C-Box exert

The second scene from the C-Box animation. Unfortunately, I havent been able to upload this successfully, but I'll write about it all the same.

This one turned out very nicely. I tried to get a nice overlap in the wrist and hand at the beginning, and I added a little squash and stretch to the nerd's head as he moves into a comfortable sitting position. This gave it a little more exaggeration and energy.

Drawing expressions is definitely something I am strong at doing, and thoroughly enjoy too. I wanted to convey the emotions accurately in this shot. I found it hard to decide whether the geek should be embarrassed about his Box, or proud and excited about it. In the end, I decided that we should make him feel positive about it. After all, we are trying to promote this awful product, so his eagerness to share it with his friend should be evident.

The cool guy's attitude was unchanged from the storyboard idea I came up with. His displeasure at this totally ridiculous product was something I was aiming for from the beginning. So yeh, that stayed in the final production of this shot.

Problems I've experienced have been few and far between. However, my Flash program is older then Jon and Michelle's versions. When Michelle did the backgrounds, they didn't transfer well to my application. So I had to use simple jpg images to work with. That's why in this animation it appears that the nerd's body is overlapping the tv that's in the foreground. In the end, I sent my work to Michelle, and she dealt with arranging the background layers so this wouldn't happen.

Gnome project update and showreel

Recently, as you know, I have been trying to progress with the Gnome shot I was given by Sarah Verrel. However, I have been unable to develop it any further for many reasons. Time hasn't been on my side from the beginning, and because of this my motivation for the animation has expired.

Because of this, Sarah and Dan have decided to drop me from the project. I am kinda sad but relieved about it. It would have been nice to continue with it, but my pace and confidence to get it done at a good quality was lacking, and I felt that I was hindering the Gnome group's work.

Oh well, it means that I can work on my showreel and E+E project

At the moment, I have been gathering together all my animation work for my reel. At the moment, it consists of the following:

• "Drawn To A Close" exerts (Foundation Diploma Final Animation Short)
• Walk Cycles (Degree yr 1 Old lady and Degree yr 2 Dog)
• Button Bash Animation ( Degree yr 2 Brain Environment Project)
• "Waterproof" clip (Degree yr 2 Rave Live animation. See previous posts)
  
• "C-Box" clip (Degree yr 2 Rave Live animation. See previous posts)
• "Little Miss Sunshine" with 2D animation addition (Degree yr 2)
• Lip Synch in 3D (Degree yr 2 Willy Wonka dialogue)
  

Oh and by the way.....

Our group finished our animation for Rave Live!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

We completed all the bits of animation we needed to do, Jon put it all together using After Effects and Final Cut, and then I included the music and dialogue.

We also managed to get some pretty cool sound effects from Matthieu Baron. He worked really hard to get some cartoony sounds done for our Rave Live deadline on Monday, and I pasted it all into the animation for our hand-in.

So we have two versions of our animation. One with Tom Ritchie's Dialogue, Music, and Matt's sound effects. The other version only has Tom's dialogue and music.

I should mention that the music I got was bought from a site called Audio Network. It's a music and sound effects library where you can buy licensed tracks. Once you buy the track, you can use it without worrying about breaching copyright laws. I bought several tracks, and the one my group liked the most was one called "Miami Beach". That is the music you can hear in both versions if the animation

:D