Japan

If I can thank SCAD for anything the first thing on my list would be the chance to go to Japan. It was an absolutely amazing opportunity. Like the best things in life not only was it enjoyable, but educational.
Though the land of the rising sun is world renowned for their anime it certainly isn't a place for animators. I had been suspicious of the treatment of employees in studio Ghibli for some time and my fears were confirmed. As tough as the film market is in the United States it's easy to assume that it would be twice as hard in Japan. The long nights with no pay that workers experience here is a daily grind for the Japanese. Studio Ghibli is a place that takes advantage of the bright new dreamers, wear down all the passion they have into making a film until finally they burn out. Truly it is a market where only the strong survive. I think most the students I know in SCAD would never make it there.
If people are curious about where I got this information it is in fact a very reliable source. One of the guest professors on the trip, the infamous Mark Schultz, was able to meet with his friend Geoff Darrow. Darrow is currently working on an animated version of his comic Shanghai Cowboy at MadHouse. I'm not sure how hush hush the project is, so the only thing I'll mention is that you should anticipate the most awesome crab ever. His experience at MadHouse however has not been much of an enjoyable one. When Mark and Professor Gotto entered the studio they say it was one of the most depressing places they had ever laid eyes on. Cubicles the size of outhouses, people passed out on the floor, and a general negative energy. Geoff explained that this was a very common sight in Japan and that workers collapse in studios because they work all night long. Animators only get paid by scene, and crap pay at that. Anyone working there are hardcore fanboys that do it because they love it, not because they can support themselves. A high percent of employees still live at home with their parents because their salaries are so low.
Not everything that I heard from Geoff was bad news. He also had some rare gems of valuable quotes, and an interesting back story on how he got in the industry. He was also so kind to show our class some of his production originals for Shanghai Cowboy and sketched a self-portrait for me! I may upload that here later.
I'll leave you with a few of Geoff Darrow's quotes:
" six legs and big claws equal big laughs"
" People on an airplane-not funny. Now you put a bear on that airplane, that's funny"
"In animation everything is black and white. People are either ugly or attractive."

the final countdown

Here it is. Gaze upon it and weep

so close, yet so far

Finals are kicking my butt. The short is very nearly done. All I have left is sound, and figuring out how to put all the pieces together. I decided to make each scene a separate flash file to avoid confusion and many layers, so now I just need to put them all together. You'll see the end result shortly.

Sleeze is on

The sleeziest of whale come-ons is completed. Now it's just the hectic race to get all the animation done in time for finals next week. Here's hoping!

It approaches.

So now most of the more dynamic shots are done. I get to do the fun parts of the whale laying on the sleeze and the explosion. It's what we've all been waiting for.

So little time

A few more backgrounds are completed, another scene is near completion as well, but overall I don't have much to show for myself. Things are getting down to the wire now and with senior 2 taking up most of my time it will be interesting to see how I will complete this assignment. That's right, even I'm interested to see if I'll screw it up.

You remember that opening scene?

Well now it's completed. Title still needs to be added technically, but it's just a title. I'll call it done. This marks the completion of one of the most complicated scenes. Other then the explosion, the rest should be smooth sailing.

Going smoothly

I haven't gotten a particularly large sum of progress on my short, but one of the most complicated scenes is near completion. Some dynamic swimming/flying action for the opening scene. All that's left is clean-up and clouds. Luckily I was already working at 24 fps when Professor Deleao mentioned it. 12 and 15 fps made everything look a bit too sluggish.

Update

So far I have completed a very key element to the short. The dirigible. The only thing it needed was a working propeller (and even that wasn't necessary since most blimps do not have those) so now it does. Gaze upon it in it's magnificence.



The scene when the whale gets all excited about seeing it for the first time is also almost completed.

Care for a sample?

So for my story basically all of the shots are of the sky. I had not intended to be so exceedingly simple, since I quite enjoy backgrounds, but hey they're simple. Just so that I could spice it up a bit these will not be done straight in Flash. I will be photoshopping it up and using a great deal of textures. I feel like I'm cheating when I use textures and brushes, but lots of great artists do it.

