How it's looking so far...

Because Elle is awesome, it looks like this.

That is all.

first meeting.

so, we discussed the many extra parts that come of our new found team, many of which will hopefully be tackled in rough drafts by Monday. Once set, we'll be able to crack right on with the actual work.

The first and main point was the clouds. We've set the final hue to a washed out pink, discreet and only placed on the sky. The clouds and other elements will remain greyscale, and will be transitioned when the camera pans using a quick fade to a blurred animated swipe and fade to the next BG picture.

As for the old shot of Zhuang flying and landing, we spotted a problem where the background isn't moving right to left, but diagonally up. We've decided to make a copy and paste wallpaper that follows this example:

Hopefully it will work, so that will be tested before the next meeting on Monday.

The cel shading elements and slightly translucent overlays to show shadows was tested and now we know it's only on one layer, it'll be easy to trace over.

When all is said and done, there may still be reductions to the length of the entire animation, so I'll whip up a quick story board to make an alternate, shorter animation over the weekend. I'll also be getting my research element out of the way as well.

Team member!

I've now gained a helper to do the time consuming work of colouring and background art.


This has a huge amount of benefits, namely:

* 2x the hands, meaning that the reductions I've had to enforce to finish on the deadline may not be the case any more

* I can get reference easier with her being the camera person.

* Dedicated colour schemer means the possibility of cel shading to make it look more professional.

* The BG will look INFINITELY better than it does now.

* A constant and quick second opinion on my work means I won't sit there and um and arr about things.

* The company will do me good and keep me awake and perky while I work.

* Elle will learn along with me, as I'll teach her a few things as I go.

We will have our first session next Monday. It's shaving it close, but we'll be tanked up on junk food and vigor. I just know it's now going to become something special...

spinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

So I now almost ALMOST have a complete start of fight sequence. I've now officially found a move that makes Zhuang fly, and my God it's a cracker.

Once I've made a wee combo to push Hao towards the screen and preps him for the big move, I can then add actual lines to the entire scene and colour it, then throw it into Maya, make the magic and then bam, awesome.

I might enlist help to colour actually... It's very time consuming. First things first though, make this great.

FIGHTFIGHTFIGHT

Ok, so far I'm pretty happy. The final final move is a bit of a problem though. The angles are hurting my mind, and I'm stuck as to what to make Hao do to re-switch back into his place to lead up to the big old skyward smash.

My many attempts ended in positions that made me want to hack apart the entire scene again, so I'm now going to attempt to make Hao spin round all Michael Jackson like, landing a turning kick into Zhuang's left side, ducking Zhuang's attempt to hook kick him back and then switching scene to have Hao scoot forward into an awesome uppercut thing.

Closer to the final look

Need to sort out the clouds, final colours due to GIF compression.

that last post progress

Excellent... Just needs sky, masks, dust and rendering...

I placed the 2D animation inside an image plane in Maya and used it as a reference. This is probably one of the harder angles I'll be doing, thus I'm quite lucky it worked when I drew the frames with only a vague idea of the distance and angles. I now know the method works and that the two sit well together.

Originally I thought I would need to reduce the framerate of the 3D part to match up to the not quite as smooth 2D parts, but after this, I believe that the 3D part actually lends itself to the 2D part, giving the illusion that the 2D element has far more frames than it does.

This has solidified my faith in this project completely.

SWEEEEEEEEET

more progress Char animation

while I wait on some reference opportunities, I work on the reason why I'm going to love my final product so very much.

AWESOME ANGLES

epic posture is epic.

character animation process

this is my character animation progress so far. The first set is a few shots of Hao's expressions and reactions to Zhuang's random crap and excuses and such. The first is the initial 'oh hey there', the next is after Zhuang refuses to let him past, so Hao offers to move aside. The third is Hao responding to Zhuang's "you'll push me off" with a "what do we do then?"

As for the fight animation, this is a simple loop of the first 2 strikes. From then on it's a left hook kick from Zhuang and then 2 quick punches, both blocked, and then countered by Hao with a shove to a big ol' special punch. I might add more moves as I consult the friends.

Problems encountered so far are limited to the bridge now. I need to find a way to render off the PNG's, while allowing for progressive transparency. I'll be trying several plain white floors that represents clouds, and have various degrees of translucency between each plane. Creating a cloud cylinder, rather than a sphere will stop the weird sucking in at the top, and since they're high in the sky, it's easy enough to stop the clouds halfway up and add the sky coloured roof, making all of the cylinder immune to lighting effects like the bridge.

woot.

Zhuang - a change

I have made the final decision on one of the characters. It's a simple one, but will re-write the entire fight essentially. After alot of practice and fiddling in Flash, I've found it's somewhat difficult to make the staff work for me. Using the line tool will result in making it look very disconnected from the rest of the scene and characters, and not using the line tool results in a mess when the staff is static.

It's also a bit of a pain to erase and draw in the staff on a third layer as well if I want to not have to erase lines from inside the character. The simple solution is to change the weapon before I get too into the choreography. At first I thought sword... then I looked at the huge lunk that is Zhuang, then thought...

Tonfa.

Being nice and intimate will allow for more awesome bats and close contact stuff, and they're nice and easy to draw in comparison to a big ass staff. I never thought what is essentially a rectangle would give me this much problem. Traditionally animating this, the staff drawing would have the convenience of a ruler, and flash unfortunately does not.

But yes, Tonfa. I think they suit him rather well. As does the lack of jacket...