Bus Stop Animation

[bliss_infinite]

Here's a short animation that I put together entirely inspired by Mike Scott's (Mikdog) "Lets Animate" tutorial. It was an incredibly useful tutorial to help me get through some of the workflow blocks I was having with working in AS (so thanks Mikdog!). I also wanted to experiment with simplifying character and background design as well as going through a project from start to finish.

[Danimal]

Very impressive animation and the ending was quite unexpected. Great stuff!

[slowtiger]

Really nice! I like the style a lot. Good designs, good colours, and the animation is top.

Some points:
- The cut between the man walking and the bus stop needs a larger change of image. Maybe zoom in more to the man.
- The bus has an odd perspective, and the passengers should be as detailed as the other persons.
- The multiplane effect in the second shot is odd since the snow and mailbox should move with the pavement.

[bliss_infinite]

Ah, thanks Slowtiger, I see what your points are. I did think the miltiplane effect looked a bit odd but I wasn't sure why. The lack of detail on the bus passengers was just me cutting corners. I did think of adding the faces and other tiny details but got lazy I'll experiment with the perspective on the bus too. I wasn't 100% on that. Good points all.

[Pesto]

I really like the look and animation. Great job. I was reading slowtiger's advice and I don't understand the 3rd comment "The multiplane effect in the second shot is odd since the snow and mailbox should move with the pavement." I guess I don't get it, can someone explain it to me what is meant since I don't see it? Is it that they are moving but at different rates? Because the mailbox seems like it is moving.

Thanks

[neeters_guy]

I don't understand the 3rd comment "The multiplane effect in the second shot is odd since the snow and mailbox should move with the pavement." I guess I don't get it, can someone explain it to me what is meant since I don't see it?

It means the falling snow shouldn't track with the camera.

I'll put in my compliments to bliss_infinite as well. Nice work.

[Pesto]

Thanks Neeters_guy. I see it now. I have a lot to learn It's great having all these sets of eyes on this forum!

[Pesto]

Another question about the animation - was everything (background, etc...) created in AS?

Thanks

[3deeguy]

I really like your style, nice work. I didn't notice any problems at first. After Neeters_guy explained how the snow was tracking I noticed his scarf was blowing in the opposite direction from the snow. Then at the bus stop the scarves are still blowing but the snow is falling vertically. Just an observation.

[Little Yamori]

I think it was the sidewalk movement in perspective to the mailbox etc... If you notice, the lines in the side walk are moving at a different speed then the passing objects on the street. I didn't notice this until Slowtiger pointed it out ( at least I think he did). Everyone already commented on the other little things that stood out to me too, otherwise, great warm and charming feel to the work.

[djwaterman]

Cute gag, perhaps the joke could have been worked on a bit more but I understand it was probably more an exercise for you. The design is fantastic, that simplicity of background and character is something I love in animation, you really nailed it.

[bliss_infinite]

As I understood Slowtiger's 3rd point the parallax (is that the correct term?) looked odd having the foreground and the background moving differently in this particular instance since the foreground (signs and mailbox) were part of the sidewalk. I agreed with that and made that change. The snow, however, is a bit trickier for me to fix. I now see how the wind blown scarves and the vertical falling snow are problematic and are at odds with each other. I tried to create the falling snow using the particle effect but the more animated elements that I added to the shot seemed to 'break' the particle effect of falling snow. It would speed up until it was a mess of just random snow falling. I tried for days to fix that problem but was unable to and just went with manually animating snow falling in cycles.

I'm working up another version with these changes - again, as a continuation of this excersize.

To answer Pesto's question, I created everything, characters and backgrounds in Illustrator, imported it into Photoshop to add texture on the backgrounds and then imported all of that into AS and animated those layers. As powerful of a tool as AS is, I find the drawing tools a bit tedious to work with. But that's just me and since I'm pretty fluent in Illustrator this workflow seemed to work better for me though, for now, the animation may be more 'limited' but that worked fine with this concept. In the past I've used both AS drawings and imported drawings. It mostly depends on what I'm going for.