Hey buddy! It's time for the Progress Report!
What- How is it already April?!
Glad you see the problem. See you at the recording booth in five!
What's up people? Welcome to Progress Report Episode Thr-
Ryeeehh, this is not gonna work.
Wh-What's the issue?
This format is getting boring already! I'm not doing the same thing over and over!
Format is clean and easy-to-follow, buddy, we both agreed on t his.
Come on now, from the top.
NAY I SAY!
I wanna spice things up!
I wanna make something that people can enjoy!
I can't work on templates!
I need to move things in different directions if I feel like it!
FOR I AM...!
The Director.
So you don't need me here is what you're saying?
You're the Producer so, I don't know, go produce something!
I'm producing this video.
Don't go meta on me.
This intro is dragging a little bit.
Welcome to Progress Report Episode 3!
So, I did some thinking.
I decided I'm gonna use these Reports not only as means of showing you what's been done,
but to also give you some insights on how animation works as a whole.
All of that while also trying to be as concise and entertaining as possible, so let's get to it!
This is what we worked on in March:
Compiling Chairs, First Pass Animation, 3D Layout, Dumpling's Puppet.
Das it! Goodnight!
Now for those of you interested in the details...
The Cut we're currently working on sees Lucas on his chair.
There's different shots in different angles and in some of these shots the chair turns around.
Considering the chair is a 3D prop, establishing the view and the turning animation was extremely easy.
Mostly because I didn't do it.
Credit for that goes to Dawson. But then came the tedious part.
After getting all the rendered outlines, each piece of the chair has to be colored and compiled.
So we went from this to this.
The chair is an interactive prop so compiling the pieces basically means turning it into a Puppet.
Now as you can see, I have each chair for each shot as their own set of symbols that I can turn and move as I need.
Step 2:
Importing the chairs and characters into the scene.
Now, this is called the "Layout Stage".
In Animation, when we talk about Layout we mostly mean turning a rough sketch into a more final looking shot.
With the help of perspective lines and staging rules.
In Layout, the most important thing-
(Seriously though, it's like crucial)
-Is making sure that everything looks consistent and believable in terms of size.
Sometimes you can cheat layout for the sake of staging, but you gotta be subtle.
Otherwise THIS can happen. See what I mean?
Shoutouts to Steph and Dawson for finding these examples.
I realize I should probably explain this a bit more thoroughly, but I figure we could cover things like this in the Tutorial videos eventually.
Hey buddy! We need that Tutorial Script!
Oh I'm working super hard on it, sir, you're gonna love it.
Oh wow, well okay then. That's all the reassurance I need to stop bothering you about it.
Awesome.
In fact I'm not even gonna ask you how long it's gonna take. I'll just be in my office waiting for it.
That sounds like the best decision, sir.
Please don't take your time with it though.
Step 3:
With the Layout locked, we can move to Animation.
First thing is Keyposing.
Basically establishing the first and last pose of the character in the shot.
There's usually more than two keyposes per shot, but it very much depends.
This Cut in particular is gonna be a bit of a nightmare. Because with all of the various perspectives and turning I will have to rely on what's called BPS.
BPS stands for Built Per Shot and it applies to Puppet Animation.
More specifically when your Puppet Base can't provide what the scene calls for, forcing you to build more parts on the spot.
You can also CHOOSE to use BPS though, so it doesn't always have to come down to necessity.
As I was doing this, Dawson positioned one of the 3D props needed for scene and, just like the chair,
he animated it and sent back the outlines for me to clean-up, compile and import into the scene.
The prop is still uncolored but we'll get there.
He also took care of importing and positioning those last few props Ashley modeled into our 3D setting for Lucas' Room.
We eventually plan to texture this whole thing so we can skip the compiling and coloring phase completely.
But we first need to figure out how to achieve the rendering style that we want.
Tests for that are being conducted and everything looks very promising so far. Exciting stuff!
Equally exciting is that I finally found the time to recompile Dumpling's Puppet.
To recap, I had to shrink the heads, tweak the hair,
then import the turnaround in the file I'm building the Puppet in,
and reshape most of the existing symbols to match the new proportions.
Now she's officially ready to have the remaining views built.
After the base is complete I'll also build the clothes.
Plans for April then: Getting the current Cut done, turning 28 and keep on building Dumpling.
Oh, and starting on those Tutorials, too.
Pitch is ready, sir!
What? I didn't ask for a pitch, you silly goose. I asked for a Tutorial Script.
Yeah but I ran a poll on Twitter and this is what people want.
Okay, well I still want the Tutorial though.
Of course, but trust me, you'll love this as soon as you read the title.
I don't think that's gonna hap-