Concept art for my short

[human]

Animation is devilishly complicated, isn't it?

Not the sort of thing a sane person ought to attempt solo.

So I don't really know if I can pull this off... but here are some early concept sketches.

The ferry... with only one sample passenger so far...



The ferry terminal...



The elevated train...



The hero...



When I review these pictures, I am aware of some style differences. The train shot is a little like the Golden Age toons from Warner Brothers or Disney. The ferry and the terminal are more like "Yellow Submarine."

Is that too much a continuity problem?

In case you're wondering, I'm not currently planning on importing the backgrounds as vectors into AS... I would expect I'll try to do the backgrounds as bitmaps...

[Captain Jack]

I don't think the styles being different is an issue... they literally look like night and day. The angles might be confusing, as shown, though. With the ferry being in orthagonal views and the train being in perspective, the artwork looks noticeably different. If the camera angles are similar, the difference in artistic style and lighting should only serve as a way to transmit mood to the viewer, rather than jarring the viewer's suspension of disbelief.

My $0.02, adjusted for inflation.

[human]

Yeah, Jack, your remark is helpful.

I toy with the idea of a stylized flick that only uses orthogonal views as a way to simplify the animation, but at other times I think I'll be using perspective.

Any further comments about maintaining continuity are welcome.

When I can get a few more concepts executed, I obviously need to make the storyboard....

[jorgy]

As far as the style, I really like it. I can't address how complicated it would be to animate, but I want to see more!

jorgy

[rplate]

Animation is devilishly complicated, isn't it?

Not the sort of thing a sane person ought to attempt solo.

So I don't really know if I can pull this off... but here are some early concept sketches.
In case you're wondering, I'm not currently planning on importing the backgrounds as vectors into AS... I would expect I'll try to do the backgrounds as bitmaps...

Is any part of your concept sketches done in As. ie, the passenger on the ferry. If you use bit maps, how will you have the characters interact inside the scenes or, will you have cut aways to go inside the ferry, the train station, or where ever. The passenger is on the ferry as a small entity but is she able to interact with the environment she is in.
I'm probably jumping the gun here, being all is still in the preliminary stages. But, these are questions that are on my mind as I plan something. Drawing a static background is the simple part
But then you are already keenly aware of that I'm sure. as previously stated..."Animation is devilishly complicated, isn't it? "
Looking forward to see how it all goes.
Keep us tuned. Looks great so far!

[rplate]

Animation is devilishly complicated, isn't it?
The hero...

I just realized your hero is the one you were concerned about rotoscoping.

This thread... http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtop ... ght=#36563

With all thoes shadows and angles in his face did you come to a satisfactory remedy for how you want to animate him?
I'm finding faces with a lot of detail are hard, if not impossible, to rotoscope.
There again I'm no telling you anything new. : )

That looks like something that Verns bones could animate

[jahnocli]

I like all those styles -- but I would be ashen-faced at trying to *animate* them without some kind of (semi-)automatic help! I'd be looking at ways to simplify them to take the load off...

[Mikdog]

I really want to see the thing animated.

[human]

Yes, rplate, the hero is the same.

I decided to manually hack the face in Illustrator because I wasn't getting enough picture quality from the raster-to-vector process.

I share the concerns expressed by you and jahnocli and jorgy about how feasible it is to accomplish this...

Leaving aside the facial animation, which I suppose would best be accomplished using a vector face with bones...

Take the ferry, for instance. I think I would strip off the railings into the top-most layer, perhaps even make this a vector layer.

Then I could insert the passengers between the railing and the bitmapped ferry backdrop.

For a model of the passengers, I might be able to use rotoscopy from public-domain footage, such as:



I would have to tweak each character into period costume, though! The women would need hoop skirts.

The idea I'm toying with is a camera flying in a straight line--backwards, that is--continually dollying backwards.

It would start off with a closeup on the newly spiffed-up pilot house:



Then it would pull back to show the whole ferryboat, and whizz through the ferry terminal, as the hero exits in an omnibus...

Yes, I'm crazy, obviously crazy...

[CartoonM!ke]

true, but you're crazy in a goodway!

Nice work, looking forward to its progress.

[Mendi]

I do love the picture of the train, but for me the other two are closer to a certain clip art style than the yellow submarine style: detail and absence of perspective.
Anyway, I won't say whether the mixing of styles will work or not. Maybe if you mix both styles consistently along the footage...

It depends on how well you do it, but anyway I think that would be a real challenge!

[heyvern]

Human,

I hope you don't mind. I very quickly and roughly traced your face into AS and dropped it into my face rig with some very very minor tweaking. I spent about 45 minutes total including drawing time.

With a "better" mesh and some bone tweaking it would look ten times better.

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/human_face-rig.mov

I just dragged one bone to turn the head.

This doesn't look "fantastic" but it was a good test for me as I feel I'm on the right track with my rig.

I didn't do the mouth. To do a posable mouth you need to create a "complete" mouth "shape", lips and teeth or at least lips and the inside of a mouth... something that the bones can grab onto so to speak. Not that hard really. The nose might need to be defined as a shape more.

If at some point you would like to be a beta tester with your project and my face rig it might be fun.


-vern

[human]

Wow, don't apologize about the imperfections of this... they fail to mask the high potential.

This is amazing.

Like I said before, whether your solution has practical limitations is not as important as reliability and ease-of-use within those limitations.

In fact, I think it would be the prospect of learning to use it which I would find daunting.

But I'm obviously extremely interested...!

[human]

By the way, does the ferry terminal strike you as totally whimsical and far-fetched?

I hope you're sitting down, because this is actually a reasonably faithful model of New York's South Ferry terminal, circa 1858. (Actually, this doesn't capture all the real building's ornamentation.)

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigi ... um=&pos=13

We don't have color information, though, because the photos are black and white and I'm not aware of any polychrome print of the structure.

My guess is that it was an architectural homage to "Il Duomo" in Firenze, so I used a rose marble/olive marble color scheme...

(The blue obviously represents a place for an alpha channel....)

[HOYBOYS]

HOLY CRAP BATMAN ... AMAZING STUFF! ... EXCELLENT WORK HUMAN ... We like it all! ... Keep Up The Great Work and All The Best from The HOYBOYS! (Fart Free for almost 7 minutes!)