Final render of the Teamwork production Project

Annnnd here is the final render of our project, with all shots put together.

All in all it was a good experience, and I think we were alright with how we proceeded, and at least everyone had something to do. The Pre-Production was mostly done all-together, we only separated in "tasks" after we started working in Flash and Photoshop. Cleaning up the roughs was fun, if we forget about Flash messing up  the lines and colouring things all black out of nowhere. And of course the background was nice to work on as well, I like Digital painting/drawing \o/

I think we all did bits and bits here and there as in, helped each other out in production phase. 

It is nice to have it fully rendered before the Deadline, because we can edit a few things here and there if necessary and re-submit it then.
This post needs to be edited eventually because some changes were made!~

Production Clean Ups and pre-final render

 Shot 02

 Shot 03

Shot 04

Moar clean ups for the group project, just one shot remaining which we practically worked together on because TIME BLARGH
Shot 02 had to be partially coloured to give a starting point for Jazzy to colour next

Shot 03 with all characters in colours (just missing text)
Background was edited as well to fit Mr.Chad's ideas

And the render video, which is not yet the final product!

Production Teamwork - Doodle Dragons Day 1 and 2

Here is some of the things done for the Production Team Project, from Monday and Tuesday. 

We had to come up with a Commercial idea and ended up making it a wizard selling potions to "help" people. 

I am in charge mostly of Background and Clean-up \o/

Here are the quick little designs I came up with, most of them being quite random, especially the two last ones.

 

 Background concepts which included Statues of Dragons to go with our Team's name but...welp, they got taken out.

I refined two of them, but eventually, the middle shot statues got replaced by wizard statues, which would later be the final background idea for our animation.

This is what the background looks like so far. IF we have enough time I may end up fixing a few things, but that is how it will look for now. 

As for clean up stuff, I have done one really simple shot today which was given to me, and tested some quick colouring to make sure it fills in properly~

And thankfully it does! 

And that is about it for today!~

Darth Vader Redesign Concepts (Incomplete)

Firstly was going to go for a Cowboy/Western type of character, and then perhaps a necromancer type, though I honestly did not have many ideas, and things were pretty much set in stone already; I wanted to draw him as a dragon.
He would wear a helmet as the main asset to reflect Vader from the movies, and would have black colour overall for his body. Red was also going to be put in somewhere, first only one tail spikes, but I was not sure where to put it next. And so it sort of developed into a more magical design than flesh-y.

He ended up with a more or less shattered body, sustained for most part by the Force itself, has red transparent wing membranes, no more arms, and a visible rib cage (of sorts)
I kept a few things from the previous idea, namely the helmet, though I believe he wouldn't need the lens to open like in the other design.

I am still missing the creative Illustration for this, but I must say I am truly happy with the final concept so far!

2D Integration exercise Follow-up

The "Final" file for the 2D Integration exercise

Must say I am truly not happy with consistency in this as well as some of the movement, especially towards the end. Head changes in size even though I tried to keep it the same, Dragon himself changes in size in some places and aaaaaaaaargh

Buuuut I guess it's "okay" for a first try? BLAH
Also no timing char PFFFF

Tuesday movie pls

And this concludes the original trilogy of Star Wars, as we watched Star Wars Episode VI : Return of the Jedi on Wednesday.

In this episode, I could not help seeing Darth Vader as someone who is afraid of his master, and obeys mostly for fear of being eliminated as the Emperor has great power. It is interesting to see how he came to become "softer" when he found out about Luke, and while he still tries to get Luke to join the Dark side, it is not something he truly wishes for his son to do. At least the way I see it, it looks more like Vader hopes to defeat the Emperor with the help of Luke eventually. Granted, Vader may not be completely good at that time, but this is the good part of him that speaks. Luke tries to convince his father that there is still good in him, though Vader sounded like he paid it no mind, until Luke was led away by the Clones, mentioning that his father was truly dead, judging by Vader's words. Vader did not answer to that, and yet, even though we cannot see his face, it felt like he might have had a look of regret on his face then. A thought, perhaps, a doubt, that he is actually as bad as he himself thought in the first place.
As Luke is finally brought to the Emperor, he refuses to heel to the Emperor's attempts to make him feel hate and anger, and watches as the Rebel fleet endures a difficult assault from the Empire's forces. He eventually grabs his light saber but is blocked by Vader when he tries to attack the Emperor. Vader and Luke fight, although Luke says from time to time that he wishes not to fight his father. Vader knows how to bring Luke's anger up, and mentions that if he would not join them, perhaps Leia will. He was able to read through Luke's feelings and figure out that his sister was still alive, and Luke immediately went on the offensive, slashing repeatedly at Vader, eventually cutting off his hand which he was holding his saber with. After doing so, refusing to join the Dark side still and realising his mistake in reacting with anger, the Emperor decides he has to die, and starts shooting Luke with electricity which he probably draws from the Force itself. Vader walks up closer to the Emperor as his son is suffering, and he watches, while Luke begs for his Father's help. Eventually, and with what strength is left in him after the battle, Vader grabs the Emperor and throws him down into a deadly fall, killing the Empire leader. From then on, Vader was good once more, and we could say he was back to being Anakin, though this redemption came at the price of his life. He later asks to see his son with his own eyes, and admits to Luke, who wanted to save him, that he was already saved, thanks to Luke.
His dead body, still in the Vader armor, is then burnt like they would a king of old times, which I found was a really nice touch, a fitting ending for a great character.

