Animated Concept Art WIP

[JMcWilliams]

Hello everyone,

I thought I would get some input on this current work in progress piece...

http://www.digital-animosity.com/footage/test_render15.avi
(divx, avi, 28megs, 50 seconds so far)

It started life as a aircraft concept but I wanted to show it in action.
It's 100% 2d animation (no particle or 3d work) and is very incomplete so far but hopefully you will get the gist. The sound is also still work in progress; I will be adding some crew dialogue for the titles once I can be bothered to record it! :)

I've painted more cross sections than currently shown in the video and plan to have crew working inside. I will be adding more dust and smoke when it comes in to land and the craft will also come under attack in order to show it's weaponry in action. I will fade in a more detailed background as time goes by leading up to the fight.

Anyhow, let me know what you think so far...

Preview:
http://www.digital-animosity.com/images/website/ConceptArt/barracuda_prev.jpg

[thr0atcutter]

Hey, pretty nice :)

I really like the animation.

[Lotet]

haha, uve always been crazy, how much time did it take to make this one?

[JMcWilliams]

thr0atcutter: Cheers :D

Lotet: Well, I've been doing it on and off for a while so I'm not exactly sure, but it's probably been about weeks work so far in total if I add up the hours. :)

I find it much quicker to do it all in 2d rather than faffing around with 3d projections like the bathhouse piece (although to be fair that took even longer because I was experimenting and learning how to do it in combination with being a slacker ;) )

[Serpian]

Wow, it looks really 3D! it just bothers me that the EON title takes about half of the time...:)

[JMcWilliams]

Serpian: Thanks,

yes at the moment the titles are far too long but I plan to have crew dialogue running over them; they will be talking about coming in to land with the soldiers on the ground (still to be done! :D ), so hopefully that will help with the build up and fill the void. Of course, it might not work as I plan and I'll have to shorten it! :)

[ijacobs9]

How?!?! :O

[JMcWilliams]

ijacobs9: All done by animating 2d layers on top of each other, pretty simple really... though the layers are piling up and it's getting a bit of a pain to work with! ;)

Well, i've done a first pass on the smoke for the landing... achieved by animating loads of low opacity painted layers on top of each other.
I've cropped the video to the relevent section to save on download time ;)
http://www.digital-animosity.com/footage/test_render16_smoke1divx.avi

(Excuse the flipped version, had to get a fresh look at the work)

Preview:
http://www.digital-animosity.com/images/website/ConceptArt/barracuda_prev2.jpg

[ijacobs9]

yea I know how to do it (well the theory anyway) but I just wish I could do it that well :\

[JMcWilliams]

Ahh I see, fair enough :)

Updates coming soon (ish)

[Lotet]

cool, well that bathhouse thing was just inzane, im glad this is working out better, and faster, for ya =P

[Anthriel]

Cool design, I really like the colour scheme!

[Novbert]

Is this all 2d???? Man, you're crazy! Five stars!
I can't wait to see the finished version!

[iambanana]

Wow! Really nice stuff! What program did you use?

[JMcWilliams]

Lotet, Anthrie, Novbertl: Cheers :D Updates will come tomorrow evening, I have to go away for tonight...

iambanana: Thanks, it's all painted in photoshop and then I animate it in after effects.

Cya tomorrow guys...

[genericlife]

great job...can't wait to see it continue to progress!

[Mike Frank]

Holy crap dude! Well done.

[Pascallo]

awesome man, great work on that!

[JMcWilliams]

genericlife, Mike Frank. Pascallo: thanks :D I'll post a new video up tomorrow morning (when I get up... i'm a bit drunk right now and cannot be arsed with uploading a video ;) )

[The Lone Gunman]

nice piece James, for some reason I can't watch the video though

[JMcWilliams]

Thanks :)
hmmm... do you have the divx codec?
If not just get the free download from the link below...
http://www.divx.com/

Don't bother installing the player IMO (I don't like it much) just install the codec then you should be able to play it in WMP or media player classic (which I prefer myself)

[JMcWilliams]

Sorry for slow update... the computer is throwing tantrums and I have to deal with intermittent blue screens of death, which is really slowing me down (I think it dislikes the amount of layers I’m using to be honest).

Anyhow, here is a small snippet of the latest video: Just experimenting with a more dynamic view of the ship when it first comes in to land... Thoughts?
http://www.digital-animosity.com/footage/cam_test1.divx

note - this .divx file will open in normal video players as long as you have the divx codec, the divx player is a bit naff IMO so do a "save as" and play it in your favourite player. I would have done a normal AVI with divx compression but for some reason my computer now throws a wobbly whenever I try and render out divx files directly in AE... sigh.

[Capital G]

Outstanding work man! I cant believe you got it looking that good without 3D, amazing, what software are you using to composite?

[JMcWilliams]

Outstanding work man! I cant believe you got it looking that good without 3D, amazing, what software are you using to composite?

