2d, 3d Collaboration

2D,3D collaboration on Vimeo
Wassup people. Started my final term last week. To ease us into what will be 2 months of stress we were given this assignment. To team up with one of the 3d students and do a short animation based on a piece of dialogue which was provided by our lecturer; Parents making a statement about their kids with the child in the background contradicting or reinforcing the statement. Eg: The parent could say something like, he’s really quiet and the child could be making a racket behind them. The idea was inspired by Nick Parks Creature Comforts.
After picking our partners, dialogue and tasks out of a hat (envelope) we got down to it. My partner was Emma (I forgot her last name, will edit it in later). She animated the parent, I did the child. The dialogue was: “We’re all a slave to her allergies.” (I personally think it sound more like, “We’re all a slave to allergies”) Our idea was to have a child itching and sneezing due to an allergic reaction to the cat she’s holding. Obviously, the cat’s no good for her, but she’s a brat, you know how some kids can be.  Steve Roberts (our lecturer) advised us to use flash as it would be easier to composite. Traditional methods would have taken to much time. I was a bit reluctant to use flash as I prefer the freedom and expressiveness of pencil and paper but our lectures are always saying, there is more flash work out there than traditional animation, so I got off my high horse  and decided to give it a go. In short, I learnt so much this week, took a while getting use to flash, I was doing everything really slowly, but I’m pleased with the results. It’s a very simple animation using lots cycles, symbols and other flash jargon, but I think flash caters for this style of movement (that’s not strictly true, I’ve seen some amazing flash work that looks like hand drawn animation). There is more I wanted to do to it like when she turns her head back after the sneeze, there’s no follow through or smear. I also wanted the snot to hit the dads shoe and drip slightly. In addition, I would have liked to have added more shadows to make her feel like she’s part of the space. The 3d element also needs to be fully rendered. And the colour changed so that that the 2d fits with the 3d better. We tried cell shading it but it didn’t come out right. If I was working by myself, I would have tried to push it to increase my understanding, but I wouldn’t have met the deadline and when I’m working with someone, I feel like I don’t want to let them down so my main concern was getting it finished. Hopefully I’ll have time to tweak it later.

And Again….
Wes
Ps I’m gonna start posting roughs for my finals, watch this space….please 