Wip

[Black Spot]

Hi. I’m busy doing an animation for a song my husband co-wrote about London. Needless to say it’s all about London. All my background characters are faceless and running on castors. Only my main characters will be properly animated. I’m using Serif DrawPlus8 that doesn’t have key frames. All frames will be exported individually as tiffs to make up the video. I have two years in my spare time to do four and a half minutes.

This is just a short test to see how many background characters were needed for a close shot.



First test of my main character. Still needs loads more work.



Very short scene. I need loads more people in the background and they need to move slower. I had all 6000 plus frames lip-synched out, but it still needs tweaking – it’s off at the beginning.

[Zilant]

Hmmm. It's an interesting direction your taking here.
Are these including the breakdowns, or just the keyframes?
(I mean Keyframe in the traditional sense. Not in terms of the program's abilities)

The source material your animating with is lovely.
Your rendering of the clothes on the background characters being especially nice.
Their designs are wonderfully varied. Different weights, ages, ethnicities, even senses of style.
You went the extra mile on the background character's designs and the work really shows.


My only critique at this point,

I know your taking pains to make things seem artificial as a stylistic choice, seeing as how we're talking about faceless cardboard cutouts on wheels and all. But I think having everything move in a similar way takes you from artificial to mechanical, effectively dehumanizing the crowd.

More specifically: Moving the crowd-on-wheels at a varied paces/speeds, with pack-like behaviors, and individual movements would be mimicking real crowds and is pretending the cutouts are the humans they're trying to depict (artifical), moving everyone at a similar pace/speed, with everyone spaced apart fairly evenly, and using movements that are twin'ing* is unnatural in humans (mechanical). So much so I think your in danger of losing the sense of humanity itself.


*twin'ing: slang for motion that's repeated on two separate things.
Ex: The red jacket and black jacket moving towards the right in the back.
You don't have any occuring in the second crowd scene, but, in the first you have quite a bit that's either exact or much too close for comfort (but that could just be because it's a test, if so, just ignore that part of my comment).

[Black Spot]

You’re right. I need more groups moving like flocks of birds, almost streaming along in lines. Perhaps couples and families to break up the individuals might help.

Thanks, your comment has been very useful.

[Black Spot]

Haven't updated in a while. Doesn't mean I haven't been hard at work. This is my main character. He's dancing to the tune (need more inbetweens) and as the tune is quite jerky, so is he. The head is just pasted on at the moment as I'm more interested in his body.



Also here is a test run on background. I know some of the figures shrink too much, but that's easily fixed.

[Skenvoy]

No small undertaking!

I dig the way your main character is moving Looks really cool actually. The movement of his right hand coming up looks very nice, is his other hand going to be holding something or have you just not finished the animation in it? It's lack of movement compared to his other hand is a little off I think?

At the end of that bit you've shown it looks like his knee is starting to rotate or dislocate?

[SMILEFACE]

this rocks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cout<mecha]

This really excellent work. A slight movement on the different BG characters would be really good especially in combination with a more natural path of movement. Right now they are jumping around. If the shot is really good you can use it several times. What type of music may I ask?

[Black Spot]

No small undertaking!

I dig the way your main character is moving Looks really cool actually. The movement of his right hand coming up looks very nice, is his other hand going to be holding something or have you just not finished the animation in it? It's lack of movement compared to his other hand is a little off I think?

At the end of that bit you've shown it looks like his knee is starting to rotate or dislocate?

He won’t be holding anything, but his hand will change. I’ve got to move the foot as I want the leg rotating out. And, cheers, cool is what I was looking for.

this rocks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks.

This really excellent work. A slight movement on the different BG characters would be really good especially in combination with a more natural path of movement. Right now they are jumping around. If the shot is really good you can use it several times. What type of music may I ask?

I’m still getting all the elements into place and nothing is final yet. Trouble is there isn’t a chorus to make repetition a good option. The music is sort of New Wave that was around during the early 80s. The whole thing is very tongue in cheek.

This was the band’s only chart hit but the song I'm animating is faster.

[cout<mecha]

Wow that is some really retro stuff. Typical 80s. I'm surprised I've never heard that recording before. Would that be your husband in the lead? By the way was does 'boheca' mean?

[Black Spot]

No, he's the one playing bass in the video. The lead singer died in 1999 - my youngest is named after him.

"Boheca!" where's that?

[cout<mecha]

I heard it on a radio show. Supposed to be an English expression or cockney term of some sort.

How long are you planning on working on this, I may have a few moment here and there. Does the program your working with export Illustrator or EPS files?

[Black Spot]

Well I’m aiming for it to be ‘the’ song for the 2012 Olympics so 2011 might be the best time. Not only do I have to animate the thing, I have to clean the sound up – major time; I’m working from a demo tape (cassette) even though I do have it on vinyl but the demo is funnier. It seems that it didn’t survive the master tape being double baked as it wasn’t included on the album that has a load of crap on it as well was some good stuff.

Also there is all the rights to sort out; the four members of the group all co-wrote it, one’s dead and one has disappeared – that’s not actually a major problem as any one of the four could re-release it, it’s the publishing rights that I’m more concerned about as my husband has kept nothing in writing. Their ex-manger sold everything to another company and when I’m nearer completion I’ll see if they want to help in promoting it. Until then, I’m keeping a lot close to my chest to stop any pre-emption from various parties.

I’ll be getting in touch with the ex-wife of the lead singer as I need photos of the girls (which she was one) to get them right; my husband thinks I’ve got the lead singer spot on and as he considered him a brother, I take that as a compliment.

I’m working with Serif DrawPlusX2. I started with 8 which didn’t have tweening, but I’m doing it frame by frame as I don’t like tweening.

I’ve got an even older song to work on next and there are no issues there at all.