Felice Thread/Gallery

[Dave]

This is a place holder for Felice's Content.

[feliceworkshop]

Hey Don, I'm using Bartok's audio snippet but I'll be animating Winnie over it....
Here is my accents chart, I've split up the dialogue in 5 lines because that gave me a sense of phrasing...
http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/Accents01.jpg
Could you tell me if I did that correctly?....
I've also tried to lay down those accents on the x-sheet in a rhythmic fashion. I've tried at first placing down the beats every 12 frames, however if that worked out pretty well with the first line for the rest of the lines the accents kept falling on the wrong spot....
I've then decided to place my accents every 6 frames and that seem to work well.... however two things occur:
a) although accents fall in place almost everywhere, I have few accents falling where there it is not supposed to be an accent.
b) halfway through the dialogue an accent falls where there is silence in the dialogue instead of the correct letter!....and that is because of the offset in the timing where Bartok takes a pause between the first "please..."and the second "..PLEASE!!" .... how do I resolve this?
Here's first 3 pages of my X-Sheets:
http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/X-Sheet_01a.jpg

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/X-Sheet_02a.jpg

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/X-Sheet_03a.jpg

[feliceworkshop]

As you might note in the first page of my x-sheet the animation starts at 1a instead of 1. That is because the first beat that I've ever placed on the x-sheet, was the one on frame 27, I then built the other beats around the one on frame 27, therefore counting 12 frames upward I ended up adding 4 more frames to the beginning of the animation to fit the count. I hope that makes sense.
.....I'll be uploading thumbnails and some character research I did for Winnie, later on tonight but if meanwhile you could just give me your thoughts about my process so far it will be greatly appreciated!!....:)
Thanks.

[jeremyhopkins]

You're doing a really good job of planning. I wouldn't worry too much if your accents are off yet just give a go and see how things work. Personally I don't have a problem with the way you've labeled your X-Sheet with 1a but there are some people, especially fx artists, that are really particular about labeling everything properly. Try showing your X-Sheet to other artists too to see if they understand. If they don't maybe it's best to adjust it after you've done your pose test.

[feliceworkshop]

Wooot!.... it's super late while I'm posting these, but I couldn't wait until tomorrow.... even so because I feel that if I post these tonight tomorrow I can start with a fresh new take on my drawings. Need to work on pushing some poses and I need to put down in writing a personality profile for Winnie!... It's in my head , I did not have much time to write it down...:o

...so my scene it's going to be about Winnie pleading with that crazy looking blacksmith Ogre from Bartok the Magnificent, can't remember what he was called:
http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/WinnieArt001.jpg

here's the first pass of Winnie's thumbnails:
http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/WinnieThumbs-firstpasse.jpg

...I'm not satisfied with the first part of her poses.... but I'm sure that after a good night sleep I might be able to gather a whole new fresh perspective on everything.

[NateHorsfall]

Great stuff so far!

I THINK I follow whats going on with your X sheet. And I think this is what I should have done with mine. It's my first time not only animating dialogue in 2d, but also on an Xsheet, so I'm kind of lost with it. Haha. I may study yours and see if I can revise mine to help it. So thanks in advance :)

Thumbnails are good! But I know he's gonna call you out on the "twinning". Something I do all the time, too. Maybe try gesturing with one hand one for a few one these, or ONLY one hand if you can pull it off. At the start anyway. Then the later ones where both are out, will be that much stronger.

[johncbeggs]

felice I really like your poses and expressions you gave in those thumbnail sketches for your animation!
I can see you put alot of thought into your work! and I like your style of drawing you stay true to yourself in a great way!

ill checking back looking at your updates thats for sure! :)

[Phrogger]

Love your sketches, Felice! Lots of feeling here...Do you plan to have her act out any of the first phrase or is she standing still?

[Gabriel-Carson]

good job lots of feeling!

[Rodney]

Absolutely awesome!

The stark difference between Winnie and the Ogre immediately provides a sense of contrast that sucks our attention in. Makes me want to know what is going on between the two as there is sure to be conflict.

You've barely begun to draw and already your shot is appealing.

Very nice.

[Rodney]

Felice,
Was reading back and examining your xsheet...
Where you've indicated the question "Accent in the Wrong Spot?" looks like a perfect place for silence to me.

Don't underestimate the power of silence.
It's can be like a heart skipping a beat and in some cases that pregnant pause may actually need to be accentuated.

[Phrogger]

Felice,

I went back and looked at your xsheets- I'm not sure I'm understanding the beats/accents you're putting on here. Are you using the metronome? I thought we are supposed to be using the accents from our dialogue diagrams.

[feliceworkshop]

Thanks everybody for the nice comments, I've been taking a day off from the forum because I was working on a small gig here in Florida.

