largento

Thanks, David! Nope, they were modeled separately. The only thing that was repurposed is the side fins. they all came from copying the top half of the tail fin of the smaller fish. One thing I did differently this time out was to use distortion mode on the bigger fish's teeth. This served not only to help them fit into the mouth better, but to make them seem less uniform.

It's often helpful to pick a number of frames (say 5) and do each of your poses on those keyframes. Then you can select them and drag them to adjust the timing. At 24 fps something has to appear in two frames to register with the human eye. So remember that during quick movements. If you were to animate an eye blinking, for example, if the eye was only closed for one frame, the viewer won't see it closed. I have a stopwatch/frame counter app on my iPhone that lets me start and stop and then shows me how many frames have elapsed. I find this very helpful for getting the basic timing of movements. I am by no means a great animator, but what works for me is to think of animation as "move-hold-move-hold." So, if I'm animating the head moving around, I'll animate the head moving to a position over a certain number of frames and then I'll set another key frame down the line, holding that head position. Without the holds, you get floaty animation.

Thanks, all! You're right about the bend in the pole, Matt. I struggled with that. I initially thought I could have the pole and string as one model, rigged to bend, but found that impractical for wanting to be able to position the fish where I wanted to. In the end, the fish, the string and the pole were three different models. As to the boat, my intention was that it was rough seas and it was fully out of the water (like old cartoon cars in stills are often not touching the road.)

Since voting for the mascot contest is over, I thought I'd do up a quick post about my Laurel & Hardy entry. When I decided to do an illustration for the contest, I went looking for inspiration and came across a post on one of the cartoonist blogs I go to, Patrick Owsley's Cartoon Art, that featured this old comic book cover of Laurel and Hardy. I liked the simplicity of it and I think the animated character designs for Stan and Ollie are great. Compositionally, I also liked them in the boat. I wasn't entirely sure if it needed to landscape or portrait and knew the boat would let me easily make it either. I thought about a straight recreation of the comic book cover, but thought the joke was a little too simple. I watched a bunch of Laurel & Hardy films last year and started thinking of them in character. They were often portrayed as down on their luck, so I liked the idea of Stanley holding the plate and fork, waiting to eat the fish. Ollie was great when he seemed proud of himself even though he was actually in trouble. I originally thought I'd do some kind of regular fish, but then it occurred to me that a swordfish can look much more menacing, since it has that sword sticking out of its face. I also liked the idea that they were out on the ocean in this boat, being tossed around (rather than the obvious fat joke that Ollie's weight would lift Stanley's side of the boat out of the water. I could imagine the entire sequence of Stanley noticing the big swordfish and poking Ollie in the back and Ollie shooing him off, until finally seeing the threat and yelling "ooh!" as the sword fish stabs him in the hindquarters. Anyway, it amused me. :-) I started off by creating Stan and Ollie. I knew from the setup that Ollie wouldn't need legs and Stan wouldn't need feet, so I didn't bother modeling those parts. I then went searching for blueprints for a rowboat and loosely used them to create the boat. Most of the props were simple to make. The swordfish was tougher. I'd done a sketch that looked very much like the final version, but when I first modeled it, I got hung up and ended up with a less appealing version. Here's the first version: Thankfully, I chose to step away from the illustration for a day and come back to it with fresh eyes. The first thing that caught my eye was the swordfish. I'd gone away from my sketch, giving it an upper lip and it just didn't look as much like a fish anymore. I worked on refining the model and then I also repositioned it to fill up more of the vertical space. This earlier version of Stan also got some reworking. I didn't like that his nose cast so long of a shadow, so I shortened his nose and made some other changes. I also didn't like that smaller fish was overlapping the boat. I reduced him in size and lowered him to balance the composition. I also adjusted the lighting to make the larger fish brighter. The final version with the changes made: I think stepping away and coming back made a big difference. I know with me personally, I start to take short cuts as I get fatigued near the end. Coming back fresh let me make up for that.

I wouldn't turn my nose up at 10x faster, Rodney. :-) Six minutes vs. 1 hour is big savings.

Just a note to remind everyone it is Tuesday and a new page is up!

