TimothyB
05-06-2009 14:03:05
Many know of Don's new site DonBluthAnimation.com
Well, the site has spawned some official challenges, the first one was design a Rhino character that's a bully. The 2nd challenge is something completely different, an actual 3 minute short film, called Cyber Garage Project. Kind of like animating a film in your garage, but through the internet instead.
It was kicked off with another design competition, but this time for a character in the short that has a brief appearance, it was a Pygmy owl. That's over with and now we are on to a pencil test animation. We get to choose from three of the characters to create a rough walk, march, or run cycle. No deadline for these, only submit your final one you feel good about and then they'll judge your piece, give advice, and assign the scene that best suits your skill.
During this, Don Bluth has posted videos with how to use tools like an x-sheet, exposure sheet, do panning backgrounds, animate on 1's and 2's, etc. He has been commented on most the WIP pencil tests to point out what needs fixing and answer many questions during the Wednesday live seminars.
I chose to animate a march cycle for Sasha, the youngest rabbit. I animated it on 2's, where each frame is shown twice, so 12 frames is equal to 1 second of film at 24fps. Bluth gave us model sheet guides for walks, runs, marches. He says it's something he does so he doesn't have to reinvent the wheel everytime he does an animation like that. I used the Fievel March that was on 1's. I did my extremes, 6 total frames, then I did my 6 in-betweens. I still need to work on my ear movement, but I'm happy.
Here's my test so far on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f8de7co_pY
Don Bluth made this comment, while I'm happy, he oddly didn't give any suggestions to make it better, maybe that's a good thing, but I still think the ears are a little odd:
[quote]Timothy...
Great progress. Your addition of music tells me you have a good understanding of action moving to the beat. So far, this march comes closest to the march I have seen in my head on Sasha. I'm impressed.[/quote]
Here's a thread with everyone's WIP that anyone can view:
http://www.donbluthanimation.com/forum/showthread.php?t=253
Storyboard of the film, using character designs of a small cameo of a Fox and large Rabbit from Thumbelina;
http://www.donbluthanimation.com/_Don_Bluth_Animation_Cyber_Garage_Project_storyboard_one.html
Oh, he also wants us to use actual animation paper, 12-field, acme peg-bar, lightbox. No wacom tablet, cintiq, anything of the sorts, got to keep it traditional.
So here's an animation disc I bought and resting on top of a light box, and fievel march displayed on my tv for reference:
[img="]http://photos.toonguru.com/bluth/equipment_5.jpg[" alt=""/img]
Project ends in October, so basically 4 months to animate your scene. Depending on the number of people that will qualify by their pencil test. From there, it's not a guarantee your scene will be used in the film if you got someone else doing a better job on the same scene. Though, so far Don Bluth said he has seen 18 animators that will receive scenes so far, so I'm not sure we'll too many situations like that.