Moho Forum

Don't...Do it!

https://vimeo.com/73643052

Written, directed, designed, and animated (in Anime Studio Pro, of course!) by yours truly.

so - this is very nice - excellent work...

...but I'm totally lost with your title and description - I think you're doing yourself a disservice to be honest. Some people may really not watch this because they expect something shocking or inappropriate, and what it is is the complete opposite. It would also be nice to gain some insight into your process creating this piece but that's up to you if you want to share.

Really good artwork and animation. I agree that the reverse psychology tactic may well end up costing you views.

Loved every bits of it, the textures, the character and set design, the beat of it, and of course the animation, well done!

Beautiful work!

Hey Guys, thanks for all the great response!This project developed over a great deal of time. My clients were actually friends of mine and so they were willing to be patient. I had actually done a previous version of it but since I was dissatisfied with my earlier efforts, I decided to re-do it. I knew I could do better.

You're probably right about the reverse psychology thing, but forward psychology wasn't getting me too many views so I figured going in the opposite direction might not hurt this time.

I started off by storyboarding it. The animation studio where I worked at that time was a Flash-based studio so I decided that Flash would be the best place to storyboard it, based on how I'd seen them operate.

I based the designs of the entire piece on artists like Mary Blair, Shag, Ward Kimball, Dr. Seuss' Gerald McBoingBoing. I was also deeply inspired by FreakishKid / GreyKid Studio to create something that I hoped would catch their attention.

Next was building the character in Anime Studio Pro. I chose to do a rotation for the head and hands only since the details of the body were simple enough that a full rotation wouldn't be necessary. I did, however create a second character which was simply a back view to facilitate the shot where the boy reaches for the doughnut. DarthFurby had a tutorial detailing head turns and HeyVern had a file which illustrated a rotating hand rig, which I referred to a lot for the rigging. I referred a lot to the Rose Agent files, which were offered one Friday as a free download from Content Paradise, for the more subtle things like cheek blush, skin tones, and shading. The Rose Agent files were very educational for me even though they didn't animate all that much.

As far as the animation goes, I referred a lot to Richard Williams' Animators Survival Kit. If you don't have this book you should go out and get it as soon as possible. It's THAT good. One thing that was a little tough to remember to do while animating was to over accentuate the expressions. Had a tendency to hold back and keep it more "real-world". Turns out this makes the acting look a little flat. I also acted out some scenes to better understand how to animate it. I know Disney did this during storyboard reads. It might look silly but it helps.

I rendered a lot of the character out in multiple passes as a .png series. I couldn't render it out as vector because there was a brush stroke applied to give the character a soft, hand drawn edge and this necessitated a bitmapped-based render. Also, quicktime with alpha was giving me a bit of odd antialiasing problems which I didn't have when I rendered it as a .png sequence.

Then I brought the animation into After Effects so I could marry it to the backgrounds that I had painted in Photoshop. After Effects was where I applied the lighting effects and the rim highlights on the body. There is also some subtle shading going on to help directionalize the viewer's eye as it looks at the character.

Next I went into Final Cut Pro X for the editing, music, and sound effects. If you haven't played with FCPX yet, you should. Don't believe all the negative publicity, FCPX is a MAJOR jump forward in editing software. In editing, I employed some of the advice I'd been given by Stu Gamble to make some changes to timing and improve the pace of it. It's also amazing what sound effects can do to your animation. I almost literally watched this project come to life! Editing is also where you get your first real look at the project so there was a bit of round-tripping back to previous stages to fix things.

I plan to use this character again since it's based on my older son. My younger son will also get a character and I want to do a short web series based on them. Again, thanks for watching!

S

slice11217 wrote:forward psychology wasn't getting me too many views so I figured going in the opposite direction might not hurt this time.

I can relate to that, for sure!

Thanks for the walkthrough on your process.

That was great. Nice artwork and animation.

I think I need a doughnut now.

Hammerjammer

Really fantastic and thanks for the sharing your process.

Very polished! Excellent animation. Thanks for showing here.

Really impressive,

It's work like this on this forum that really inspires and pushes me. The head turns were really well done!

Great Animation. Whey you don't want anyone to watch the animation?

An excellent piece of work. I love the design and finish too.

I couldn't help but watch because of the title. Glad I did. Really excellent work. Inspiring.