Moho Forum

The layers are fairly close, but I have also angled the eyes, and used masking to keep the face markings from overlapping the borders of the head. These screengrabs might show better:.

Aaaahhhhhh Masking!!!!
A very elegant solution! I wish I thought of it.

Excelent work Barry! Timing, composition ... everything works from first frame to last. You mentioned that it took 4 weeks (tight time line!); how many people besides yourself were required to finish this piece in this aggressive a deadline? Again, great work Barry.

Rob

AAAGH! I seem to have exceeded my bandwidth allowance, and Plusnet have taken my site down. What's more, they'll only restore it if I tell them what steps I have taken to ensure it doesn't go over again. Apologies to those who haven't managed to download the film yet, but I'll have to find another way of sharing it.

And I thought 250MB/day would be ample...

kdiddy13 wrote:I used to teach a 3d class as well as some After Effects classes. I'm a huge fan of rendering in layers and compositing afterwards. It may seem to be more time consuming but I'm always happy with myself when I can just render out one fixed character without having to render the whole scene out again. The "pros" split it out even more, doing individual passes on color, specularity, shadows, etc. It ultimately gives you more control over your images.

I couldn't have completed on time without rendering in layers, but I did come across one big disadvantage of being in a hurry. The long scene where hog-boss swims down to switch on the shredder I had only seen at its full length in a very rough render without effects and reduced particles. When you render layers and there's a camera move involved, you have no chance to tweak the camera at all once you've rendered a few layers without dumping everything and starting again.

I would have liked the scene to be shorter, with a faster swim up; however the length of the commentary dictated the length of the scene, and I find the boss looks a bit like he is treading water at the end.

This is extraordinary - An ocean of paper - swirling secretary -
diving manager - swarming paperclips - flying manta folder -
biting stapler - inking submarine fountain-pen - telephone seaweed.....
A voice you have to follow.
Absolutely magnificent - What an enjoyable experience.

Cheers
Nolan

kdiddy13 wrote:So did you only have one Kitty model for the whole animation?

I've been debating the advantages of one model for everything vs. several models for different angles. Any opinions? Would you do it the same way again?

Yes, I only had one model of Kitty. She had interchangeable hands on switch layers, and a head that would cover a fairly wide turning angle, but it was enough, except for the scene where I needed a profile.

If I'd had more time (and I was working on a longer film), I would have built a profile model of her, and a back view. I would avoid switching between models in a single scene, and storyboard it so that cuts would make switching unnecessary. I would also have a full frontal body position as well as the 3/4, and be able to switch between them.

In a longer project, there will always be occasions when a general all-purpose model will not do, and for those occasions I would set up a custom character pose. But there's nothing to stop me importing a head or other parts from the general models. The head, in particular, is a lot of work to set up nicely, but a well planned head can cover so many situations.

But when I was on my last morning of production, and I still had two scenes of Kitty to animate (the last 2 in which she appears) I sure was thankful for the general purpose model. I could so quickly put her into a pose and get her to act the scene without any last minute character building.

bupaje wrote:If you can handle the bandwidth -or can get someone to host it who can- post a link at the appropriate forum at cgtalk.com. The few items I have posted over the years always generate a huge amount of hits when I included my links for at least a day -longer if people ask questions keeping the thread from getting buried. Good place to showcase your own work and Moho's capabilities.

Note: You need a high bandwidth site or mirror it and post the alternate links as a few times so many people view it that the server can't handle it so they can't access the file - the high amount of posts then might push your post below the horizon with not many people seeing it.

As I've just discovered, the bandwidth is the problem. Otherwise, it's a welcome suggestion - just have to find a hosting solution that doesn't cost me money, and doesn't get pulled down everytime I get a few hits on a large quicktime file.

robj wrote:You mentioned that it took 4 weeks (tight time line!); how many people besides yourself were required to finish this piece in this aggressive a deadline? Again, great work Barry.

