Animation Tests:
Wednesday, 2006-03-22, I got my proficiency for the 3d animation labs. On the morn of Thursday, I frantically attempted to convert Barbie dolls into functioning armatures using steel wire and stage blood. The results are somewhat cybernetic, and interesting looking. On the evening of Thursday, Brad Hutchinson showed me the ropes by helping me do some test animations, and taught me the finer points of lighting puppets, and performing exacting motion control and previsualization during the manual process of animating. Here are some photos from this experience (taken by Brad):
During the following days, since the 3d animation lab is closed over spring break, and since I may be doing at least some animation at home, I set up a little studio of my own. This studio consisted of:
A friends computer outfitted with my older ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9000, for the capture of analogue video streams.
My Panasonic PV-GS150 with a broken DV port (necessitating the analogue capture).
My main computer’s mouse and keyboard controlling the frame-grabbing computer over a network switch with the software Synergy.
… and so forth.
Anyway, as you will soon be able to tell, the results look positively awful. RCA cables are just not the way to go. I will consider using a digital still camera for the capture of frames in the future (using the analogue video-out for monitoring and onion-skinning).
Following is a test animation I did with the arm-head announcer man and his tin-foil reality. The background of moving tinfoil is composited in with green-screen technique.) Notable in both is my experimentation with using the Reelsmart Twixtor time-altering and frame interpolation plugin for After Effects in order to make the image-sequence (captured at ~ 12fps motion reference) look more like natural motion at 24fps, which is what the rest of my footage will be. Also present is the Reelsmart Motion Blur plugin, which creates an interesting illusion of motion, and when taken to an extreme, as in the 2nd clip, can produce some quite interesting abstract motion, which would be quite handy in my planned evolution from representation to abstraction regarding motion of objects.
(sorry… youtube compression does not like the frenetic motion of those last.)
And here are some more test animations using my home system:
Hair Attack:
Rose Race:
I also recorded a plethora of samples for percussion in my soundtrack. Objects recorded are included but not limited to: balloons popping, balloons not popping but escaping from booted feet slamming into the bathroom floor, a handful of pennies being dropped, a plastic foil heart-balloon left over from valentines day being molested with squeaky results, and a smorgasboard of samplings from my brother Kina Smith’s collection of bizarre musical instruments constructed from balloons, plastic bottles, and PVC pipe.
In store for tomorrow will be a mighty battle with this debilitating fever which is currently forcing me to type lying down, and the further exploration of audio software (including Ableton Live 5.0, Reason, Reaktor, Kontakt, Battery, Recycle… etc.) for the sampling and construction of sound, both organic and digitally generated.
On a note of reason, my shotlist and psuedo-script continues to evolve. It is essential for the movement from ideas to acquisition of footage, but unimportant in the process of editing footage into its final form.
An update
Animation Tests:
Wednesday, 2006-03-22, I got my proficiency for the 3d animation labs. On the morn of Thursday, I frantically attempted to convert Barbie dolls into functioning armatures using steel wire and stage blood. The results are somewhat cybernetic, and interesting looking. On the evening of Thursday, Brad Hutchinson showed me the ropes by helping me do some test animations, and taught me the finer points of lighting puppets, and performing exacting motion control and previsualization during the manual process of animating. Here are some photos from this experience (taken by Brad):
During the following days, since the 3d animation lab is closed over spring break, and since I may be doing at least some animation at home, I set up a little studio of my own. This studio consisted of:
Anyway, as you will soon be able to tell, the results look positively awful. RCA cables are just not the way to go. I will consider using a digital still camera for the capture of frames in the future (using the analogue video-out for monitoring and onion-skinning).
Following is a test animation I did with the arm-head announcer man and his tin-foil reality. The background of moving tinfoil is composited in with green-screen technique.) Notable in both is my experimentation with using the Reelsmart Twixtor time-altering and frame interpolation plugin for After Effects in order to make the image-sequence (captured at ~ 12fps motion reference) look more like natural motion at 24fps, which is what the rest of my footage will be. Also present is the Reelsmart Motion Blur plugin, which creates an interesting illusion of motion, and when taken to an extreme, as in the 2nd clip, can produce some quite interesting abstract motion, which would be quite handy in my planned evolution from representation to abstraction regarding motion of objects.
(sorry… youtube compression does not like the frenetic motion of those last.)
And here are some more test animations using my home system:
Hair Attack:
Rose Race:
I also recorded a plethora of samples for percussion in my soundtrack. Objects recorded are included but not limited to: balloons popping, balloons not popping but escaping from booted feet slamming into the bathroom floor, a handful of pennies being dropped, a plastic foil heart-balloon left over from valentines day being molested with squeaky results, and a smorgasboard of samplings from my brother Kina Smith’s collection of bizarre musical instruments constructed from balloons, plastic bottles, and PVC pipe.
In store for tomorrow will be a mighty battle with this debilitating fever which is currently forcing me to type lying down, and the further exploration of audio software (including Ableton Live 5.0, Reason, Reaktor, Kontakt, Battery, Recycle… etc.) for the sampling and construction of sound, both organic and digitally generated.
On a note of reason, my shotlist and psuedo-script continues to evolve. It is essential for the movement from ideas to acquisition of footage, but unimportant in the process of editing footage into its final form.