The Fates Crew

This is a couple of strung-together cuts from the second act of the new short. Definitely up a notch from the last two, but now I’m disgusted by my complete lack of dynamic angles. So flat!!

THIS IS NOT JOE. Joe himself is not in this clip. These are, instead, Very Bad Men That Joe Has Known. There’s a lot of those, it seems.

It is, as far as I can tell, physically impossible to twirl a pistol like that. I know, I tried, I dropped a model Sig several times, I bruised my toes in the great pursuit of Art. But that’s the magic of animation for you… animation is all about the things that can’t be done, being done.

There’s two examples of staggered timing here (“staggering” is when you set the timing so that it goes 2 forward, 1 back). For instance the clutching hand in the third cut is seven frames that ease in and out of a closing motion, but by setting the timing as 1-2-3-2-3-4-3-4-5-4-5-6-7-6-7, you extend the timing from 7 to 15 frames without additional drawings, and create that clutching motion. The laugh cycles at the beginning are also staggered, but not so evenly (more like 1-3-2-1-2-4-5-4-3-2-5-4-3-6-5-6-7, or something like that, I don’t know). It’s not as good-looking as straightforward, properly animated action, but then again it’s a cheat.
Continue reading “JiJ : Two Buckets “gun play””

This is an interesting piece, because it’s really not set up for a specific animation routine… instead, it’s built as a series of layered actions so that the compositor can set it to the music. So there’s sets of actions; drag, release, center switch, just the basics… but set to the music, it looks pretty sweet. This particular sequence is really just a line test… it’s not set to anything in particular, but it shows how the moves work.

In theory, we could probably make an interesting little Flash game out of it all, too… the elements are there, anyway.

There’s a couple elements that aren’t included here… there’s sway in the bar, for instance, and a flicker to the record reflection so that it’s not so static. But I gotta leave something for you guys to check out in the final.

Layered line test, completely drawn in-system using a WACOM Cintiq and some custom HTF techniques. No trees were harmed in the making of this production. Took a couple days to put it all together.

Continue reading “JiJ : Two Buckets “turntablin’””