I'd say so, but maybe it can be fixed without having to restart the vote another time!

It may come to the other app stores if it's successful enough. Given the numbers, it makes sense to release for iOS first (and even only.) Despite Android's increasing market share, app revenue is still largely in favor of iOS. iOS' daily app revenue is five times Android's. Given Windows 8's tiny market share, they don't even factor it into it. I saw a story recently that of the 100 best selling mobile apps, Windows 8's app store carries less than half. Additionally, there's that old "has to work on everything" problem. Features available in high-end Android phones are not present in low-end models. Not to mention that Apple has lots of features in iOS that were designed just for this kind of an app. Jobs' whole textbook initiative shortly before his death was to create these kinds of educational books for students. Heck, this book could have been initiated during that period. Also, don't forget that Disney and Apple still have significant ties. Jobs' widow should be the largest individual share holder in Disney (from the Pixar acquisition.) Jobs even had a seat on Disney's Board of Directors. Here's some interesting comments from a mobile app developer:

Gotta admit I check the forums more often now, hoping to see the vote gallery pop up.

I'm not sure how "serious" the app is. It seems like it may be something more for the casual animation enthusiast. There are whole school districts giving their students iPads, so I'm sure there'll be some future animators who are inspired by the app. It shows how these phone app stores have changed our view of application pricing. My first thought was that $13.99 was a bit pricey, but I'm sure a DVD-ROM back in the day would have been priced in the $40+ range. It's hard to buy a regular book for less than $14 these days.

Thanks, guys! That was what I was thinking, Rodney. Rather than just jump back into the story where I left off, do a little tease to get folks interested again. It's not a dream, though.

Jumped the gun early and put up the first page tonight.

Look at the shape of his head from the top view. That should help you see how the forehead should be shaped. This is rotated back slightly (see how it's sitting in the side view), but notice that the front of the skull isn't as wide as the back.

I think you answered your question, but yes, a model sheet is what people create in animation so that all of the animators have the same reference for what a character looks like. You've probably heard the expression "off model," which refers to a character being drawn wrong. New version is looking much improved!

I've been okay without this as an option, but I'd certainly welcome it. I don't think there's one of us that hasn't tumbled around a choreography, found an angle they loved and then struggled to try to place a camera to match the view. Never succeeded in getting a perfect match. That was one of the reasons I loved the old techno crane camera. I could use it instead of tumbling to get just the shot I wanted.

Yeah, I think you're flying blind. Have you done a Google image search for "Batman model sheet" ? If nothing else, I'd suggest using a generic super-hero rotoscope so that you can get proportions right.

5 years and 675 animated videos! :-) Happy anniversary!

Thanks, guys!

Yes, they are. When I redesigned the website, I had to deactivate the old one. A lot of it was fluff, but here's the short version of how it's done: 1) I write a script. 2) I create the layout for the strip in Adobe Illustrator, representing the panels using colored squares. I type the dialogue and position it within the squares to determine how the strip will flow. 3) I use those squares' dimensions (@300ppi) to determine the camera size, creating a choreography for each panel. 4) I position the characters to tell the story and allow for where dialogue balloons will go. 5) I bring the renders back into Illustrator to replace the squares and export the page so that it can go up on the web.

I must've gotten a defective set of cards. Mine always comes up Joker. :-)

It's crazy to be back in the midst of it again, but next Tuesday, The Wannabe Pirates webcomic returns! Here's a preview of the first page (minus all the spoilery dialogue.):

I'm not aware of a shortcut key that will do that. Would be cool if you could. Maybe one of the older folks know something. [EDIT] There are shortcut keys for moving the camera around while in camera view. I'll have to look for them, since I don't use them myself. [EDIT] Here are the key commands to move the camera around:

Hey Douglas, You can create your own very simple rig. All you have to do is create bones and then assign CPs to them. The existing rigs offer many more things, but back when I was in your position, David S. gave me the advice of trying to build my own rig first. Just so that I'd gain an understanding of how things work. Mechadelphia has a great intro to rigging on his site you should check out.

Not me. Maybe Jason can post a list here so we can be sure our submissions made it there?

whew! Mailing mine right this second. Looking forward to seeing everyone's work.