David: Final

As far as animation goes this project has been a roller coaster ride to say the least. I chose to use the mom clip from family guy and in order to make David look like he was actually talking I had to use my own lips to mimic the words along with using Stewie as a reference. I had trouble making the lips and teeth match I had to re-put the teeth and lips in a lot.

I think it is a cool touch that I add his mouth opening just a little to see his front teeth before he opens up all the way because it is a hint to what is to come next. Also when people talk their mouths open a little before it opens all the way. Theres no way for your mouth to be wide open without it being a little open first.

It was tedious to make him constantly bop up and down. I chose to make him do it at one constant speed and not too much on the beat with mom and ma because this shows how clueless he can be. He is just bouncing up and down because he has this "need" to. He doesn't even realise that he's not doing it with the beat. I think this just fits David perfectly. I put so much time into this project and I hope everyone likes it because I worked really hard.

The constant speed is because there is no reason for him to bounce faster especially if he is not on the beat to mom. He never speeds up his dialogue the dialogue is one constant speed too. The bouncing is also his way of communication because he doesn't have any arms to communicate that way, so the bouncing also represents his energy and his need for his mom. His need to get attention (or at least he thinks he needs it; remember he is clueless and theres nothing in his mind really thats why his head is see through. So does he really know what he needs?)

Since he is only bouncing up and down and his head is directly in the middle there is no weight shift to accommodate  his head because his head won't make him lean to one side or the other since it is centered in the middle.

I love his stance with his feet because it looks like he could do something else besides bounce, but he just continues to bounce. It's as if he can;t make up his mind whether to continue bouncing or do something else.

As you may have noticed the mom is not present. I left it up to the viewers to decide where the mom is or if the mom is even near him because David has the personality of calling a mom that is not there.

As far as technical goes I made things that needed to be symbols symbols and things that needed to be drawing drawings. What needed to be drawings were the legs and some other small things. Hopefully, everything is the way it needs to be for technical so that theres no problems with that. I remember before you said that drawing come with consequences good and bad (tweens), so I chose what I believe is a good solution between my symbols and drawings. I also have everything on a separate layer to easily get to one symbol/drawing without running into one another. I know exactly where everything is so that I wouldn't be be struggling trying to find out where the teeth or lips or head is .

The top of the head gets darker and that is because i decided to make a last minute change in some of the frames, but it is barely noticeable. You might not have even noticed if I didn't write this. (if you didn't notice ignore this comment ha-ha) The reasoning for this change is because I wanted to make those ones drawings and not symbols because I was going to do something with his head at that point, but decided not to.

I learned a lot in this class and there were so many challenges I had to face, but I would never change this experience for the world. I again chose to use flash because I wanted to challenge my self. I know on the last project since I used flash I didn't get the best grade I could have gotten if I used aftereffects, but I think now my flash skills have gotten better by challenging myself and not going the easy route.

Fixed David walk cycle

Fixed David walk cycle: no breaking parts.

Final Part 1

For my final I'm am going to use David again because I had so much fun with him before. I want to use the voice of Stewie from Family guy where he is saying mom over and over: See below.  I also want David to bounce up and down while he is saying it; I have not decided if I want his bounce to match mom or if I want him to just bounce randomly. Both would be effective in terms of David because he could either bounce to the mom because he has nothing in his head and he is just doing whatever OR he could bounce not on beat to mom because he has nothing in his head and he just does whatever. See below.

David

I had so much fun with David. I love this character and I had so much fun playing around with him and doing his walk cycle. I know I wanted David to be a confused character where there is not really much in his head. This is why his walk starts off with him going on his tip toes and then looks looks weird and suddenly turns into him trying to catch his balance/a hop.

At first I wanted his head to be all white, but then I realised his head should be see through because then it shows how empty headed he really is. It shows that there is literally nothing there so someone can see through it. I wanted to do it from screen to screen instead of one walk and then cycling it because I wanted everyone to see the full David. If I had to cycle it then he wouldn't be able to go into his balance catching/hop, which to me is a big part of his personality. He also wouldn't be able to go into the tip toes necessarily. In my opinion this was the best way to express what I wanted to express from David.

