Callie Finishes Builds!

I've finished doing both my puppets for my film!!! Sam and Donna are done!! Yay!! Rejoice!! Joel looked them over for me and approved them. He helped me make things neater on the timeline and made it easier to animate the facial features moving, but eventually he said they were good to go. I'm so proud of what I've done so far, but I know there is no way I could've done it alone. I had to ask a billion questions to even understand what puppets were. I've had so much help during this stage and I'm super grateful. I'm very lucky to be at smiley guy.

 Next week I'll be moving on to backgrounds, so maybe it would be a good idea to practice drawing rooms in my house so I can practice perspective. I'll be talking to Aramika when I come back on Monday, and she can help me start out with backgrounds. Another stage closer to animation and I'm so excited!! Have a great weekend everyone!

Callie Continues to Build

Friday is a PA day for me and I'm not coming in to co op (I'll be on an airplane!! Yay long weekends), so I'm writing my post for only Monday and Wednesday.

I can't remember what I did last week, only that it was builds. This week is the same except I know what I am doing, and it's wonderful because I am not losing time figuring out flash.

On Monday I built the outline for the light bulb and then today I went into the symbols and built all the eye movements and a few of the mouth expressions.

I had to extend my schedule, like I thought, to finish builds but it should all go quickly from now on. Adios until next week!

Callie is Sleepy!

This week has been so busy at school and I'm really super tired. Falling asleep at my desk sort of tired and being irrationally frustrated at tiny things. Anyways, it's almost the weekend and I am very excited to sleep.

I have sort of finished up the puppet for the firefly in my short (sort of because I am not quite sure if I have all the important elements) and I started to work on my puppet for the light bulb. I'm having some issues with making the eyes because they are not just regular circles (they are lemon shaped eyes!)

But after designing Sam the firefly I think the light bulb will be much easier because it doesn't move and I now know a bunch of Flash features.

However, I don't think that I will be able to finish design by the end of next week because I have a PA day so it's only a two day week, but I gave myself lots of time for animation so hopefully I can go into that time without to many issues later on. Have a great weekend!

Callie on Builds

This has probably been the most challenging week yet. I figured after doing the animatic I had Flash sort of figured out (lol). I was wrong! I started design and had no clue what I was doing or even where to start, and so on Monday I watched videos on YouTube attempting to understand the many different layers and symbols that make up a "puppet". Watching the video didn't really help.

However, I found help in the form of Lea and Joel. They are both my saviors. I must have asked Lea a thousand questions. I am getting better though so I hope not to badger them as much next week.

Anyways with a lot of guidance I have managed to make three different views of Sam the firefly. He can blink and flap his wings while shouting! All at the same time! Super cool.

Have a great weekend!

Callie is Sick but still Awesome!

So the animatic is done but unfortunately, I was sick on Tuesday so I got nothing done (except sleeping at home). Sleeping is fun. I got almost none last night because I was studying for a chem midterm today and now I can barely keep my eyes open.

Joel was very, very patient with me when he was explaining character builds in flash. It took me forever to have even the smallest idea what he was talking about. Granted, it's a confusing topic to begin with (especially for someone who hasn't had a lot of experience with flash), but my brain was functioning at about 1%.

Anyways, he talked to me and showed me a few examples then I went off on my own and looked up YouTube videos about character rigs. There was not a lot accomplished this week but hopefully on Monday I can come in not tired and start poking around with simple symbols and work my way towards the harder stuff.

Callie is Fabulous

I have finished my animatic and boy, am I happy. This stage has been the most rewarding so far, because it involved me trying to learn something I had never used before (AKA flash) along with challenging me to incorporate all the elements of an environment into a drawing. That doesn't really make sense but what I mean is when I draw, I usually only draw faces and not backgrounds so I am not very good at backgrounds and perspective. For this stage I had to draw a bug moving across a background from different angles. It's pretty difficult to translate 3D space into 2D. However I managed and now I am done.

Rich helped me turn my animatic into a video so I can take it home and show my parents and friends. The more opinions the better so I can make revisions. Monday and Wednesday were pretty ordinary but today, Friday, I got to wear pyjamas and eat custard tarts and enjoy the satisfaction of another part of my film done.

Have a fabulous weekend and I'll see you next week!

Callie Works In Flash

This week marked a new part of my schedule. I sort of moved from storyboards to animatic (what I'm doing right now is actually a mix of the two stages). Regardless, it's pretty cool because I am finally working in flash. I only have storyboard thumbnails so I wasn't really finished the boarding stage, but Rich suggested that in order to give myself plenty of time for animating, I should just do my polished boards in flash. So that's what I did! Basically, I just used my thumbnails as references and inserted key frames along a timeline. I'm not anywhere close to being done, but I have a rough animation of the first 10 seconds. Now I don't have to worry about setting up the animatic later because it's already made! 

Everyone has been in long meetings this week so I haven't been able to ask many questions. I hope I am not screwing it up, because it is so much harder than I thought to draw consistently and figure out how to time it all out properly meanwhile still learning flash!! See you next week.