And He's Done.

All done! (I hope)

Got the walking cycle animation finished the other day, put everything together and linked the buttons up to the frames. (hint: when you want to move frames in the main timeline from a MovieClip, use the '_root.' action, works awesomely.)

Here's the final product:

Interactive Character Model Sheet

In reflection, I would have liked to add a few more animations to the mix, but the ones that I did were quite a task for me, plus I spent alot of time designing the character itself and getting the presentation right before I started the animation.

Also, if I was more experienced in the program I would have liked to use some of the animation techniques I tried before in the project, with the heads/body turning and stuff, but it just didn't seem like a feasible option to take for animating my character as I may have gone of the deadline if I'd have took that route.

Nearly Finished, I Think?

Nearly finished up with the work, just gotta do some final tweaks here and there... Looking good though, right? Nice and clean how I wanted it, I also decided I could have some little things going on in the background maybe, like something rolling past... Just something to make it more 'fun'. I did end up going with the "pull" tab at the top in the end, it just seemed to work best, the button seemed to just look out of place when the menu wasn't there.

I'm nearly finished with the walk cycle though, this is the hardest thing I've had to animate. Especially when I realised I drew the character in a 3/4 pose and can't directly take the walk cycle I did ealier in the project.

You can see here how I'm having a tough time because I pretty much have to redraw the leg each time I want it to move, and not just tween it.

Other than this, I'm getting along steady, I have two animations done, Standing Still (not so much an animation, but I have him breathing/blinking/etc, so it sort of counts) and Waving (which I'm quite pleased with), the last one, Dance, shouldn't be too hard I think.

Oh yeah, also I have some sound in the movie, he says "hey" when he waves and I added in a feature that you can move the menu back up once it's been pulled down (just press the tab again), it was getting sort of annoying having it still there when you're trying to watch the animations.

Making a start.

Made a start on the interface already, want to get it nice and clean looking, don't want to have the user trying to figure out where to go to press something.

This is the simple idea I have, it's a bit like the background in the onion animation I did (actually, I stole the idea off of it) but I placed a couple of black bars at the top and bottom to give a widescreen effect. Want I want to have is the character stood in the middle with a simple drop shadow effect underneath, I think this will look really nice.

I actually got the menu design down earlier too, which I'm liking... I'm thinking of having either a button to press to make the menu come down from the top or this little thing at the bottom so you can press it as though it's pulling it down, I've put "pull" on the tag itself though, so the user knows what to do with it.

Character Sheets.

Okay, so I've finished designing the two characters, and I just need to pick one now!

I'm most likely going to be going for the character on the left (Tyrone) as I think he'd stand out more when I animate him compared the the right character (Francis) which is sort of dull with his dark clothes and shoes.

I'll be making a start on the interface for this project soon, I'm thinking something quick minimal, with a drop-down menu or something? We'll see.

Walk cycles, woo!

Wow, walk cycles are pretty hard to do... You'll get the legs walking right then realise the arms are moving wrong, or the body's not doing much so the character's walking all boring. MAN.

But anyway, I got a couple done that I'm pleased with, one's a cartoon style (like disney style characters) which obviously, I'm not going to use, but it's good research, and the second one is a simple gentle walking loop, which I plan on using for my final piece.

Walk Cycle - Cartoon

Walk Cycle - Normal

I got a little creative with the second one and decided to add in an animated background, to make it look a bit more effective. Which I think it does ;)

I've just started on drawing the characters I'm thinking about using, I'll have the sheet on here soon enough, but it's taking a while, haha.

Quick post.

Just a quickie, I haven't had chance to do much at the moment, but I wanted to keep myself in the swing of things so I had a go at doing a little stick man action thing, it's not much, but it's something, right?

Stick Man Animation

Yep, More Turning Heads.

I went ahead and animated a couple more tests to do with turning heads and stuff, although when it comes to making the final thing, I don't really think I like this method... It's quite effective, but I just can't seem to animate it very, or at least it takes me WAY to long to do so.

