friday crit with Anna

• technical polish
• show status quo for the young couple more clearly
• work on sound with composers.
  

emotions chart

3D camera in After Effects.

The Can from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

Mouth

Looking for mouth footage





Next step is mouth for female characters. This going to be a difficult one, good time to learn how to draw it :) Google it first!

http://text.vipzes.ru/risuem-anime-manga/kak-risovat-mangu-rot-anatomiya-i-uroki.html


Mango style. Simple linear mouth, need something like that for my piece.
quick mouth collage with one of the reference footage

plus some adjustments to make her face feature more subtle
and finally

Respond to the home crit

My brother and his bride gave me some comment on this cut, one of the points they made was about eyes on female characters. They didn't liked them at all. But they liked eyes on male characters. Now I am trying to make some alternative look for both females characters eyes.
Some tutorials on realistic eyes - http://memblog.ru/testovaya/risuem-glaz
will try to get the right shape and structure of the eye to make it look more convincing.
Looking at this tutorial I took one of the pictures of the eye and made a quick collage


Looks much better. Now I will try to draw something similar

This should do the job. Also there are some simple changes to the nose shape

Rought Cut for final crit

Before crit I put down thing which I have to change in the animation. Most of the comment I received on crit were very similar to the points I wrote down.



Also I showed this cut to my father and he gave me some comment as well. Translation in bold.

· Название опустить ниже половины экрана

Move title lower the middle of the screen

· ведро должно лететь и тонуть в нижней правой четверти- будет больше днамики

Bucket should be thrown to the bottom right one quarter of the screen, it will add more dynamics

· надо бабку повернуть зеркально относительно ведер, чтобы смотрела в сторону дома, тогда и понесет воду домой а не от него (несовпадение векторов движения)

Turn old lady opposite direction, she would look toward the house (otherwise a vector of the movement doesn’t match)

· по идее надо чтобы она подняла ведра и следуюшим кадром, без проходки, общий вид дома

She lift the buckets and next shot is a view of a house

· порядок фотографий не совпадает в разных кадрах, я бы заменил их на рисунки- смешение стилей не есть хорошо, если это не является задумкой

Order of the photos on the wall doesn’t much in different scenes, I would change them to watercolour pictures, otherwise mixture of styles, if not an original idea

· переход с деда на фото- сделай в стык

Transition from Old man to photos make as cut.

· мне кажется, что можно отказаться от просмотра фоток- тогда и отпадет необходимость менять их на рисунки, я чтто они изображают и так понятно

I think that you can get rid of scenes where we see photos in details, then you’ll have no need change them to pictures. Anyway it is obvious what they portray.

· 0,55 - бабка налила чай и несет кружку на стол, след. кадр - кружка падает и чай проливается, нет необходимости показывать часть движения, мозг и так додумает

0,55 min – woman fill the cup and puts it to the table. Next scene – cup is falling and spilling tea. There is no need to show thise movement again. Brain will hit upon.

· 1,03- незавершенный взмах руки у деда, надо показать часть движения вниз

1,03 – incomplete movement of the man’ hand, you should show it moving down as well

· во время "разборки"- затянутые ккадры, вырежь паузы и появится динамика

Get rid of long shots during the argument, this will add some dynamics.

· 1,20- зачем зигзагообразный отъезд на общий план? просто откатись

1,20 – why showing wavy zooms out on general plane. Just zoom out

· 1,40- бабка вышла из кадра и сразу вышла из избы

1,40 min – woman left the scene and straight away left the hut

· 1,50- лучший переход- это стык!!!!,

1,50 min – best transition is CUT!!!!

· 1,52- смести бабку в левую треть и появится больше простора перед ней

1,52 min – move woman to left one third of the screen this will give more space in front of it.

· 2,13- зачем отъездды и наезды?, надо работать сменой планов- общий, средний, крупный и т.д.

2,13 min – why do you use zooming in and out. You should work with changing of the planes – background, middleground, foreground and etc.

· 2,20- рассказ протерпевшей. Нарушена центровка- сместить кадр вправо.

2,20 min – tale of victim, move shot to right.

· Я-бы этот эпизод сделал так-Общий план 2 старухи, средний- видна жестикуляция, крупный- мимика старухи, средний- картинки рассказа(только динамику- резкие движения), крупный- испуганное лицо соседки, общий план- соседка мотает головой, встает...

