This is a really useful website showing how different birds and bats fly so you can see in detail the way that their wings move. However hummingbirds wings move so fast that i don't believe getting the exact movement is necessary as you won't even be able to see it. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2776970/Watch-fruit-bat-fly-hummingbird-hover-The-hypnotic-animations-reveal-exactly-different-animals-skies.html The start of this video shows multiple humming birds playing together which shows how they move. Their wings are fast and the hover then move quickly then back to a hover. This movement is very specific to humming birds so i think it is important to get it right.
I have now tested the condors lip sync using the phonemes i created. I did this from the side because in the storyboard we mainly see his talking from side view. I think it actually turned out okay! I was a little bit worried as its completely different to a human mouth. To make this testing process quick i litterally placed the phoneme images on top of each other rather than just the mouth thats why it is a little jittery but i obviously will just replace the mouth in the real thing. This was just for speed to see if the phonemes worked and i think they do!
Today i have been working on the condors phonemes. Because the condor has a beak it has been a lot more difficult as birds don't actually talk and their beaks just go up and down. So i had to anthropomorphise it. I decided to just make the lower jaw move and that is what moves in human mouths but i made the upper beak hard so it doesn't move like lips its more like a nose. I think this will stop it looking to cartoony and silly.
Here is my test lip sync for Quetzalcoatl. Think it went alright, not as good as the bat but still pretty good i think!! I think from figuring out phonemes to this 2 second animation it took me about less than 4 hours. I think the actual animation itself was 2 hours but there was no other movement just the lips.
Today i have figured out the phonemes for Quetzalcoatl so i can do a lip sync test. It was more difficult than the bat but i think it turned out okay. There is a lot less jaw movement in this one as i think he doesn't talk as expressively. He is more refined and quiet.
Well that could have gone better… Something that i thought would take a short day to do actually took me 2 days. I was getting a bit confused with what i was doing yesterday so i asked mat and he told me that i was animating the layers instead of animating the camera. This sounded great but unfortunately the way i had created my scene meant that i couldn't do it this way. I had designed it so that things would be revealed from behind trees as you went round and things but this could not be done the way mat had explained so i had to do it my confusing way. Unfortunately as soon as i felt like i had got it right, something else went wrong….many times….I just wanted to punch the screen after a while but i didn't i just carried on correcting things. I rendered it and it looked fine right up until the end!! just a little flash. And also i need to rub out some silly green bits in the foreground. But that won't take long or much effort so i am much happier. However…I am not doing it today i have had enough. And I would love to show you it but its too large for blogger and I'm fed up. I will put it up eventually.
Now I have started making things like backgrounds and some test I am gradually putting these into my animatics. This shows me what I still have left to do and shows it all coming together and eventually It'll turn into the full animation swapping finished parts in as and when they are done. Im not sure if this is best to do on after effects or photoshop but i am currently doing it in photoshop as that is what my original animatic is in and that is what i have on my laptop so i can do this at home.
So looks like a bat flying is almost like our backstroke except not upside down or in water....
I think it is not nessessarry to look exactly like this especially how the bones move and stuff as my bats hands fit differently but i will try get this kind of movement. I have also noticed that the feet move with the wings, this seems kind of crucial to staying in the air so i will try and incorporate this but we will see how it looks.
From this I have made a test of my bat flying. I have just done keyframes so far as it is just a test and i think it works well enough for that like this but for the real one i will add more frames in. This took me about 2 and a half hours which isn't bad but adding in betweens would probably make it about 6 hours at a guess. I think I will actually animate this in one place and use after effects to make it move across screen that might be best. Although it works fine as it is and you just have to duplicate the frames so I'm not really sure what would be easier? I think it will depend on context.
So I have now hopefully fixed my problem as i have made each layer fuller and all the trees taller and/or wider so that i have more room to manover. We now have this as the full image but obviously you won't be able to see all of that as the aspect ratio is different and we will be panning through. Hopefully i have done enough to see a big difference when i try it tomorrow.
So I needed to do a test on this to figure out if my method of painting is working okay for what i want and also to figure out how to do a parallax again before i need to do the real thing. Im really glad i did this because i completely forgot how to do it. I think i need to have another conversation with someone about getting better angles but for now at least i have the basics down. From this i have realised that i need to alter my photoshop documents so that each piece is on its own layer and also that each layer/tree has more height and width than it needs to that there won't be blank bits. I also need to make sure that each layer of floor is filled because as you can see in this test it creates blank bits. Overall i think this is going to work really well. I may add a few more trees in there on the left though as its a bit bare. I may need another test/ tutorial on how to do this before the real deal. I think i will try look on youtube a bit to see if there are any good tutorials or just ask a tutor tomorrow. Tonight i need to fix the backgrounds so i can properly use them.
