Names

Yesterday my brother pointed out that my characters don't have last names. So I've looked up English surnames and we sorted through and eventually decided on their last names.

Louella (their grandmother), Robyn (the mother), and Arinya's surname is Moore. Then Robyn marries Stephen Taylor and so Robyn and Benji's surnames become Taylor.

Louella Moore
Arinya Moore
Robyn Moore/Robyn Taylor
Stephen Taylor
Benji (Banjora) Taylor

Jayden became Stephen, because Jayden is a modren name so it isn't likely that the name was around at the time he was born.

So surnames are worked out, I just have to continue with working out dates and planning out the series.

Animatic 40

Today I put my characters in my animation, and then decided that it would be best to animate a walk cycle, so I did that. I animated both the boy and girl walking. I then put them in. I found that having them walk across and off the screen to be too distracting, so it was better to have them move very slowly part way across the screen, and slowly fade out to disappear before the full title "Outback Adventure" appears.

I considered switching the walk from them with all their gear from the start of the series, to them as they are at the start of this episode...but it didn't work. Because of the items they are holding - the wagon and the map, I couldn't use the same walk cycle...and changing the cycle looked strange, so I scrapped it. It works fine as it is, apart from potentially causing some confusion to those who might not know it's part of a series who would see that the characters do not have the same stuff as they do in the title sequence. I don't consider it to be a big issue though.

Boy with gear walk cycle:


Girl with gear walk cycle:


Boy without gear walk cycle:


Girl without gear walk cycle:

Chibi kids for start

One thing I've been thinking of doing, is adding chibi images of the main characters in the opening titles, when the text is drawing, so that there is something interesting to look at while the text is drawing. The picture would be of the children with all their gear as they would have looked at the start of their journey...it would either be a still image or an animation of them walking on or across the screen. And may or may not show them with their full gear fading into them in their current state at the start of the animation.
Something that would have been an interesting intro to each episode would be to show mini animations of how they lose each item to the current point of the series. It would be kind of like those clips at the start of an episode that refreshes the viewer what has happened in the last few episodes.

Yesterday I drew sketches of the two states, and scanned. Then yesterday I started converting a chibi run cycle to this new image. I started with the boy, adding a jacket, shoes, and his wagon with the contents. Today I added the bag and experimented with the colour of the boy's jacket. I think I'll go with a shade of red. I also completely finished the girl today.

Sketch:


Chibi boy with red jacket:


Chibi boy with blue jacket:


Chibi boy with green jacket:


Chibi kids together:

Animatic 39

Today I recorded and added a few more sound effects, emu chick footsteps (a bead necklace), pecking (thuds), emu's beak snapping shut after missing boy's foot (earring case snapping shut combined with a clap). I extended the music at the start and slightly altered the timing of the music going into and out of the cave.

I also cleaned up a few more scenes, some random pixel row along the bottom of some of the backgrounds (both Uluru, cave and jump backgrounds). I also changed the colour of the two drawing scene backgrounds so that they are actually closer to the colour of the ground rather than being too orange and standing out as different.

Had to clean up the legs and arms of the boy putting food in his mouth.

I also looked at my back story and tried to work out dates for when everything happens, to work out proper ages and even birthdays of the characters, since it's possible that one of the characters might have a birthday during the series, and I have to make sure all the dates add up.

I tried to get my brother to do Benji's voice, but it kept coming out too deep or throaty, so I ended up doing another recording myself.

I also added two frames of the close up of the girl where I moved her arm a little bit, so it looks like she is drawing, rather than just being a still image.

Background: Drawing 1:


Background: Drawing 2:

Animatic 38

Edited the caterpillar to give more detail, shine, thicker shadow, etc.
I also edited the music at the end, still need to fix up that at the start. I extended the chase over Uluru scenes, pushing my length up to 2 minutes. I also added the drawing on the ground in scene 10.

