Since the grad screening, I've finished 6 more shots, and 2 more are on the way! It's my goal to have as much of Song 1 done as possible for the faculty review, if not all of Song 1, so I've been animating like crazy.
Here's a link to the latest Song 1 animation on Youtube. As you can see, it's rapidly nearing completion!! (Please excuse the partially-animated shots, as usual.)
Below are some reflections on the animation process so far...
I'm learning to grapple with the complexity of animating Sir Knightly and the Princess, the two most difficult characters to animate. Aside from reusing as much animation as possible (which isn't much), I've learned that certain body parts, such as the head and torso, can be tweened by the computer, but other body parts, including the neck and, surprisingly, the arms, are better inbetweened by hand.
If Sir Knightly looks simple, he isn't. Here's a list of the layers inside his symbol in my Flash timeline:
Sir Knightly's Body
-Head
-Neck
-Leg1
-Boot1
-Waist
-Shoulder1
-Forearm1
-Arm1
-Body
-Shoulder2
-Forearm2
-Arm2
-Leg2
-Boot2
Sir Knightly's Head
-Eyebrows
-Ear
-Glass1
-Nose
-Glass2
-Mouth
-Chin
-Visor
-Dome
-Feather
That's a combined total of 24 separate body parts to animate individually. You may wonder why I don't just switch to 100% traditional frame replacement animation, but in my experience that takes even longer, plus I'd risk going off-model.
By contrast, here are the layers in the Singing Sword's symbol:
-Arms
-Pupils
-Eyes
-Mouth
-Sword Lines
-Rim
-Pattern
-Handle
That's only 8 layers, including facial expressions, for full-body shots. I've decided my next movie will be exclusively about swords.
