No, you're right about the eyes. I was using "stage looking" -- probably not the right term, but it's been a long time since I acted in theatre. But it's a kind of cheating in theatre to have the characters looking at empty space facing more toward the camera, in order to show more of their faces. Is that what you were talking about? Maybe I shouldn't have used it. I'll avoid using it in my next bit.
If it weren't needed for the actual anniversary date, I'd consider amending it.
Or, it could be a symptom of the fact that I animated the characters separately, usually blind, but in 2 spots I imported a still image of Ariel for reference. I had a lot of problems getting this rendered out as long as it was and had to break it into smaller pieces, and having both characters in there I think would have been a disaster. I kept running into places where the master/control bone script would suddenly stop working
during the rendering, either freezing or making the body reset to arms-out position, or another part where when I tried rendering it from frame 600 the script never activated in the first place. I ended up "fixing" it by rendering a few frames manually (Ctrl-R), saving those, and rendering starting from past the problem area.
Also, there are a few strange glitches in the eyes sometimes, where it shows the pupil underneath through a crack, and I have no idea why. There is no seam where it appears in the render, I can see all the points on the screen, and all's fine, but it appears only in the render.
Oh, and I want to admit that I'm not happy at all with the pointless arm gestures I had Ariel do near the end.
Anyway, here's the rest of it. Thanx for the comments and suggestions!
http://revver.com/watch/231256
(Fullscreen mode recommended)
I don't have any gradients in my shapes.
