Mon, June 7, 2010
Glass Half Full—3:39 PM
The past few days, I've been thinking a lot about these sage words from Ira Glass of This American Life – it boils down to the importance of forging ahead when your creative work is not living up to your own standards. (Many thanks to JoMac for originally sending Ira's interview my way.)
(The rest of Ira's four-part discussion on storytelling starts here.)
It's been on my mind because I have been really excited about the shot I'm currently working on, but after four weeks of poring over the same 200 frames, it's hard to tell what looks good any more. A month ago, it was my favorite clip I'd yet attempted – this weekend, I worried maybe it was no good at all.
This morning I found out I earned 100% on Sunday's assignment, so I guess it isn't so bad after all! (This isn't to say it's the best animated clip ever – the assignment is just one step on the path toward final review this week.) I've only received a 100 once before, so it's a very good feeling, and extremely well timed.
Here's the animation I turned in – a sneak peek of what I've been working on, though I still need to catch you up on the three shots since the parkour clip I described in my last update.
Onward into the gap between ability and taste!
AC — Tue, 6/8/10 2:19pm
Great job!! For some reason the camera felt like it needed to be hand-held and less stiff, but I doubt that was the point of the exercise and I acknowledge that I've always had a bias toward more camera movement.
The character animation is superb, though. Glad to have the head back!! And the 20 dollar bill came out well too.
Bee Boy — Tue, 6/8/10 2:47pm
Thanks! I, too, am a fan of lots of camerawork, but the school is understandably in favor of minimizing it whenever possible. Partly because they want it to be easy to see what you're doing with your characters, which is hard if there are camera jiggles in the way – but mostly because a lot of people get access to a CG camera and they go buck-wild, swinging it unnaturally all over the place, the way Robert Zemeckis and Peter Jackson do. So they have repeatedly mentioned in lectures that the camera should only move when there's a good reason. In this case, my good reason is that a static camera would have to leave space at the bottom right of the frame for him to fall into, which would tend to spoil the ending. (Plus, the dramatic tilt downward increases the sense of peril. If it weren't for the fact that I'm being evaluated on the animation after the fall, I'd tilt down even more, but then his spine would mostly be obscured by his shoulders, which I think would seem like cheating from an animation perspective.)
I don't think I'd go with hand-held, though, simply because the camera's position here makes it pretty clear that it's on a crane. I like a sense of realism, which is why the tilt comes a few frames after the fall, as though the cameraman has to keep up. Fortunately, my mentor agrees with me, and has not accused me of cheating to get out of animating the feet for a few frames. :)
Bee Boy — Tue, 6/15/10 9:46am
100 again this week, which was the final submission for this assignment. Considering my mentor's reputation as a tough grader, maybe it is the best animated clip in history, after all! I think I'll start shopping around for a theatrical distributor.