Tuesday, May 26, 2009

So, as promised, I'm posting all of my pre-production stuff on here in one big, composite post so that you can see the whole process from beginning to end.

The Premise:

I’ve always been a huge fan of the French artist Edmond Kiraz. He’s an illustrator that occasionally draws comics. I’d like to take one of his comic strips from his work and animate it in Flash. One I have in mind is of a girl that won’t stop dancing during and after a party, and gets herself and her boyfriend thrown in jail when she twirls a policeman’s moustache. I’d animate it and use “Linus & Lucy” by Vince Guaraldi for the background music.

The Script:

Title Card

Scene One

A high-class party. A man sits, playing the piano. His girlfriend is draped over his shoulder, watching as a girl dances playfully on top of the piano. The girl’s boyfriend also stands with the couple, watching and drinking a martini. Fade out.

The dancing girl and her boyfriend have left the party. They are walking outside. She is still dancing. Fade out.

Scene Three

The couple continues walking. The girl continues dancing. They pass a police officer. The girl reaches out and plays with the policeman’s moustache. He is not pleased. Cut to black.

Scene Four

The couple is in a jail cell. The man sits on the bench and sighs. The girl continues dancing. Fade to black.

End Credits

The Schedule:

Basically, my schedule is simply to work on the assignment in class. The only real solid dates are as follows:

>5/3: Create Characters and BGs in Photoshop
>5/6: Complete Scene One
>5/10: Complete Scene Two
>5/15: Complete Scene Three
>5/20: Complete Scene Four
>5/27: Final Film

The Storyboard:



Backgrounds:






Lastly, the notes on sound:

Basically, I'm just going to score it with "Linus & Lucy" by Vince Guaraldi.

And here's the finished product:









Conclusion:

Overall, this was a pleasant experience. Flash is a program I've been wanting to learn for a while, and despite the fact that I've only scratched it's surface, it's good to know that I now at least now how to produce SOMETHING with it. Obviously this would look very different if it were hand drawn, in that the quality of the animation would be higher (simply because I'd know exactly what the hell I was doing) but oh well. As for doing anything differently, I guess I'd try to take more time ON the animation and get it really stellar, and probably rework some of the puppets to work better aesthetically. But outside of that, I'm pretty pleased with the end product. Anyway, that's it for me. See you in the fall. Maybe. Probably.

At Long Last...

Huzzah! I've finally finished my Flash animation for DigiCel, and here it is. There will be one final post that mushes the final video, script, storyboards, etc. into one lump package after this. But for now...


Monday, May 25, 2009

Ok, so I've got the third scene complete, which is the second to last, as well as the second most difficult. Scene four is currently underway and coming along nicely, but I don't have much to say about that. Anyway, here's the video for scene 3. I admit, it's kind of hard for me to look at, and is far inferior to anything I'd (like to think I'd) produce with pencil-and-paper 2D, but hey, I'm still learnin' Flash. lol. I do enjoy the program, though, and hope to get better in the near future. But without further ado:


Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Finally, an update. It took me forever (which is why I haven't been updating) to figure out what was wrong with my movies when I exported them. They kept pixelating real badly, but I just exported them uncompressed and that fixed the problem. So without further ado, here are scenes one and two of my "film."



Monday, May 11, 2009

I'd love to update this with a video of my first scene, but when I exported it as an .avi it was super-heavily pixelated, so instead I'm going to ask anyone if they've also had this problem and if so, what they did to fix it. I can't remember if the professor gave us any real specific settings for the videos or anything that I may have missed, and if so, any info would be very appreciated. Anyway, I'll keep trying to figure this out and try to get some updated footage.