Easter Hols

Before the Easter Holidays Anja asked me to animate some fish. I told Anja that I only really joined her group for Post Production as i mainly only wanted to do editing and copositing. I told her that I have never done an animation in Maya before. She assured me that it was 'easy' and I wouldn't have to worry, but I am still unsure as to why she would still assign this project to me as I am sure there are other peope with more experience in animating than me. She knew how I felt and insisted I still do it so I decided I'd give it a try anyway. I warned her though that she cannot expect my work to look perfect though if I have never done animatign before.

It is hard to understand exactelywhat Anja asks me to do also as she doesn’t explain things very well. I generally have to ask every possible question in order to get as clear of an idea of what she wants.

From the questions I asked she wants me to animate them to swim on the spot swaying then quickly swim away from each other. Unfortunately she would not give me any idea of actual timing, for example frames/seconds. This makes it both easier to create, but harder to do properly for what Anja envisions. It is easier because I can make up the timings myself but chances are that they won’t be good enough for Anja as I will be completely making up the timings myself.

She also wanted me to make the fish's fins flap around whilst they were stationary. I explained to her that Japanese Koi (or fish in general) wouldn’t sway their fins as if they were swimming ,when sitting still but she asked me to do it anyway. I understand on an aesthetic level why she wants this to happen, although having the fish realistically swim up to each other to stop and sway, without moving their fins, will still look just as aesthetically pleasing, at least to me and wouldn’t look strange. This is such a small thing though that I doubt anyone watching will notice that is unrealistic/strange or even care if they did.

I still thought this was an important thing to bring up though just in case but Anja thought it would look more beautiful if it was swaying on the spot, so that is how I will do it.

Term 2

Last weeks of term 2

Experimented with inking in Daryl's frames on computer in different programs to see which would be easier to do. Toon Boom made the most sense to try first as it is designed for this job. It is also considered as industry standard software. I have used flash a little in the past and am fairly competent with various controls in most Adobe software in general although Toon Boom proved quite different.

Although unfortunately there wasn’t much point in learning Toon Boom at this stage as the software wasn’t working properly – Toon boom couldn’t save anything. Although it has been reported to IT there was no reason to not start in a different piece of software. The obvious solution was flash.

I started with the first scene that has been drawn and scanned in by Daryl. We have named it ‘Glove Scene’. It has been a long time since I last used Flash so it took a bit of time to get used to the controls again. In all honestly i practically had to learn all shortcuts and tools again. Although I did remember that F5 and F6 keys create and edit keyframes, being the most important function.

I started by creating every single set of frames for every different frame drawn. This was two blank keyframes for every one image, unless otherwise stated by Daryl. (for example some scenes reuse the same body for a number of frames)

I then started drawing in flash using the pen tool over every single frame. I idea behind using this strategy is ultimately to understand how the final film will look through this method and also to give a good idea as to how long it will take us to complete the film this way.

Here is a clip of before I finished it.

It proved to take me three weeks to do this one scene. Granted it will be quicker to do the other scenes as a lot of this time was used getting used to Flash and the entire process. Unfortunately though we have to bare in mind that other members of the group will have to learn it too if they are to ink in also. This will mean they too will need this extra time to learn the program. I will of course be able to help with this but it still wasn’t an ideal solution as it would still require far too much time to complete all the scenes.