Callie on Builds

This has probably been the most challenging week yet. I figured after doing the animatic I had Flash sort of figured out (lol). I was wrong! I started design and had no clue what I was doing or even where to start, and so on Monday I watched videos on YouTube attempting to understand the many different layers and symbols that make up a "puppet". Watching the video didn't really help.

However, I found help in the form of Lea and Joel. They are both my saviors. I must have asked Lea a thousand questions. I am getting better though so I hope not to badger them as much next week.

Anyways with a lot of guidance I have managed to make three different views of Sam the firefly. He can blink and flap his wings while shouting! All at the same time! Super cool.

Have a great weekend!

Callie is Sick but still Awesome!

So the animatic is done but unfortunately, I was sick on Tuesday so I got nothing done (except sleeping at home). Sleeping is fun. I got almost none last night because I was studying for a chem midterm today and now I can barely keep my eyes open.

Joel was very, very patient with me when he was explaining character builds in flash. It took me forever to have even the smallest idea what he was talking about. Granted, it's a confusing topic to begin with (especially for someone who hasn't had a lot of experience with flash), but my brain was functioning at about 1%.

Anyways, he talked to me and showed me a few examples then I went off on my own and looked up YouTube videos about character rigs. There was not a lot accomplished this week but hopefully on Monday I can come in not tired and start poking around with simple symbols and work my way towards the harder stuff.

Callie is Fabulous

I have finished my animatic and boy, am I happy. This stage has been the most rewarding so far, because it involved me trying to learn something I had never used before (AKA flash) along with challenging me to incorporate all the elements of an environment into a drawing. That doesn't really make sense but what I mean is when I draw, I usually only draw faces and not backgrounds so I am not very good at backgrounds and perspective. For this stage I had to draw a bug moving across a background from different angles. It's pretty difficult to translate 3D space into 2D. However I managed and now I am done.

Rich helped me turn my animatic into a video so I can take it home and show my parents and friends. The more opinions the better so I can make revisions. Monday and Wednesday were pretty ordinary but today, Friday, I got to wear pyjamas and eat custard tarts and enjoy the satisfaction of another part of my film done.

Have a fabulous weekend and I'll see you next week!

Callie Works In Flash

This week marked a new part of my schedule. I sort of moved from storyboards to animatic (what I'm doing right now is actually a mix of the two stages). Regardless, it's pretty cool because I am finally working in flash. I only have storyboard thumbnails so I wasn't really finished the boarding stage, but Rich suggested that in order to give myself plenty of time for animating, I should just do my polished boards in flash. So that's what I did! Basically, I just used my thumbnails as references and inserted key frames along a timeline. I'm not anywhere close to being done, but I have a rough animation of the first 10 seconds. Now I don't have to worry about setting up the animatic later because it's already made! 

Everyone has been in long meetings this week so I haven't been able to ask many questions. I hope I am not screwing it up, because it is so much harder than I thought to draw consistently and figure out how to time it all out properly meanwhile still learning flash!! See you next week.