Final Animation Updates

I haven't been posting all of my ideas and changes for my final animation, and I think I confused some people, so I'll post them here:
I decided to do this in flash instead of photoshop. I decided that early on even though I didn't know flash because I knew it would have better animation tools than photoshop.
For the final draft, I will be adding the following ending:
-stuff happens
-mouse eats fox
-slight pause
-mouse hops back into vending machine
-fade to black as door opens and another character walks into room
-mouse laughs an insane high pitched laugh

I want to give the mouse this crazy high pitched laugh, which we'll be introduced to earlier in the animation as well when he's laughing at the fox. Hopefully I'll be able to find this online. If not, I'll try voice manipulation with garage band or something ... who knows.

I'm adding a segment where there is a close up of the fox's hand inside the vending machine when he reaches in to try to get the mouse. This will be for clarity.

A few other timing issues will be worked on. ... Stuff cleaned up... etc.


End.

Belated Progress Report

I noticed everyone else has their progress report up on their blog. I guess I missed when that was mentioned in class, so I'll post it now.


Animation Progress Calendar
ARTC 400 Spring 2008
Estimated Length of Animation: 2 mins
Working Title: Vulpes, vulpes
Technique(s) used: Hand drawn (on computer) - flash

Week of: Mar 10 – 16
Got rough animatic done.Rough timing.

Mar 17 - 23
Get at least 5 ‘scenes’ done (a scene here I’m saying is a segment where the background graphics don’t change).Start looking for/making sound FX.

Mar 24 - 30
Get at least 5 ‘scenes’ done.Have 90% of SFX gathered.Apply at least 50% of SFX.

Mar 30 - Apr 6Get at least 5 ‘scenes’ done.Have all SFX gathered.Apply all to the best of your ability.

Apr 7 - Apr 13
Get at least 5 ‘scenes’ done.Tweak any SFX if needed.

Apr 14 - Apr 20
Get the last ‘scenes’ done 4(+).

Apr 21 - Apr 27
Correct any mistakes. Get timing down perfectly.

Apr 28
Done.


This was my first draft of a progress report. What I actually did was make a full animatic in sketchy stick figures, and I'm going back in and adding details and final timing. I will add the sound FX most likely the week of April 21-27th, as my final step. If I have time, I will color the characters and the vending machine, but by the looks of things, I won't have time and it will be in black and white.

Halfway Report

When I last talked with the whole class about what I wanted to do for my final project, I was leaning toward doing a music video. Well-- I had to scrap that. The songs that inspired me most were copywrighted and I couldn't get permission... and I didn't want to pick a song I didn't really like because I knew I would have to listen to it about a bajillion times.


SO- I came up with a short story. My idea behind this short story was to take an every day activity, and make it not so every day, as well as to throw in some crazy cartoon violence. I kept it hand drawn (on the computer- so no scanning), and used flash. I found it pretty easy to learn.




The short 10 second explaination of my story is character goes to a vending machine to get food, the food gets stuck in the machine after he puts his money in, he tries all sorts of crazy things to get it out, then finally at the end he gets it, but there's some sort of strange irony at the end.




My main character is a fox. Here's the concept art (he gets WAY simplified because of the strange way flash draws lines):








The item in the vending machine that won't fall out is a mouse. I decided to fill the vending machine with animal snacks instead of human snacks. Then I took it a step further and decided to add only small animals (prey items) to the vending machine- no fruits or veggies. So the final vending machine will have birds, lizards, a turtle, opossum, squirrel, etc. etc.





Here's the concept art of the mouse:



I basically have a finished animatic (no sounds) so far. I still need to work on the timing of a few things though.
It's pretty big, if you wanna watch it it'll take a while to load. I should've compressed it more or made a smaller one. Oh well. *shrug
PS. On blogger, this looks really really really choppy on my computer (about 1 fps). Idk why, it said it uploaded fine. Don't be surprised if it does it to you too I guess :P.

I've had a lot of trouble coming up with an ending on this. I feel like the ending I have now has been overdone, but I can't come up with anything better (and believe me I've tried :P). I've had everything from giant robots, bears, lions, ghosts, angels, demons, and the power of the ninja somehow enter at the end.

Well, that's it for now. I'm just gonna include my draft artist's statement below (cuz that's what was assigned for us to post here), but it's mostly already been said above.

Artist's Statement:

The concept for this piece was to take an everyday activity and make it a bit crazy (in a cartoony sense). The original idea was to make this a fake commercial for a fake product (a food item that would be in a vending machine). The main character would walk up to the machine, put in his money, enter his selection, and the snack would get stuck. The main character would then try all sorts of crazy ways to get it out, ultimately succeeding and walking off with his prize. The vending machine would come to life as a monster with big pointy teeth and eat the character as he walked off. Then the logo for the fake product would appear (the item the main character wanted). Happy music would be played.

My main character I decided early on would be some sort of canid (dog/fox/wolf/coyote), since I typically draw them a lot (and I wanted to do some sort of hand drawn animation as opposed to stop motion or something else). For this project, I also wanted to make sure I didn't do something that could just be done by a video camera and an actor in a wolf suit- so I wanted to add cartoony aspects to it. Because of this, I also started to think about changing what was IN the vending machine from just normal human snacks to animal snacks. Then from random animal snacks, I changed it to include just small animals that a fox would eat (my main character winded up being a red fox). The inspiration for the mouse eating the fox at the end came mostly from Futurama (the character 'Nibbler'), but it's really been used a lot in other places too.

To do this animation, I used adobe flash Cs3 and a wacom tablet. It's all hand drawn frame by frame for the most part. A few areas use symbols and instances thereof. I chose to do it this way because I didn't want to scan thousands of things into the computer, but I still wanted to do something hand drawn. I left it feeling a little sketchy, but not too sketchy on purpose. I just liked it that way.