My instructor, Will Vinton, was on hand to show the class reel afterwards, which had my morphing animation and the school logo introducing our work. So that was really cool.
After the films, we voted and three Audience Appreciation Awards were given out. I didn't win, but was happy to see the most deserving films take the prizes for Best Story.
Then, surprisingly, I was mobbed with interest in my sculpting technique, and ended up giving a live demonstration from my chair.
When class let out, a few of us went for drinks and plan on keeping in touch.
All in all, great experience, my animation's improved, my storytelling has gotten better, I've been exposed to talents in storytelling that far exceed mine, and I don't even care if there are fingerprints all over my characters, or if I'm out of Wax #195. That's probably the biggest development in all of this. I have been taught to just let clay be clay, not worry so much about the details, and put all that focus into creating great characters to tell effective stories with.
Thank You, Mr. Vinton, for making all of this possible.
And thank you, Mr. Sykora, for giving me the job that paid for this class.
And now, without further adieu, I present to you Don Carlson (Helper Brain)'s final project:
A Currant Affair!
A Currant Affair!
Don Carlson
animator/alumnus
NWFC School of Film
Awesome!!! A truly worthwhile effort, and it sounds like it's been an amazing learning experience!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Strider!
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's been a crazy amount of knowledge to take in. A lot of these techniques are a hybrid of what we were taught and what I added from the boot camp days on Blue Alien Summer.
The lip sync design is explained in the comments for the video, but it's pretty simple and quick (for full clay mouth animation, which has always been the most time-consuming). The main thing is, you create a solid structure, you establish boundaries for that structure, and then you fill it in with a soft material and re-sculpt the entire lower half of the face every frame (by tearing it off and balling it up). I dont' have a scale to ensure that everything is on-model (using the same amount of clay every time), so instead I just made a bunch of balls of the same-sized balls of clay and that ensured that the same volume was added or taken away every frame. The lines of the carrot also had to be re-etched with a wooden tool every frame, so I always tried to make sure they were faintly visible in order to keep them from being in a different spot every time the mouth moved.