Tales of Beardyman COMPLETED

Once again, my last minute magic has kicked in and I have managed to finish my animation on time (though I won't be going to sleep tonight as I have to get my blog up to date). There's still a good half hour before this baby uploads to Youtube, so let's get this blog rolling.

There were a few last minute changes to do time allowances, this namely being the absence of the 'wife discovering the internet' parts (also because I didn't want to let those sexy map scenes go to waste). This actually works in the animation's favour, as it makes it look less like some cheesy advert and more like a general animation, taking away some of the guilt. So yeah, basically, it's not so much an ad anymore rather than your standard animation with a few flagrant uses of brand names.

My penguin guy, Martin Tierney, delivered on his 3D cyber penguins, delivering his animation on a shiny disk. However, one slight issue I had to work around was the fact the animations used their own backgrounds, which clashed with the snowy background I had gotten from Kieran. To compensate for this, I used some colour keying on one of the opening clips so that I could show the background behind it, and adjusted the colour on the others so that they managed the colour scheme. Once that hurdle was crossed, I managed to take advantage of the scenes to get creative with the story. I also got him to send me some alpha stills of the penguins that I could use for comic flinging. I also threw in some laser sights, which I made by making a long glowy solid and then moving it around in 3D space, which looks pretty badass.

The ninja octopus scene came out lovely, thanks to a combination of rainy stuff, and rocky waves drawn by Kieran. There was quite a bit of After Effects use in this, mainly for moments when I needed some epic effects or such. For simple animations mind, I just stuck to animating it in Flash.

One lil aspect I threw in was a reference to the Avatar DVD Beardyman was questing for. In leu of wasting time doing some gay drawing, I instead took a quick webcam video of me being a twat (I do not know any 'university' alternatives to the word 'twat' so forgive me), and altered it to give me Avatar blue skin. If I had remembered to take my shirt off I bet you wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the real thing!

Post production was gonna be a tricky matter given how painstakingly last minute it was, but it came out really well. Editing the video came out nicely with some little fades in and out of the map scenes that were pulled off nicely IMO. As for sound, Deven had given me a health supply of 'Aarrrghs' to accompany Beardyman's battles. Hunting for sound effects was a little trickier, but a quick hunt through FindSounds and SoundDogs turned up some decent clips. Since I clearly had no time to make a worthwhile soundtrack in Fruityloops, I turned to that ever so loveable source of royalty free music, Newgrounds. After going through all the relevant keywords 'epic, quest, journey, etc.) and hit and missing through the iffy techno tracks, I eventually found 'Our Epic Journey' by Zero123Music, which not only sounded great, but synced PERFECTLY with the video!

The end result looks absolutely magical. A combination of smooth animation, high res visuals, top notch voice acting and well layered sound effects. It gives off a level of sheen that's expected of most professional animations (well, in the advertising field at least). For me personally, it's given me that chance to actually take my tutor's advice and animate something that isn't just the same bog standard flash stuff I do all the time.

Without further ado, here is Tales of Beardyman!

More Updates, now with actual evidence I've been doing something

Okay, so in the final week now, so things need to speed up. The hot weather and ever increasing amount of bugs is not helping. First off, here's a couple more of the models I've done.


I've decided to do a lil self insert and cast myself as the HMV clerk. I took a quick webcam picture to use as a reference and used some of the official assets from the defunct contest brief for the badge. The only real thing I'm lacking is a reference for the HMV checkout itself, as google seems to be lacking (and if google's lacking, it probably means it won't be easy to take some pics meself.)

And then you have a generic boat, but the sail does animate.

As for what the Level 5 students have (or at least are supposed to be) doing, some dude named Keiran is working up some backgrounds. They just need a few tweakings colourwise but should be alright.




Another dude named Martin is making something supremely awesome if it turns out well. 3D Cyber Penguins, which should hopefully be turned into a massive army. Here's a mockup model he's made using parts from an Iron Man figure. I've reccomended the final one be more blue tinted to fit in with the winter battlefield.



I've also got some other dude working on the HMV dog, to compensate for my general suckiness at drawing animals. I'm just worried about whether I can get all this stuff in time to do something about it. Not to mention I still have to worry about soundtracks for both this and the monkey short which quite frankly I haven't given a rat's arse about once it was finished.


As for what I've been doing, I've finally started animating and have finished animating one scene, the encounter with the fire sumo. As the process goes, I used the models I created and animated them in flash using good ol' tweenage. (These could technically be tweened in After Effects, but I'm a lot more familiar with this method). Then I imported the animations in their SWF formats into After Effects. After looking up a couple of tutorials online, I made a nifty little fire using CC Particle Systems II and CC Vector Blur, which gives it an awesome 'this is seriously gonna melt stuff' look.

