Trax- not really good, it decieved me!

Ok well after that post about how great i thort trax was that was after a succesfull test with simple objects beeing animated, but not a test with a full rig, that has a lot of hierarchy chains. I think this is where it screwed me over. It seemed to work fine to start with then when i was wanting to repeat the animation in the trax editor, it went all weird, sending the rig all over the place like it had been exploded and frozen in space. However, after a disappointing time with trax, i decided that i wanted to do something with the animation that i had made, as i was rather happy with it, its not perfect, but i wanted to start putting clips of my progress up, and then see my animation skill getting better. My origial idea for this animation that went wrong, was this;

take heavy box, walk with it, trip over a curb and fall sending the box flying as welll as the character and then smashing through the table, get up,look round whilst rubbing soar joints, end.



i wish i listened to liam now! lol

Easter island talking heads

I like this for some reason, maybe coz it made me rember how much i want to do stuff like this, but all the technical difficulties in maya, its rather off putting, why does maya have to do this too you?

Trax

Trying to master trax editor and i think i finally get it. What im doing by the way is animating just a skeleton (one from previous project) and just making my animation skills better, im going to run thru some scenario's that my film may be in animation wise and make the animations, just testing that i can actually do. The trax seems to give me more confidence that my idea can be done.

Got back into drawing

How many penguins?
complete the yawn


Yeah, im pretty pleased as i have missed this for a while and the fact that i wasnt as good as i was. I used to draw much more, and i think i must have stopped drawing properly and that has made me pretty lazy, however i am getting back into back into it and i cant stop doodling drawing etc. I feel so great to be dooing it. My mutter gave me this book called 'Doodle while you work - by Staffan Gnosspelius' and it has half finished drawings and stuff, and its pretty good to help me get back into drawing and just coming up with some possible character designs for one of my FMP.

thort id have a wee go

I have a few ideas about entering this posibly cliche'd contest http://thesimpsons.com/postercontest/ its just a still, so yeah, im havin a go. :p

paintball war zone animated film

I really liked this too, as it is both involving 2 of my fav things, paintball and animation, it has a very simplistic style, it reminds me of some computer game, i just cant think which.

really strange surreal short animated film

it is based on the nice characters based in childrens books, but it has a very weird twist, i really dont like the all the lettering in this tho, i think there still trying to keep a kids book look, but it anoys me, apart from that, its quite ok.

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom
nuther example of CG ww2 animation, not as good as my previous finds tho

wow

I dont no what it is about stop motion that i get the strange loving feeling about it, just the way it is so raw looking, wow. oh and quite funny too.

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

Influences

Ok i thought id better do some more explaining of how i got my main overall idea theme. For a while, i have wanted to make a film which relates to world war two, i seemed to have developed a keen interest of it, over the years, watching discovery channel, nat geo, history channel etc. And finally i have a decent idea for a ww2 animation.
I have decided that its going to be a little bit like creature comforts in the way of the visual humour, which doesnt always involve the dialogue, but sometimes relates to what is beeing said.
This is probably the best example i could find of this, youtube was a bit disapointing for what i actually wanted.
My main inspiration was an Aardman film called War Story, when i first saw this, a long time ago, i imediatly was impressed by the subtle comedy that goes on in the film, it is kind of the thing that what i am wanting to achieve, but of course i have a different story, and even tho it is still the same theme as War Story, it will be a different kind of film, in my way.


I want it to be like a montage of events, sequenced in order and hopefully use interviewed dialogue, i have from my Grandad, and use old photos as references and to help me build characters etc.
As a main style to my film, i want it to be very 'cartoon' like, i don't like realistic, as i feel it would limit me, in that of humor etc. I am going to look at the old warner bros cartoons and mgm cartoons as some animation references. As this is an example of very 'cartoon' like style in 3d.

i also saw this from the same channel, which is another war animated film, not as good as others, but its a good reference, this is meant to be a comedy too, but i felt the soundtrack was letting the film down.
So in a very small nutshell, and if someone asks, what are you dooing, i think i would say;
.....I am making an animated short film which is a light comedy flick about some persons experiences during world war 2. (that person happens to be my Grandad, but it could be anyone, just lucky i got him for this)......

So the whole reason that i have made this post is to make it a more in depth understanding of why i want to do this idea. Also i know this brief i will be more into, and wont get sick of it (to a point anyway, lol), On this, i dont think there will be much lip sync, theyl just be a lot of actions, close ups, glimpses of characters in the background, etc. So i dont belive it is going to be as much work as it sounds. I do know i will have to make multiple characters, scenes etc, so i am slitely looking forward to it all. AND, i am going to actually learn from my mistakes, dont waste time on certain things, and of course, my main objective is to make certain things simple SiMpLe SIMPLE SIMPLE! One last thing, i really want to get out of maya, but i know ill be using it lots again for this project, but i want to learn other 3d apps too, its just a time thing. :D :p

Final Major Rationalle

I have learnt a lot of CG skills over a my time on this course, and I know there’s still lots to be learnt, as with my pervious project I designed a brief which was to help me with my animation skills, to develop them further and understand more about some technical side of things more too. I now feel that I need to put these skills to more practice. So I have decided to make an animated short film which is relied upon the narration that has been pre-recorded, and from some pre-recorded audio, I will develop the short film around it after I have edited the narration to my requirements. The actual content is World War 2 related, and the whole concept of the animated film, is really going to be an edited account of a certain persons time during the events of World War 2. Already I have ideas of how the film is going to look, from some content already found, I believe it is going to be comical and will have a rather cartoon look to the characters etc. The film ‘War Story’ from Aardman animations has inspired me to do this. I feel that as I have a strong interest in the overall subject, and my existing knowledge will help, with the technical side of things, factual aspects and of course the animation.
As my whole idea for this film, is based around one character, I can see myself having very little problems for the realisation. For certain scenes I may need more than one character, and I have the idea to have one character and just edit the mesh several times, this way it saves me making whole characters from scratch, so the initial first thing I need to do is design a neutral character, so then all the characters will have the same stylistic outlook As for a soundtrack, I don’t think it would be essential, as comedies don’t seem to work well with them, but I will investigate this anyway, as it may need the odd sound to emote audiences emotions (like what they do in horror films).
As for the whole duration of the film, I am not certain yet, I think it could be 5-10 mins give or take, it All depends on my audio content, and how much scenes I will add in.