This first one I'm quite proud of, as it took quite a bit of effort to get the proper outcome on the face itself. The face actually contains about 12 different assets/layers for the animation of it, as I wanted for him to have his eyebrows/eyelids move around as he looks around, etc. You can see in this screenshot:

Everything turned out pretty well though, although the mouth and nose don't seem to right when he turns round to face the camera, but other than that I like it...

Turning Head 2

The second test I did is a little surreal, but I used a few techniques I haven't yet, so alls well...

Onion Turning

...I successfully worked out how I can use masks to create the illusion that a part of the body has gone to the back and to the front again, I simply just added in a mask whenever I wanted some to be hidden and animated it accordingly. I think it turned out pretty well, even if it isn't the sort of thing I'll be animating for the project.

Simple tests

I've been trying to do some simple tests of animation to get myself warmed up with using Flash, the first I was trying to recreate a physics basis to the animation...

Physics Test

...with the ball bouncing and the machine picking it up. I added in a blue to the ball as it was falling to create more of a focus on how the ball is speeding up when it's dropped. The shadow in the background was simple made by taking the MovieClip of the main animation and duplicating it so it's just a solid colour with a blur. This test what all made frame-by-frame as I felt I could produce a better result doing it by hand. Got it all running at 20 FPS(Frame per second) so it's really quite smooth.

The second test was something I took from one of the tutorials that we were given as help for the project. This is probably the first of a few test that I might do, it involves me trying to animate someone turning their head/body with the tweening options, hopefully I can pull it off well...

Turning Head

...I think I did alright with this one, but obviously it's not the sort of character I want to be animating for my final thing. Also I'm not sure how I'd have the arm at the back go infront of his body when he turns round, I'll have to read up on that... This ones only running at about 16 FPS, but it's seems really smooth to me and saves on trying to animate intricate detail as with 20 FPS.

Next post will most likely contain a few more turning head animations, as I've just started another!

Character Sketches

Just been getting some ideas down for this project really, got a couple of character design ideas, but I don't want to start animating them yet until I have some tests done.

The character on the left I thought could be a sort of character that's not quite on the smart side and kind of moody. The character on the right seems pretty much the opposite, looking quite smart and intelligent, although maybe not as funny?

That's all I have for now, but I'll post some animation tests I've been doing soon. 

Next Project Time.

For our next assignment we've been asked to produce an interactive character model sheet using Adobe Flash.

We've had this described to us as "effectively a blueprint of a character from different angles that depicts a character’s key appearance, traits, attitudes and movement. The overall aim of a character model sheet is to familiarise the animator and others with the character."

I've been doing some sketches and stuff for some character designs which I'll upload later on.

As for that, I'll be going through some flash animating tutorials and produce some tests from them.

All done!

So I'm all done with my 10 second film, I've submitted it to YouTube for viewing:

I'm pleased with the outcome, I believe it came out as I wanted it to, the clips seem to flow really well and the audio fades compliment the video greatly. As for anything I would change about the film, I think maybe I could set up a microphone system for better audio input next time.

Just about finished with editting.

I just have a few more things to do in the editting part of things, but I'm pretty much there.

As you can see I'm using Sony Vegas to edit the video clips together, this is because I have a more extense of knowledge in this program compared to any other video editting program.

What I have at the moment is a title part (with the words 'Plug it in, baby') which fades into the scene where the amp is turned on, this then quick fades into the lead being plugged into the amp I then kept the hum that is generated from the amp, which overlays onto the next clip of the lead being plugged into the guitar. The last clip is of me strumming down the guitar (as you can see in the preview box in the upper-right corner) I still have yet to add on some ending credits and export it to the right formats for submission. I will update when I'm complete.

Starting filming.

So I've started to film the project now, I have a camera, a firewire cable and a tape ready for use.

I've played around with some different angles with the clips, filming the 'Pressing Power Button', 'Plugging Lead into Amp',  'Plugging Lead into Guitar' and 'Playing Guitar' parts. I'm pretty happy with most of the shots, but I will most likely go back and re-do the strumming the guitar part because I want to get a longer sound on it that could be faded through the credits.

I decided on the title 'Plug It In, Baby' by the way.