Flash 1.7

Seriously I felt so stupid not so long ago, I been trying to figure out how to play movie clips in the scene for ages, like they did play in SWF movie, but now while editing or exporting as images or AVI. And its so fucking simple to do. I been trying shit like Actionscript and all you need to do is click on the object in the scene and in properties set its behavior to "Graphic" and not "Movie Clip". You can even select from which frame its starts, which is pretty useful. I might need to go around the animation and fix up few timings here and there, but if I knew this like two days ago my life would have been much much easier. Anyway, I managed to finaly export it was JPGs and use PhotoLapse (free program that converts JPGs into AVIs) to make a video, its kinda low quality and only Alpha version, but it'll do for preview.

Flash 1.6

Late post after a long day. After getting home from drawing class in the museum I felt really tired and uninspired to do work, but I pushed myself into it. Needed to finished that scene with raising Zombie. I figured how to do it, but problem was with the bloody layers, I needed body on one, dirt in the middle and hands between, fucking nightmare, took me many times and I redid it many times to get something I was happy with, still if I had more time I'd draw it frame by frame rather than using tweens for those 30 or so frames, it would saved me lots of frustration but it would take too long, time I don't have. Deadline is next Tuesday and I still need to polish it, write my essay and do the 3D animation.

I think on my list to finish this is: Do the reaction scene, clean the file, touch-up all the objects, add Play button, figure out easy and quick way to make greyscale (which I should look up tomorrow and try to do it on Friday in uni). So yeah, I think I will do my best to finish it tomorrow, then do 3D and finish of the critical report.

Hopefully with the next post or soon I'll include the animation itself =D

Maya 2.1

Done more of the scene and imported it to the animation file, so now the PumpkinDude has something to dig to. Only problem so far is with world axis and how to change it and then with the forest background, need to find some better way, maybe I'll try to do it in after effects. Oh and need to work more with the lights, it look all right from the first angle.

Maya 2.0

Almost there with my scene. Just gonna add the grave itself and some background. I thought about maybe a tree too, but I dont want to spend too much time on it, so just going with a simple plane as ground, pile of rubble and a tomb stone as decoration. I used texturing and bump mapping to fake more detail around the geometry.

Below is my current plan for the rest of the scene, the rectange is gonna be the grave, the numbers are potential positions of the character and the triangles are places for camera and/or lights. I think the positions I outlined should give interesting views, will see.

Maya 1.9

Got some pointers and improved my animation a bit, only thing that still could be improved I guess is more of a turn when he throws away the dirt, someone told me it looks like he is putting back into the grave. But thanks to all the controls and not thinking that earlier I can't do it really, so I'll hope to use particles or something to show the dirt is flying away. Anyway, also to remember for next time, texture BEFORE animating, like really, its a bitch to do later. Thankfully I had some projections from before so I could texture the body fairly easily, but was pretty bloody impossible with the head. I think thats all for now, next gonna work on the scene so I can put this shit together and make it look closer to finished piece. Overall I am quite happy with it, just should have started earlier and not fuck around.

Flash 1.5

Almost finished the Alpha version, I think only things missing is the scene of the zombie raising, which I am stuck on. Hopefully I'll get my head around it soon and can finalize this thing.

Maya 1.8

Worked more on the digging animation, had a problem with hands not staying on the spade as it moved around, they were off, so I had to manually keyframe them into right positions. First did it just at keyframes of the spade movement, but then there were still glitches, eventually ended up with keyframe almost on every frame, but it paid off, I am happy how it looks now. Also added head movement into it.

I guess next step will be putting together a simple scene, adding more animation and then making the lamp. I have about 2 weeks and a half, so I think i can do it.