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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Journals Stuff I made Tutorials

Zip it good!

It’s been 9 to 15 July 2017. I don’t have anything close to a preview of Shot 3 yet – it’s been a week of lost evenings, product releases at the day job, visits from interstate and a pressing need for rest. Shot 3 and its bird/cactus japery is just going to take a while longer and that’s that.

Someone asked how I did the “zip” (smear) effect in Shot 2 and whether I used motion blur. I didn’t! It’s just extreme scaling on a few single frames.

Here’s the shot in motion (again):

ALL HAIL THE PYRAMID (again)

And here’s stills of the smear frames where the head monk appears.

Frame 73 – monk enters
Frame 74 – monk ascends

Here’s a screengrab from Blender:

The highlighted bone is the base bone. It is quite stretched.

The X and Z scale values are both 0.142 because I built the base character much bigger than it ended up being in the final scene, so I had to scale it down. The Y scale value is 1.492, over ten times the value of X and Z. This distorts the rig considerably along the length of the base bone.

This means the character covers a lot of the screen, and in a single frame I can draw the attention of the audience to what this little purple guy is up to. It ups the cartooniness, it strengthens the staging, and as long as the zip frames are spaced so that they have obvious visual continuity (i.e. no large spatial gap from one frame to the next), it’s a lot of impact for not very much time spent.

If I’d had more time, I’d have added a frame where the monk is distorted in more of a curve to follow the contour of the ground rising up into the pyramid, but it’s fine without it. (Next time for sure!)

There can be no discussion of smears and zips and such without linking a certain Chuck Jones short which is chock full of great smear effects. Who needs motion blur?

See you next week!

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Journals Stuff I made

Shot 2 is done!

It’s been 1 to 8 July 2017. As hoped, I have a shot! Hurray!

ALL HAIL THE PYRAMID

As you can see, the animation is steppy instead of smooth and interpolated. This is a deliberate choice – I want to focus on the editing/writing/directing part more than finessing F-Curves. Even with less polished animation, everything still has to be  staged and timed, making sure there’s only one thing to focus on at once, etc.

This took about 24 hours to render using a nightly build of Blender 2.79 with the new denoising feature. Blender 2.79 is going to be a massive release by the way – aforementioned render denoising, Troy Sobotka’s awesome filmic look-up-tables and the new principled ubershader are all looking awesome.

I have my next shot idea – there’s a bird in a tree – but nothing to show off yet. Please enjoy this video of musician and sound designer Oskar Sala playing his Trautonium in the meantime. (Sorry, can’t embed.) The thing with the dial on it is an analogue frequency shifter.

See you next week!

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Journals Stuff I made

Big week, little progress

That was 25 June to 1 July 2017.

As feared, this week completely wiped me out and left little time for making the funnies. To top it all off, it’s very cold and rainy this weekend.

But I got a little bit done. Here’s a work in progress pyramid worshipper. This little person is a replacement for the stick figure from the original part of the shot. (I think I might have another shot at making the triangle.)

“Hello. Do you know where there’s a pyramid around here I can worship?”

Next week should be less hectic and see the completion of Shot 2. See you then!

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Journals Stuff I made

You spin me right round, AAAAA, right round…

Welcome to what was 18 to 24 June 2017. Scene 2 has begun in earnest. This scene establishes level of general silliness.

AAAAA runs past a mild-mannered cube with such force that the cube gets violently lathed into a pyramid. The pyramid is roused from its dizziness by a pyramid worshipper that’s arrived from nowhere. The pyramid does not know what to think about this.

Here’s the first attempt:

This pyramid has so many questions…

It’s a beginning, but there’s definitely room for improvement. (Mainly I’m thinking “How would this scene unfold if Terry Gilliam were directing it?”)

The little worshipper doesn’t instantly read as a worshipper. The audience needs to be able to recognise the character instantly for the shot to work because everything happens so quickly. I showed it to a workmate and they confused the worshipper for AAAAA himself!

To fix this, I’m going to switch the stick figure out for a small group of monk-like characters instead. Monks are obviously there to worship something, moreso if they have little pyramids on their robes and if they’re wearing pyramid hats so it’s obvious that they’re pyramid monks. Sound will definitely help with making the gag work too.

Meanwhile, the day job is ramping up again for an emergency project and I just took delivery of four DIY synthesiser kits from Befaco which I’m itching to put together. If I still deliver this shot despite all that, I’d consider that quite the win!

