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And here we go finally, the finished animation:

Well, rendered the first two shots and assembled the video (with a playblast placeholder for the last shot) with the sound.



I will get the last shot from Andrew Tuesday morning and swap it for the placeholder and render our complete animation ready to hand in for class.

I have worked so much on these 15 seconds that I think I have lost all objectivity, but I am happy with it. There are things I would go back and change if I could of course, but that's part of the learning process. It will be very interesting to go back and watch this animation again in a couple of months and see what I think of it.

I continued working with the animation. Trying to get a more fluid feel to Phil's movement. It's really difficult in such a short amount of time. I think less is more here. Simple movements. So I added just a bit of a head turn to shot 2. I also played with a bit more vocalization. Just grunting. I don't want him to talk. I think it adds another dimension to the animation.




I just read this article by Michael Geisler about sound effects for animation. He has done sound for motion pictures as well as animation. The thing that resonated with me is where he notes that the sound effects must be cut very precisely with the animation (seems obvious) but that the timing isn't necessarily where you think it is (not so obvious), and that the sound itself is not necessarily what you think it is either. I found this true with the glass shattering sound when Phil "Gets It". First what was interesting is that I had to use more than one type of glass shattering sound to get "realism". I had to use the sound of a lightbulb popping and a water glass breaking. Then I had to play with the timing of the sounds relative to each other. What really struck me was that if I placed the sound to happen at exactly the end of the last frame, it didn't feel right. It didn't seem to match the visual. I played around with the timing and found I had to time the sound a bit "late." Maybe this is due to the natural effect of sound waves traveling slower than light? I don't know for sure (need to investigate further). But it really makes a difference.
[Animation World Magazine Article Issue 4.1 April 1999 - http://www.awn.com/mag/issue4.01/4.01pages/geislersound.php3]

It's funny. It just now occurred to me that perhaps there is a place for me in the world of animation doing sound production! I left that part for last on this project, which was a mistake, but I was so worried about the animation part of it. Now I realize that it is integral. Of, course we created sound that was pretty close for the 2D animatic, and that did help a lot. But I realized how important the nuance of the sound design is to the final piece.

Worked on the animation in Shot 1. Phil's reaction to the fly is not right. It is too slow and systematic. He looks like a robot. I have animated a bit more of a double take now, as he looks for the where the sound is coming from. A quick look to the left and then the right. It's amazing how as the timing gets closer you can feel that it is more "right". The more acting I did, the easier it got too.

Here are before and after playblasts to compare: