Land of milk and honey

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Tue May 15, 2007 2:12 pm

Hi. Update of 'My little Project thingie'.

Anyway, here's a minute of it with voice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NrsO8RRAA

Here's the old one without any sounds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8j5lH7UyeA

I'm swayed towards doing the thing without voices. Also, not entirely sure of the big eyes the main guy's got in the voices version.

Well, I thought I'd just post it here anyways.

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Tue May 15, 2007 2:40 pm

Looks good! I like the big eyes, the lip sync is well done, and I was just getting into the story when it ended(!) Well done.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Tue May 15, 2007 3:20 pm

Thanks man. Big eyes and voices, eh? Hmm. Interesting.

In the end, they all die from a volcanic explosion. Jokes. Thanks for the reply.

AmigaMan · Post by **AmigaMan** » Tue May 15, 2007 5:28 pm

That's excellent!

With some bright music I can imagine that as a great kids series. Nice animation.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Tue May 15, 2007 5:32 pm

Thanks man.

AmigaMan - any thoughts about voice/no voices, big white eyes, small beady black eyes, don't really care, etc...? Pls?

AmigaMan · Post by **AmigaMan** » Tue May 15, 2007 5:44 pm

I do care I do

I really couldn't fault it.

I think the voices suit it perfectly and, like Jahnocli, I like the big eyes. My characters always have big eyes so I can't say anything else

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Tue May 15, 2007 8:45 pm

Thanks man. I also liked the voice. My buddy I've known from junior school, Toko Moeketsi. Talented fellow.

Shot man.

sour_jax · Post by **sour_jax** » Tue May 15, 2007 9:06 pm

Big Eyes work because they can show the emotion you need to show. The voices are perfect in fact it doesn't even seem right without them now. Some bouncy kiddie show music (or "Silent Movie" music) and you'll have it perfect. I absolutely love the style, I've been trying to create a look very similar to that for a while now and can't seem to nail it.

Out of curiosity, what would your alternative to voices be? How would you convey the info and emotion needed to push the "story" forward? The only thing I could think of cartoony word bubbles or silent movie word screens, but the problem there is that any kind of reading would detract from the kiddie show style.

DarthFurby · Post by **DarthFurby** » Tue May 15, 2007 11:46 pm

I vote small eyes and voices. But maybe get a female voice for the triangle. They all have a low pitch so I would try to mix it up.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Tue May 15, 2007 11:51 pm

Hey,

Thanks man. I guess without voices, it's just acting, with the soundtrack setting the tone. Sad music when things go wrong, upbeat boppy music when things go right. I don't think reading would work too well.

The music option's not a bad idea. Might explore it a bit further. Looney Toons did it pretty well. Hell, OLD-school animation did it REALLY well, with no voices, and just the music setting the pace. Walt Disney's heydays, I suppose, LOONEY LIMERICKS I think they were. Then sometimes they'd have a narrator, which was kind of fun.

I dunno.

Anyway, some more messing around with the eyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDIoeXJYz9c

Darth>> U dig the small eyes? Kiff. First person who's replied they like the small eyes. Interesting. Thanks

Mike

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Wed May 16, 2007 10:06 am

It's getting better and better. I like the voices. Add some well-chosen sound effects, and just some small cues of music ...

Mind if I go into details again?

- The "paper" character doesn't read well in the last version. The blue circles destroy the outline of the triangle too much. You should take care to have the important parts, eyes and mouth, be the most prominent details in a character. Otherwise the spectator doesn't recognise the emotionally important bits immediately and looses time to search for them, thus being distracted from the story.

- I'm confused with the placing of the sun. Was it just a mistake, to not switch it invisible in the following scenes? Right now it doesn't look like a character but a station ID, because it doesn't change size and place. I would expect the sun to be in the sky, maybe partly behind some tree. This should work, because the sun talks in only one scene, and that scene could do with a bit more close-up on it anyway.

- The clouds look nice, but maybe form too much of a pattern. Think about to make it irregular, with about 60% less clouds, spaced unevenly while maintaining the rows. Of course you also will fix the first scene where one clearly sees the borders of the cloud level ...

- The wide angle shot shows too much water for my taste. I'd prefer to have the sea cover not more than the bottom third of the screen. Increasing the heaven gives the whole setting a better sense of space.

- You might want to change your background a bit. In the scene where character 1 complains to not be able to swim we only see land behind him. If there were open sea visible in the left of the screen, it would sell his point much more effectively.

As always, this is judged from my personal taste and you're welcome to completely ignore it ...

And one question for the curious mind: do you animate everything in one file, or have you split up the film into several parts?

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Wed May 16, 2007 10:22 am

Ah, AWESOME! Thanks man. Again, your info rocks. Will definitely work all those things in. The sun's a mistake there. Interesting about not showing land behind the non-swimmer dude. Coolness

I import separate character, sea and background files into one moho file to animate with.

Still a bit unsure which eyes to use. I'm swaying towards the small black beady strip eyes, although I could be wrong...

Thanks again. Priceless info.

sour_jax · Post by **sour_jax** » Wed May 16, 2007 11:53 am

IMO slowtiger is pretty much right on every point.

Also, the eyes, I think the "heavy" character should have big eyes and the others should have the "bead" eyes. Man I can't wait to see the rest of it.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Wed May 16, 2007 12:41 pm

interesting.

I agree with you that slowtiger's got a knack for nailing things down pretty well. That's why he's a legend.

Will give some more thought to your suggestion about 1 guy with big eyes and the others with small eyes. Thinking maybe the heavy dude might feature in the next thingie where they go the moon and find aliens. Originally planned to have it so each little episodey thing there were different characters.

Might just go with small eyes throughout though to make life easier. I guess I'm messing around so much because once I've committed to one design choice, it sticks throughout any further work I do within this thing. Really want to set this thing up so that subsequent episodes become easier and easier to set up and animate, if I just need to change the body shape and colour for different characters, and to be able to reuse elements, like bushes and clouds and houses, etc...

Anything screwy I make now has exponential screwy thing down the line. Want to be sure in my mind that the groundwork and blueprints are set down clearly and justly.

slowtiger >> any suggestions for the eyes? From your experience, what works well? Mouth I'm happy with, background I'm happy with. It's the eyes...

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Wed May 16, 2007 2:09 pm

I like the bigger eyes better because:
- they're bigger and so easier to read (especially for children)
- they give any look a direction, which is important to adress dialogue to characters, and they deliver more emotion ("heavy" already performs great with this)
- they stick out clearly from the darker body of the characters. OK, this isn't true for the white paper character ...

The sun can be left with the small eyes.

I wonder why you changed the design of the waves. In the first versions the water was a sine wave, and I expected this to be animated in some way. Now it's a line of blue circles and doesn't meet any established symbol for water. I can't imagine a reason except that animating a line of circles is easier ...

Did I already mention the voices? They're great. Nice, with just enough variation in intonation and speed.