Wednesday, September 05, 2007

FlipBook doodle...

Sometimes, when I get tired of animating in CG, this is where I end up. Its really great to see your pencil drawings come to life. I believe that pencil drawings/lines do have some kind of magic. They look alive and more organic. This is certainly not a good animation but still I'm excited to see my pencil lines moving! Software used: Digicel Flipbook.

-A

9 comments:

RVG said...

Hi there Amrit,

I must apologise beforehand for any questions I ask that perhaps might have been covered by you already on your blog. Unfortunately I haven't had much time to look in detail through ur work but I've seen pretty much most of your tests.

I've seen you around on CGTantra and Keith's blog, being the latter the site through which I could get to your portfolio. I'm a newbie in the world of animation and I always wanted to thank you for your admirable exertion and talent in animation. I've started a new blog through which I'm hoping to get more into the community and know more people, and hopefully exchange feedback, discuss animation...and live the animation experience even more.

I just wanted to ask you, and I know is a very delicate subject: when you work in different mediums, do you have any particular preference? Is there any advantages /disadvantages you find depending on the medium, or you purely believe that the limitations are up to the capabilities of the artist? I just noticed some of your comments in your pieces, and (please point out if I'm wrong) it seems that you kinda feel more comfortable doing 2d and than you get "frustrated" sometimes with the stages you have to go through in 3D. Is this true?

Another question I would like to ask you is that, when you're given a task in a team project...do you like to have total creative freedom over it? Or do you like the storyboards handed to you to be as detailed as possible to fullfill the director's needs.

Hope to keep in touch and wish you all the best. Again thanks for showing us your animation tests

Ravi

Amrit Derhgawen said...

Hi there,

Thanks a lot for the kind words. You’re most welcome to discuss animation here. Wow, that’s a lot of questions!

You asked: I just wanted to ask you, and I know is a very delicate subject: when you work in different mediums, do you have any particular preference? Is there any advantages /disadvantages you find depending on the medium, or you purely believe that the limitations are up to the capabilities of the artist?

Nope I don’t prefer anything over something else. I love animation, and it doesn’t matter if it is made with a pencil or a CG software.

Well, from a technical point of view, every medium has their limitations or negative/positive points. I don’t wanna make this a 2d vs. 3d discussion so I’ll just say that most of the stuff depends on the capabilities of an artist/animator. I’ve seen some great animation done with stiff and crappy rigs. If you’re a good animator, you may still pull out a great performance with a crappy rig. So, one should rather try to polish their own skill and become a total artist (doesn’t matter if you work in CG, or 2D, or clay or whatever), instead of thinking about and criticizing a medium.

You asked: it seems that you kinda feel more comfortable doing 2d and than you get "frustrated" sometimes with the stages you have to go through in 3D. Is this true?

No, this is not true. My drawings are horrible. I can hardly draw anything correctly. So, I’m not at all more comfortable doing 2D. Well, I’m an animator, so of course I can animate my drawings in 2D as well. However, that doesn’t mean I feel comfortable in 2D. I really struggle a lot to make a single drawing work in my animation. But that’s the fun part! Of course I’m a CG animator and I love working in Maya. And I’m most comfortable in working in Maya. When I get into Maya, I know what I have to do because I’ve already planned it out in my 2D drawings. So, I don’t struggle much when I’m in Maya. It feels more like cruising. The only part which I don’t like is cleaning up the graph editor. I never really get frustrated. Sometimes though, after 2 or 3 hours of nonstop cleanup, (selecting every control and cleaning up its every attribute in linear and then, fixing my tangents and deleting all the redundant keys in spline) my eyes and fingers and spine get tired. It’s really a lot of work, and it takes forever. However, this cleaning up part is so much important in CG animation that I cannot overlook it.

You asked: When you're given a task in a team project...do you like to have total creative freedom over it? Or do you like the storyboards handed to you to be as detailed as possible to fulfill the director's needs.

Everyone wants freedom, and so do I. However, I would love to know what my director has to say. After all, I have to work according to my director. The best I can do is throw out some ideas to my director and see what he has to say about that.
Yes, I would like to have a detailed storyboard. I have to animate you know, and I wouldn’t want to spend my time on anything else. Creative freedom is a good thing, though I wouldn’t trespass my director’s boundaries. I would certainly try my best to keep my director happy. That’s it.

I hope you got your answers. Good luck! 

-A

Chintan Shah said...

hey amrit,

i really like this doodle animation... just one thing which came up my mind was tht... when the character is liftin off the ground.. it will stretch out the most just like a bouncing ball, dont you think soo... anyways can u tell me how to download flipbook.. and is it free or not.. coz it ask for some email id for download... and hey how do you upload a quicktime movie on ur blog... bcoz when i m tryin it... it converts to flv automatically ??? pls help...

Thanks.
Chintan

DJ said...

Hiya amrit!

ur 2d clip looks cool. just wanted to say that the spacing on the hands is off. hands are "hitting" at the top. I understand that you are trying to get overlap, but you could ease a bit into to top arc of hands flipping.

neways. keep working hard!
me and mahesh bist and a couple of other students are going to crit your push pull animation.. ;) I told them to watch it and write crits and bring to class so that we can discuss. hope you dont mind. if you do mind, do let me know ..

DJ

Amrit Derhgawen said...

Hey Chintan and DJ,

Thanks a lot for the critique!

Chintan Shah: Thats right, though I don't wanna stretch the character anymore. I think the stretch is quite enough for this kinda jump. :)
Yes, Digicel FlipBook isn't for free. :( You can use, PAP or Plastic Animation Paper.
Its free version works great! ;)

DJ: Yes, I agree with you, and I can see what you're saying about the hands. Their spacing is kinda off. I noticed that too, when I was inbetweening it. However, I couldn't spend anymore time on it and cleaning it up. I'm glad you noticed it. My drawings are really horrible and I've to struggle hard on my every drawing. However, I'm glad that I'm improving!

Yes, you're totally free to discuss and criticize my Push/Pull animation in your class.
DJ, you asked me about the secret behind the smear frames in my Push/Pull animation.... Alright, I'll tell you my great secret! lol..heheh..

The secret (is simple!): Those are all post production stuff. I've used Adobe After Effects to make some of my drawings look smeared. However, the super cool animator, Jason Ryan warned me not to use it a lot! Jason said,

"Amrit, the blur effect is really cool but don't over do it. If it's on too many frames in a row you loose the effect."

Jason is totally right, of course! So, these effects are totally cool but make sure you don't over do it. :)

Thanks again everyone for the comments. I really appreciate it! :)

-A

Chintan Shah said...

Hey,

thanks for letting me know abt digicel... besides PAP looks gr8.. i wanna try it soon... but hey... please tell me how to upload a mov movie on the blog... coz its automatically converts the movie it FLV format... so how can i upload my work on my blog in mov format.

Thanks,
Chintan.

Amrit Derhgawen said...

You wanna embed QuickTime? Its a long HTML code. Just Google it and I'm sure you'll get a lot about embedding QuickTime movies. Okay, give me your email address and I'll send you the HTML code. ;)

-A

Chintan Shah said...

sure dude... thanks a lot man... my email address is """chints84 (at) gmail.com""" ... also can you please tell me how to use it as i m not at all familiar with HTML....... thanks once again, and hey feel free to crit & comment abt my works on my blog, its """www.chints-84.blogspot.com"""

thanks,
Chintan :)

Chetan Trivedi said...

hmmm... havent been to this part of Framesville...
i wonder wat else is hidden here..
hehe