The animation is ready as of 20071021:
See it on google video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 6912063538
or via the blogs
http://circusfaldinianimation.blogspot.com/
http://circusfaldini.blogspot.com/
end edit ***)
I started to create an animation for a hobby (for my sons as they like both drawing and story telling). I took a "child book" of my oldest son and I plan to base the story of the animation on this book. This project will certainly take some time!
Just started and this is just a mesage to share my progress. I can show you a "screentest" of this animation I created and uploaded to google video. It can be accessed through the link below.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 4825550571
Keep in mind that the animation is rendered at "web quality" and not in "dvd quality". On google video it also shows rather small (that is when watching at 100%).
Tools I (plan to) use are:
Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer CTP sept
Anime Studio Pro 5
Vegas Movie Studio 6 or Premiere Elements 2
Audacity 1.2.4
and perhaps
Paint Shop Pro 9 and/or Dogwaffle
The background of the animation snippet posted on google video was done in Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer (EGD), exported twice to a png file. Once "normally" and once with a blur effect applied to all objects. The latter version is shows "under the fog cloud" and is otherwise hidden (in the google video instance of the animation this will probally not visible as it is too small for this). This approach is based on AS Tutorial 6.9.
The characters were also done in EGD, a seperate layer was created for each "moving" part of the body (as I used the cut-out animation style for creating this animation). So in the EGD file there is a layer for the torso, the arm, the upper leg, the lower leg, the heel, the tow etc. Each layer is exported seperatly to a png. Actually, as with the backgound this is done twice, one normal version and one blurred version (the latter shows up when the character walks through the fog cloud).
All pngs where imported in Anime Studio Pro (Moho). Inside AS the character was "rigged" using "bones". This took a few iterations (exporting from EGD to AS) as the cut out parts of the character have to fit nicely over each other even when the part are moved. In my first attempts the seperate parts did fiit nicely in the inital position but when open space or undesired shapes became visible when moved into another position. I had to correct this in EGD by adapting the shapes of the individual parts and then import the parts again in AS.
The fog was entirely created in AS (tutorial 6.9)
The character could have been created in AS but I choose to create it in
EGD. By doing so I perhaps had to do some extra work but I hope to reuse to the created walk cylce for another characters simply by placing another set of pngs into the animation. Also: for now the character is a simple drawing. I could choose to create a more illustrated version of the character in EGD and without changing the animation that character will become more illustrated in the animation also. I read in this forum that the drawing capabilties of AS are limited so at some point I think I would have to use another application for this anyway.
My "circus project" will continue and perhaps from time to time I will post
some additional questions and perhaps some additional work in progress in this forum (when time permits me to do so).
Gr,
Frank[/img]
!! 