Tutorials completed

Now that tutorials 1 through 5 are out of the way it's time to get down to business. I've completed the animation on one of the scenes of Dirigibles Don't fall in love My big problem is going to be clean-up. I hate clean up. I have yet to do the backgrounds, but since they are all of the sky it's going to be very easy. The one thing I may have to go back and do is a comparison chart between the whale and the dirigible.

Storyboards

The story has been tweaked based on some highly effective recommendations from my peers. There will be no sappy seagull scene, instead to enhance the funny the whale is going to come on strong and sleezy.

Wiggle

Lip syncing can be a fun assignment. I had recently seen the movie airplane with my step brother over the summer, and tried looking for the "excuse me stewardess, I speak jive", but for whatever reason it was not out there. Since I already created the lip sync symbols without knowing what I was going to do I chose the more provocative quote. I ran into a few bumps making this. Sound files should be streams, not events, and when making a symbol be sure that everything has the same position. Swapping made this an easy assignment. Definitely a good trick to know.

References

Some of what I could find for my film:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKWkUKOFpSI (embedding was disabled)

walk cycle

We all get revved up about walk cycles, right?
Well I completed the walk cycle of my skeleton guy. I tried to give him the slight look of military, but I think I over worked it. When the walk cycle happens in place it didn't appear to be that bad, but when going across the screen it looks stiff. Rather then tweaking this more then it has to I'm going to spend my time wisely and move on to the final tutorial.

Flying whale model sheet

I don't have a name for him yet, but here he is:

This is a bear, hello

The rotoscoping assignment involved using muybridge's walking man. Only problem is, well there were several. He had a moon walk effect, the feet had no weight to them and would slide backward for every cycle. Due to this it was not necessary to copy over every frame. There was also a strange lack of frame and a duplication of another.





Second rotoscope completed. I got tired of people, so I rotoscoped a cat instead. The only problem I encountered was that the cat actually stops in the frame at the end, so for looping purposes I animated him going off screen.

"Jump!" said the cruel audience to the one legged clown

Here's the in class version. The on your own is soon to come.

Just completed the second tutorial for the puppet animation required. I had fun with this. I have a little bit of experience doing puppet animation from back in Animation 2 class. My final project was all done in photoshop and after effects. After Effects makes puppet animation in Flash feel like putting together a 20 piece jigsaw rather then a 200 one. So I enjoyed this. Hope you like my mad dog hopping around in Hannah's gunflower world. Is it bandages, or a straight jacket? You decide!

Dirigibles don't fall in love, they just fall.

Robyn Haley “Dirigibles don’t fall in love (w/t)”

Sound Effect	Action
Blowing Winds and the slight ambient sound of water flowing.	Shot of the whale floating in the sky going about his business.
Blow hole noise (slight burst of air).	Close up shot of the whale blowing out clouds.
Seagull caws	Long shot of whale. Two seagulls fly by cheerfully intertwining their paths.
More seagull caws	MS of whale smiling
Fading gull caws.	Long shot of seagulls fading into the distance and over the shoulder shot of whale.
Ambient sea/sky sounds	CU of whale. Looks around.
Ambient sea/sky sounds	POV nothing is there but the sky and his clouds.
Ambient sea/sky sounds. Slight whale sigh.	ECU The whale casts his eyes down in his loneliness.
Ambient sea/sky sounds.	MS. Whale spots something in the distance.
Distant sound of engine	LS. Slight zoom. A dirigible floats in the distance through the clouds.
Whale coo.	CU. Whale is pleasantly surprised. Assumes the dirigible is another whale.
Engine sounds and rushing wind.	LS. Pan. The excited whale flies next to the dirigible. It tries to impress it by blowing out a heart cloud.
Loud humming of engine.	MS of dirigible having no reaction.
Wind noises.	Cross cut of the whale looking perplexed.
Gleeful whale noise.	Cut to MS of whale and dirigible. The whale smiles at its idea and flies in front of the machine.
Explosion, flames, faint sound of people screaming.	MS. Instead of gently nuzzling it, the dirigible crashes into the whale.
Flames, faint sound of screams.	Down shot. The dirigible falls toward the ocean.
A splash.	CU. The whale looks absolutely mortified.

