Moho Forum

it's been a while since i posted anything...so...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlABV5riqyI

I animated this by request for a "youtube producer" last summer.

Needless to say that's the last time I produce anything for free (I was sent a prerecorded audio track, everything else was all me) I realize it's common sense (even back then) to not animate for the promise of "exposure" but apparently I had to prove it to myself.

I really like your drawing style, its different from anything i have seen here at the forum before, looks a bit handdrawn.
Great job.

Thanks Parker, I scan in my doodles and clean them up in AS.

Hey, Sinclair, nice to see your work again. If it's any consolation, I think every freelance artist gets burned once in a while.

thanks Neeters, very true; but at least the end result came out decent

Really nice!

It's a very nice animation. Just a couple of quick observations :

1 - The left and right part of the faces do exactly the same thing. They mirror each other actions. Having one eye brow raised, the other lowered, one eye more open, the other squinting, the mouth pulling to one side, etc. adds a bit more life to expressions (all of the interesting facial expressions are assymetrical).

2 - Even though the mouth speaks, the eyes do not. Their only action is the obligatory blinking. A bit more eye action (squinting, widening, etc.) gives more depth to a speech, it gives hints as to what the speaker is thinking about what he says.

Of course, for the officers, it might stay just as it is now (being unemotional investigators). But by making Obi Wan and Yoda more emotional in their expressions, it would emphasize the officers' straight faces.

Your animation was much better than that ho-hum audio track deserved.

Regarding working for free, when you work for free, at least you know you aren't going to see any money. What really sucks is when you work on a project expecting to be paid, and you don't get jack squat.

Thanks for the critique Paul, if you watch some of my earlier stuff my facial movement was way all over the place, I'm still trying to find the happy medium. I contemplated adding more features but cut and ran due to time restraints.

Tony- I thought the voicework was really good; the story:not so much. The track that was sent to me was a couple years old. I trimmed down the "jokes" in this cut so that it would run under two minutes. I'm not sure why I actually animated it, I didn't laugh the first time I heard the track. Maybe I was just impressed that it was one guy doing all of the voices. Maybe it was that I just wanted to draw Obi and Yoda.

Money was never brought into it, I had no expectations of it. What lit me up was how many names got attached to the cut that went up on the main page that really had nothing to do with the project and the fact that when it did go up there were multiple plugs for sites but not one of them was for mine.

Go figure.

Thanks again for the critiques

S

sinclair wrote:Tony- I thought the voicework was really good; the story:not so much.

Yeh, that's exactly what I was thinking.

I wonder if the guy, after seeing your animation, thought, "Crap! If I'd known he was going to make it look so good, I would've spent more time on it and made it funnier!"

I recently voiced a 5 minute skit where I voiced all 3 characters and it bombed not because of me, it was the script that stank. Some here at LM have heard the track and I am happy their advice made me see things more clear before I committed to the project. I bailed on it before it went into production.

About your animation. I liked it.

As always, I love your stuff. I'm just glad to see something new, as it has been quite a while.

Sorry to hear that you got scammed into doing it, though!

sbtamu-I think it all comes down to this: Good voicework wont make a bad script a funny. A good script with bad voicework won't be funny and great animation won't make a script funny. But a funny script with good voicework will be funny no matter how bad the animation is. I too, have a mountain of scripts, audio and partial bits that I bailed on. Sin and Kristshun alone have at least 20 bits recorded that were never animated because of these fundamentals.

Tony- I wish I could have actually got in contact with the voice actor, from what i understand those impressions were just the tip of the iceberg, this bit would have been funnier from a different angle (I'm thinking: No country for Old Jedi) But the script was written and recorded long before I was involved.

Fliptop- good to see you're still around, the final clip got something like 10k views, the burn was that it didn't have a sawtoons bumper at the front or back (as promised) I really have to get back in the habit of frequenting these boards, I forgot how much fun it is-


S

Nice drawing and animations mate. Have to agree with the rest, script isn't that funny.

That's bastard about not getting paid mate, I'd break out the baseball bat if I were you! Hah, jokes.

Time to get onboard with another writer, or give it a go yourself I reckon