Odds/Ends

A few different pieces/experiments. Just playing around with some ideas, and messing around in flash.

Epoch O'Harah: First Impressions

I made a "beat board" for myself of the first time Larry and Kate meet:

Kate falls for the old "garden-gnome-bait-in-front-of-the-fake-tree-house" ploy. Larry doesn't take too kindly to those who mess with his gnome friends.

Layout & Timing: Draft 3

This is closer to the final version of this storyboard/animatic before diving into the layout process. This is also the story in it's entirety, finally. I still need to rework some things for clarity, and add sound effects, plus various other timing tweeks and what-have-you. But I'm getting happier with it, and closer to actually making something of it.

Still doesn't have a title, though...

Layout & Timing: Draft 2

A Second pass at the Buccaneer storyboard, still a work in progress

Layout & Timing: Draft 1

This semester I'm taking a course in "Layout and Timing" for animation. I'll be focusing on the first half of an animated short I'll be finishing in the future. It features the characters I've been posting lately.

I've got the first draft of the storyboard done, in a very rough form. I'm trying to make a strong, pantomime-focused film this time, visuals only/no dialog. I'll be adding sound effects later to make some parts clearer, but for the most part I'll be relying on screen direction and acting to tell the story

here are some more character sketches, as well as the first pass at timing this animatic out. Enjoy!

Design For Media: Finale

Here it is, the final product:



not up to the quality that I was hoping for, but I'm still mostly proud of what was accomplished, and I'm looking to grow even further with my next endeavors.

Design 4 Media, Final Project Update

This week I have the finalized animatic, with final dialog and sound effects.

All that's left to do now is to finish up the two animated scenes (which will be replacing the two "rough" sequences that are still left in the animatic, drawn in light blue).

I'm back on track, and hopefully in a position where finishing is doable.

any comments or thoughts are appreciated!

Design For Media Ron Saks Project, Week 04: FINAL

I managed to finish on schedule!

Included in this post is the storyboard/animatic in both PDF and Video form. Unfortunately, Vimeo won't allow me to post anything above 500mb, so I had to turn to Youtube, as I don't have the means to compress the video before this is due. I'll go back this weekend and upload to Vimeo for better quality

Untill then, here is the Youtube version:



and here is the PDF, for your viewing pleasure:

StandOut

and lastly, here is the original version, again, from last year if you'd like a better idea of how it was improved, or maybe not improved:



There are aspects of both that I like, but I feel this new on is the superior version

Design For Media Ron Saks Project, Week 03:

This week for uploading purposes, I switched to Vimeo, so as not to run into audio desynchronization (thanks for nothing, Youtube)

Stand Out Animatic WIP from Tyler Crowley on Vimeo.

Due to time constraints (especially over this past weekend when I normally get alot of work done), I wasn't able to get quite as far along in this revision as I had hoped, but I've mapped out time to work on it, and should hopefully have it done before the end of this coming weekend.

I think that thus far the changes made have been constructive ones, and I'm really happy with how it's turning out.

let me know what you think in the comments, if you'd like!

Design For Media, Ron Saks Project Week 02:

After talking with Tom last week, it was decided that I was headed in the wrong direction with the project, in that my second pass wasn't differentiating itself enough from the original, and I was really just muddling things further by adding in superfluous motion to the animatic. Last week was a failure, but we grow from our failures, so this week I went back to the drawing board and re-thumbnailed the story from start to finish, toning down alot of the antics from the first attempt , and the initial emotions of the hero and the villain in particular.

I decided on starting the song later on to give myself some breathing room to give more screen time to each of the principal characters and give a better idea of the roles they play for eachother. The cartoony-ness of the main character has also been softened (now he can't magically make props appear like in the first one). It's not a direction I necessarily like, but I want this animatic to seem new while still following the basic story beats of the first one, and wanted to try it nonetheless.

Here are the thumbnails I finished, forgive my chicken-scratch notes to myself:

From here I'll be looking for ways to better improve the composition of shots, making them more interesting but still clear. Any thoughts or suggestions at this stage of the game would be greatly appreciated.

Hopefully this time next week I'll have a good chunk of the new animatic to show off, once I salvage what I can from last week's attempt.

Design For Media, Ron Saks Project Week 01:

As I began to discuss with my last DFM post, I made an animatic for a short I'd like to produce called "Stand Out", featuring the song of the same name by Tevin Campbell as the driving force of the story.

As with any story though, an important part of the process is refining what you've already made for the sake of both clarity and entertainment. Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be remaking this animatic to strengthen this story to the best of my ability.

If you'd like to see my completed first pass at it from last year, it's right here:


THE STORY "SCRIPT":

We follow the tale of a young man leading a dreary and monotonous life in gray-scale world. The girl of his dreams doesn't know he exists and spends her time with a conceited man concerned only with his own self-image. Our hero musters the courage to try and impress this girl, and he finds in himself the power to "stand out", to literally become the color of his emotions. He gets her attention, but the conceited man's influence on the girl is to strong to overcome so easily.

Our hero is not dissuaded, and intensifies his pursuit, trying ever more elaborate ways to "stand out" for this girl. He knows that if he could only get her alone and away from the conceited man, he would be able to prove himself more loyal and affectionate. The conceited man continues to push back, and knowing that he is losing this battle, decides to flee with the girl.

Our hero at this point becomes desperate, wondering just what he has to do to win this girl over. He places his faith in one last gamble, climbing the tallest building in the city and hijacking a blimp so his message can be seen by the entire populous. Upon seeing this, the girl finally frees herself from the conceited man, and discovers that with the support of her new friend, she too has the power to "stand out" from the sea of grayscale faces.

END

Well how bout that? a lovely 3 "act" structure

I like this story not only because of it's simplistic love story and visual potential/possibilities, but also because of the "Straw Man Fallacy" qualities of the villain character, in that we really don't know much about him other than how our "hero" perceives him.

Thus far, I've only updated the opening of the animatic, about 20 seconds, and I'm trying to play around with the camera a bit more this time to make more interesting shots/transitions. Hopefully you can see some improvements already, but it's still early days yet. Also there are some timing issues with this version because Youtube loves to desync the audio of .mov files, so please bear with me. The audio is a little bit ahead of the visuals, as you'll notice that the girl and the conceited man aren't supposed to react until the singing starts, but the singing starts before we even cut to the shot of them in front of the camera:



as always, any comments or critiques are welcome and appreciated.

Design For Media, Ron Saks Project Week 00: Iteration is Key!

For this next DFM Project, Biffo and Co are going on the backburner for the time being (though I plan to keep working on it to use it for the final project). What I would like to do is take a story I've already taken at pass at, but want to improve and make stronger. Specifically, this animatic I made last year:



After watching it once I finished, I already knew I could do a better job. I could change camera angles and characters and even story elements to clarify the story as well as make it look more interesting in general/more fun to watch.

So That's what I plan to do, I'll be redrawing/reworking the project from start to finish, including revising the main characters, which I've already started doing:

Let me know what you think in the comments!