...well first things first, Meredith, Nate and whoever is looking at my x-sheet and thinking of following my example, please don't!... I am pretty sure now that I did that wrong....why? well here's why:

if you take the time to go to the above link and download the zip file from Megaupload, you'll be able to take a look at a clip from one of Don's Wednesday seminar sessions, in which I've asked him how to lay down the beats in a dialogue (I'm so sorry that I've just remembered about this recorded session this morning and not early on!) As he points out in the clip, the idea is that the beats are not mechanically laid down in a rhythmic fashion like when we use the metronome.... the rhythm in a dialogue is syncopated, uneven, irregular, they follow the accents of the words...so my take is that when you lay down the beats for a dialogue following the accents on the words, the result is quite different from when you use a metronome,..since the accents are irregular, then the beats will show up irregularly in the X-sheet as well....makes sense?
(..so sorry, Rodney, but I think that your solution of increasing the numbers of beats to fit both the action and the dialogue don't works....it's either on or the other, otherwise it's a mess: like my first messy attempt at laying down the beats on my X-sheet clearly demonstrates...) ...again, I'm sorry for coming back at you guys so late with this, but I'm sure that tomorrow there is going to be a exhaustive discussion on the subject matter with Don.....:)

[Dave]

Thanks everybody for the nice comments, I've been taking a day off from the forum because I was working on a small gig here in Florida.

...well first things first, Meredith, Nate and whoever is looking at my x-sheet and thinking of following my example, please don't!... I am pretty sure now that I did that wrong....why? well here's why:

if you take the time to go to the above link and download the zip file from Megaupload, you'll be able to take a look at a clip from one of Don's Wednesday seminar sessions, in which I've asked him how to lay down the beats in a dialogue (I'm so sorry that I've just remembered about this recorded session this morning and not early on!) As he points out in the clip, the idea is that the beats are not mechanically laid down in a rhythmic fashion like when we use the metronome.... the rhythm in a dialogue is syncopated, uneven, irregular, they follow the accents of the words...so my take is that when you lay down the beats for a dialogue following the accents on the words, the result is quite different from when you use a metronome,..since the accents are irregular, then the beats will show up irregularly in the X-sheet as well....makes sense?
(..so sorry, Rodney, but I think that your solution of increasing the numbers of beats to fit both the action and the dialogue don't works....it's either on or the other, otherwise it's a mess: like my first messy attempt at laying down the beats on my X-sheet clearly demonstrates...) ...again, I'm sorry for coming back at you guys so late with this, but I'm sure that tomorrow there is going to be a exhaustive discussion on the subject matter with Don.....:)

Felice,
I took that link out of your post because the site you mention seems to have an unauthorized copy of our weekly seminar.

I don't know if you read this copy by Don that was attached to the track reading page...
"Action scenes are normally timed to the rhythm of the metronome. Acting scenes can be timed to the rhythm of the dialog track. I advise you not to try combine both methods in the same scene.
Here's a link to the page...
http://donbluthanimation.com/_Don_Bluth_Animation_acting_track_reading_xsheets. html

[feliceworkshop]

I took that link out of your post because the site you mention seems to have an unauthorized copy of our weekly seminar.

Sorry about the misunderstanding Dave, it was just a brief snippet, barely above 1 minute from the weekly seminar: it wasn't the entire 1 hour ..but if you feel that I shouldn't post the link to begin with I will respect that.


I don't know if you read this copy by Don that was attached to the track reading page...

I've totally missed that, thank you for the heads up.... that confirms what I was writing above. I'm glad to be on the right track....

[Rodney]

(..so sorry, Rodney, but I think that your solution of increasing the numbers of beats to fit both the action and the dialogue don't works....it's either on or the other, otherwise it's a mess: like my first messy attempt at laying down the beats on my X-sheet clearly demonstrates...)

Now you've got me curious about what I wrote Felice!
I've either typed something incorrect or wasn't very clear in my thoughts on the subject.

As far as I know the main thing increasing the number of beats will do is quicken the pace. My comments on Layering of rythyms/beats has more to do with patterns that form when they are combined (especially dialogue/music).

I had read the notice on the webpage Dave references with respect to not combining Action and Dialogue beats which is why I used the term 'Layering'. This may be where you got the idea of quickening the pace of the metronome? I do think it entirely reasonable to have fast paced Dialogue match up with fast paced Action. If one or the other is too slow then the other will likely have to be changed.

Sorry if what I wrote was confusing and glad to see you are back on track.


I'm sure that tomorrow there is going to be a exhaustive discussion on the subject matter with Don.....

Most definitely. I'm looking forward to that! :)

[feliceworkshop]

I had read the notice on the webpage Dave references with respect to not combining Action and Dialogue beats which is why I used the term 'Layering'. This may be where you got the idea of quickening the pace of the metronome?

.... no, actually by reading this:


One thing that tends to make everyone's job a whole lot easier is that when the beat is fairly quick actions will tend to sync with the beat even if only by accident. Then it may be just a matter of moving the most important movements a few frames forward or back to hit the critical beats.

which lead me incorrectly to believe that you where suggesting a methodology...but instead you where simply depicting a scenario.


Sorry if what I wrote was confusing...

no need for that since I was the one rushing through your post and jumping to conclusions.

