my first music video

[gra4mac]

Hi gang. I finally have a showable version of my first music video for crit. This is the project that led me to A:M 3 years ago. After 2 starts, 1: in Strata and Poser, 2: in A:M 9.5 (enough said about that), and now in A:M 10.5.

 

Even though it is quite rough, I am quite happy how it turned out. I would love to hear what you like and don't like, and don't worry, I'm not easily offended.

 

I made it as small as possible 5.4 megs for 1.5 minutes using the On2 codec. If you have trouble veiwing it, please let me know. I can post a Sorrenson 3 version, but for similar quality it comes in at 8.8 meg.

 

Here it is Just My Imagination

[KenH]

lol Pretty soppy But animation and visual wise it's very competent. I can see where all those questions were coming from now!

[jfirestine]

Pretty darn good! I'm glad to hear that you never gave up on your project. I tend to start projects and have tons of ideas, but some how always get side tracked.

Good job!

My only crits are:

I would like to see your lighting changed. It makes the feel of the animation flat.

I would also like to see more improvement on the textures. Get away from the computer generated stale look.

The animation timing seems a bit too slow or off. Maybe rework it a bit.

 

Just my 2 cents worth.

Great effort!

 

Have a great day

[jfirestine]

Pretty darn good! I'm glad to hear that you never gave up on your project. I tend to start projects and have tons of ideas, but some how always get side tracked.

Good job!

My only crits are:

I would like to see your lighting changed. It makes the feel of the animation flat.

I would also like to see more improvement on the textures. Get away from the computer generated stale look.

The animation timing seems a bit too slow or off. Maybe rework it a bit.

 

Just my 2 cents worth.

Great effort!

 

Have a great day

[Rodney]

Graham,

Looks good to me.

I'm glad you didn't give up easily too.

 

You've added a lot of elements and transitions that aren't exactly easy to do!

Without giving too much away to anyone that wants to view I'd say the drawing part and transition is rather inspired... and I found I wanted see a little bit more.

 

When my girls get home from shopping I'll have to have them check it out.

I have a feeling they'll love it!

 

Now I'll been looking for your future projects.

 

Best,

Rodney

 

*Kids back and the verdict is in... thumbs up!

The review:

"Her is good at drawing", "Can I see that again" (Jessica and Julia Baker)

 

Kids know good when they see it!

[Iham Wrong]

Hey! That has a lot of really nice elements in it. Are you going to keep refining it into a really slick piece?

[robcat2075]

Clever idea! Lots of work goes into something like that. I was quite impressed by the quadruped walk at the end.

 

I always have trouble with the "subtext" of these things: she draws her fantasy... and then it walks away? hmmm...

 

Instead how about if the horse and rider jumped off the page into her room, sweeps her off her feet and yada yada yada.

 

Also, while they were swinging each other around I thought, "field of daisies... somebody cue the field of daisies, please!"

 

Good job!

[Rodney]

Robert hit on an interesting thing there...

 

The walk away at the end did leave me wanting more as I said before.

Perhaps since she is already toon she could enter the drawing (from the left if you don't want to do a shot of her 'dropping' into the paper. The guy helps her onto the horse and they ride of together...

 

I'm thinking mainly in terms of changing the scene without changing the timing that is in place already. At the same time the horse begins to come alive she could walk (or run) in from the left. It might not even be necessary to have the horse walk off but you'd lose a bit of the 'fantasy transforms to reality' part.

 

That would definitely result in a more satisfying ending than the horse and hero riding off into the sunset without the girl.

 

Good eye Robert!

[gra4mac]

Thanks for the comments, I find them all very helpful. As we all know, after looking at our own work day after day, it really helps to have some outside input.

 

Yes it is a bit soppy. It was orriginally going to be about a school aged girl who draws to cheer herself up. That's why the room is kid's colours. Also I wanted to express the power that, kids have to enter there imaginary worlds. I changed it after I found the music. I liked the song, and it has a good beat to animate to, so I wanted the story to fit the song.

 

I didn't spend a lot of time on modelling, texturing, lighting, etc, because I wanted the project to flow quickly, so I'd get it done, and my goal was to tell the story and not spend a lot of time up front. I would like to polish it, and add some to the end. The rider is the girl, she is drawing herself on a horse. I planned to have the horse and rider shift to colour, opposite the her and her boyfreind fading to black and white, but I liked the look of the line horse walking away I left it that way. In the expanded version the horse and rider will disolve into a colour scene, but that will come later.

 

I am quite happy how the transition from drawing to animation worked. This part was the main theme of the project, showing how we can use our imagination to create our world. It was also the part I was least sure how to do when I started. it turned out to be quite easy, after a great suggestion from Iham Wrong.

[Aminator]

Nice job!

 

A few suggestions:

 

- her eyes often seem to be diverging. Consider using constraints to have them either orient the same, or both aim at the same point.

 

- her right hand doesn't hold the pencil convincingly - too far up and hand too open.

 

- it would be a lot harder to animate, but when I draw something like a horse I don't generally trace around a perfect outline. I tend to quickly sketch out shapes and then refine them...