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First Animation: Birthday Card for My Wife

Posted: Sat May 30, 2015 5:48 am
by mattchee
Whew! I finally finished up my first animation. Here it is:



It's a birthday card for my wife - I find that giving myself little assignments like this is a good way to learn by doing.

ANYHOW, here are the details for those that are interested:

I created all of the assets (background, props, character art) in Photoshop, since I was more comfortable drawing there, and then focusing on rigging/animating once brought into AS. I used AS Pro 9.5 (but have now upgraded to 11, WOO!). Editing was done in Premier. Simple as that.

Issues I ran into:
the main issue I ran into is the one you can plainly see. Some of the bone deformations went really wonky during rendering. When I previewed the animation inside AS, everything looked good (in fact, I spent a long time making adjustments to get it looking good), but when rendered weird stuff happened. There's a part where the line-art of the guys arm straight up breaks, and then another point where the line on the girls arm gets all wiggly. This probably could have gotten resolved with a bit more trial and error, but I was running out of time, so I had to run with it as is. Other than that, photoshop played pretty nice with AS. I think in the future though I might just have to get good at using the AS vector tools and use textures, to avoid headaches. :)

Anyway, let me know what y'all think - I had a blast making it and can't wait to start my next little project (just gotta think of what I'm gonna do)!

PS- Wife's birthday is tomorrow, she hasn't seen this yet, so I will let you all know how it goes!

Re: First Animation: Birthday Card for My Wife

Posted: Sat May 30, 2015 11:03 am
by slowtiger
Maybe a bit slow, but I like the style. Especially clever solution when he reaches into his pocket.

Re: First Animation: Birthday Card for My Wife

Posted: Sat May 30, 2015 5:59 pm
by Pinesal
I thought it was very good and I didn't even notice the line issues until you pointed them out and I rewatched it.

Re: First Animation: Birthday Card for My Wife

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 2:28 pm
by Danimal
Very nicely done. Quick and amusing, all videos should be like this!

Re: First Animation: Birthday Card for My Wife

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 2:47 pm
by 3deeguy
You got it done on time. For a first project I think that's especially impressive. Well done!

Re: First Animation: Birthday Card for My Wife

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 10:20 pm
by mattchee
Hey all! Thanks! Glad you guys liked it!
slowtiger wrote:Maybe a bit slow, but I like the style. Especially clever solution when he reaches into his pocket.
Yes, I think the pacing might have got a little weird. I found I had to make the action pretty tight to combat the "floaty" look, and so I felt I had to space things out a bit (if that makes any sense) to give the viewer a chance to process what's going on. Maybe too much?

The pocket shot - had to get creative with the layering there!
Pinesal wrote:I thought it was very good and I didn't even notice the line issues until you pointed them out and I rewatched it.
Thanks, and good feedback! No one that I've show it to without mentioning the issues has seemed to notice, so that's good. :)
Danimal wrote:Very nicely done. Quick and amusing, all videos should be like this!
Thanks!
3deeguy wrote:You got it done on time. For a first project I think that's especially impressive. Well done!
Thanks! Yes, I could NOT be late with this one!!!

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Follow up: My wife loved it, though she did have a similar reaction as her on-screen counterpart when her age was revealed - luckily the video was charming enough to keep me out of hot water on that one! ;)

Thanks for the great feedback all! Can't wait to make more!