[feliceworkshop]

Here's my second pass for Winnie's thumbnails. I'm fairly satisfied with most of her poses, but man oh, man those one in the middle of her dialogue when she turns around and goes: ...sir I'm Begging you..." are really bugging me incredibly.
I'm still not good at this whole visualization process.... some times it works for me and I can see the scene playing in my head just as if I was watching it on a tv screen, but other times it is like the antenna gets knocked off and all I can get is interference and static.
I've decided to have Winnie chained down. This gives me the chance to add more elements to the story (she is a prisoner of Ogle the blacksmith ogre), and play with a prop which complements her already frustrated state.

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/Felice-2p_Winnie001.jpg
http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/Felice-2p_Winnie002.jpg
http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/Felice-2p_Winnie003.jpg
http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/Felice-2p_Winnie004.jpg

[feliceworkshop]

....and a few pages from my revised x-sheet, beats fall only where the accents in the dialogue are. Hopefully this time around I did things correctly....

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/Felice_X-Sheet_01-1.jpg

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy149/felcebucket72/Winnie%20The%20Witch/Felice_X-Sheet_02-1.jpg

[lavallelee]

awesome job on winnie! on model, can't wait to see you animate this! :cool:

[NateHorsfall]

Hey Felice, awesome job so far. A+! and the only one with full approval to animate! Kick some ass, man!

But don't think it won't go unchallenged! ;)

[feliceworkshop]

LOL...I know Nate, a lot of talented contenders to the belt in this workshop....
put up your dukes man!!... I'm looking forward to next week....:cool:

[feliceworkshop]

Holy Cannoli!...
I've been neglecting the forum for couple of weeks now,...sorry about that. Lots of things happened in my neck of the woods, my computer survived a nasty crash...but it took some work and time to get it back on-schedule; I'm also dealing with some difficulties about landing a steady job here in Florida (working on small gigs here and there it's not working out for me) :)
...and all this, while trying to deliver an animation that for the most part needs to demonstrate that I'm paying attention at Don's lectures...LOL
well here it is....

http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=578

I know it looks incomplete, but that's due to the fact that I've restarted from scratch after the last on-line session. Too many things where bugging me; design, spacing between the drawings and mostly of all: the desire to put into practice the lecture that Don put together for us this past week. It was kind of a struggle between wanting to impress Don with what I already had and realizing that I'm also doing this Acting Workshop to gain something out of this incredible medium. So against all my ethical rules I ended up clearing the working table and starting up from zero... :rolleyes:
If the result matched the effort I'll know for sure tomorrow.... I still see a lot of things to improve, but definitely something funny has happened while working on this animation...while moving my pencil on the paper, some of Don's teaching started clicking in my head ....and while this prevented me to fall down the usual bad path of erroneous habits it also instilled me with a great sense of self confidence. I'm way far off from claiming that I "get it", I'm simply happy that when my animation comes out the way it does is it because of my planning and my thoughts, instead of being an happy accident.
I hope that somehow makes sense and hopefully will not come off as smugness..

[Phrogger]

Wow, Felice! I didn't think your scene could look any better- but it does! You really have the feeling and expression down in Winnies face and gestures. Bravo!

[jeremyhopkins]

Night and day improvement. Much stronger choices and I'm sure if you hadn't had all the technical problems, you'd be finished no problem. Great work! I don't really have any suggestions except I hope you can finish it up after class. It's very professional. Congrats!

[NateHorsfall]

really sucks about all the computer woes and everything else.. but good on you for sticking with all this :)

I did NOT expect you to redraw things completely from scratch, but hey, whatever makes things better, right?
The same things i liked about it before, are still there.. especially your squash and stretch. But now you have even stronger poses and a really really smooth sweep of the arm with a step! If you EVER take this to twos.. I bet that would be so fluid.. It's a small thing, but my favorite part.

Sorry you had to start everything all over.. but if you learned and improved.. it's all worth it. Great job!

[feliceworkshop]

Thank you Meredith, Jeremy and Nate for the great comments.... I really appreciate the kind words.

It's crazy late while I'm trying to write these few lines with bloodshot eyes... but I couldn't resist, I worked on it a few hours and added more in-between and breakdown drawing. Now at least the first part of the animation is on 4's.

http://donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=589

Still, because now the poses are much close one to the other I can spot even more inconsistencies in the model and the poses..... Gah! It's like a never ending arm-wrestling match. Well at least from this point on fixing up these problems will not require any hair-pulling ( ....I hope).

[NateHorsfall]

welcome to insanity!
But then again.. we've been here before... haven't we? ;)

good job man. hopefully Dave posts it!

[feliceworkshop]

welcome to insanity!
But then again.. we've been here before... haven't we?

...AH,ha!..you know it!
I totally miss the cold pizza and the sight of everybody working at their Jake's animation in the wee hours of the night in the Xona's conference room.... oh, yeah! and Alexandra walking around in her pajamas! Man!...those where the good days! :laughing: