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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

Exercise 2: Chorus Line


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  • 3 weeks later...

WOW! There are some very nice renderings here for Exercise 2.

 

Here is my version. Nothing fancy right now, just following along with the exercise in the book.

 

Name: Al Dinelt

Exercise Completed: Exercise 2: Chorus Line

Date Completed: September 6, 2006

Instructor: TAoA:M

 

[attachmentid=20332]

exercise2.mov

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  • 2 weeks later...

Name: Caroline Begbie

Exercise: Exercise 2 - Chorus Line

Date Completed: 24th Sept 2006

 

Remarks: Played around with lighting, but I realised that needs a whole new lifetime, so I'll hold off on that for a while. Also, in the movie, my knight has a rather effeminate skip in his cancan, which the other two do not, but he does not do that in the project. Perhaps it is the compression (Sorenson Video 3).

 

[attachmentid=20861]

[Hi, Rodney, Mike, David!]

Exercise_2.mov

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Name: Caroline Begbie

Exercise: Exercise 2 - Chorus Line

Date Completed: 24th Sept 2006

 

Remarks: Played around with lighting, but I realised that needs a whole new lifetime, so I'll hold off on that for a while. Also, in the movie, my knight has a rather effeminate skip in his cancan, which the other two do not, but he does not do that in the project. Perhaps it is the compression (Sorenson Video 3).

 

[attachmentid=20861]

[Hi, Rodney, Mike, David!]

 

Hi!

I had the same problem with Knight. Have you gone to the following forum location and downloaded the new (good) Knight? If you have the Knight from Yeti V12 (evil Knight), he has weak knees. Not your problem. download this Knight and resubmit.

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...3&hl=Knight

 

Let me know if that works for you.

 

JohnnyB

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  • 4 weeks later...

Name: George Dugas

 

Exercise completed: 2

 

Completed on October 16th 2006

 

Estimated time to complete: I'd say about no more than a week. It's hard to judge because I only worked on this in my spare time and I took a long break in between.

 

Special thanks: To Ken H. and Rodney.

 

Early on during the preliminary animation I had a problem getting the foot slipping action of shaggy working in the choreography. Ken and Rodney found the problem which allowed me to create all the nasty things that happen in the animation LOL so thanks guys :)

 

I know one critique I will get from this animation. there is little to no cue for the viewer to understand the events. To see all that is going on, you'll need to watch the animation a few times.

 

I had planned on telling the story through different camera shots but decided that because this is only an exercise to show how to set up a scene and load re-usable actions, I didn't need to spend any more time on this.

 

I think as it stands it's pretty cool.

 

[attachmentid=21516]

 

George

Exercise_2.mov

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That was great George. Too funny :D

 

Thanks Dhar,

 

After seeing others creative ways of doing this exercise, I wanted something that would stand out.

 

Like I'm sure a lot of animations materialize, this started out being a simple animation but as I kept working on it more and more, ideas kept popping in my head which lead to the chain reaction you see here.

 

This could be a good example of cause and effect LOL.

 

I'm glad you liked it.

 

George

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Hey George...

 

That was priceless. Watched it several times and stepped through it very slowly. You are right about there being a lot to see in the video. I loved how the rabbit followed the knight as he went head over heels, but as a true performer, the show must go on. And the way the floor board flexes is great! Almost feel like calling them Larry, Moe and Curly Joe!! :lol:

 

Nice attention to the little details. If the little details weren't there, it would feel as if something was missing. But with the little details there, it feels right, even if we are not consciously aware of them. I once read that the best special effect is the one that people don't recognize is even there. I think it is the same way with the little details as well.

 

Al

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Hey George...

 

That was priceless. Watched it several times and stepped through it very slowly. You are right about there being a lot to see in the video. I loved how the rabbit followed the knight as he went head over heels, but as a true performer, the show must go on. And the way the floor board flexes is great! Almost feel like calling them Larry, Moe and Curly Joe!! :lol:

 

Nice attention to the little details. If the little details weren't there, it would feel as if something was missing. But with the little details there, it feels right, even if we are not consciously aware of them. I once read that the best special effect is the one that people don't recognize is even there. I think it is the same way with the little details as well.

 

Al

 

 

Thanks Al,

 

I agree wholeheartedly that it's the little details that sell an animation and I try to put as much as I can.

 

On that note: I know because the render is small due to file size but did you notice that after Rabbit looks over and sees what happens to Knight, he shrugs his shoulders to basically say, "Oh well the show must go on".

 

I was hoping people would pick up on the "show must go on" theme and you did!!

 

Thanks for commenting,

George

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George,

What can one say about such a great take on Exercise 2?

 

Superb, best 'scene' to date. ;)

 

Thanks Rodney,

 

I couldn't have done it with out the support from you, Ken and from the many posts people have created on the forums that help so much.

 

George

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Name: Daniel H

 

Exercise: Chorus Line

 

Date Completed: November 28th, 2006

 

Instructor: Rodney

 

Remarks: Missing a few models, I opted for the Thom brothers to perform the CanCan for us. Someone needs to tell them to keep their hands out of their stomach. ;)

 

Here's a link to my file:

th_ex2.jpg

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Ulrika,

Unless mistaken, the AVI file format is not an accepted format for uploading to the forum. There are several workarounds:

 

- Upload the file to another webspace and link to it from the forum.

- Use a program such as Winzip to compress the file into the .ZIP format. Then upload it to the forum.

- Use a program/utility to convert the AVI to an animated .GIF image. Then upload it to the forum.

 

I believe the forum will accept .MOV files as well but I don't think I've ever tried it.

 

-Rodney

When I reviewed the video for exersize2 I noticed the instructor selected the AVI format. So when I did the exersize, I also selected AVI. It was a waist of time because the prefered format is MOV. The upload was not execpted after spends ~12 hr rendering the file.

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When I reviewed the video for exersize2 I noticed the instructor selected the AVI format. So when I did the exersize, I also selected AVI. It was a waist of time because the prefered format is MOV. The upload was not execpted after spends ~12 hr rendering the file.

 

The power of negative thinking never gets anything done. ;)

Think positively... like... "How can I solve this problem?"

The important thing to realise is that you don't have to re-render! Now THAT would be a waste of time.

 

If you open the AVI you rendered in A:M you can easily convert it to MOV, TGA are any number of other formats/codecs.

 

Here's what I'd suggest (there are other ways to do this with A:M but this one is the quickest):

- Create a New Project

- Open your Project Workspace (PWS)

- Under the Image option Right Click and choose Import then select Animation or Image Sequence

- Locate and select your AVI (Make sure to select the checkbox that will import sequential images or you'll just get the first image)

- Once imported Right Click on the Image of the Sequence in the PWS

- Select "Save As Animation"

- Name your file (and look for the options to change the codec. For best compression I recommend Sorensen 3)

 

Good Luck and let us know if you have any difficulties!

 

Rodney

 

P.S. This might be a good time for me to recommend rendering to TGA sequential images the first time.

This can help in a lot of situations such as when power goes out or you only want to replace part of your animation. Recompiling into another format later from the TGA sequence can save you a lot of time and frustration.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Name:Chris J

 

Exercise Completed: #2:The Chorus Line

 

Instructor: The Art of Animation Master book(sorry Rodney :P)

 

Date Completed: December 28, 2006

E2Chrury.mov

Let me know if that doesn't work. My comp has given me troubles with mov files.

 

Notes: No problems with completing the exercise but I am a little worried about the action. I looks as though the characters are.... I'm not sure what they are doing. :huh:

post-8837-1167336483_thumb.jpg

That's the top of the 'kick'.

Any thoughts?

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Nope. My versions were Sorenson(11.1 and 12.0) and the fancy new OZ disk. (13.0o)

 

Ah, you are ahead of me then! It'll be a few more weeks before I order my upgrade.

It's possible the files on the Oz disk may be corrupt but no way to check from here.

 

I'll investigate your file.

 

*Update:

- The actions appear to be the same.

- The models (Rabbit at least) appear to be different.

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- The actions appear to be the same.
As in it works for you? or it mirrored my results?

 

- The models (Rabbit at least) appear to be different.

