But does that really matter? I mean, I did do the animation on Wednesday night, June 13th. Currently, it's Thursday night, and I'm writing about it now because that's when I have time. It's 11pm, I didn't have time to animate, so I'll blog about last night's progress. However I still backdated it. Old habits die hard. I'll figure something out.
So, none of you have asked, "What does your animation setup look like, Errol?" So I'll show you right now.
We changed the room around since last time. The computer is on the right, and a second monitor extends so that I could see what I'm animating. I stupidly tried to animate without that second monitor, and the result was a blurry, washed out mess. I have two mice attached to the keyboard, and I'm thinking of getting a second keyboard too, that would make life a bit easier.
I was able to get some frames of animation done, about 50 frames. Not bad, considering my average. It involved one skeleton bursting out of the ground. At least, that's how I envisioned it. The arm comes bursting out followed by the ancient and decrepit body of a creaky old skeleton. Of course, that isn't translated to the final product. It looks like a stikfas skeleton coming through lego. And this is after having done it twice.
Yes, I did it twice. The first time, the timing was quite off. I forgot how slow I have to go for 24 frames per second. The arm came out too quickly, a brief 3 frame pause, and then the body. It looked unnatural. I mean, the undead are unnatural, but they still follow a few basic laws of physics.
The second time I did it, I tried to have the arm burst out, snap back a bit, and then stand up somewhat slowly. However, the same amount of frames were used for bursting out as there was for standing up slowly, so it doesn't have much of a bursting quality to it. I may cut some frames there to make it a bit quicker.
And that's it. I think I spent only an hour on it, and I was able to refilm it twice. Not much happens in one animation sitting, as you can tell.
I'm envisioning the next run of sequences. After the first skeleton rises, it will cut to the villain who is causing all the resurrections. Then, I will probably do a number of quick shots of skeletal arms bursting out of the ground in different angles. Then a shot of maggie looking concerned, which is difficult without facial expressions, so it will be of Maggie just looking. And then it will have the seven skeletons rising to attention.
Since I'm not storyboarding this, I do everything in my head, it's good to write these things down.