Although I still wish he could have lived, buuut I guess it's better than him dying as a villain.
This was a really interesting way of watching the Original Trilogy, and I understood a lot more than when I watched it long ago...looong ago. xD

Monday Movie Pls

On Monday, it was time to watch Star Wars Episode V : Empire Strikes Back

There are a lot of things that could be said if we had to study all characters but we are mostly focusing on Darth Vader, and I must say he is still as cool as ever.
What I especially like with Vader is the fact we cannot see his face and thus, his expression. His mood is translated into gestures and stances, words and tone of voice, and I suppose this must be one of the things that make him so "scary" to his men. In this movie he was the one in control, after the Death Star got destroyed. From his Star Destroyer, he gives commands as he tries to find the heroes, and seems to be unforgiving. He did not tolerate failure to a certain point, and did not exactly appreciate an apology for failure either, all who did so were "strangled" and killed for disappointing him. Though this may as well be Vader making sure the Emperor is satisfied and has capable men to serve him, as he is under the latter's rule after all. Vader seems to still be in touch with his former Jedi self in a sense, as he is seen meditating in several scenes, though always in his own meditation chamber. He managed to trick Luke into a trap using Leia and Han as baits, making a "deal" with the head of the City he lured Luke in, Lando, who knew Han. Vader made changes to the deal little by little as things happened quite accordingly to his plan so far, which displeased Lando, but Vader's imposing presence prevented him from doing something directly, and he had to be careful as he decided to lead Leia and the others out of the city, to safety.

In the fight between Luke and Vader, at first it appeared like Vader slightly underestimated Luke as he thought he had him frozen, yet Luke had jumped out and saved himself from the freeze. Throughout the fight however, Vader seems to go stronger and stronger on Luke, and Luke held on, until Vader cut his hand off and part of his arm as well, rendering Luke incapable to fight, with no light saber available to him anymore. Now, Vader mentions that it is Luke's destiny to defeat the Emperor, and then asks Luke to join him. We know the Emperor and Vader discussed that Luke could become a powerful ally to the Empire if he joined them, but the way Vader put it when speaking to Luke nearly makes you believe he does not like being under the Emperor's rule any longer, and would rather reign himself. It is almost as if Vader fears the Emperor, just as his men fear Vader. He also spoke of restoring order to the galaxy to Luke, which again, may or may not be a lie to make him join their side.
Does Vader have plans of defeating the Emperor? Does he mean to reign with his son or would he just kill him after? Was it just a trick (a rather nicely worded one), to get Luke to join the Empire? I cannot be certain, but that is what makes it so interesting in my opinion. Black and white characters, one purely evil and one purely just is quite a common thing and so it is nice to have a mix of both somewhere in a story, and Vader seems to be just that. A feared and respected Lord, with a huge amount of power both in command and fight, yet struggling to find peace in himself, most likely secretly.

So in this Episode, Vader was shown to be an unforgiving Lord, ready to do anything to fulfill his master's request, yet with a touch of his own (he was the one to suggest that Luke joined their side, rather than killing him right away as the Emperor inferred).

Thursday Movie pls

On Thursday we watched Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope, and...It sure had been a while since the last time I watched the Star Wars saga, and there were some things I truly did not remember, one being quite gruesome, but eh, it was not that bad. I enjoyed it of course, and I actually got to understand a lot more about the development of things in the story now that I'm not a little kid anymore.

