Space Puppy Thumbnail Revamp

This first week of school was seriously fantastic. Character Design is my new favorite class, I couldn't be more excited about Porfolio, and I should be brewing up something fun in Interactive Design... this year should be fun!

This week I had the chance to talk to my Animation II, III and now Character Design professor about these new thumbnail boards I worked on the last few weeks of summer (after I finished Hardcow).  I did my best to really think some things I'd overlooked through as far as continuity of shots and layouts, but my teacher was able to point out some issues I'd missed even after this new pass.

For anyone who doesn't want to know the ending, obviously, beware of the spoilers (I'm looking at you, mom)!

Some of the critiques I got were to watch the battle flow continuity from left to right. I got some pointers about keeping the ship's crash in the beginning more funny/realistic by having the duo fall down and have all of their ship be upside-down, changing the shot when the alien wave is revealed, adding a POV shot of the puppy zapping the aliens, adding a scary mouth shot of the boss, adding more funny cat things and lots of more places to add anticipation. After some more thumbnails, I will be ready to do some full-scaled layouts and get some backgrounds brewing. I hope to have a finished animatic on it's way (here's my old one)(here are my initial thumbnails)!

Sketch ATTACK! #8 - Space Puppy Returns... Again

Here's the last batch of sketches I have compiled.... for now! More Space Puppy. There's some drawings of storyboard thumbnails in here: I was working on making sure each shot made sense as far as flow and leading the eye from shot to shot. I plan on revamping my initial storyboards as well as the animatic before I dive in. 

HARDCOW! Boards, Roughs, Clean Pass

Finals week was especially fun animating, cleaning, and coloring this lovely Hardcore-Hardcow idea I have had for awhile now. The project was for Animation III class, and it is something I plan on revamping, finishing, and reworking the rest of the summer. The bit was featured in the End-of-the-year 134th Annual Student Show at CCAD. Music credit go to locals Hollow Like Me (https://www.facebook.com/HollowLikeMe)! There's 32 seconds here of all that I managed to get done; the summer goal is to finish the thought and story to be a little more complete:
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Space Puppy - Animatic Attack!

Lots of process updates for the animation I plan on making my senior thesis film!

First off, in class, we started timing out the drawings we created for our storyboard:

After these were done, it was time to start timing out the entire piece. My instructor brought up a really good point: I timed things way too fast. We tried playing it at double the time, and lots of scenes instantly read better. Here's the fast pass (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU9mx-JKKOc) vs the double-timed:

After playing with the timing, I came up with this. There are a few drawings missing, but I am overall happy and ready to take another pass at this sometime this summer, as well as really start digging into the animation before senior year begins:

Space Puppy Update Scenes 9-16

Storyboard update for my Layout and Timing/Space Puppy project that was due last Wednesday. I spent a lot of time going through and making sure the backgrounds were consistent, and lots of time trying to explain the actions I wanted to see through key poses. This week in class, we are moving the drawings into Toon Boom Harmony - which is going to make this process a lot more easy in the future. One thing I need to work on a little bit more is explaining hands and feet a bit more. Also, I need to pay a bit more attention to the frame of the composition itself. Some of the drawings are jumbled up from class - camera moves that were suggested, etc

 

 

Space Puppy Storybaord Update/Final "Rough"

After lots of feedback, the story is ready to be taken apart by individual scenes for layout, poses, etc. Reworking of scenes 9-16 are due the Wednesday after spring break (2 weeks from today).

Last class I flip-flopped the beginning to give the story better continuity. I also nixed the idea of the rocket ship blasting and visiting from "Earth" - instead, the only planet in the sky is "Jupiter", the planet that gets eaten - creating hopefully less confusion. I also changed the reaction shot of the cat and dog seeing the boss to a wide shot to signify their height relationship (hah, their relationship in SPACE) as well as the shot where we bring the alien close to the ship - now showing a view from the inside of the ship itself - a much needed change in setting.

Two parts that will require a bit extra work by means of cutting back and forth will be the initial "Oh, shit, there are aliens in front of us, eating a planet" reveal in the dog and cat's eyes, as well as at the end when the cat is thinking about what to do in order to save the dog - ending with the "Ah-hah!" moment of the button on his collar.

Hardcow Storyboard Update & Rooster Crow Pass 2

New storyboard pass I have been meaning to get off my chest! I feel like it is long overdue, and I definitely feel that I can finally, genuinely get the ball rolling. It's funny, once I break it down like this, I see how simple the story really is - dancing cow dances through a barn and finds a dance opponent - I feel immensely better about tackling it.

Here's an update on the first scene as well as the twisty background/behind the barn from the beginning. It's come a long way since last time (last thumbnails: http://sarahmaeschmidt.blogspot.com/2013/01/in-class-cow-gesturesrough-storyboard.html; first attempt: http://sarahmaeschmidt.blogspot.com/2012/09/media-arts-seminar.html).

Space Puppy Storyboard

Big update on my storyboard for Layout and Timing. I managed to condense down 70 thumbnails into 30 scenes. I let go of lots of ideas I felt like I could have fun running with, but it feels good to knock down the story into a manageable scene amount for the class. Next is to throw this into Storyboard Pro.

Got some great feedback today. Lots of updates planned for Monday.

Space Puppy Rough Thumbnail'd Storyboard

First pulled together thumbnails. I had lots of ideas floating around here and there; it feels good to be able and have them visually more clear for me. After I completed these, I wrote a script in Final Draft - I changed a few things, definitely. The next step is to turn these thumbnails into more readable, complete thoughts.