11 December 2009- Consultation and mini-interim of Week 8

Consultation: I managed to edit my shots with regards to the mini-interim last week, and show them to Mr. Ronald.
Glad to say, he seemed pleased with the outcomes, although he pointed out an edit that needs to be made for realism’s sake: In the “rainy night” shots, I should be adding rain drops that pelt the characters and other necessary elements (bag, arms, umbrella, etc) to show that the rain is really in contact with the animation.
So, back in my Photoshop files, I added three layers of raindrops, before performing the edits.

Mini-interim: I showed my improved animatics (with done-shots added) to the class. Most of the criticism I got focused on Shot 47 (a ‘rainy-night’ shot, where the bunny boy and cat girl see each other and started staring at each other).
The problems with Shot 47:
* The cat and bunny need to be really looking at each other; may require edits on eyes and head-pivot position.
* Raindrops also need to pelt the cat’s arm.
* Cat’s body needs to turn a bit, like three-quarters.
* Cat sitting down needs to be at bunny’s chest level.

I guess that is all the edits I need to do for the weekend for Shot 47…will probably do it over the weekend. For now, I need to finish animating three more shots for this week before I declare my official two-week vacation (unless I decide to be as hardworking as my peers).

By the way, in case anyone is wondering how I animate:
1) First I draw out the frames in Photoshop. If a shot has more than one moving element, I put these moving elements in separate layers. I then export either layer by layer or all at once in .png files.
2) I then import the .png files in After Effects. After compositing the different layers/ elements on top of each other, I arrange the frames around to ensure smooth animation. Sometimes, in a single project/shot, more than one composition is created. This is especially when there is plenty of moving elements involved.