<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">They do if you shout very loudly, put the fear of god into them and do rehearsals before hand. its called directing.I mean, real actors don't act the way you want them to!
Elaborate on your doings!
I'd like to see some stuff as well. Sorry for making this a public topic, but perhaps some sort of reallife actors vs drawn characters could evolve out of this.
I mean, real actors don't act the way you want them to!
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">They do if you shout very loudly, put the fear of god into them and do rehearsals before hand. its called directing.I mean, real actors don't act the way you want them to!
Ive done a little bit of animation, some shots are in:
http://public.fotki.com/eXposure/eddie/
This is all stop motion stuff. Dont know what you want to know.
Basically Animation takes a huge amount of patience, and the indulgence to immerse yourself in it if its to come out remotley right.
Puppets are great in that they do precisely what you ask. But then thats also their short coming.
It can be quite a meditation, but its not really as fun as talking to human beings.
Heard a story about an aardman animator who quit his job after this conversation with his wife:
Wife: Had a good day today?
Ex-Animator: yes we finished 16 frames of film this week!
Thats not even a second of finished product in a week.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Nice! That reminds me of Picasso's "Computers are useless - they only give answers."Originally posted by eidde:
[QBPuppets are great in that they do precisely what you ask. But then thats also their short coming.[/QB]
Hi Guys!
Whew! Where to begin? The animation I do is strictly 3D. I use 3D Studio Max, mainly, and a couple of other programmes to produce my animations. But, the final product is rendered out with a 'toon shader to give it a hand drawn "flat" look. I have been thinking about posting some stills or a couple of clips (it seems like a popular thing to do around here) but I don't have anything that I'm 100% happy with right now. Maybe in a few weeks i'll have something for y'all.
At the moment I'm working on a 26 minute piece that's either going to be a stand-alone short or the opening to a series. I'll be sticking it all up on the web for free when I'm done as this whole thing is a hobby for me and I have no interest in trying to make money from it.
What I am really into is the writing, so the animation and the straight-ahead film work I do is just a way of getting the writing into a visual form.
I would agree with the comments above; you need some kind of compulsive disorder to do animation. It takes enormous concentration and a little bit of skill. For me it's the best choice as aside from licencing the software, I have no overheads! I can work in my own time to my own schedule. The only time I have to rely on other people is when I get the actors together to record the sound. That's right at the begining of the project (well after the writing!) so once that's done, me and my flatmate (my flatmate and I?) can sit down and work through it. Once the props are modelled and the set's built, the animation part is fairly simple. I do a rough "pop through" for the timing and the lip-sync, which takes about three or four weeks for half an hour. Then, we tweak everything to smooth out the animation flow. After that, it's bells and whistles, secondary animations on the characters, scenery animation, the dreaded foley work. Once that's all done it takes about 2 solid weeks of computer time to render everything out. This is, of course, assuming I have the time. I have a job to go to and I also help out as a crew member on other peoples films and videos. It's taken me 8 years to get to the stage where my workflow and knowledge of the tools is strong enough to output at that level.
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Were there any questions?
Yep... render times will kill you.
Speaking of animation, I don't know if anyone's posted a link to this one lately.
http://www.rustboy.com/
The guy has been working on this for 4 years! I have utmost respect for that kind of patience.
If the end result is good he might get a call from Pixxar. It happens.
he might, but then he may never have as much freedom to do what he wants again working for a studio...
still...
A friend of mine worked his tits off learning Studio Max etc for many years, finally got a job at an animation company. He worked for months (on a contract) on one tiny sequence - I think he was colouring in jelly babies - whilst all the bigger wigs than he brainstormed in a room nearby and planned out their next venture.
He got paid and his scene was cut from the final film.
He quit through boredom, and frustration and became a graphics designer. Although he says the people he was working with were great - really interesting collection of oddballs. (from all over the world)
My point is that working for a studio may be pretty exciting, but at the end of the day you are doing what someone else wants. You probably get home knackered and to look at 'film' or a computer is the last thing you want to do.
Working independantly, may be hard and take 4 years, but at the end of the day its all your idea - and no suit can take that away from you.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">My thoughts exactly.Originally posted by eidde:
Working independantly, may be hard and take 4 years, but at the end of the day its all your idea - and no suit can take that away from you.
Our render times are not too bad actually. Because we're using a 'toon shader we can get away with much lower poly stuff and keep the raytraced lighting to a minimum. Most of the shadowing on the characters is actually precalculated in the shader. My current frames are only about 30-45 seconds so for a half-hour piece we're only looking at about a month of rendering. Over the 6 PC's we're using, it takes about 4 solid days of rendering time.
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tick...tick...tick...
Just thought Id add some more info:
Ive animated using a super8 camera, and using
a high end DV camera, MAC laptop and software called BTV Pro ( http://www.btv.org.uk/ )
The digital route allows you to view what you've done while you do it, and fix problems as they happen. The film route doesnt.
However in hindsight I think the super8 stuff was more fun to do, and maybe got better results - seems to be a little more fluid to me, but that might just be me - or my state of mind at the time.
My super8 camera didnt have a single frame button, so I fixed up a micro switch between the battery and the terminals, locked the trigger on, and took 'frames' by flicking the switch.
this took about 3 or 4 frames at a time, which was OK for what I was doing - however inbetween some of the '4 or 5 frames' I got a flash of over exposure (white). These had to be removed (yawn) using Adobe Premier after it was transferred. Whether you got this or not would depend on your make of camera. Mine obviously left the shutter open inbetween shots.
The Digital method does allow you much more flexibility, in post as well, such as changing the viewing speed - but I think I prefer the film -(but $$$$$ again) - perhaps this was down to circumstances though again. But I am a sucker for a roll of film (over a DV tape!)
Ive noticed that some cameras (PD150) claims to take 'single frame' (sans laptop and software) but in reality it takes about 5 frames at a time. This can lead to stuttering, or jumpy animation, unless you do some serious post on in.
Yadda yadda, good luck
Cheers
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