Although I did love David he did come with some complications. I had to start over three or four different times, which was really frustrating. A lot of problems occurred with keyframes and then things not matching together. David broke apart at one point and parts of his body didn't work right. Therefore I had to start over in order to fix the problem. Some of the parts of David kept repeating and it was a huge mess.

The background wasn't all that bad, but of course it came with its problems (why wouldn't it?). For some reason the trees would start moving when I didn't click them and there were other minor problems like that throughout.

I spent hours, like usual, on this project and I am very happy with it. I know there this is not a perfect project because there is never a perfect project. However, I also know I put a lot of work into this and I choice to use Flash over After Effects. I am very familiar with After Effects, so it might have been easier for me to do after Effects, but I wanted to challenge myself and take a risk and that is why I used Flash.

Below is David in his walk cycle:

David 2

This is the new David. I decided to take is old mouth out because everyone thought it was a cigarette or his tongue. So now I made the area where his scar use to be his mouth. He has sharp teeth and no hands.

Everything else stays the same especially about his personality, which will show him walking in a way that he looks lost or confused.

David

This is David. I have no drawing experience or have taken a class that has taught me really how to draw, so it's not the best piece of work in the world or probably the class. However, I think it actually looks cool and its a big step from my previous projects drawing: Fred.
David is has a big head because i know in a lot of animations heads are over exaggerated and that really appeals to me because it brings some funny moments into the animation. The red triangle is his nose and the red rectangle under his nose is his long mouth. The red dot in his head is his eye and the black slashes at the bottom of his face is texture to show that he is not all human if you couldn't tell before.
Personality: Confused. Doesn't really know what is going on. Just going in a direction, but doesn't know where he is going.

Weight Project Final Export.

This project, of course, had a lot of challenges. My overall idea for this project was to have Fred come over to a big object blocking his path to an all you can eat restaurant. I wanted Fred's arms, legs, and fingers to lengthen and shorten as they please, but his head was to NEVER get smaller or bigger. In order to prevent his head from getting bigger and smaller I created a black ball and always traced around it. Later in the video it looks like his head may have gotten smaller, but it hasn't because I put the ball there again to double check my work and everything is the same. As far as the arms legs, and fingers, the only thing that really changes length is the fingers. The legs and arms roughly stay close to the same length, which wasn't my original plan, but I kind of like it that way.
There's a part in my video where Fred leans back as he is pulling. I added that because I think that is more real/exaggerated. When people pull something they usually lean in the opposite direction to add more power. Also, when you watch it the lean comes fast and it almost looks like the camera may have been shaking and as a horror filmmaker I appreciate that because when there is a lot of struggle or fast scares sometimes shaky camera brings the action out more.
As far as challenges there were times where it seemed choppy so I kept adding more frames to make it smoother and most of the time it worked and others it didn't. I spent hours and hours and days trying to figure everything out and make my project what it is now.
One big challenge I had was at first everything was so small and I didn't realise cause when I drew Fred zoomed out he was small, but I thought you would be able to see his struggle and everything so I zoomed in and edited the entire video zoomed in and when I zoomed out I realised that he was way to small and I didn't know how to make him bigger without going back to each frame and changing the length because when I tried highlighting all the frames and changing the length it didn't change the length for every frame. So I started going to each frame and changing the length, but some lengths would be off and it was a big mess Finally, after an hour and a half I figured out how to edit all the frames at once and make him bigger.
I only used a mouse for this project because I know that is more challenging and I wanted to push myself because I am graduating soon and I might not have other opportunities like this, so I wanted to make the most out of it.
What I wanted people to feel from this project in terms of Fred is that he is so cute and that they feel so bad for him that he cant move this item. I wanted people to say "awww" when he fainted.
Great, now I'm dealing with uploading issues. It says that my video can't be uploaded.
The video won't even go in Media Encoder
Okay, I got it to work!!!