Monday, January 30, 2006

21: Men Never Learn

It's true. Ekko was feeling sick and so I stayed with her in the Lego room as she lay there all tired and worn out.

Being in the Lego room, I thought, "Hey, I may as well do some animating since Ekko doesn't have enough energy to bother me."

Bad idea. I forgot that there is another saboteur whose name starts with "Z", and she likes to follow Ekko around and come into the Lego room and do all sorts of things detrimental to animation.


I was able to get in about 7 frames, when I bumped the camera. It took me almost an hour to get 7 frames. *sigh*

In all fairness, I probably would have eventually bumped the camera anyways, because I had the camera cable wedged underneath the camera, which I didn't notice. So any slight bump would have caused it to go off kilter. And actually, on the second take, when all the kids were in bed, I actually did bump the camera again, but only after I finished filming everything. Only when I tried to go back and insert a couple of frames, because the lift didn't accelerate, I bumped it, and it went all askew.

Problem is, I have the camera on an angle, so I just put two round 1x1 on the corner of the camera and then angle it that way.

In the end, I did get the scene done and I'll keep it the way it is. I do have to get "falling" done correctly. Falling from a height is fine, but falling from being tripped or hit is going too fast. It should take about 5 or even 6 frames to fall down. I do 3 or 4, but that's the same number of frames I use for falling from a height.

In fact, I think any movement that is 3 or less frames is too fast. Any punch, kick or whatever should be at the very least 4 frames.

Stikfas can't bend there feet very well, at least not the beta females, so having her kneel was difficult because at first, the best I could do was get her to be in a sitting position. However, I wanted her to duck and crouch. So the shot here, if you didn't notice, has her feet backwards. I was wondering if it would be too noticeable, but it actually looks somewhat natural.