Rob

Actually, I just looked at the dates on the files again, and it must have been more like 5 weeks, including 3 weekends. Still a very tight deadline. As I said, this sequence (Lesson 3) is about a quarter of the whole film, which runs to over 5 minutes. Large sections of two of the sequences had already been animated in Flash, and needed tweaks and new animation to fit with the reworked script. Another section had to be started afresh, as the main character had been changed from a monkey to a frog. So I had 3 animators working with me on the project, Jason, Simon and Richard (who all did a superb job). I assigned them each a sequence, and took the final sequence for myself, the idea being that they could jump in and help me once their Flash sequences were complete.

So in the end, they all managed to finish in time to put some work into Lesson 3, which was just as well, as I would have been in deep merde without them! I wish I could put the whole job up to be seen, but not only would it be a very large download, it would also eat up my bandwidth allowance in record time!

Thanks for answering is such detail Barry. Great stuff!!!

Holy Shit!!! I can't see it!! Your site bandwith has exceeded its limits... I hope to see your work soon

Diego

Barry Baker wrote: AAAGH! I seem to have exceeded my bandwidth allowance, and Plusnet have taken my site down. What's more, they'll only restore it if I tell them what steps I have taken to ensure it doesn't go over again. Apologies to those who haven't managed to download the film yet, but I'll have to find another way of sharing it.

And I thought 250MB/day would be ample...

250Mb gives you a bit less than 18 downloads if your file is 14 Mb, less if there is other traffic. Surprising how small 250Mb sounds when you look at it like that. What is weird is that Plusnet doesn't simply allow for the extra bandwith and charge you extra for it.

There are some really nice designs in there. Did Matt do some of them? I like the animation of the hog swimming.

Anyway, this is a really nice instructional video. Heaven knows I've worked on some real horrors in that genre, clients that constantly change their minds, horrible designs, naff scripts, no money. This is definately one of the better ones I've seen.

When you get your bandwidth conundrum solved, could you post a still, your choice (but preferably with the Kitty).

The detail gets lost in the video compression and I'd love to check out your work more closely.

@Barry - I can host your animation temporarily if you want. I have paid for an account and because I'm working a couple of jobs haven't been able to find time to complete my site. If you want to take me up on this let me know and I'll see how I set up a folder with a password so you can upload it direct.

You also may want to check out web hosting at Yahoo http://smallbusiness.sbc.yahoo.com/webhosting/?p=1. The deals are good. In my case I get DSL from them as well and they give good discounts if you have more than one things from them -ie website + DSL etc and the management tools are really easy to use.

Hi bupaje,

Thanks for your generous offer; I'd like to take you up on it, just a temporay measure, as you say. The hosting you linked to looks like good value, but I've just got too many bills this month to feel like adding a new subscription to them.

In the meantime, Plusnet have reinstated my webspace, as long as I don't go over my bandwidth limit. I had to take down the film, but at kdiddy's request here's a still:



If you would like to see others, let me know which scenes you would like. I'm sure a few jpegs can't do any harm!

Manu wrote: 250Mb gives you a bit less than 18 downloads if your file is 14 Mb, less if there is other traffic. Surprising how small 250Mb sounds when you look at it like that. What is weird is that Plusnet doesn't simply allow for the extra bandwith and charge you extra for it.

There are some really nice designs in there. Did Matt do some of them? I like the animation of the hog swimming.

Anyway, this is a really nice instructional video. Heaven knows I've worked on some real horrors in that genre, clients that constantly change their minds, horrible designs, naff scripts, no money. This is definately one of the better ones I've seen.

Hi Manu,

I just didn't do the maths in advance.

Matt designed all of the characters for the job, and also the backgrounds for the other sequences. I built Kitty from Matt's design for Moho, and designed and created all of Lesson 3's BGs and effects. Jason animated the hog swimming cycle, but Richard and Simon both adapted it for the underpaper scenes.

I have certainly never worked on such a nicely scripted instructional video before - but I haven't done many. As you say, they're usually something to run away from.