If you’ve got any other feedback on this shot, please do me the honour of leaving a comment. 🙂

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Journals Stuff I made

The rules of the game

It’s been 11 to 17 June 2017. It’s been a soldering-heavy week! In fact, I burnt my finger doing some soldering last night so typing is an annoyance.

But here all the same is shot 1 of the new short in all its goofy glory.

There he goes. A high-powered prototype never intended for mass production.

Here’s my draft “constitution” for this project:

The basics

  • The goal is to produce a comedic narrative animated short.
  • The narrative commences with a vaguely A-shaped creature (the AAAAA) going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA while running.
  • The narrative shall be constructed of reactions and consequences of AAAAA running around going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
    • AAAAA’s running/going AAAAAAAAAAAAA should not be explained or rationalised. It is not something mundane like a prickle in his foot. AAAAA does not stop running or going AAAAAAAAAAAAAA because it is AAAAA’s intent to do it as long as AAAAA can. Think of it as an endurance exercise that AAAAA is the champion of the universe at.
  • The project begins on the weekend of WA Day and ends on the Queens Birthday weekend (2 October).
  • The expected running time is.. not very long. Three minutes would probably be pushing it considering someone will be going AAAAAAAAAA although who knows what that could precipitate.
  • This project is intended as a learning experience and ultimately a stepping stone towards finishing larger more complex projects.

Production stipulations

  • The film is to be produced from start to finish in running order, aside from titles which are fine to put in during post-production.
  • Music and sound can also be retouched in post-production.
  • The narrative shall be entirely improvised during production:
    • Planning ahead before the current scene is completed is forbidden.
    • Planning ahead further than one scene is utterly forbidden.
  • Any attempt to brainstorm in advance how the movie ends before the actual final scene begins its planning phase will result in the instant forfeit and blacklist of that idea.
    • The blacklisted conclusions currently include a resolution where the AAAAA trips over, notices their group of followers, encourages them to continue after him like some sort of single file AAAAArmy.
  • Absolutely no 2D animatics – this is explicitly not that kind of project.
  • Limit the use of planning tools like storyboards except where they do double-duty as character and scenery design.
  • Going back and redoing footage is forbidden except to fix technical errors which cannot be fixed at composite time (animation glitches, etc).
  • Scenes should be simple enough to complete in two weeks alongside rest and relaxation, etc.
    • Time spent should be logged.
    • Late nights are strongly discouraged even on weekends.
    • Production pace can be slowed in case of mitigating factors like injury, fatigue, day job being extra-demanding, etc.

Scene guidelines

  • Scenes should contain no more than three shots – action, reaction, another reaction. Hopfrog‘s minimalism is a good guide here.
  • As per all narrative movies, scenes should continue on from one another logically. Scenes may refer to previous scenes.
  • Each new scene should introduce a new place, character and/or action.
  • Any single scene should present a single idea or gag. Scenes can carry ideas and gags from previous scenes but only secondary to the scene’s own gag.
  • Each scene should also contain a surprise.
  • The film will contain no dialogue or written material. Where words are expected to appear visually, e.g. the title of a book, a nonsense script should be substituted. Where dialogue would be expected, substitute lively gibberish or suitable sound effects.

Design and tone guidelines

  • The general tone should be giddy and fun, for kids of all ages. This is a happy place.
  • Given that this is a sweet and merry little refuge, it’s fine for characters to disapprove of AAAAA but it’s not fine for them to get furiously angry or terribly sad or agonisingly hurt. The standard-issue supporting character is friendly and calm and approachable.
    • Sad characters are ok but cheer them up!
  • It’s fine for the humour to be a little bit naughty but not outright rude. Again, consult Hopfrog.
  • Characters/scenery should be unlikely in some way or another.
  • Keep the designs colourful and fun to look at, and don’t make them too detailed. Go easy on stuff like greebles and cracks.
  • No need to do everything in geo! Non-pixellated textures are fine but keep the surfaces simple.
  • At least one character has to have fur at some point.
  • Design-wise, sharp angles are fine this time but tend towards roundness. Try for a general stumpiness, stockiness and broadness in the proportions of the designs. Allow for some contrast too.

Technical guidelines

 

  • If Eevee gets production-ready, use Eevee. Otherwise, use Cycles.
  • Using DASYRAC for the sound and music is strongly encouraged. There is no explicit budget for extra Eurorack modules though.
  • Use of third party time-and-effort saving plug-ins (e.g. automatic rigging systems) and other resources is absolutely mandatory. Use them! They good!

That’s it for now, so thanks for reading and I hope to see you with something new next week!