It's been a bit quiet around here ...!

I've been busy with 2 frame-by-frame animation among other 3D stuff. So far, I haven't found a reason to not like Toonboom. My animation school has actually just acquired TVPaint and teaching with that, but I'm starting to understand what a fellow animator meant when he said he swears by Toonboom. Pretty strong words there.  Though I have yet to get comfortable enough with using it for cut out animation. Anyhow, I'll leave you with a screenshot of my current work. Deadline in 3 weeks - let's hope I can make it!

Making sense of random audio

Exercise in using an X-sheet to sync animation to audio. Drawn on paper and compiled/coloured in TVpaint.  

I only did a pencil test after all the drawings were done, so some parts of the animation could be better. Having to paint every frame was a killer...!  Stay tuned...more work coming soon. 

Chase (animatic)

Storyboarded a chase scene from a script. Since I had the materials already, why not make it into a semi-animatic? All SFX obtained from freesound.org

On review: Some scenes went on for too long, dictated by the sound file which was created first before the video - I overestimated the length of the shots. Tightening up the speed of the shots could make the animatic more interesting and engaging with the chase.

Here are 2 pages out of 9 of the storyboard panels drawn.

..and the turnarounds for the characters. Yes, they do have names :)

11-second Club NOVEMBER 2012

So this was my submission to the 11-second Club November 2012. Spent about 10ish days on it from character turnarounds to this *finished state.



On hindsight now, thanks to some feedback I've gotten, I should have planned the shot a bit better. I was rushing into the animating and lip sync part, I'd neglected planning. I really shouldn't have started inking and painting but I'd wanted to see what the finished product could look like.. not a good idea competition-wise but glad I did.

Some preparatory stuff I did prior to animating. I realise it was hard to keep him on model once I started! And....holds! *slaps forehead* Had I known that concept beforehand...gosh, could have saved so much work.

 What 85 drawings look like.

Basic animation: Mr. Floursack

Finally! First real update for the year - late huh? This is my first animation (short?) piece, drawn on tons of paper on a lightbox. It's based on an assignment in Tony White's ' How to Make Animated Films' book. The background, as directed by the book, was obtained from www.desktopacademy.com . This took 3 weeks to complete and I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. There are some mistakes in there but I've learnt a great deal from doing this assignment. And boy, have I gained a larger appreciation for animators and all that effort they put into getting the movement and fluidity just right! Additions and improvements can be made here but I thought, this is enough, it's time to move on to something else. I may add sound in later on, to learn more about post-production.

Thanks for watching! Vann signing off.