Dead Lines with Nine Lives

Well...

I spent much of my weekend working on the Free as a Bird animation, and I got through almost all of the hard parts, including some interaction between two cel layers involving a lot of movement in 3-d space. Guh. 150 frames of that in fact. I actually can't believe I managed to pull that one off. it's not fantastic but it's passible for the ~14 seconds it is on the screen. All in all, this movie is going great. I'm just not sure I can make the deadline of 10PM on Thursday.
I'm going to put forth my very best effort and try though. There's a lot left to do but for the most part it's just glances, head turns, nods, and other things that are really easy. I deliberately worked through the really hard stuff this weekend so that I would have small pieces left to work on in times like during lunch at work.
I'm pretty confident I can get the rest of the animation finished before the deadline, though it is certainly only going to be a pencil-test to submit (which is totally okay for this competition) I'm not as confident about the photography, sound, and editing. I'm going to try and I may not sleep for a few days, but what the heck. Might as well go for it. the worst that can happen is that I don't finish and have to submit it in a different competition in 6 months, or I do submit it and lose. (Though in my dilluded little mind, the later can't happen, of course)

Speaking of competing, I took a break from animating last night to animate. My entry for the artist's Ambush last night I finished late so I told them not to put it in the competition but people voted for me anyhow and I'd have won easily except I didn't think it would have been fair so they revoted. Very cool. I'm feeling good about that. Winning at the Ambush used to be very important to me, but since I've started doing the Flash entries, my focus has really changed to it being about what I can learn in the alotted time. I wasn't at all stressed that I was out of time last night, even though I knew it ment I'd be disqualified. I just finished up in a way that I liked it, then told them to disqualify me. :)

Things are coming faster now. I'm experiencing one of those growth spurt thingies as an artist. I'm suddenly finding I can just draw walks and jumps and such without a lot of strife or difficulty. Each sequence I've done for the cat has gotten faster and faster, and unlike the bunny, I'm not finding it at all frustrating. I'm glad I pushed through and finished the bunny though. I learned so much working on it, even if I did complain and fuss endlessly about it. Now if centauress would just get around to doing the cel painting so I could close it once and for all...

Ohwell. Anyhow. That's enough babbling from me for now.

-Sammi

Succombed to Communist Ideas

Wee! Now isn't that a great topic? But it's true, sorta. I watched a whole bunch of 'Nu, Podogi' this weekend. (soviet-era russian cartoon) and one of the things I really liked about it was their solid understanding of physics.

We watched one episode where they were on a ship and a storm started blowing and the ship began to roll, and I commented at the time to centauress that it was neat because they'd animated the pitch of the ship with rotation of the compound and made the objects react accordingly. This makes a lot of sense for a complex scene being rotated weirdly. LITTLE DID I KNOW That these cartoons had made me suceptible to the power of communist animators!

Today, working on my cat animation, there's a scene where the cat hits the stand of the birdcage making it swing wildly and the bird inside squawk and flutter... I'm short on time and a wire cage is a tough render when moving because the wires will move in and out if you don't animate it right. But... What if the cage stayed still and the camera moved and the bird just flapped inside it? ...

Okay, so it's not fantastic animation. It's a flat side-on view and its a cheap shortcut BUT, it lets me come in close and focus on the expression of the bird and not spend a huge amount of time animating this scene (as I'm already WAY behind schedule) Hee! Yay for soviet cartoons! :)