6: Still Too Fast

Well, I was able to do the back thrust kick last night, and I think I only spent about 2 hours on it. Maggie's spin is kinda fast though. It works, but she spins like a cyclone. It at least registers that she's spinning. So I may use that timing more for spinning when hit (often used in other martial arts films).

I have frame averaging turned on to about 10 (I think). While I was doing the initial jump for Maggie, she started to slowly fall over (because she was blue-tacced on) and the result was a neat motion blur. :) So for when Red Kicker gets kicked, I motion blurred him as well. Of course, the feet aren't motion blurred, but I usually have to watch the clip about 6 times to catch every nuance I put in to see if it looks correct:

Does maggie's hair look ok?
Does Red kicker move too fast?
Does the kick look ok?
Can you see any residual blue tac?
Is the spin too fast?

There are so many things that I look for! I just put the clip on repeat and watch it over and over again. Then of course I have to look for the cool factor: how cool does it look?

Sound will eventually add a lot more to it, but I have to watch everything in silence for now.

I still refrained from doing any frame by frame photoshop editing, so when Maggie jumps, I have her hold on to a long lego stick off of the screen. Because the spin is so fast, you don't notice that her arm is off screen. Heck, you barely notice that she jumps. But at least I don't have to resort to chroma keying or mind-numbing frame editing.


Real Life

Well, I hunkered down and finally put this journal on Blogger. I've been keeping it in gmail drafts this whole time, but I want to eventually publish it. Although, I can't seem to find a way to have the entries sort in ascending order. It's not meant to be a journal read every day.

The last thing I want is brickfilmers to know about this. Mainly because I'll get asked every time how my movie is going. The asking is not bad in itself, it's when I STOP doing stuff on my film because I'm lazy, and I have to look all sheepish because I haven't worked on it for a year. *sigh* I hope I can keep my motivation up this time.

Although we're having family down, so I won't be able to animate for the next week (they're staying in the Lego room) and then the week after I'm off to Calgary! Maybe in the meantime, I can improve this blog and add some photos and pics to the entries!

Happy new year!