Shots Two
OK, another shot.
The Zoosters reach Madagascar and are being shown what life in Paradise is like. Alex is charged up as his natural instincts awaken. Gloria, with fruit slices on her eyes, is wallowing in a jacuzzi-like pool fed by a waterfall, and fanned by lemurs with palm fronds. She tells Marty how cool this place is, when Alex bounces in and finishes her sentence for her, before bouncing off again.
I was really lucky to get this shot, and it is probably the hardest one I have tackled at work. Alex wasn't always in this shot, but his inclusion gives it much more energy. Animating Gloria turned out to be pretty easy after I had a quick sit-down with a few of my peers to discuss how I could achieve herlaid-back pose. Using a secret technique handed down by ninja monks to Mr Jason Schleifer, I had a nice little system for manipulating the fruit, so bish bash bosh, job down.
Approaching Alex was a different story altogether, resulting in the most cartoony animation I have done so far. He enters frame and pings around in the background before jumping in behind Gloria and delivering his line. I had quite a few considerations to be aware of - the distances Alex had to travel, the time he had to do them, and to make sure he was posed in plenty of time for the viewer to read him during his line.
I really didn't have that much time to get him from place to place, so Alex spends time on his contacts, and covers the distance between them by smearing from one pose to the other. By smearing, I mean the complete distortion of the character in one or two frames, that allows the transition between fast poses, like in the image below. It is a 2D technique that we've been able to start playing with on Mad, thanks to the rather spiffy character setup made by really clever people.
Whew! So now we've got our hero to the foreground, avoiding all of the tricky water hazards that would have made things tough for the Effects crew. This shot was a big eye-opener for me, and the basic principles of squash and stretch really helped to give the shot some energy.
One more shot to follow, I think...
The Zoosters reach Madagascar and are being shown what life in Paradise is like. Alex is charged up as his natural instincts awaken. Gloria, with fruit slices on her eyes, is wallowing in a jacuzzi-like pool fed by a waterfall, and fanned by lemurs with palm fronds. She tells Marty how cool this place is, when Alex bounces in and finishes her sentence for her, before bouncing off again.
I was really lucky to get this shot, and it is probably the hardest one I have tackled at work. Alex wasn't always in this shot, but his inclusion gives it much more energy. Animating Gloria turned out to be pretty easy after I had a quick sit-down with a few of my peers to discuss how I could achieve herlaid-back pose. Using a secret technique handed down by ninja monks to Mr Jason Schleifer, I had a nice little system for manipulating the fruit, so bish bash bosh, job down.
Approaching Alex was a different story altogether, resulting in the most cartoony animation I have done so far. He enters frame and pings around in the background before jumping in behind Gloria and delivering his line. I had quite a few considerations to be aware of - the distances Alex had to travel, the time he had to do them, and to make sure he was posed in plenty of time for the viewer to read him during his line.
I really didn't have that much time to get him from place to place, so Alex spends time on his contacts, and covers the distance between them by smearing from one pose to the other. By smearing, I mean the complete distortion of the character in one or two frames, that allows the transition between fast poses, like in the image below. It is a 2D technique that we've been able to start playing with on Mad, thanks to the rather spiffy character setup made by really clever people.
Whew! So now we've got our hero to the foreground, avoiding all of the tricky water hazards that would have made things tough for the Effects crew. This shot was a big eye-opener for me, and the basic principles of squash and stretch really helped to give the shot some energy.One more shot to follow, I think...
posted by Kevan at
6/09/2005 05:48:00 AM
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