Completing the animation

Once all of the seperate scenes had been successfully animated and recorded, I needed to comile them into a sequence. To do so, I collated all of the recordings into Windows Movie Maker, and positioned them in sequential order. Some clips had to be shortened in length to improve the flow - although I generally had recorded longer clips than I intended to use, to allow for editing.

Some scenes were joined directly - quick transitions between clips giving the impression of an instant camera change without the flow of the movement being disrupted - this can be seen such as when there is a close-up of his hoof as he walks over the remote control, and also when seeing his hands holding it.

I used a couple of fade transitions in places where a little time was supposed to have passed between the two clips - the Minotaur running away from the TV fades out, with him behind the sofa in the next clip. This allows for the viewer to accept the flow of the animation where a few details have been left out, to avoid unnecessary complications in animation.

The TV screen shot has been used the first time the character looks at the screen - however later I have edited shots directly into the sequence - this is because the first shot establishes that the video is on the television screen.

I decided to opt for a "silent movie" approach to the sound, as I dont have much experience in that area. The music I used was actually composed as a silent movie track, which was meant for the purpose of background music that completes the scene, without detracting from the visuals (the particular tune used was named "Olde Timey", which I chose from a website that hosted various tracks in the genre)

I am pleased with the end result of the project - although I had no real animation experience in the past, I feel that I have created a character with some personality, and succeeded in making a complete sequence. Whenever I found a problem, I managed to find a way around it - since the end result is the main importance, I found it was good to be able to look outside of the box and consider other ways of implying actions, or creating the effects that I wanted to portray.

Animation Pt 4

The final stages of animating my character was showing him watching the TV. To do so, I then used a complete biped once more, and positioned his torso and arms to give the impression of him relaxing on the back of the sofa. I then used keyframes to animate two slightly different scenes:

1) The first consists of him appearing to watch the screen, tilting his head as he observes the video with curiosity.

2) The second of him waving at the screen - this was initially meant to be him waving at the characters on-screen, although with the camera angle it gives the impression that maybe he is waving at the viewer. Either way works however, and gives a nice result.

I animated these scenes by keeping the biped positioned behind the sofa, using auto-key to manipulate parts of his arm and head to move along with the timeline.

After this had been done, I researched into how to apply a video to the TV. After a little searching, the method I found to work was to create a .tga (Targa) sequence. To do so, I took a few clips of a cartoon, and edited parts together within movie editing software.

Once this was created, I used a programme called VirtualDub to convert the file to a .tga sequence. I then applied the sequence to a plane that acted as the television screen, and recorded a few hundred frames of a still shot of the screen, showing the video playing on it. I did initially have some trouble with this - but this was due to my own error at unnecessarily altering a value I didnt need to, whilst working out how to use video within 3D max.

Animation Pt. 3

I wasnt sure how to implement video into my project at this point, so I decided to leave the TV sections until the end of animation - the actual animating would be fairly simple at these points. I next used the footsteps tool to create a short running clip which followed the first TV clip.

The next task I had was to create a scene of my character peeking out from beyond the sofa. To do so, I positioned a camera facing the front of the sofa, with the character model behind it.

Instead of animating the entire character to actually kneel behind the sofa and actually do the complete action, I only worked on the body parts that you can actually see - obviously there was no real need to work on complicated motions that would not be seen in the finished item, rather give the illusion that the character does these things.



So, to get the effect I was after, I animated the model's hands reaching over the sofa, keyframing the hands and fingers to curl around the top of the furniture. To give the illusion of the minotaur pulling himself up, I actually copied the head of the character, and animated this moving freely - since the actual body cant be seen, it gives the effect that the parts are moving in sync.