A couple days with no posts...

...and with not much work getting done.

Regardless, I was able to start animating the animatic and have strung together a few shots. Based on the storyboard we first worked out, these are shots 2, 3, 7 and 8, in that order. Clearly some shots are missing. Nevertheless, it's a good first exercise for seeing how we can move through the world.

So, what's wrong with it? Well, the timing is rather weak and does nothing to set the mood of this open. Moving into final animation, I want the girl to feel small and tentative. She's exploring a part of the city she's not spent time in and she's looking for something. And, probably, as she moves through the world, it starts to crowd her, to loom up around her and, eventually, she gets pulled inside - not literally.

I think that the few shots that have a moving camera need to fit together better as well, here and in the shots as we move forwards.

What I do like about some of these is the framing, where there are fore, medium and back ground elements that all block together a nice shot.

And RE how much sky is visible, I'm not sure how exactly we're gonna handle that yet.

I'll get a few more shots up tomorrow and recut the animatic. I think I'll probably make it too long at first, and then we'll cut it back together.

And one odd thing rendering out this movie, After Effects wouldn't render to H.264. After Effects instead of FCP? Yeah, whatever. I use AE every damned day of my life, it's just too easy to open it up and cut a little sequence together in it than it is to open a real editing program. At one point I thought I should devote some serious time to FCP but really, come on. The last thing this world needs is one more editor.

Back to the point, I could Export to H.264, but not Render to it. Apparently it's an issue related to the source of your footage. These are Playblasts outta Maya, saved as .mov's. What that means in this context, I have no idea.



James - comments welcome.

(Man, I need to get faster "up" speeds. Or I've got to start UL'ing when I start typing. I'm only getting 43kbps UL'ing to Google video. Is that slow? It sure feels slow.)