Deadlines looming...

Today I finished the animation for the woodland scene. I am not too happy with it as the ending has been rushed in order for us to render and finish on time.

From when BB wiggles his bum onwards has all been done in just over a day, which, lets face it.. isn't cricket. Anyway, yeah so its very blocked out and made up of pose to pose stuff. He gets up from his bum wiggle, spins around, takes a few toddler steps, looks around the woodland for a bit, and then nods to the camera in approval of his new suit and environment. All of this came to approx 7 seconds of animation. I know I can do ALOT better, but again time is too tight to be tedious and finess. One day I hope to go back to this scene and animate it properly, however for the purposes of the demo Paul asked for, it will have to do...




I really wanted to have BB skip off down the woodland path and into the distance for the end shot. Again because of time I will have to end it on him nodding to the camera now. I did start the skipthinking it would be quick to knock out, but as we all know to perfect a decent walkcycle takes at least a few days, so I was simply attempting the impossible with the time left...



I gave up as you can see. There are more important jobs to be done over the next few days before hand in. Tommorow I will send the scene to render (widecscreen - unlike our ROA version). I will then begin gathering sounds and preparing titles and the dvd cover. I will also help my disabled team mates. They are taking far too long to sort it out.

I have learnt alot about my animation technqiues and style lately. I really really need to use the graph editor more... well I say that, I actually need to use it! I hardly touch it, which is bad. It means I use far too many key frames to achieve principles that can be done with few keys and different tangents.

I feel a TEENY bit disappointed with some of the decisions made in the team today. I understand time is of the essence, but it seems like massive shortcuts are being made to reduce the amount of animation needed. Kind of a cheat really. Finessing is not priority at the mo. I hope it all cuts together well otherwise the story will be inconsistent and the tumbling out of the cupboard in my scene will make no sense. Phil and Alec have tomo to sort it out. Dave will be working on his book intro which will hoepfully look good if the renders are smart, and the book page presented well.