April 6, 2013

Weekend update

Some things I made. Note to self: Traveling shot- not even once.

I probably could have done a simple zoom in, but really felt the scene was reading kind of flat. Which isn't a bad thing because this part of the story is supposed to be kind of low key. Watching it though, wasn't getting the feeling that this was supposed to be a dramatic beat (which it was), just kinda felt like: "dad walks into the bar meets his buddy and the kid sits in booth", when it's supposed to be: "dad ignores son to meet with buddy, son is standing there maybe hoping for something to happen, but he just mosies along rather sad, maybe a bit annoyed".

Yeah, the sad walk animation could've maybe sold that beat, but...dunno, needed a bit more of a kick- I think.

Just a couple of more weeks!




4 comments:

Kirun said...

this is awesome.
how do you go about animating perspective for this kind of thing? are you just going straight ahead?

Michael Barquero said...

The perspective I go about it two different ways, but at the core of it all: I blur my eyes and if it looks wrong I fix it.

The first way, I'll key frame my set, so if want a chair to turn from front to side, I'll draw the front view and then the side view and depending on how many frames I want on it, I'll draw an arc on a top layer connecting each edge of the chair and put little tick marks so I know where to put each edge and adjust it so it flows.

So it's kinda like animating anything else pose-to-pose.

For this particular one I went straight ahead because this wasn't a simple dolly shot (the camera was being pushed in by some invisible force), so I couldn't just mechanically connect points.

I mean, I could but I dunno, it didn't seem like it made sense for something like a "dynamic" traveling shot where things are moving around and I kinda want that "shakey cam" aesthetic.

So with this one, I went straight ahead and just blocked in shapes to where it felt right. Now, I didn't completely go straight-ahead because in my "line-layer" I do have poses for those booths turning, but I had to abandom them (kinda) because it didn't feel right for a moving camera. So I guess it's a mix?

To be honest, I don't know what I'm doing so I would take all these methods with a grain of salt. In the future, I don't think I'd go at this the same way. Probably would have been more efficient to model some basic stuff in maya then just draw over it in flash. Or just forget flash and do it all in maya.

As for the characters, yeah I do them straight ahead- I think. I really don't know the terminiology all too well, but I guess the closest thing I can think of is how you would straight-ahead animation in maya- so...layering?

I like getting the feel of the movement (again blurring my eyes) by just putting down blocks of shapes and then I start adding the legs and putting arms on it and adjusting the head so it makes sense.

I used to do pose to pose b/c that's how our teachers taught us, but layering has so much more vitality. As long as you know where the weight is and understand the momentum that's happening within your character and how he/she/it would compensate that shift in weight- you're gold.

If there's interest I could put together a "how I made this short" (assuming I do finish it) after I turn this in- I probably won't have anything better to do anyway. ha.

Thanks for looking man, good luck on your stuff!

Kirun said...

AWESOME.
thanks for the insight

Lily Williams said...

SHARK