it`s not been fully submitted yet,but i am done and dusted with this subject 🙂

and to show for it all,i`ve two neat little cartoons to show off.

first i`ll talk a little about the flour sack,mentioned in my previous post, it me took me 5 iterations to realize my dream of flour sack porn. for every version i drew more frames (by hand) on a lightbox,photographed them (by hand) and laboriously edited them all into flash. with each concurrent version i noticed something that didn’t look right or something that needed changed so this process ended up taking up my entire week that I had free because of pitch and crit sessions.

animatic a very rough version using badly drawn sketches and motion tweening to try to test out the movements i have planned.

version 1as you can see,very jumpy and the color is all over the place.

version 2 i learned how to take grayscale photos (go me!) but I didn’t like the angle,and there’s no flour mill yet.

version3 added a flutter to the first jump and the flour mill sign, and photographed with a sepia filter just to try it out.

version4 backgrounds are all in place.from this version on,i doubled the frame rate for the final version and added sounds.

as you can see,the sound makes it very explicit,the reactions i`ve had from this is similar to watching people watch “two girls 1 cup” for the very first time.

the flour bag was fun and everything,but everyone takes character animation so they could bring their own creations to life. the actual creation process was fiddly and frustrating but concept and the later stages of development was enough to keep me going.

storyboarding and revising my idea took a few drafts,at first i wanted y-fronts man to give the two shadow bad guy s a wedgie to defeat them. but that would involve another prop (i already have a lightbulb,sparks and a torch moving independently of the characters)and it`s funnier if he gets beaten up. 😉

i poured a lot of care into the background,since i didn’t have to animate it in any way,i could pour plenty of detail into it without worry of it looking jarring. i made sure to keep the color tones as subdued and dim as possible so they didn’t detract from the characters. (who are in black and white)

i dont know why,but drawing in the keyframes was incredibly frustrating,drawing three characters and trying to keep the shapes right grates after a while. my arm was actually cramping from so much drawing, and every time i tried to draw faster i`d end up snuffing it up and having to scrap it and redraw that frame. and just like the flour sack animatic i used motion tweening to express how certain objects were going to move. gives a nice fluidity to it.

in case your wondering what the hell just happened,i will elaborate.

y fronts man is training in his personal gym,and then he uses the light from his lightbulb to cast a shadow on the ground which he then uses to `shadow box` with.

however,it is too powerful for him and he has to resort to a flashlight to try and destroy it. but this backfires as it splits it in two (similar to the cop terminator in terminator 2 when he gets blasted with the shotgun) and he is then pummeled by the dark duo.

but the greatest part about this class by far? no paperwork was required 😀 there was no essay required like every other subject.i`ll remember this module fondly 😛