I finally finished it!

My little animation is finally finished, such as it is. If you have been following my progress (or lack thereof), you are aware that this project has been plagued with with problems. The biggest, of course, being a toss up between my complete cluelessness and the fact that I took a few too many short cuts. Something I am obviously not skilled enough to pull off gracefully

But, while this will never be labeled a masterpiece, I wouldn’t call it a complete failure either. Like most of my projects, this proved to be quite the learning experience, which is always a plus in my book.

Anyhow, now that I am finished, I thought I would take a moment and assess my project, taking a look back at the good, the bad and the ugly.

the Good

Let’s start with the good, (there is little enough, that this part won’t take long). The best thing I can say about this animation is that it is finished! That may not seem like an overly big thing, but in light of the problems I had, it really is a biggie!

So on to the things I liked (and or things that worked out well). I really did like how my characters turned out. The modeling was solid and they didn’t pinch up too much when animated. On the same note, the texturing of the set turned out pretty well. And for once, my lighting actually turned out fairly good with a minimum of fussing on my part.

I did manage to tell the story I had in envisioned (even if I did tell it badly). Well at least it follows what I had in mind, which was to show two characters who met by chance and fell in love. I know, pretty goofy, but remember, this was supposed to be for Valentines Day.

Well that pretty much sums up the good. Told you there wasn’t much.

the Bad

Lack of proper planning caused quite a few issues with blocking and animation. Okay so there was little to no thought for the blocking and it shows. The animation wasn’t even remotely smooth and in some places wasn’t even believable. The best you can say is that they did manage to get from point “A” to ”B’. Breaking the scene into shots (a step I totally spaced) would have helped the story flow much better, as well as give a better reference for blocking.

Framing (the camera part) is totally pathetic, to say the least. Something proper storyboarding would have improved greatly.

The sound track is every bit as bad as the animation itself. Some parts were way too loud, while others weren’t loud enough. The pink character’s footsteps didn’t even match up at all. I will definitely need to work on creating sound tracks.

the Ugly

Now for the totally outrageous blunders. Most of these I didn’t even notice until I was completely finished. It would seem that my animation caught a bad case of the “Flickers”. At one point the back wall of the set started jumping and flickering, which I found puzzling as it was an un-animated prop.

Then there was my blue guy’s flicker problems, as he seemed to jump back and forth. I probably should have checked the IPOs for his walk. Obviously there are some glitchy spots. But that was fairly minor, until you notice that at one point his head manages to turn a full 180 degrees (ouch!!!) and that his hand passes right through his foot while he is sitting on the bench. (umm, bad, very bad).

Well that about wraps it up. I learned quite a bit. In addition to what I have learned from this project, I have been watching quite a few video tutorials lately, so my next project will be better (it can’t actually get worse, can it? )

In fact, I’ll even give you a teaser for my next project. My daughter has talked me into modeling and animating a cartoon character she developed. So watch out for Perry the Sheep. Expect some off the wall humor, as Perry has something of a very bad attitude.

What’s that? …

What do you mean “so where is it already?”

The animation? …

Oh yeah, the animation! Well if you are into watching bad animation, you can check it out here on vimeo.