Thanks Captial G, I am using After Effects :)

[Capital G]

cool, gonna have a go at animating 2D in aftereffects, I only use it for putting together my 3D at the min, cheers for the inspiration, I love when the Recon drone pops out and takes off, exellent animation and the sound rocks too :D

[JMcWilliams]

Yeh, give it a blast, it's great fun :D funnily enough the main element of the drone/UAV sound was made by distorting a recording of a squeaky gate! Whatever works eh? ;) I think there is also the sound of my washing machine in there somewhere.

[Matsign]

James, what are you thinking? This belongs in the finally finished section.

[JMcWilliams]

Matsign: I will post it there at some point but I still have lots to do on it yet. :D

[SpikeVallentine]

you got some skills, maybe one day we can collab.

[JMcWilliams]

Cheers, I enjoyed your speed animation by the way! :D

I Won't have another video for a day or two, but here are some screen grabs of the latest...
http://www.digital-animosity.com/images/website/ConceptArt/jm_grabs1.jpg

[Lotet]

i love the motion blur on the first one.

[JMcWilliams]

Cheers :D I'll be back with an update soon-ish I promise, but I have plenty of work to do at the moment and we all have to pay the bills ;)

[Kaffinated]

Sweet work! Thanks for the post!

[igorstshirts]

Pretty cool bro.

[worxe]

This is looking like a really awesome body of work man. Me and a friend had a go at animating in after effects with moving stills and bits and pieces back at the start of the year, we only had a day on it but it was great fun what with the range of effects and fluff you can use to bring things to life, i'd say you're deffinately doing it justice, and its inspiring me to go back and do some more :).

As with the noises, the guys at Lucas studio recorded racing cars as they drove by, took it into a soundfx program and reveberated the sound with a stutter then reversed it among other things (i think), which they used for that awesome engine noise in the star wars pod racer scene, for sebulba's pod. I can deffinitely hear how a squeaky gate would've been used now that you mentioned it, nice job :). Also did you make the music by the way? its got a nice easy buildup for this, I love it.

The intro part with EON there could be shortened a bit, it takes up quite a lot of time for a simple title, beyond that, the shot where the ship is flying past the silhouettes through to a landing is really well done, nice use of motion blur, but try not to go overboard with it. I suggest playing around with Fractals as well for your fog and clouds to see what results you can get, you can mimic heat exhaust effects using fractals for example, among many other things.

About the background, I don't think it'd hurt to put in some background to block out the horizon line since the majority of your scenes look onto that ship, yet the background has nothing in it, perhaps a jungle or a really big cave/abyss or such, along with the background I think you can use it to your advantage later depending on how you plan it for the battle scene to show the dropships' defense batteries in action.

If you have an alpha matte of the ship it'd be handy to put a light wrap (using the background colors to 'creep' onto the outside edge of the object) on there that you can control the reflected light around the silhouette of the ship as the scenes shift through night/day and such, may come in handy later onward when you wanted to do that battle scene.

Also agreeing with what someone else said earlier, highly recommend posting this in the finally finished section when you're done ;). Really looking forward to how this turns out.



If you're interested these were the animations we did back in February; teaser (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-_7asVJt_w) trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIOAgexc7Ok) - our brief was to make a trailer for 'something', and we were assigned a word, we got vengeance and we used a bit of babylon-esque camera shottage. The trailer one we used a portion of the homeworld sound-track with all the background machinery since we liked it so much, the guys at relic made some really awesome ship/machinery-based sounds that felt colossal that I think would serve as a good source of inspiration should you need any later for sounds.

[rushwolf]

This is really impressive, James.

I LOVE that little probe orb. That sound effect is priceless.

[JMcWilliams]

Sorry for the slow reply guys, I forgot about the thread and I didn't get any notifications.

Kaffinated and igorstshirts: Thanks :D

Luftwaffles: Hey, I liked your videos, nice work. There is something about 2d animation that just calls out to me! :D I didn't make the music, it's a track from the filmscore for "One Hour Photo". I would have liked to have done the music myself but I moved recently and my music gear is still stacked up in my parents shed. Thanks for the crits and tips - there will indeed be a proper background but it will fade in after the cross section segment. Planning on heat haze too, I was going to do it with a displacment map tracking along with the engines.

Rushwolf: Thanks Earl, good to see you here! :)

[MikeyH]

man, looks extreme! I really want to follow in your footsteps and do something similar!

[JMcWilliams]

MikeyH: Thanks, make sure you do it... it's great fun :)

I will be starting work on this again soon, an update will be a couple of weeks away but I'm gonna try and really ramp this up and get it done!

[JMcWilliams]

Quick update with a preview of the current WIP background scene...
http://www.digital-animosity.com/images/website/cuts/herches_101.jpg

The finished animation will have different camera angles and won't be tied to this side on view all the time (I am planning cut aways, close ups, internal shots, 1st person cockpit views etc).

[senany11]

Holy crap dude! Well done.
great work on that!

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[vincentgordon]

very well thought out design.

[Hookswords]

This is really impressive. I've never used aftereffects before. Does that allow you to add the sounds as well, or is that done through another program? This is really great, I cant wait to see the progress

[JMcWilliams]

senany11, vincentgordon: Thank you.

Hookswords: Thanks, After Effects does allow you to place sounds in the timeline and has some basic audio editing features.