You can thank TheReelTodd for this post. All his talk of making an animation planted a seed in my head that started to grow last night while I was sleeping. When I woke up I had the PERFECT little short playing over and over in my head and now I HAVE to get it down on paper. All this said and I don't even have a clue how to add sound to a movie yet. Having not ever made a movie I only THINK I know how to do that. So here's what I want to tell you. The 1 or 2 minute piece of animation looping in my head right now is a totally logical extention of what we've seen before but its also mostly totally original and will require me to make another new model that's never been seen before. In fact I've almost got that model done as I've been working on it most of the day. And within the next day or two I'll start story boarding with small lower quality pictures so they don't take me forever. So here's my question... Do you guys want to see the story boards when I'm done but before I've made the animation as I think I might have the story boards done in a week or two and the animation may be 6 months away. I've even considered sharing the storyboards as I make them but the first few might give away what I'm going to do and I want it to be a surprise. So let me know what you guys want. If anyone here can keep a secret and has some experience making shorts that can be shared on the internet please feel free to contact me. If I'm going to do this I'd like it to look nice. I have no idea how to mix in live action so this will be 100% CGI and the presence of 'programs' will be implied but not seen in this short.order abortion pill abortion pill buy online where to buy abortion pillwhere to buy abortion pill ordering abortion pills to be shipped to house buy abortion pill online

Story board is the definately the way to go. I believe Steve Lisberger had done this for the movie Tron as well when He was developing the film as well. ANd I believe this in the way too when I was doing my 10 minute short films. Make the story board up first to get the continuity down first. and then bring it intothe animation that you want to do. I believe it will work best for you.

TheReelTodd Wrote: Talk about your project at your own risk... and don't forget to read your PMs. I just PM'd you.

Are you sure? The last PM I got was back on December 12 and it was from you by the way. Maybe this last one just hasn't shown up yet.

And I'll take the advice and keep everything under raps till I'm done story boarding atleast. Ideally my little short would be capped with a short piece set in the real world at the begining and end. I'm not sure how to do those parts. In the story board they'll probably be just a short paragraph of text.

Also I can now say I've made my first animation. It was just a short fly-by of one of my models but I'm not happy at all with the quality. The frames I put together are all nice and sharp but in the mpeg file its all pixelated. I've got alot to learn before I can make something that looks nice I think. So if anyone wants to help... or even just point me to some good software for this kind of thing I'm all ears. I think I need something like "Animation for dummies". If anyone wants to see my first animation just let me know and I can email it to you. Its only 19 frames long and 183KB which is about the size of one frame by itself so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it looks bad.

Carl

Sorry about that.

Yes, you have a PM from me.

I just wrote a TON of stuff and it took me a while type it all and you read the posting before I was done.

It's in there now

And about your animation - give it time. You're probably going to animate MANY "didn't like it" stuff before you get the feel for it. That's how all of my creative projects go too. It's all trial and error.

TheReelTodd Wrote:Sorry about that. Yes, you have a PM from me. I just wrote a TON of stuff and it took me a while type it all and you read the posting before I was done. It's in there now

Got it. Thanks.

TheReelTodd Wrote:And about your animation - give it time. You're probably going to animate MANY "didn't like it" stuff before you get the feel for it. That's how all of my creative projects go too. It's all trial and error.

Its not the subject I don't like. Its what mpeg did to my nice sharp chrisp frames. All but the first frame looks to be made out of pixels that are now 10 pixels on a side. So there's now about 1/100th of the amout of information there. I can understand not being happy with the angle of a shot or the lighting and I'd have a clue how to fix those. At the moment I don't have a clue what to do about the mpeg compression artifacts. If someone thinks they can do better please email me and I'll send you the 19 frames I made. If you can get something that looks nicer PLEASE tell me what you did.

Carl

wwwmwww Wrote: Its not the subject I don't like. Its what mpeg did to my nice sharp chrisp frames. All but the first frame looks to be made out of pixels that are now 10 pixels on a side. So there's now about 1/100th of the amout of information there. I can understand not being happy with the angle of a shot or the lighting and I'd have a clue how to fix those. At the moment I don't have a clue what to do about the mpeg compression artifacts. If someone thinks they can do better please email me and I'll send you the 19 frames I made. If you can get something that looks nicer PLEASE tell me what you did. Carl

shoot me a copy of the frames, i can turn them into an animated gif or png

Ok... here is what I've done. I've gone back and added a frame between each of my prior 19 frames and made a new mpeg. Its here:

film.mpg

If anyone wants the origional 37 frames they are here:

film01.png

through...

film37.png

I'll leave these here for a week or so and anyone that wants to play with them is welcome to. If you can get something that looks less pixelated please share and let me know what you did.

Enjoy,
Carl

Nice... I think it might look even smoother at a lower resolution. May I ask what software you used?

Thanks,
Carl

kyp Wrote:To make it I used Animation Shop 3. which is part of the Paint Shop Pro 7 program.

Sounds expensive. Do you like it? If so I'll look into it more after I've got a job and can justify the expense.

kyp Wrote:If theres any changes you want made, let me know.

No need to perfect this one. Its just a test to see what can be done and what tools do the best job at it. With this one the thing that catches my eye the most is toward the end, the last 4 or 5 frames look to be split with the top half of the frame a little out of sync with the bottom half of the frame. I'm guessing that's due to the system having to stop and read the rest of the image into memory. This is as you say a very large file. I think the next test I do will be at 320x240 or maybe 320x200 to give it the widescreen look. The files will be smaller and I think they'll play smoother.

How about some other variations on the lightcycle? 2 seater? Variable direction - people facing both directions? 4D cycle that can go in any direction?