Flash examples

I stumbled upon Arthur de Pins twice in my life without knowing it. I voted for his short Revolution of the Crabs a few years ago for the Nicktoons animation contest. About a year later I discovered Geraldine on youtube through an animation channel. Once I saw his name in the credits I was able to find a full portfolio of his work. He is a great example of the new breed of Flash animators. The majority of his work is very well animated and designed. The main complaint I have with his work is that at times the movement is so fluid and ever moving that it looks like a horrendous use of motion/shape tweening. http://www.arthurdepins.com/petites_animsflash/NetClubAnim-s.swf

His short films are where it's at. Especially Revolution of the Crabs. Everyone needs to watch it.
http://www.arthurdepins.com/index.php?page=crabes

A fair warning though if you check out his illustrative work be prepared to be a fair amount of disturbed. He has some raunchy drawings of a strange mixture of frog/chibi/pin up girls.

Flying Whales

Remember when I said it was hard to think of something when you were trying too hard? Yeah, it was a long time ago. Well in my slump while barely thinking at all I came up with what will be my premise. In a fifteen minute interval I numbly thought about things I like and some how whales came up. And they would be really cool if thew flew. So there you have it. My premise is about a flying whale. To be more specific a flying whale that creates clouds and falls in love with a dirigible.

As Max would say "aawoooo".

premises due

"Blocks" are some of the worst experiences someone can have. They would be on a mediocre level of bad things that can happen to you, but none-the-less they are always frustrating. The premises are due tomorrow, and I don't seem to recall any handout, and each idea I have just hits a flat note at the moment. It seems when one tries too hard to make something good happen it never will be. So far my premises are:

1. A guy walking down cliché ave. (ie. falling pianos, open man holes, etc.) and narrowly escapes each only to spontaneously combust at the end.
not quite sure if this will work. May be too complicated.
2. Box of kittens. Evil kittens.
eh. I'm bored already of this.
3. A guy is seen in a totally empty area and the only thing that gives it life is different beats and rhythm causing his appearance and area to change.
so far this is my favorite. It requires a number of backgrounds, but then is simple in terms of cycled dance animations. There's a lot of freedom with it. The major speed bump is what music I use. I may be forced to create my own.
4. Something involving a dirigible. I was thinking something classy, along the lines of a few rich men just standing about in a cushy area sipping tea tooting "what what, splendid day for an air ride what." until it zooms out to the scene of the dirigible hitting the building.
very classy, right? Perhaps a bit too simple though. Not sure if it will meet the required time length.

That's all I have at the moment..... I just don't know what to do.

Side effects may include bleeding eyes.

Bouncing Ball= not the greatest thing ever. Maybe to some. Also ease in and ease out capabilities on flash are decent, but not something I would particularly look in to again.

Favorite Animation

My favorite animation? It's like picking what child you like the most; therefore it's easy. No in all sincerity there are so many favorites. I'm sure I can't list them all, but here are some samples:

"Best" so far

For the moment being I will have to provide a youtube video for what I consider my best animation. The rest will be dealt with later.

A brief introduction

Name: Robyn A. Haley

1. Hometown: Silver Spring, Maryland
2. School: Savannah College of Art and Design
3. Major: Animation
4. 2d or 3d? - second dimension all the way.
5. Favorite Color: Purple and Green. That's right, there are two. Maybe even more. Who says you can't have more than one?
6. Favorite Food: Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese, and fine breads. When I make a meal, I always consider "now how can I incorporate cheese into this?"
7. Favorite Animal: Hawks?
8. Favorite Movie: honestly I can't pick.
9. Least Favorite Movie: Jumper. Though there are more horrible movies out there just as worthy of this title.
10. Favorite Band: Deep Forest
11. Favorite Artist: Alphonse Mucha
12. Favorite Book: The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
13. Favorite Show: Dexter
14. Favorite Video Game: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Smash Brothers, and Metroid Prime
15. My only weakness: bullets. Only sometimes stabbings and diseases.