loved this short about crabs!

Yes, after watching this, i did kind of wish i had seen it before i handed my dissertation in, because there was some interesting things in there, that could have backed up some of my points that i was making. What i found very strange, in this film, is the use of subtle, yet dark humour, the narration, was very serious in the sound, yet certain gags and events that happened on screen, and also was subtitled. I always enjoy watching a film that is completely away from the whole Holywood thing, in that of style, humour etc. Its always nice to see a variation in the story telling format, it inspires me, and makes me want to make something like that, in a traditional sense. It has even given me ideas about my overall style in my war account for my FMP, i know what everything should look, i just want to design some kind of overall uniqueness to it, as i know alot of CG animated stuff, can seem very 'samey'.

There was this video, that i found on Aniboom, which to me was a good example, of overusing the 'squash and stretch' method, and it did kind of annoy me, as every single movement, there was some kind of wobble or stretching,and i thort it was just beeing abused too much, but that might be my opinion.

Audio and other things

Today i worked on some sketches on my plans for the 3d assets for the piece that i am doing for a YCN brief, that was what i did.
What i discussed with Matt was that of two things. One was the fact of landscape scenery generation software, and the other was the fact of my audio, the narration is hard to understand by people who are not from Yorkshire, which was something that i had not realized. The solution to this is subtitles, as it would be useful for the people from the local area etc. However, i would like to keep the original audio, and not have subtitles to ruin it, so im going to explore this issue.

Here we go....

Story development at the moment has been fairly consistant, i have been filtering thru some of my interviewed audio footage that i gained over xmas, and i have been working on this, my anamatics have changed somewhat from a first idea.
I have had dilemmas where for instance, the actual storyboards weren't very interesting and as comical as other storyboards, the thing that i dont want is bits of the animated film to not relate to each scene, in terms of composition. At the moment i have some storyboard images to add, and also a soundtrack that i have someone working on as well.

I said this;

Earlier i was saying that i was wanting to get out of the old habbit of using maya, but after speaking with matt, this is a BAD idea, i am sticking to maya and not gunna leave its side. It is pointless going into seperate peograms doing things like texturing etc, when you can all do it in maya, there are loads of programs that cud do better texturing, but i am ONLY delaying the inevitable!

some dreamworks related ranting

OK, here goes, i have noticed this thing that a few dreamworks animated films/ shorts seem to do a lot. In Shrek, Kunf fu panda, and Father of the Pride, i have noticed that the character animation is way too smooth, and for me its one of those things which i pick up on in a very subtle way, but it seems to make a big difference to how i enjoy the film. Ok i havnt done a lot of CG animation yet, but i believe its just not believable enuff, it kinda makes me cringe. I think i may see it more in human looking characters than animals/ monsters/ ogers etc, so thats what i have to say.
Thanks.

Some lovely cinematic filming

This short film is a very dramatic filmed paintball video, you can see that there has been a lot of thought that has gone into it, even tho you dont see faces, from the movement in the characters that have been shot, etc, you do see this. I have seen many promotional videos for paintball, and most of them are a bunch of random people running about shooting each other and has been fimed really poorly, this is very diffeferent, the filming style reminded me of Top Gear, but overall the film reminded me of a scene from the film 'Enemy at the gates', where jude law is been hunted by the german sniper, and he his hunting him, it is just a matter of who finds who first. If you like that film, and you hate or have no interest in paintball, id still urge you take 5 mins and watch it, as part way through, i felt it was giving me research ideas for the more 'professional' me. Of course you could argue that the film would work better if it were of an actual war, instead of the safer paintballs, but i liked it, and i rekon others will too.

watch here