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2nd character head turn

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 10:21 pm
by human
Here's a head turn for my second character, Fred Vaughan, omnibus driver.

Image

I'm uploading this at an early stage, so you can see for yourself the pros and cons of pixel-based morphing using three keyframes.

Obviously the animator has to do cleanup after this stage.

Also, I currently plan to move away from this purely-painted art style towards a slightly more stylized look (the woodcut look that comes from my use of photocopy and posterize filters).


** EDIT: Let me clarify. I had to paint the three keyframes into consistency with *each other* before I could get a good morph between them. I did not paint on the resulting morph...

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 11:10 pm
by cribble
Man, that looks like it must be hard to do, being pixels and everything. I can see the basis of a good job there, but like you said, it requires some clean-up. None-the-less, a real good job from a "oh-my-god, i hate pixels and they're hard to work with" point of view.

Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 2:41 am
by human
Here's the clean-up version:

Image

This is based upon two interpolated keyframes found in the movie above, giving me a total of five poses.

I cleaned up the keyframes and morphed between the five of them.

This still generated a little morph noise, but it was relatively easy to clean up.

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:28 pm
by cribble
Kick ass. That looks better. Congrats.

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:38 pm
by jahnocli
He sure looks itchy!

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 5:23 pm
by human
itchy... Touche!

As a head turn, it wasn't meant to be usable animation...

But what do I need to do to transform this into an actual head shake?

Improve the neck posture, perhaps?

If so, how, specifically?

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 6:24 pm
by jahnocli
If you want just a head shake, there is far too much movement in the neck and shoulders -- he could be on a jetski! You also need a little ease-in/ease-out at the extremes of the head movement -- it looks a little mechanical...in my humble opinion, of course!

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 6:36 pm
by human
jahnocli...

I was beginning to realize you meant the shoulder movement.

As for ease in and ease out, though... yes, this is an important lesson I obviously have to learn!

Hey, I can do this... I *can* get better!

Thanks

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:02 am
by human
Goodbye, Mr. Roboto!

Image

In this version, I removed the shoulder artifacts by simply cropping them out.

I added ease-in/ease-out by manually editing the interframe delays in the animated GIF. (Guesstimating because I don't have any computer-driven ease functionality in my software pipeline).

I also reduced the repeat factor on head shakes from Nonstop to 2. (That means if you see a still image, your browser thinks you've already seen both of them.)

In general, "your mileage may vary" in viewing this, because different browsers interpret animated GIF frame rate differently. (Internet Explorer shows the animation significantly slower than Firefox.)

Whoo hoo! I can animate!

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:44 am
by jahnocli
I like that, but it needs to be faster, I think (sorry, I must come over as terribly picky!)

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:16 pm
by human
jahnocli wrote:I like that, but it needs to be faster, I think (sorry, I must come over as terribly picky!)
Which browser are you using? Internet Explorer shows the animation at probably 3 or 4 times slower than Firefox (which I use almost exclusively).

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:41 pm
by VĂ­ctor Paredes
human wrote:
jahnocli wrote:I like that, but it needs to be faster, I think (sorry, I must come over as terribly picky!)
Which browser are you using? Internet Explorer shows the animation at probably 3 or 4 times slower than Firefox (which I use almost exclusively).
:roll: i don't know why people still using internet explorer...

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 7:53 pm
by jahnocli
human wrote:Which browser are you using?
Er...Firefox...