Obviously I was also awaiting the arrival of Darth Vader since we are working on redesigning him for class, but then again it did not take long for him to show up, and it was quite interesting seeing him again. I remember I used to think he was the leader of all the Imperial armies, yet under the Emperor's rule, but re-watching the movie, I realised he was more of a henchman at the time. He obviously does have a position of power in some way, but some others still disrespect him because he speaks of the Force, which they do not seem to quite believe in. It was also interesting to see that, even though he was ordered to terminate Leia "immediately" at some point in the movie, he did not quite do that, and instead later said she could still be of use. Well, I guess there may or may not be a reason he did not execute her on the order (in the later movies), but this is an other story.
Eventually when he confronts Obi-wan on the Death Star, even though the troopers saw them fighting and came closer for possible help, no one interfered and it is as Vader wanted-- to deal with his former master alone. He was not accompanied either. So in a sense, he is still respected/feared, and some things clearly require his permission to be done. He also seemed to be quite perceptive of enemy tactics and plans, and was often seen giving the Imperials orders to help them better handle their opponents.
Vader claimed to have become superior to Obi-wan before they started fighting, however, when Obi-wan let go, and let himself get killed by Vader, he seemed to be focusing greatly, as he closed his eyes and vanished instead of being cut by Vader when he swung his saber in a final blow. This kind of made it look like Obi-wan came to learn even more about the Force than Vader could ever imagine.
 Darth Vader even checked Obi-wan's clothes that were the only thing that remained (and Obi's light saber too), as if he did not really understand what had just happened.

As for other characters, I noticed quite a bunch of similarities between Vader and Luke, and mainly with how Luke came to train as a Jedi Knight himself, and his enthusiasm for piloting, as well as his skill at fixing/building robots.
3PO and R2 also added a nice touch of humor to the movie, which I did not quite catch back then.
I did not quite remember how Han Solo used to act clearly either, but upon seeing it again, he does add to the story quite well too. His character is fun and entertaining to see on screen, unlike what I remembered.
The movie special effects also looked better than I remembered, heh.
The timing of the battles was well done, I especially loved the battle between the Rebels and the Death Star, and how everything was a race to survive in a sense. Although the Death Star had nothing to do but wait for the Rebel base to be in range, its troops still had to defend the one weak spot Rebels were aiming for. Three waves of Rebels fighters came to try and attack that weak spot, and 2 of them were destroyed by Vader and his wing-men. The last one succeeded with only one survivor, so eventually the Rebels won that battle, adding a thanks to Han's intervention to help Luke. However, since Vader was still alive, I suppose we can say it is only partly a victory, in a sense. They may think they destroyed the Empire's most powerful weapon, yet, the way I see it, Death Star was only one of the Empire's great weapons. An other one escaped, being Darth Vader himself. So I guess a battle won, just not the war. But obviously they would not win the war in this episode, duh!

I'm not going to include things that were not seen in the movie in this post obviously, but it was great watching it again and understanding things more! \o/

2D Integration Exercise

The fun little 2D Integration exercise where we have to use a shot acted by our lovely tutor Darth Glasswell or Mike Vader, and add a character to it \o/

VERSION 1

 VERSION 2

The latest version is the one where the claw attack was replaced with a tail whip, has more frames, and feels a lot better looking at it \o/

Comic page pls

WELL
That sure took a while AND there are still some details missing on the characters AND I still want to try and improve the background BUT oh well
Moar like this pls school ;A;

'Poisoned' Dialogue

The video might not work because of Flash Player issues, but errrgh I have no idea how to fix that e.e
Lip Sync exercise in which we were allowed to come up with our own ideas for the character's pose and so on c:
Was quite fun as well \o/

Bunny Clean Up

This was probably much harder than it is meant to be. I have to blame it all on the cold I caught a few days before the start of the week, because working on something while you have killer headaches and keep on coughing with a painful throat, is truly not good working conditions.
But I did not want to fall behind on this, so I kinda forced myself to finish it on time.
Was not able to submit it to the students folder, because I don't know what happened with my computer, but it cannot see the students folder at  the moment.

