Friday's Lesson

Today two people that I don't know came into our class with Mr Powell. Mr Powell wanted to show them my animation, so I wasted a fair amount of my working time waiting for it to load and showing them. With about twenty minutes left, I learnt (thanks to Lauren) how to transfer a scene from one Animation-ish file to another. You go share, something like pictures in frames, and then save the pictures somewhere. You can them import the pictures to Animation-ish where you can then trace them. I had almost finished tracing Dan, Lucy and the background by the time the bell rang. I am also going to hire a laptop over the weekend so that I can work on it then.

Thursday's Lesson

Today, at long last, I FINALLY finished the scene where Dan and Lucy walk to the park bench. After many freezes two system restarts and deleting over half of my work (which was already saved in another scene) to make the program move a bit faster, I finally managed to use key frames to make Dan and Lucy move towards the bench. I also managed to transfer the bench from the foreground to the background (which was actually quite easy) so that the bench wouldn't move with Dan and Lucy when they walked. I am soooo happy that this scene is finished because now I can move onto a new one, that hopefully won't freeze *fingers crossed*! :D

Rushes

Ok, so today we did our Rushes. I worked on the walking park scene in between other people's previews, and after many freezes, managed to get the background to move behind Dan and Lucy to give the illusion that they are walking. I had just finished this when Lauren and I went up to show the class our previews. I think that most people liked our animation, but it was hard to tell because most of their faces were expressionless. We did, however, get some feedback from Mr Powell, who said that he liked our animation and thought it was very good from a technical perspective. I don't think that we need to change anything really at the moment, but will have to get our butts into gear to be able to get this finished on time, especially considering we have to put sound in too!

Disaster Strikes Again...

Today's lesson just topped off Tuesday's! I again worked on the scene where Dan and Lucy walk through the park. Once again, the program just kept freezing! I finally got this part of the animation to where I wanted it and then about five or ten minutes before the end of the lesson, the program froze again and stayed that way until after the bell. So when I couldn't wait any longer, I just had to shut down the computer so I could safely remove my USB. I had been saving progressively to the desktop throughout the lesson, but couldn't copy this to my USB at the end because I couldn't access anything else but Animation-ish - which was frozen!!! This lesson was extremely frustrating and was practically a complete waste! :(

ARGGHHHH!!!! :(

This was the worst lesson ever!!! (well, almost). I spent the whole lesson trying to make the background move so that it would look like Dan and Lucy were walking. I actually did achieve this but the background was moving too fast at first, and then it moved way too slow and then the program kept on freezing! So frustrating!!! I thought that this was because I kept on pasting over things, instead of deleting them first, so attempted to delete all of it and just paste in the final copy of the background, causing the program to freeze again. Eventually everything began working again and I manage to make Dan and Lucy walk through the park, although I still am not quite happy with the speed. I will also have to find a way to put the park bench in the background next lesson.

The Park Scene

This lesson I began working on the background in the park scene. I found this quite easy, thanks to my storyboard, as I knew exactly what I wanted the background to look like. I managed to draw the footpath, and the trees and plants and even imported a picture of a bench and traced it. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to make Dan and Lucy sit on the bench, so will do this next lesson.

Mr Powell also talked to us about a preview sort of thing for our movies. I think that this is a really good idea because we will be able to get some constructive feedback from the rest of the class and then make changes to our animation accordingly. Although, I am a bit concerned because Lauren and I have been working on different scenes from all over the place in the story, so it might not quite make sense to the audience, meaning our feedback may not be all that constructive. Hopefully, we will be able to fill in some gaps in the storyline before the "preview".

Dan and Lucy walk......

Over the past two days I have worked on the scene where Dan and Lucy walk into the park. I have successfully got them both walking, which is actually a lot harder than it looks! I found it took a lot of time to put in the detail of the characters and morph their look with the traced shapes of the "walking man" off BlackBoard. This was also quite frustrating as it was very hard to get the lines all the same thickness. Next lesson I will work on the background and make Dan and Lucy sit down if I have time.

More Holiday Work

Ok, so I did a little bit more work on the assignment, but am a little frustrated with the first scene because it's not quite working at the moment, so I will work on something else before I come back to it. I am now working on the scene where Dan and Lucy walk through the park together then sit on a bench. I have successfully put their bodies on the frame of the traced walking man, which makes it look pretty good now, I think. I have also decided that I will not make them hold hands yet when they walk in together, but will make them hold hands when they get up from sitting on the bench and go for a walk in the park together. I'm pretty happy with what I have done so far, but just wish that I'd done a little bit more work over these holidays because I am worried that it won't be finished by the time its due.

Holiday Work

It's the holidays, but I hired out a laptop and drawing tablet from the library so that I could work on my assignment over the holidays. So far I have manage to fix the part where Dan walks into the first scene, and just have to make him turn around to face Lucy. I have also traced the walking man frames into Animation-ish so just have to morph that body into the bodies of Dan and Lucy, and then make them hold hands.

The first scene......

On Thursday's lesson I finalised the scene where Lucy drives into school and started trying to make Dan walk into the scene also. This is actually really hard! I had to put Lucy and her car into the background and then draw the different frames of Dan walking in the foreground. Unlike my previous attempts where I traced the frames of the walking man off BlackBoard, I can't do this because I need to have Dan seen from the back, not the side. So far, I have managed to get his legs to move, but they go really fast, so it looks like he is running! I will have to work on that and his arms next lesson.