finally finished-

sinclair · Post by **sinclair** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 1:29 pm

Hey-

I've been working on this one since May- Did a lot of playing with particle layers (never tried them before, the how do I ? forum, as usual, was very helpful and supplied all the information I needed)-

http://www.aniboom.com/competitions/Fox ... he-Fourth/

It's the first thing I've posted in a long time that actually resembles a story and isn't just a clip or bit-

All feedback is appreciated-

S

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 3:29 pm

The characters are great and the story is really funny. The animatiion needs to be better to do it justice, IMHO...

J. Baker · Post by **J. Baker** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 5:01 pm

That was hilarious! You should send it in for the fox animation contest on aniboom. I think you would have a good chance of winning.

sinclair · Post by **sinclair** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 10:14 pm

Thanks Jahnocli, the animation is a work in progress, I still got a long way to go-

J- It is entered, I hope your right-

b15fliptop · Post by **b15fliptop** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:19 am

Good stuff! I think the animation is fine, personally. Good luck with the FOX thing!

sinclair · Post by **sinclair** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:39 am

Thanks flip-

Did you guys get an entry in?

b15fliptop · Post by **b15fliptop** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:47 am

Yeah, although it isn't Sea of Idiots. We came up with a new concept for it, called Ghost Squad, that is a spoof of shows like Ghost Hunters and Paranormal State. It can be found here, for any that are interested: http://www.aniboom.com/competitions/Fox ... ost-Squad/

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:26 am

Excellent job!

Worthy replacements for Beavis and Butthead.

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On the topic of the "animation needing work". I can see where it could use some subtle improvement. It's something I struggle with as well. I would say that 90% of it is great but there are some areas where the motion is a bit "floaty"... needs some "tightening" of the motion. Basically you have some areas where the distance between moving keys is too far... which creates some slow movements over time.

When I find this in my own animations I will pop in some "hold" keys in between the "slow" areas and then have the larger changes in keys that are closer together. It's the slow movements over long stretches of frames that look "odd". I leave in some small subtle movement but where it looks odd is say an arm that rotates very slowly over a long time. I like to put in some secondary motion but keep the movements over shorter frame lengths.

Actually, the dialog, characters and story are so well done that this subtle issue regarding the animation is very very easy to overlook. The backgrounds and detail are fantastic.

-vern

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 8:12 am

When I find this in my own animations I will pop in some "hold" keys in between the "slow" areas and then have the larger changes in keys that are closer together. It's the slow movements over long stretches of frames that look "odd". I leave in some small subtle movement but where it looks odd is say an arm that rotates very slowly over a long time. I like to put in some secondary motion but keep the movements over shorter frame lengths.

This is one of the best pieces of advice, and a much needed one.

sinclair · Post by **sinclair** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:28 pm

Thanks HeyVern-

I think you nailed it spot on, I had spent so much time composing my backgrounds that it ate up a majority of the time so when It came to actually animating I found myself rushing through to meet the deadline. there were two scenes in there that I had animated and edited in as "placeholders" with the intent that I would have time to go back and fix them later but I ran out of time so they stayed in-

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:29 pm

I find getting that "motion" right the most time consuming. Putting in the keys and hold keys is a real "art" for me. I have to concentrate really really hard.

I look back at stuff I've done where I completely missed that in areas. It really does stand out.

--------

p.s. A very long time ago there was a discussion on this forum about a "bug" or "defect" in "Moho". They called it the "Moho drift" or something like that. Had to do with how key frames would slowly move from one key to the next instead of "automagically" holding in place. Made me laugh out loud. Don't know if I was able to convince the people who believed in it that it wasn't a "Moho" problem but an animation principle. They kept insisting it was a bug or problem in the application.

I called the new feature they wanted "Psychic Key Frame Interpolation". The software would "read your mind" to know what frame a keyed movement should start and stop.

-vern

b15fliptop · Post by **b15fliptop** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:58 pm

I always thought keyframes would make a lot more sense if you just added your key to the place in the timeline where you wanted a move to happen, and then the key would have a little handle that you grabbed and dragged backwards in the timeline to where you wanted the move to start. Seems like a more intuitive, linear way of thinking. If any of you compose music with a sequencer, a piano roll editor works in a similar way, except you put the note where you want it and then drag the right edge out to set the duration of the note in the timeline.

sinclair · Post by **sinclair** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:22 am

B15- A Theoretical key frame with bezier handles on it like the verticies in Adobe Illustrator-(that's probably totally misspelled)-

AS- Bug, nice, like someone complaining that their new car won't stop, Have you tried applying the brakes?

My models heads are mainly comprised of switch layers, the mouth, jaw and hair are all set to the same dat file, the eyes are manually key framed and all switches are set to interpolate. I generally don't see the small drifts until after I render, which means I really need to start using the F5 key more often-

K-

sinclair · Post by **sinclair** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:41 pm

Just re-posted an alternate cut on Youtube-

This one has the original music (I had swapped it out at the last minute)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI9JPnQ1BoI