Well here is my first animation and my first contest entry -all three seconds of it.
I decided to reuse the fish I was experimenting with -I started a more complex one using switches to create an 'eat' , 'turn' etc animations to create more complex and reusable character but decided that I might not make it by the deadline if I got carried away. I'll probably look to creating a library of props and characters as I gain experience of the next several months as it makes sense given the time it takes to do them.
Don't blink or you'll miss the snail entering stage left and the small school of shrimp entering stage right at the bottom.
Ok, think it is fixed. I want to keep tweaking it as I see several areas of improvement and mistakes but feel good I at least have an entry after my first week using the product. All suggestions welcome.
What you've made is a really good basis for a little film, I don't see it as finished yet either. I like all the elements, though I wonder why the shoal of fish just stop when they get to the side of the tank. try flipping them with a little motion blur and some fast wriggling, and it will look like you animated them turning around.
Barry Baker wrote:...try flipping them with a little motion blur and some fast wriggling, and it will look like you animated them turning around.
I tried to flip them around but have to experiment some more; when I did it it looked ugly. I didn't think of the motion blur thing, was going to draw an intermediate frame of the fish front view and back view to interpolate but wasn't sure I could get it done in time -only managed to get this up thanks to the extra free time of the holiday weekend.
I agree it is not really a story as is, just glad to get something out there.