I've uploaded a look at the video here (though I'm not particularly convinced of its ability to show up properly): http://www.twitvid.com/7QVE6

Another animated bit I've got sorted are your classic map travelling intermissions. Since the animation for this was a lot simpler, I could just animate everything in flash and export it straight from there. The lil 2D icon was also drawn in Photoshop since I wanted to practice my Photoshop sketching.

http://spamtheweb.com/ul/s244201088_mapscenes.html (takes a short while to load)

Usually I have to worry about stuff like file size when it comes to sticking loads of graphics and stuff in flash, but since I'm compiling it elsewhere, I don't have to worry bout that.

Wifey

Just need to make a few more expressions and stuff for her. Decided to go with curly bangs, cos...like...I've never done those before.

And I came face to face with a...

FIRE SUMO!!!

In other news, I've got the voices in from Deven Mack (Arrgh Idol) and Alison Stark (voices ladies in the Edd Egg series), and they are mighty fine. Just gotta get a few more models done (working on the wife atm) and see what the L5s are up to and I'm ready to animate this thing.

Ninja Octopus Rawr

Rawr baby.

Viking and Tentacles

So I've just finished up the Photoshopped model for Beardyman. Will probably need to go back and make some alternate versions, (such as a wartorn Beardyman) but I'm impressed with what I've made. I've done several handshapes and a few eye symbols to show his expression. I've also equipped him with a sword and a shield featuring the design of Wonchomp, a character created by ages ago by an online friend based on a mispelling of my name, turning out to be a cross between Wonchop and a Chain Chomp from the Mario series.

Considering the scenarios he's going to placed in, I've also thought about how to change the colour scheme to apply for various scenarios, such as the nighttime octopus battle or the fire sumo showdown. Here, I've done a little tinkering with saturation and colour filtering to accomodate to certain backdrops. I apply it to each part by using Photoshop's Actions feature to record an action and then replay it for each layer. Also, if you're wondering why there's only half a guy in each of those, it's because for certain bits, such as the limbs of the eyes, I only make one thing for the side, which I can then duplicate and mirror once I get it into Flash.

Next, I'm having a crack at getting the Ninja Octopus down. Regardless of whether I go with the style above for the Viking, I certainly wanna try representing the Ninja Octopus in as epic a manner as possible. Using a technique I learned during my brief stay in Gamer Camp, I used Photoshop's animation feature to draw out a four-frame animation for the tentacle, which is probably more industry like and whatnot. Nonetheless, it looks swell.

As for the unpaid hired help, I've contacted Devin Mack (Arrgh Idol) about doing some voices and he appears interested so I've sent him the script. I'm just waiting to hear from my missus. Speaking of which, I'll doodle up some more designs for her tommorow.

Experimentation (Photoshop characters)

Okay, so concentrating on my Beardyman animation for now, and getting to a point where I should get to animating it. Should be asking round for voices at this point, I'll probably ask Devin Mack, who voiced the pirate in one of my previous animations, Arrgh Idol, to do the voice of my beardy man. I'm also considering asking one of my internet friend's fiancee to do the voice of the wife (who I still need to do a proper design for).

So trying to decide on an animation style for this, I am once again reminded of my general train of thought concerning the past two years at uni.

"ALL MY ANIMATIONS ARE NOTHING BUT F***ING FLASH!!!"

It's a bit late in the day to think of learning new programs for the sake of completing a one minute short withing two weeks. So, I'm trying to think of a method of making this look like I actually tried. I have thought about sticking flash animation in After Effects for some of the scenes, but then it'd still be obviously flash animation.

It is then I am reminded of a FLIP festival lecture from a couple of years back, held by Boulder Media, the animation studio who was working on various animated series such as Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and El Tigre. I remember them showing off some FLA files of the various shorts they worked on, and constantly reiterating the same thing:

"When we make stuff digitally, we want it to look as less digital as possible"

Or something along those lines. Basically, this boils down to taking standard vector stuff and adding a lil photoshop magic to give it a less digital look. In one of the FLAs they showed of their short film, Carte de Visite, they showed how they had animated the thing in Flash, but made it so it was composed of several little photoshopped bits to make it more realistic, such as the shading style you simply can't make in vector without chucking in a crapton of blur filters.

Going on this train of though, I decided to have a little crack at making a model of my Beardyman in Photoshop that I can export into Flash.



This is my progress so far. I have made each part on a seperate layer, so that they can be individually animated in Flash. With good ol' tweens of course. They were drawn at a resolution of almost 4x times the resolution of my animation (standard PAL Widescreen, since I realise now that animating something in flash on a 1080p canvas is stupid)so that I can get some good close up shots without causing any unsightly pixellation. The plan is to draw several different layers to make up the different hand shapes, eye expressions, etc.

With the model I have made so far, I have done a test animation in Flash. There is also the option of animating it in After Effects, but Flash seems to be the more comfortable option.

http://spamtheweb.com/ul/upload/100510/47_pscharactertest.php

One of the more notable changes of the general design I have made is the replacement of the mouth with a giant moustache. This way, I can simply squash and stretch the moustache to make mouth movements instead of wasting too much time on lipsync.

I'll be working more on this model, designs for other characters and heck, maybe I'll actually get off my arse and animate it. Still waiting to hear from the Level 5 lackeys.