Moho Forum

Well, I'm waaaay behind schedule with my next Gecko Town Animation, but I thought I'd share a scene. I linked to it way back on mtbuck's post, but I figured I'd share it here on it's own topic. It garnered 1st place over at the May animestudiotutor.com scene competition. (By the way, there is a contest there every month with a $20 prize which is a great motivation. They don't want to spam it, but I would definitely recommend it). When I finish this project I plan on submitting more entries.

Anyway, critiques welcome


LY

This was done in Anime Studio?! It's really looks nice and the depth is definitely displayed. Excellent work!

Thanks Danimal,

Yup, all done in AS Debut 6. It's a photo background, with a log I painted in Corel Paint Essentials that came with my 5 year old Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet, I imported that as a PNG and drew and rigged the ants in AS. I really hope to finish up this project soon, it's been over a year since I started. It's at the 6 minute mark and will probably end up at about 7 minutes total. A little too long, but I tried to pace it quickly.

LY

Looks excellent. I can relate to things taking longer than ideal, but I've gotta say, when the end product is looking this good it's hard to argue with the process and taking the extra time. Pacing is important though, even knowing all that hard work, when viewed, goes by so quickly. (But it should. Then it has re-watchability) Excited to see the rest

Thanks ddrake,

Hopefully it won't take too much longer. Funny thing is, after finishing the Galactic Gecko which I was making while learning the beginning steps of using the software, it took 8 months, then I figured the next one I'd have done in half the time (Hah!) Turns out the sounds and music are just as hard as the animation. So, anyway, I was getting anxious to share something. I'll post it when I get it done.

LY

Looks really good to me, a fine job! I think you did excellent work on the way the ant's bodies have that hard shiny look, and especially how you rigged them so the legs scuttle and the antennas wave in a very ant-like way. And you took the time to have them cast shadows on the log using a nice blur technique gives it a good 3D feel. My only thought if you had additional time for this segment... perhaps some smaller, darker, less blurred shadows where the legs (feet?) touch the log to "anchor" them to the log. What is the shadow rule again? ... I think closer to surface is darker, smaller, less blurred shadow?

Great job, keep up the good work, can't wait to see more!

Thanks drichird,

You caught a lot of details. You're right about the shadows, they should be darker, but when I did them that way with less of a blur they became a bit distracting, partially because on a real log there would be differences in the height of the bark, and thus a real shadow would be constantly obstructed and raised depending on the texture of wood below, but because my log is 1 dimensional, a more realistic shadow revealed the unrealistic dimension of the log......so I cheated and used the blur

LY

Quote by Little Yamori
...because my log is 1 dimensional, a more realistic shadow revealed the unrealistic dimension of the log......so I cheated and used the blur

Because you're good. There's no other way to say it. I cannot wait until you complete your current projects and upgrade to pro.
You haven't heard much from me recently but I still check to see how everybody is doing.

I like how you managed to make your animated characters, and background characters looked as if they were done with the same program. See, when I draw a background, it would look so obvious that I did it in another program because I have a hard time blending vectors and my own drawn images. I know its possible to do, (because you've done done it), but I gotta keep working at it. Both are really well done btw. =)

3deeguy wrote:Because you're good. There's no other way to say it. I cannot wait until you complete your current projects and upgrade to pro.
You haven't heard much from me recently but I still check to see how everybody is doing.

eric1223 wrote:I like how you managed to make your animated characters, and background characters looked as if they were done with the same program. See, when I draw a background, it would look so obvious that I did it in another program because I have a hard time blending vectors and my own drawn images. I know its possible to do, (because you've done done it), but I gotta keep working at it. Both are really well done btw. =)

Thanks you guys, I appreciate the encouragement. What helps with the blending is getting the right photo and blurring some layers. Since our eyes can't focus on everything at once the blur feature gives a lot of options to experiment with. The bulk of the work I've done from this point is sort of a mix like this. I just hope the story comes together as a whole they way I envisioned it. All the work can end up for nothing if the story doesn't pace right and if the scenes don't flow. eric1223, keep at it until you find the right combo of images.

LY