Zlogspot - animationandvideo

Police forces in many places around the world perform roadside, random breath tests to catch out drink drivers. More recently, in some parts of Australia at least, Police conduct random drug tests in response to growing concerns of people driving under the influences of other illicit substances. In a spark of silliness, I got to thinking what else could Police forces start randomly testing for on the roadside? That's how my short animation, Random Testing Unit , began to form. Before reading any further you should watch my animation below as the humour is generated through the initial premise. Once you know it, you can't un-know it. When you've seen it, read on to find out my process of creating the animation. Should Take About a Week with Muvizu... After I had my initial idea, it only took me about three days to write my full script. At the time I was learning Muvizu , the low cost, 3D animation software that claims it's the easiest and fastest way to tell stories with...

This week Smith Micro released the latest version of it's animation software, Moho Pro 12 , which is actually the latest, completely revised and updated version of Anime Studio Pro 11 with a new name, kind of. As I understand it Anime Studio used to be called Moho in the beginning and this is a return to the original name. I firmly believe in this software as a professional animation tool, as evidenced by the fact I've kept upgrading every time they release a new version, despite never having the time to even scratch the surface learning how to use it properly. Whilst it may not have all the bells and whistles of high end, industry standard, animation software like Harmony , it's still packed full of more than enough features to create professional animation. Particularly for online distribution. Naturally I upgraded pretty much the day I got the email announcement there was a new version. Aside from all the new features, what tipped me into a purchase was a special launch ...

I haven't posted to this blog for nearly a month because Animation4Business projects have been monopolising my time. As well, I prefer to write about actual projects I'm working on over writing fill in posts like reviews (of which I have a couple I've been meaning to do). The last week or two I've had some time to get back to my Random Testing Unit short animation project so I thought I'd give you an update on that as well as my Comedian animated short. The Comedian Regular readers will know I released a one minute, cut down version of The Comedian which I entered into Reallusion's CrazyTalk 8 Comedy Contest . Unfortunately my entry didn't even get an honourable mention and lost any chance to win the entry with the most 'Facebook Likes' after some entrants tried to game the system with fake accounts. That prize was split between the three honourable mentions. Links to all the winners are in the embeded Facebook post below: I don't want to sound...

TET. Mobile Phone Sketch. There was a time when I would sit in front of the TV on an evening, sketch book in my lap, doodling away turning lines and shapes into all manner of characters and quite a few dragons too. With the rise of social media and advances in mobile phone technology my sketch pad has been replaced with Facebook, email and other social app checking. So my lack of creativity is basically your collective fault for distracting me with Likes, comments and other blips of information that really don't need to be checked every few minutes... well not really. I could just put away my phone and pick up a sketchbook again but... I've never been a big fan of flatbed scanners. For me they're an unnecessary hurdle for getting my art from sketch book to computer where so much of my work ends up these days. Back in the day, before scanners I used to draw directly into the computer with the mouse - reproducing my hand drawn sketches on paper on the screen. Whilst I got fai...

Jump Fail Animation The only way to get better at animation is to actually do some. I figure I can't keep sitting around waiting for time to complete full projects. So the other day I fired up iClone6, after having watched an iClone tutorial on creating action scenes, to try and create a short action sequence of my own. The result is this short sequence of a character attempting to jump between two roof tops but failing to make the distance. The character features on of Gary Pye's recently released Comic Faces which you can read more about under the next heading. Watch the finished scene in the animation below, that is also a comparison between my first render of just creating the basic action, and my second render, done a few days later, that includes some facial expression and a little more arm movement once the character realises he's falling. I wouldn't say it's perfect animation by any means. I had issues key framing the arms and legs. If you look a little too ...

Screen Shot from 'Random Testing Unit'. Towards the end of last week, inspiration hit with an animation idea I could create relatively quickly in Muvizu (so I thought). Over three days I wrote a script with the working title of 'Random Testing Unit'. I can't go into great detail about the script as it would spoil some of the initial humour. I can tell you, the basic premise is a comedy sketch featuring a Police, Random Testing Unit, road stop and a driver who is stopped to be tested. The finished animation will run for around 3 minutes. By the way, if you're looking for script writing software the free, online version of   Celtx is great. I swear by it as the easiest and fastest way to write a script. The paid version has many useful tools but for me, the script writing tool is enough. About two days into writing my script I felt confident enough that it was going to come together so I began designing my set in Muvizu. What I've come to realize with 3D sof...

Reallusion's Comedy Contest. Reallusion, the creators CrazyTalk 8 , which makes animating 2D or 3D talking heads easy, launched their latest animation competition, The CrazyTalk Comedy Contest . The competition closes on June 24th, 2016, which is plenty of time to learn CrazyTalk and submit a 60 second comedy animation created with the software. Even better, if you don't own CrazyTalk 8, you can still enter as Reallusion is making a special free edition available for download from the contest page. Making this the ideal time to give it a try and possibly win over $1000.00 in cash. Of Course I'm Entering... Work in progress. The Comedian in iClone6. The Comedian Back in March I started working on a CT8/iClone6 animation based upon a character I created for a planned series of comic strips called 'The Comedians'. Even though this animation was intended to use both CT8 (close ups) and iClone 6 (medium and wide shots) to create a complete short, my comedian's entir...