Kicking, Bucking and the like!

Muffins!

Nah.. just me doing something different than 'Hey Everypony'

Lion here with an update!

Like Spirit said in the previous post, we're going ahead.  While there are not many shots left, which is good, one of the longest and most difficult is left to do.  I'll be starting it momentarily but do have corrections to do in several shots for Luna's mane.  As unruly as it is and despite the general looks there are some places where.. it looks flat and falls short of being flowy.

So that's my next task: RULE LUNA'S MANE!  Or.. y'know.. make it behave like I want >.>

Some of you managed to sneak on my stream some time ago and saw how much is done already and for the shot that I was working on, I have a Screencap here.

Of course, the effects are yet to be added for several reasons.  One of which, instead of stopping my animating to have a complete render, I will just move on to the next order of the day and do FX in the order it is supposed to go in: After production.

those of you still sketpical as to if she drops the children in the night?  This should clarify :)

 All in all, progress being made, another shot to add to the 'done' list and another one starts.

Bit more patience everyone, its getting done.

-Lion

Progress of CoTN

Hello there everypony!

I am here to report exactly were we are at with our little short film.

The most frequent asked questions are:

When will it be done?
How much do you have left to do?
How long it will be?

Once again,  let me explain that we decided NOT to give a release date to focus on production instead of  completion. The point of the film is to push our skill to the maximum, getting a product of the highest quality we can achieve at the

moment.  Giving a deadline would make it an industry standard case and it would be absolutely pointless, because we don´t have industry standard conditions (no team, no budget, limited resources, no profit purpose and only two folks doing what they can).

Now for status report:

Backgrounds: 100% complete (pending corrections in shot 33B)
Animation 75% (two shots left to animate)
Postproduction 60% (effects have been prepared, catalogued and tested in AE, it is just a matter of rendering). Pending shots haven´t been postproducted yet (d'uh).

VA: 100%
 FX animation: 75%   Changes in Luna´s mane for better flow over shots 11, 8, 14 , 24 A, 34B, 35, shot 34 A , 34Bb and 35 pending FX, done in tradigital technique.

Now , I am afraid that such things are very difficult to calculate in time frame. I don´t know if we are going to encounter a technical problem along the way (we had many before).

 Ok, now that the explanations are done, let's get to the cool stuff, and that is the problems that we are tackling right now.


Just yesterday we encountered a problem of flow in Luna's mane. The cycle that we have prooves not to be enough for the need, so we will have to tweak it, just like they do in the show.    We tested three different ways of tackling this problem, to conclude that tradigital was the only way to solve it.

Basically, we will have to add more animation to her mane when she lands, takes off or does extreme movements. We decided to take example from three cartoon characters with similar hair treatment, being those Ariel, Eris and the Spring devil from Samurai Jack ( which looks like Celestia BTW).  

Here you can have a rough example. 

Streaming

Lion is Streaming the animation process for the shot 34B, if you want to peek at what he is doing, you will be welcome to join!

http://www.livestream.com/lionheartcartoon

Don't get in the way, Flash

Hello there!

Spirit reporting some progress today.

I have been running lots and lots of tests lately, and to my surprise, I have figured out ways to eliminate some of the Flash software limits.

The list of positive tests include:

* Randomization of multiple  graphics at once with one command
* Possibility of rendering any action script media in PNG sequence with no frame loss, including the use of a V- cam
* Transform FILLS to LINES  (twisted procedure, but the possibility is now open)

All this technical meaning that I have now more freedom to do my FX magic here and there.
 
Link to the swf file:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25132556/example%20stars.swf


This is one example of what can be done now. This clip would usually take about two hours to get done, while with the new commands took about 30 seconds, it is only one graphic symbol, applied with the spray tool, and set to random frame with one single command.


With similar strategies I have done waterfalls for the clip, dust dissipations and some mist. 

New flash plugin, Single frame on Graphics by default

Hello There everypony!

Some weeks ago I made post on this blog about something that I believed Flash needed badly.

That would be a plugin for forcing every new created symbol to be in single frame by default.

Well, our fella, Arno B, has made it happen. Here is an open source plugin that he developed in a jiffy, that makes just that.

Flash Extension, lock single frame, by ARNO B.

If you are a professional Flash animator or builder, this may come in handy.  It is not a critical thing, but when you have passed several hours building something, it is very frustrating to find out that you missed some parts in loop, and you have to go like a hawk over evertyhint to fix it.

Thank you so much Arno B for your wonderful work on this. It is been an incredible surprise and a honor to test this tool with you.

Best

Spirit

Foals building complete

Hello there folks!

I have fantastic news to share today. The 12 foals have been completed, and not a single correction or detail is left to be done.  I feel like I just scaled a huge mountain.

Here I leave you with the test stage test, where I put all of the foals in an official background with an official character next to them for comparison. 

Gari and Spirit were very troublesome to do because I had to adjust all the mouths to their special features, that makes  about 300 symbols to arrange that must work together as a unit.

Building the foals 2

Hello there Everypony!

Spirit reporting progress again. 

In the last post I talked a bit about he foals builds, and I have been working on that , having now 8 out of 12 finished and two more half done. 

Hopefully, if everything goes well, I should be able to have the whole lot by the end of next week. 

Some of you suggested to test them with some official MLP character on an average show stage, which was a great suggestion, so here is the result. 

Seems taht Twilight is running a daycare center in the Golden Oak Library.  I added  extra color corrections to most of the foals, The most affected ones by the amends were Windwhisper (light blue pegasus on the top right corner)  and Tingle (Dark unicorn standing by the door).

I found a couple of technical problems that I solved thanks to this integration test, such as nomenclature errors, would have resulted in a very nasty surprise if added to our current shots directly. 

Here you can see an example of  a full build of a foal

 

 Each single foal has a 20 point turn around to cover the 360º rotation.  As part of the challenge, we made our best to make them rotate on the horse center axys (between the four legs) and to have as little snaps as possible. 

This is the reasons for which our builds take a while, it is the control of the 20 points of rotation, which involves a lot of symbol creation, plus, a lot of control tests necessary to ensure good functionality, not to mention the nomemclature surveillance. If one symbol is named the same from foal to foal, we will get  build bug, so you will get, for example, Spirit's legs on Moondancer's body. 

See you on the next update, I have a lot of wonderful stuff ready to share with you which I will try to post during this week. 

:)