I would make this episode like this: general plane – 2 women, middle shot – show gestures, fore shot – scared face of old woman, general plane – old woman moving her head, stands up.

· 2,58- отзеркаль сцену набора воды, покажи только процесс черпания ( ведро- кружка-рука), зачем видна склонившееся голова??? и сразу смена кадра- ср план- подает воду бабке

2,58 min – turn this scene to other direction, show only process of filling the cup (bucket and hand) Why do you show the head? Change of shot-middle ground – she gives water to the woman.

· 3,29-ср план- на этом благодарность закончить, вырежь отъезд

3,39 min, middle ground, get rid of zooming out.

· 3,40- дорога домой-общ план, или надо рисовать для него ноги?

3,40 min – way back home – general plane, or you have to draw legs for this?

· 3,47- ср план- входит в избу, - след кадр

3,47 min – middle ground, entering the hut, next shot

· 3,53-обш план- разруха на столе и старик ругается,- кр план- старуха пъет воду

3,53 general plane, mess on the table and shouting man, fore ground – woman drinks water.

· 4,34- сдвинулся задний план и остановилось солнце

4,34 min – displacement of background and sun has stopped.

· может конец сделать так- солнце опускается вниз и камера сним, а затем идет проходка на воду, бабка там не нужна

Maybe you should make like this – sun and camera moving down together. Then camera moves to the water. You don’t need an old woman there.

Raw 1/3 part of animation is done.

Figure in watercolor

I ve looked at this book t get some ideas how to paint people in watercolor.Starting with simple brushes, no line drawing, just a few stains make people looks sophisticated (quick, but not exactly what I am looking for), though very nice style.

Starting with linear pencil drawing and then coming to watercolor. These ones much closer to desired result

Landscapes in watercolor

Looked at this book to get some approaches for painting the landscapes. Depth of environment (relevant for paralax animation scenes)

investigation of watercolor techniques (paint with watercolor masters)

some techniques for painting the buildings. Starting with pencil line drawing, then adding the index colors and finally coming to details with fine brushespainting the sky


People in watercolor


Sea in watercolor (looks great, but doesn't fit the animation style)

landscapes in watercolor (simplicity + efficiency). Great colors relations.

woman walk cycle

Mouth animation

As my cartoon is completely speechless everything has to be shown through emotions - both facial expressions and body movements. So far I managed to sort out the body movement and facial expressions at some degree, but the only thing is missing - animation of mouth on the woman and old lady characters. There was no problem with that on the male character as his mouth is covered with beard and mustaches.
Now I am making some research on this:

Re: Keyframing mouth movements
by Mike Park on Nov 17, 2008 at 1:39:07 am
Do you want AE to interpolate between the frames our simply switch from one frame to another. For the latter, check out Aharon's tutorial section. For the former, there are a variety of ways to do this depending on the shot. For a static face, you may try using the liquid effect and setting several keyframes outside you animation. Then simply copy the keyframes to the proper place. AE will interpolate between the frames. Also, you can keyframe percentages between the neutral position and the new keyframed so that each sound doesn't look exactly the same. One could be at 100 percent, with another at 80 percent. (from http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/945911)

something off topic (live footage mouth animation)


great set of AF tutorials from Crazy Cow -http://leaders.creativecow.net/leaders/rabinowitz_aharon/

Lip-sync - http://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/lip_synch/video-tutorial.php

Frame by frame

Today I am working on the frame by frame animation bit. It is the moment where man and woman getting old very quickly (sort of time machine effects). I tried Color Key to remove the white background and it looks fine, will use for the sequence.




I have drawn 36 frames of that animation and made some tests (which you can find on the submitted DVD). It looked not exactly as I thought and it was too time consuming to get it right.
I showed result to Steve S. and he suggested to use morphing effect. Something like this:
I downloaded Morpheus software, but it did not had an option to render out HD quality. Also I looked at morphing in AfterEffects, but then I came up with different idea:

Instead of showing them getting old after we saw their pictures, we will see them old straight away. This will save both message and time.

Camera tracking into the window

Marvel

Today in the DDM studio I was attracted by this comics cover

So I decided to look through the book and see if there is anything I could highlight for my project.

watercolor like sky

expressive lines

depth of environment