Final Post for Digital Cel

Well, it's the last day of Digital Cel! That was an interesting ride, I loved seeing everyone's blogs progress and the final films I've seen so far are fantastic.

I'm overall fairly pleased with my final film. If I was to change it, I maybe would have tried to do a film with straight animation rather than the cut-out style, but doing that would require simpler character designs and probably a whole lot more time! (Or I would have to be Chris St. Clair, that guy is insane! :P) Anyway, I think the goals I set for myself were pretty realistic and the outcome was pretty much as I expected.

And now I know how to use Flash, woo hoo!

FINISHED FILM

Here it is!

Last preview before the final movie!

Some scenes done!

So far it's going about as quickly as I expected. As I get more comfortable with what I'm doing, I hope it will get even faster. Of course, most of the upcoming scenes are more complicated than these, but we'll see.

Anyone know if the completed film is due Monday or Wednesday?


I was going to upload multiple scenes but you can only put one in a post so whatever.

Last screenshot update probably

Hey some stuff.

I AM SO ALMOST DONE WITH THE PUPPETS AAAH.
Only 5 leftttt. Well, 6, counting one last hamster puppet.

EDIT: 3 LEFT

EDIT: ~*~*~*~DONE WITH PUPPETS!~*~*~*~

Almost done with backgrounds

Wooo, update.

Only one background left!

Yellow wall
Jewelry box 1 (Reaching for ring)
Sink basin
Profile sink, with and without X-ray vision
Inside hamster cage
Outside hamster cage
Edge of sink counter
Sink drain opening
X-ray vision sink pipes
Jewelry box 2 (Hamster height)

Cool. Then when I'm done with that there's only doing the girl puppets for the opening scene aaand the hamster and cockroach puppets for the last scene.

The actual animation of this thing shouldn't be too hard. I'm going to animate the string around the hamster in flash rather than try and make some weird string puppet because that would be really hard. And animating a line is not that hard.

So I definitely anticipate being finished with the puppets by the end of this week, which leaves the next week open for animation. There may yet be an all-nighter in there somewhere but I'm pretty comfortable with the remaining time.

So yeah. Gonna finish that last background in class today.

EDIT: Finished the final scene hamster puppets! Took forever, too. There is only one more hamster puppet. Then I have to make the roach puppets (3), and then the girl puppets (there's about 8, I think.) It took 2 hours to make 6 hamster puppets. The roach is going to be easy. The girl... I'm not really sure. I'll say 10 hours of puppet-making left just to be safe.

Pic

Now I'm just uploading stuff to upload stuff.

Trying to work at least an hour every day on this now. 2:30 hours today.

backgrounds and stuff

Hey. Haven't been updating this very much because I haven't been getting any feedback from it. Here's some backgrounds and stills.









work work work time

Storyboard

Here's the storyboard for my thing. Still don't know what the title of it is! Anyone have any ideas? A pun or something? I don't know.



I'm going to have 11 different backgrounds. One of those is just one color, so that doesn't really count. I've already done the opening shot one, which was hardest.

I have --

Yellow wall
Jewelry box 1 (Reaching for ring)
Sink basin
Profile sink, with and without X-ray vision
Inside hamster cage
Outside hamster cage
Edge of sink counter
Sink drain opening
X-ray vision sink pipes
Jewelry box 2 (Hamster height)

I'm going to have to figure out how to do fades in Flash. I hope it's not very difficult.

Here's a rough go at the opening shot.

Little Girl Ref Sheet

Here is the design for the little girl character.

More hamster testing

More cut-out style animation testing.

I am pretty far behind in this class; A lot of outside stuff has interfered with me completing the tutorials and storyboards for my final project. However, I hope to complete as much as physically possible. I'm just not sure if I'll be able to make my final project look anything like I hoped it would.

Here's my lip-sync anyway.



Audio from "Groundhog's Day".

Hamster Vid, Ref Sheet

Reeeally messy, but I learned a lot making this little thing. This is pretty much how my film will look (sans the bad animation, hopefully.)

Here's the character design for Hamster, before he gets the paper cut-out makeover.


Working on the other designs now.

Script -- Feedback please?

Background music fade-in
Exposition – Fade-in of a bathroom with fade-in/out overlaid title, a little girl is standing in front of the sink on a stool and applying lipstick, badly. She is wearing big pearls and a hat that doesn’t fit; obviously she is playing dress-up in her mother’s clothing.

Med. Shot, from perspective of mirror – The girl smiles into the mirror; her face is a mess of bad make-up. She reaches down for the jewelry box and picks up a ring, but drops it.

The ring clinks in the metal drain.

Profile, med long shot. The inside of the pipe is visible in a silhouetted sink like a diagram. The girl tries to stick her finger down the drain but can’t reach the ring.

Med. Shot, from perspective of mirror- The girl is frustrated and thinks about what to do. She smiles and gets an idea, then turns to leave the bathroom.

A hamster in a cage that is on a girlish dresser. He is carefully selecting a nut from his food pile. Offscreen footsteps rise in volume and the hamster looks up nervously.

C/U – Some Barbie and Ken dolls on stands. One of them has a little pith helmet on and the girl’s hand comes from off-screen and grabs it.

The girl’s hands open the hamster cage. She scoops out the bewildered hamster and puts the pith helmet on his head, then dashes off screen.

Med-long shot, the sink “diagram” again. A cockroach cautiously approaches the ring in the drain and pokes at it with its antennae. As footsteps get louder it dashes down the drain. The girl runs on screen with the hamster in hand.

Low shot from the hamster’s perspective –The hamster gets placed on the rim of the sink. The girl points at the sink and the hamster looks where she’s pointing. He shakes his head nervously but the girls hands quickly ties a piece of string around the hamster’s middle.

Med shot of hamster. He hops down into the basin of the sink and peers into the hole. He looks up pitifully at the girl and reacts to her off screen reaction by slowly shaking his head and gulping. He hops down into the drain.

“Diagram” shot again, but closer to the drain. The hamster lands on the bend in the drain and sees the ring. The cockroach from before peeks up over the second bend and pokes at the ring. The hamster hops over and snatches it, then tugs on the line. As he gets dragged slowly upward, the cockroach watches sadly and waves his antennae.

The hamster gets awkwardly dragged out of the drain, almost dropping the ring but managing to hold on to it.

The girl pulls the hamster to eye level and grins, putting out her hand to receive the ring. The hamster drops it into her hand and the girl lowers the hamster to the sink.

The hamster gets set down beside the jewelry box and looks up at the girl.

The girl puts on the ring and looks at it admiringly.

The hamster is still looking up at the girl. The cockroach edges up beside him. The hamster notices him and tilts his head. The cockroach points at the jewelry lying in the box above the hamster with an antenna. The hamster grabs a different ring from the box and gives it to the cockroach, who bounces happily and skitters away as the hamster waves good-bye.

Cut to credits.

Delao Puppet

Here is my attempt at making Delao's creepy clown puppet jump.

This was my first attempt to make the bouncy ball.


I think I'll try and do a better one later!

Digital Cel premise

I've had a lot of fleeting ideas to use as a premise for my Digital Cel Animation project, including a music video for the song "I Think I Smell a Rat" by the White Stripes. There are one or two ideas that I'm undecided on.
One of the better developed ones is a story about a little girl playing with her mother's bathroom things, playing dress-up and trying on jewelry. She accidentally drops a ring down the sink and the only way to get it out is to employ her pet hamster/gerbil/mouse, who dons an explorer hat and gets lowered down into the drain by a rope. Then he has a brief adventure, probably fighting a cockroach or something, retrieves the ring, and brings it back to the little girl.

I had other ideas, too, but this one seemed most straightforward. It's probably way too ambitious, however, and I'm trying to find a more simple premise to work with.

Mojizu.com inspiration

We were supposed to pick an inspirational character design from Mojizu.com. I chose this monster.
I like the color and the very simple but effective design. It has a lot of appeal. I do not usually draw in such a stylized manner, but I really like the aesthetic so I could see myself adopting it for the purpose of this class.

This movie is my favorite from my favorite studio. It's beautiful, and the animation and characters are perfect. The aesthetic, lighting, and color choices are all wonderful, and it all comes together so wonderfully. I obviously can't hope to achieve this sort of thing in Flash, so I am including this second video, which, as Adam Phillips's most recent film, is the current coolest thing made on that program.

Intro.

I am Cat Brooks, although my given name is Anna Brooks, which is a source of some annoyance. Mostly it comes up when attempting to correct professors taking roll. (How did she get "Cat" from "Anna"? Is she just making up words? She doesn't look like a "Cat" to me.)
It is a dilemma, but not really a big one, so I'll stop talking about it. (For the record, my middle name is "Catherine". I never went by my first name growing up.)

I live in Nashville, Tennessee when I'm not living in Savannah attending SCAD. I have two cats and two siblings and I love to watch movies, read books, fly kites, play games, draw things, fly kites, eat pineapple and do stuff. My favorite color is orange, usually. Different colors have tried to convince me otherwise in the past, and, being a generally amiable person, I sometimes hear them out.

I love animation of all sorts, and love looking at art of any kind: film, paintings, sculpture, etc. My own art has up until quite recently featured primarily animals because I felt and still feel very low confidence in my ability to portray the human form and face. I am working very hard at rectifying that.

My art gallery online is http://stuffed.deviantart.com