Thoughts and impressions of the first draft of the film

After reviewing the first draft with a number of people, some issues have come to light. There are the obvious ones that we were aware of, the lack of a television set, the blank part were James image was to go, the lack of sound in one part and the flickering light.

However a number of other issues have come up also. Firstly there are a lot of places where the characters are just frozen that I think needs to be cut. Other parts characters are moving a bi too slowly. When the prof runs off during the competent scene people get confused, we need a puff of smoke or something in there. We will have to do a proper reverse pan for the end and put the audience members in the shot. The teeth are just too gross for some people and I think may need to be corrected. Simon wants to change the textures in the background, so they are more cartoony. James didn't animated the prof's hand moving when he examines Mort's tooth so that will need to be corrected.

The biggest issue is that people get confused in the audience selection scene. I was hoping that with the sound effects and a proper spot light it would work, but as Simon points out their is no emotional resonance with Mort as we have not met him until this point in the film. We could cut to a shot of him before to establish him which is good filmic language, but would they do that in a studio. Simon suggests doing a pan of the audience but that might be tricky.

Draft Version of Film

Here is the Draft Version of the film. We have sent it to the James the sound guy. We we working till 19:00 last night to finish it. It needs some tweaking but otherwise I'm happy.

A Tutorial about Flash

A tutorial about Flash I found on http://www.cartoonsolutions.com/store/catalog/Editing-Multiple-Frames-of-Animation-sp-77.html

Editing Multiple Frames of Animation

Successfully move, scale or alter multiple frames of animation together.Have you ever finished animating something only to decide that you need to change it's placement on the stage or size on the screen? You may have tried selecting all of the frames on that layer and moved the first frame, hoping that the remaining frames in the layer would also move with it, only to find out that you have only moved the first key frame and nothing else.
The good news is that yes, you can move all of the frames at the same time, you just need to use the "Edit Multiple Frames" feature so that Flash will understand that you want to alter more than just one frame.
Let's take a look at a sample project where we want to scale up the animation on the character layer:
Look at the onion skinning features and you'll see on the far right of them two boxes that are both colored in. This is the "Edit Multiple Frames" feature and is what you want click on to activate.

This feature operates just like the "Onion Skinning" feature. Place your timeline marker in the middle of your animated frames and pull the handles out so that they encompass all of the animation that you wish to alter.

Once the handles are pulled out in the timeline, you should be able to see all of your key frames at once on the stage.

It is important to lock any layers that you do not want to alter or change. In this case, we will lock the 'background' layer so that it doesn't accidentally get selected.

Next you have to select all of the art on the stage. You can do this by either 'selecting all' (hotkey "Control"+"A") or by dragging over all of the art with the Arrow (V) tool. DON'T FORGET THIS STEP!

With all of the art selected, we'll use the "Free Transform" tool by pressing the "Q" keyboard shortcut, and pull on the corner handles to scale all of the art up at the same time.

You can do more than just scale or move the art, you can also apply filters to all of the symbols at the same time.

In this example we will also select "Tint" from the "Properties Bar" and choose a color to tint all of the symbols at the same time.

When you are finished, simply turn off the "Edit Multiple Frames" feature by clicking on it. You have now successfully edited multiple frames of animation!

IMPORTANT NOTE:You can use the "Edit Multiple Frames" feature on more than one layer at a time! You can use it on as many layers as you like. Just remember that if there are layers that you don't want to move, either lock those layers, or temporarily turn off their visibility so that they are not included when you edit the other frames.

Fat Back Bits Can in Maya

Here is the can of Fat Back Bits in Gravy that Simon designed and UV textured in Maya.

New Production Schedule

Sorry for not updating the production schedule recently. This shedule now has all the completed sections removed as there was a lot of it. (Hooray for completing tasks!)

It now shows everything we have to do starting next week till hand in. This also includes the remaining inking that Al and James did not complete.

As shown, myself and Daryl must try to complete the inking that Ali was meant to do by Monday and James is also giving his scenes a go for Monday too.

It is a shame that James did not contact us sooner, especially considering he was having difficulties using the programs (even with my tutorial). Although I am confident that he will have a lot done for Monday. I showed him, a second time, how to use the programs on Friday and he showed good progress by completing a few keyframes that day.

Good luck everyone. Remember the tutorial should still be up (look down this page for link) otherwise contact me and i'll send you the tutorial or help you out myself.

Current Progress

Well, would you like the good news or the bad news first.

The good news is that Simon and I have completed inking and colouring in the 2nd year frames. We have also done a lot of the 2D artwork for the film, such as Simon's great FatBack Bits in Gravy can (with Snubbs the pig supplied by Lewis) and extra little bits of simple animation in Flash, using Tweens.

The bad news is that Al and James have not completed the inking and colouring on their scenes. This is a great disappointment as now we have to rush covering their scenes. Simon again showed James how to do the inking, and James has promised us that he will get it done for Monday. He did at least start it today.

In other news, we have to get two images in two different sizes handed in for the 5th June and for the 12th June, 6 final film renders, 20 plus images of pr-production and production artwork and any other personal work you might want to show at the degree show. This as well as completing the film.

Tutorial up

http://www.woofiles.com/dl-192940-Uo7jHp2V-TutorialFlashInking.pdf

I created a tutorial for inking in Flash if anyone needs it. I tried to list everything from how to do it, and solving potential problems.