Catprint progress (nearly done!)

I finally finished off the animation for Catprint! All I have left to do is add the sounds, refine the timing and add credits and then I'll finally be free!

I might use Aftereffects or Premier Pro to add the credits and time the animation to the music as I learned how to use the programs doing A New Game for the stop-motion paper.

I managed to finish off Catprint and showed it to my brother for critiquing- he said that it needed better sounds (I used public music libraries and in some instances it shows) and that the addition of shadows would improve the overall animation quality. These are valid critiques that I would try to implement if I had more time, but I am happy with where the animation is at now.

A New Game progress

Editing the rough cuts:

This week we focused on collating the footage we took and timing it to the dialogue. Marilyn and I also created the title cards and end credits, respectively. Now we have to add music and the clean up the animation so that the viewer can see the UI switches etc.
I timed out the living room scenes to match the pace of the dialogue by extending frames so that a particular frame is held for longer if needed. I also cleaned up the videogame UI sections to make the character on screen react to the costume changes in time to the dialogue. I also cropped the UI changes and spliced them into the footage to make it look like Zack and Lulu were flicking around the blog to select the clothing options.


We've added music and finished the film!

Stop-motion review: SAKA-MEN

Directed by Shigeru Okada, Saka-Men is a Japanese horror stop-motion short detailing the s a violent bandit and his family and the misfortune they incur after the bandit breaks a shimenawa rope (sacred straw rope designed to serve as a border between the real world and the other world in Shinto religion). The characters seem to be made of fairly stiff plastic "dolls" with claymation to help with their expressions and the monsters in the short film. I found the short to be quite creepy and effective, especially with the monster that shows up and possesses the bandit, warping his body using claymation.

The video can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=0Xb6SBrjP1c

Transformers (1986) review

Transformers (1986)

Today we watched the 1986 cartoon movie based on the Transformers animated TV cartoon. The movie begins in the distant year of 2005, where the Autobot base on one of Cybertrons moons sends a shuttle the Autobot City on Earth on an energon run, which Megatron intercepts and launches a surprise attack on Autobot City. The resulting battle ends only when Optimus Prime enters the fray, killing Megatron and being fatally wounded as a result. A dying Optimus hands the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus to continue his legacy as Prime and Megatron is reborn by Unicron as Galvatron (to sell toys).

Visually the film holds up well to this day, especially with how they shaded the metal. The issues with this film largely lie in the, pacing, flashing lights, aggressively 80's music and plot. Personally, I think the 1986 movie is a more enjoyable watch than most of the recent live action ones directed by Micheal Bay. Although Bay's transformers are more "realistic", they are much more visually complex, which makes reading their actions and expressions (and telling them apart), which makes the character designs of the 1986 movie more appealing

A New Game progress (editing film footage)

A New Game Progress:

 Today we started doing post-production edits to our film footage. We figured out how to convert our raw footage into something we can use (either TARGA sequences or .avi files) in Adobe Premier Pro. We have collated our raw footage into the first rough cut, where the UI sections have to be edited so that they make sense and the audio added.

In Premier Pro we also learned how to crop out sections of frames to help clean up and edit shots.

I used what I learned to edit out Marilyns hand in the rough cut of this scene.


A screenshot of our current progress on Premier Pro

Stop-motion Review: More (2016) by Lawrence Becker

More is a short about a man who digs into the ground chanting "There must be more than this". The story and premise is very simple, more of a visualisation of a joke than a story, but this film is still a light and entertaining watch and the use of silhouettes is creative and serves the story well. And while the dialogue between the characters on the screen is natural and flows well, the majority of the short is the the man falling down the hole he dug, which, like the dialogue, flows well and was entertaining to watch. During the end credits, it shows how the man falling scene was made by placing the environment around him, which I though was entertaining and creative.