Black Spot's WIP

Thanks. I’m animating a pop song that my husband co-wrote nearly 30 years ago. The backgrounds are in the Daily Sketch section.

Finally got the face to match the hair, but I had to start again and tone the hair down. I’m not too worried about inbetweens because the character was very jerky in real life, and yes, he did have cab door ears.

This is just a quick test of my background characters - making the streets of London look busy. I'm checking how many characters I'll be needing for a close shot.

Finally, I'm beginning to put my animation together. Here's the most complicated bit. It’s only 20 frames, but it took 5 minutes to save each time because having to have a new background in each frame. Sorry if it takes a while to load, but the file is fairly large. There’s still one frame I have to go back and edit. Refresh to see it again – doesn’t take so long.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/theblackspot/videos/up.mov

Cheers. It’s only a test at 10fps and there are only 9 frames in the loop. I’ll be using 25fps for the final version to make it a lot smoother, but I do want to have people rushing about as they do in a big city. For longer shots I’m going to need loads more people – back to the mouse pad.

Cheers. Here's a bit more of him.

I’ve added the eyes and nose. I lifted the hair as well because I didn’t want him too cutsey. He will be not moving his head very much, so this is a not a typical shot, but I need all the angles. Lengthening the chin next with a bit of cheek movement.

I decided to redo the eye movement and make it a lot smoother. I’ve been rushing too much to get things done. This character has to be perfect because he’s the lead singer.

I managed to persuade some of my colleagues to pose as background models. They did various poses, but I decided to make a montage of the first lot – so many black trousers. When I email it to everyone on Monday to drum up a few more models, I hope I won’t be getting my marching orders.

I hate drawing noses, I always have had a problem with them. Two days it taken me to get anywhere close to what I wanted. First it looked like a caterpillar crawling just over him mouth, and then the outlines of the bridge were dancing to YMCA. Finally, I think I’ve got. Did I mention I hated noses?

I’ve also reduced the size of his eyes to lessen the Bambi effect. If his mouth stay open any longer, he’ll catch a fly.

Here are a couple of background people. I’m going to need loads to populate London.

A busker.

Thanks for the feedback. That’s why I’m posting here –it’s good to get another point of view. And you’re right about the shadow, I can see what you mean – I’ll tweak it later today.

I’ve tweaked the nose a bit. It’s still not perfect, but I’ll come back to it. The shading in the middle at the top shouldn’t come over quite so far. He won’t actually be shaking his head like this. Sorted the fringe out, so it’s less like wearing a loose wig. Also stopped the eyebrow on the right trying to stab his ear, even if they are still a tad lively and are in the wrong place on a couple of frames.

Some more. It’s amazing what a difference a few months make in my technique. I’m really pleased with the carrier bag.

It still needs a couple of frames more at the start, and I haven’t put a pop up head at the end yet saying, “Come on”.

Low resolution:
http://s79.photobucket.com/albums/j123/black_spot/Animation-Test/?action=view&current=test3.flv

Much better, but you might have to wait a couple of minutes ‘cos its big:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/theblackspot/videos/test3.mov

I decided to redo my main character. This means re-doing a fair bit of work, but I wasn’t happy with him and I didn’t want to compromise my animation, especially with my main character. I’ve kept his old head because I was reasonably happy with that bit. The arms were so out of proportion and the whole body felt sloppily put together. Also, moving him as a cardboard cut-out, was beginning to feel so wrong.

He needed to be plain and simple to stand out from the busy backgrounds and I need a lot of different poses with all the inbetweens. An idea then hit me; I’d downloaded Antics ages ago and rarely played with it – I could use the manikins there to help me. The men on the programme are a lot bulkier than my character and the suits were dreadful – more like 1930 gangsters, but it did mean that I could manipulate him to get a general idea of positions. You have to be careful, as the model can quickly distort into unfeasible positions.

It’s funny that since I’ve here, I’ve begun to work so much harder in getting everything right. I have a week off from work, and in addition to Spring cleaning, I’ll be working full time on this.

I’ve been working on the new version of my main character, and have done a variety of poses to start animating him. It’s still very early days, and it needs loads of inbetweens, but at least it’s a beginning.