Walk Cycle exercise

This one I am not fully pleased with, I tried using the Mannequin character since I could not pick out of all the characters I own (tooooooo many)

Flour Sack

The Flour Sack exercise from last week, which was rather interesting to work on
I did not realise how creative we were actually allowed to be, but I am still satisfied with what I've done~

Ice Wyrm Lord Illustration

For the Elemental Creature design thingy

Pretty sure I'm dead now

Special Effects Assessment

There are other things I would have liked to animate for this assessment, but given the time I preferred not to start them at all, thus went for only two things, being a wolf shooting lasers and gathering energy from crystals after creating red lightnings out of a stomp.
The first shot does not work as a .gif due to the laser being a Movie clip (somehow Flash doesn't like playing it over unless it's a Graphic). The dust was not so difficult to draw either, though it took me some time to figure out how to make it work exactly.

While tricky to figure out the key positions of, Lightning is quite fun to animate and I really enjoyed the second shot, as simple as it may look.
So while these two weeks have been rather stressful for reasons other than schoolwork as well, it was still entertaining and interesting to go through.

Laser Wolf test

This is merely a test but I think it turned out pretty fine, and I do want to keep that idea! /o/
Will need to make it glow for the final thing (the laser that is)

First shot idea

First shot idea for the Two shots special effects assessment
It is a little confusing to plan since I have different ideas in mind, but I'm trying to see if I can find something I'll like in the end
This shot should have a minimum of two effects I think~

Inbetweening King

The king
The king of pain pls
My brain cannot handle it, though it reckons this was a good exercise and quite an extensive practice

Hybrid design

Basically a deer-necked pegasus with a human head ??
Would be wearing a deer skull on its face as a mask though, but I preferred not to go too far I:
Then again I might~

It was pretty difficult for me to even think of something, and at first it was going to be just a wizard crow of some sort, though it also change to a lady-bird fighter of a kind, also thought of trying a sea horse mix but I did not go far with it at all.
And in the end it became a deer-ish figure, and finally, the one we see in the first pictures~

Water Ripples

 Done over the weekend, but done!

Dust Cloud

I would probably add one last frame to reduce the size of the dust remains in frame 45 so it does not look like it just suddenly disappears, but I do not believe we are allowed to alter stuff I:

Smoke Film

It is time to rest in pieces @-@

Candle and Rain drops

Not sure why the yellow borders are showing on the candle, but oh well xD
Today's special effects exercises c:

Le questions of doom

What Character did you key frame for this exercise?
Vykel the Viking, and Jor the Dragon

What did you enjoy most about the pair exercise?
Uh...That's not fair
I liked all of it so I really can't pick. xD
From Keyframing  to inbetweening, all of it was enjoyable

What was difficult?
The dust effect
I didn't find a way to make it look proper until recently, so it needs to be edited

Was your animation too complicated?
Not in my opinion, and it was not difficult to build either

if so, what was complicated about it?
The void

did you and your team mate communicate well?
Like birds chit-chatting during a good meal

What were some of the things you and your team mate discussed?
The timing chart I once again forgot, and the key frames
The dragon design, the girl design, the everything design, and apples and sushis

Vykel and Jor Rough

 

 

Rough Keyframes for Vykel and Jor Shot 1/2, the second one will be done by my partner in Crime, Valkina, huehuehue~
The second one just has some random dust effect, rushed attempt but the idea is there xD

Vykel & Jor

Viking and dragon, best friends foreveeeeer!

RRH Keyframing - Weightlift

This week's exercise for which we had to draw our character lifting a heavy object of our own choice. Uh...it's 93 frames long and I don't even know if this is a proper length for it, or if it is too long. xD
Obviously it'll look smoother if it got in-betweens, but this was not required for this week so none!
I made some changes throughout the keyframing process, compared to the roughs I formerly drew, too. To me it looks better than the rough sketches, but who knows!

Clean up Exercises

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~

Personally I love clean up, so this exercise was never frustrating to work on-- Gotta love making things look clean :'D

The four first drawings were done in the traditional room using Pen and pencil to clean up the rough lines, and the two last ones were done in Photoshop.

Luv Clean up!

Maxwell In-betweening

A little exercise done as an other inbetweening practice
We also had to create a few characters and imagine what Maxwell's world would be like, thus adapting our designs to the world. I do not currently have samples of these characters, but I'm having fun thinking of a story for Maxwell and the others!

Style Practice- Vivziepop

For the Style research work, I picked Vivziepop's style as it has a rather interesting look to it
It is quite a nice style and is very entertaining to work in!