Ah yes. I've made sure all my librarys are shown. So I have version 12's models and version 13s in the library window. This gives gives me a copies for a few of the more famous actors. I probably just put the earlier version in.

 

To test things, I got both versions of all three and gave them all the same dance. The leg position changes a small bit between versions but they all look like they want their knee in their lung.

 

It should be noted that the knight models look exactly the same.

 

So I'm thinking it's the action.

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As in it works for you? or it mirrored my results?

 

Sorry for the delay.

 

Initially I thought the models were the culprits. That doesn't appear to be the case here.

I tried to first isolate the actions... then isolate the models... I get broken poses in each case.

 

I left off testing before going back and starting from scratch.

That may be the best thing to do here.

 

The differences in models don't appear to be whats causing the problem.

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Name: Jeremiah M. Faries

 

Exercise Completed: #2: Chorus line

 

Date Completed: Jan 3, 2007

 

Instructor: none

 

Remarks: The spotlights were originally intended to mask the weirdness of "crazy legs" the CD Knight. I replaced him with the corrected version but left the moving spots. The lights seem a little frantic in the short loop but, hey, it's the CanCan...

 

 

exercise_2_fixed_knight.mov

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  • 3 weeks later...

Name: Steven Ellinger

 

Excersise Completed: Excersise 2 Chorus Line

 

Date Completed: 1-27-07

 

Instructor: None

 

Remarks/Suggestions: I figured out that AVI's don't work, and the MOV file I tried to make was too big. I looked in this forum and found that people are zipping the files, so I did that. As for the exercise, I am not really satisfied with the camera angle, but the important thing in this exercise is learning how actions work on different sized characters. I think that actions are very cool, even if it feels like cheating.

CanCan.zip

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Name: Mark Largent

Exercise 2

February 6, 2007

 

Comments: Like Tigerblue, I'm using a Mac & A:M 14 (a5) and my curtain looks flat, too. For fun, I moved the camera around and rendered the scene 3 times. I rendered the individual frames as TGAs and imported them into Quicktime and then stuck 'em in iMovie and added a little music clip. Kind of works with it. :-)

 

I tried uploading the movie, but got a message saying that I wasn't "permitted to upload this type of file." I saved it as an mp4, so it'd be small. I stuck it up here instead:

 

http://web.mac.com/randarr/iWeb/animation/Movie.html

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Great stuff, Mark - love the music.

 

You can import tgas into A:M and then output them again - This thread here.

 

However, iMovie is easier to add music (at least, I've never tried it in A:M, so I'm probably wrong).

 

If you render in A:M, to .mov, using Sorensen 3 compression, then you get a small movie that can be uploaded to the forum.

 

Having said that, though - I love the page your movie's on.

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Thanks! The music is an excerpt from an old David Seville Alvin & The Chipmunks song called "Alvin's Harmonica." (That's why you hear that harmonica flourish at the end!)

 

The wmv file referenced in the thread you linked to doesn't seem to be online anymore. I'll check on the extras DVD and see if it's there. QT handled it pretty easily. (There's an "Open Image Sequence" option.)

 

I wanted to bring it into iMovie, so that I could play with putting the different shots together. The music was an afterthought, but it did help with figuring out where I needed to take out some frames to keep the motion passing through the clips. There's an illusion in the close-up that the camera is pulling back a little which I guess is because the character is moving.

 

I thought it was probably the file extension that kept it from uploading. The difference between the compression of the mp4 (using H.264) and a mov using Sorenson 3 is pretty large. The mp4 is 480x360 and came out at 568K. The mov I outputted with Sorenson 3 compression (medium setting) at 320x240 was 1.8MB!

 

I can't take any credit for the page it's on, since it's just a template page in iWeb, but it does give it a kind of feel like I'm keeping a notebook of my class assignments. :-)

 

Thanks again!

 

Great stuff, Mark - love the music.

 

You can import tgas into A:M and then output them again - This thread here.

 

However, iMovie is easier to add music (at least, I've never tried it in A:M, so I'm probably wrong).

 

If you render in A:M, to .mov, using Sorensen 3 compression, then you get a small movie that can be uploaded to the forum.

 

Having said that, though - I love the page your movie's on.

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