More string animation

Almost finished animating the strings for shot 4. I didn't complete the whole dance sequence as the camera will pan up to the monsters hand and I'm yet to film the hand footage. I'm happy with how its looking so far.
Also Jack sugested I put a shadow under Pip to ground her a bit more into the composition, its just a test with no refinment in 1 shot so far but I think it looks good and I'll fix it up a bit later, just have to concentrate on gettign the animation done for now.

Backgrounds, More Strings

I'm still trying to find out what works best for the backgrounds, color wise I prefered straight black rather than the greadient of blues i had but overall it looks a bit minimal. So now I've tried a smokey blue effect which I prefer though I'm not 100% happy with it. It's a step in the right direction though.

I've completed all the string animation for the beginning of shot 5, I think it works well enough so now I just need to concentrate on getting the rest done. The only other tricky bit R.E the strings will be animating them from the monsters hand ratehr than from Pip. I'll need to shoot some test hand footage asap so I can have a crack at that.

My running comp so far

DVD Slick & Disk Prints

These are a few of my designs for the DVD slick and disk. I went through a bunch of ideas and different color designs as the monsters color changes throughout the animation. These are just a few of the better designs I came up with. The two dots are representative of the monsters eyes.

The idea below is what I finally settled on, I think it represents what the animation is about well. I haven't decided on the straight black or gradient blue, I'm printing both to see what comes out the best (thanks sean mundy). I also changed the block of text on the left to a simpler font to make it more readable after receiving some advice in class today.

I think I like this one the best

More String Animation & Eye Animation

I started on the string animation for shot 5 instead of 4 as shot 4 has a camera move scrolling up to the monsters hand it will become a lot more complex. I wasn't sure how it would go as I hadn't attempted any of the complex and fast movements before but it turned out well i think. It still need some touching up.

I've begun animating the monsters eyes for shot 3, its takes quite a bit of fiddling around with the turbulent displacment effect but it is going pretty well. I'm still considering how many color changes (if any) i should have with the monster as this may have an effect on how I animate it.

This is my running comp so far

Animation Production Milestone #1

Work to be completed at the end of week 5

•  Send splice times of "poisonous" to Tim
• Finish edit of live action footage
• Complete keying and masking of live action footage
• Complete monsters body animation in shot 3
• Begin string animation of shot 4

Animating Monster

This is for shot 3, there will be a hand above Pip testing the strings before the monster ducks down near her. I'm fairly pleased with how it is going, I think the timing needs to be a bit quicker at the beginning of the movement. 

Hand Sizing

In hindsight I should have done this before beginning to animate the strings to get a good idea of what angle they should lead up towards when pulled tight on Pip. However after doing some tests I think I got it close enough to not have to re-do the work.

That was the first point of testing the hand sizes the other is to keep a relatively correct scale between different shots and gage what size hands look best for both shot 3 and shot 5 (when Pip and the hand are dancing in sync together). In regards to shot 5 originally I had wanted the hand to be about the same size as Pip when standing on 2 fingers but now I am going with something bigger, I think it looks better and emphasizes the scale of the monsters more and it also helps the hands looking too small in shot 3.

Lastly when doing the hand scaling it made me think about the perspective of which I am to shoot the hand footage for shot 3. If the hand was lying out flat above Pip then it should be shot from slightly below however as the hand will be a smokey silhouette I need it to be in a position with a clearly outlined shape otherwise it ends up just looking like a blob. Its good this problem has come to mind before I have gotten around to shooting the hand footage as I now know I will need to shoot it from 2 different angles to see what works best.

Shot 3

 Shot 5

Animating the Strings

This was my first attempt at animating the strings on Pip. It went really well, it wasn't quick but quicker than I expected. I'm using a combination of frame by frame and tweens in Flash. The strings look kinda crap here as the video is low res, high res it looks great. I'm really happy with it.

Rough Edit of Footage & Backgrounds

Still have a long way to go with the edit but everything is basically about where it needs to be so I can start getting into the animation. We did well for shooting on green screen especially as it was my first time, extracting the green was quick and easy and the edge on Pip looks great.

Taking Jacks advice I got the camera up nice and high for the extreme long shots, it's not overly obvious watching this edit but with the monster in their drawn in perspective should help drive it home.

The edit so far

I took a range of photos of Pip in different poses as I have an idea for the DVD case. The front cover being this pose

and the back cover being the same pose but Pip in the other costume to show the 2 sides of her character. Obviously I'll get rid of the green and do something with the background.