Detailed caterpillar crawl:

Animatic 37

Today I added the emu chick to the scene where the boy is in the tree, I found that the chick ends up not near where it is in the following close-up, however the size of the bag and chick is inaccurate in the first scene due to it being a chibi, it may be more accurate if it were proper, I may decide to change the background for the close-up scene later.

I drew and animated a caterpillar climbing up a branch in the tree, and added the scene in between the girl being shocked the the bag being lowered with the chick inside, and then another scene after that, of a sun against a mostly pink and white sky that fades in and out of the previous and next scenes. I'll still work on the timing. I now have 1 second to work with.

To animate the caterpillar I used a reference video and drew 8 main frames of the animation as nothing more than a thick green line, used the puppet warp tool to get the different shapes. Then after I was happy with it I added in the extra details (like eyes, and feet).

Basic caterpillar animation:

Animatic 36

Today and yesterday I edited the minor details that I noitised when watching the video of my animation last time. It was mostly cleaning up frames where the colour was going out of the lines. I also had to change the arms in the chibi side run cycle, so that they wouldn't swap when the kids run in the opposite direction. And added the bag and emu chick to the chibi front run away scene (26).
The only thing I have to do now is put the bag and emu chick in one of the scenes where the children are in the tree with the emu below them.
Other than that I've considered adding a scene between the girl shocked and the lowering of the emu in the bag, of a caterpillar crawling along a branch. This would break it up, show time passing and extra detail about the area as the children help the emu chick, putting it in the bag off screen.

Animatic 35

Today I edited the backgrounds of 3 scene, the 3 following the inside the cave scene (scene 30). I made the sky a sunset colour, and altered the hue of the sky to be sunset-type colours, this is to show the time that's passed and to avoid going from blue sky in scene 33 to multicoloured sky in scene 34.
In order to make the rock in scenes 28 and 32 look like Uluru, I drew thin trunks on the trees (which previously looked more like grass) and made the characters running over it smaller.

Background 31 with sunset sky:


Background 32 with sunset sky:


Background 33 with sunset sky:

Animatic 34

I have extended my animation. It has gone from 1 minutes and 30 seconds to almost 1 minute 50 seconds.

I animated shines in the emu's eyes to make it look more sad, and extended the scene as necessary.
I animated the title sequence, so that the characters's names draw onto the scene, rather than fade in, this is what took the longest. It also required lengthening of the title scene and scene 1. I also made mini compositions for each of the words being drawn and of different title elements that had significant animation.
I lengthened the credits as well, which wasn't difficult.
I edited the boy jumping side scene to have a trail of transparent images following his jump.The scene of the girl reaching out was also extended by a few frames, and the two focused on drawing scenes.

I also did some sound work. I had to lengthen the start music as it ended up too short after the first scenes had been extended. I edited more of my dog's whines to make the squawks of the adult emu...I also had to lengthen and edit the end music, and edited the boy's voice slightly to be louder and played around with the pitch. I also moved the audio lines so they weren't as close together.

Animatic 33

Recently been working on adding sound effects. I made a few other minor changes: removed some colour that was out of line, slight credits adjustment. I edited the recordings I already had, made sure to remove the static and make them loud enough to be heard. The dialogue is temporary and may or may not stay at all. Depends on if it's needed.
There is dialogue around the drawing scenes, the children gasp, a slight whimper when close up of the boy on the ground, heavy breathing and gasps in the cave, the emu chick cries (which is an edited and combined version of one of my dogs whining). I also edited the ending music, speeding it up when I want it to sound more happy.

Animatic 32

I have broken up the background of scene 1 to create a better panorama effect. It worked quite well.
I have also added some temporary beginning and ending credits. I'm still playing around with the style of the titles. My animation is now at 1min30sec including the credits.

Animatic 31

The past couple of days I've just been making minor changes to my animation, mostly adding/making the shadows on the characters more prominent. I did this in in the first and last scenes, though not the chase scene. Before that I added a shadow to the silhoette scene, since they are directly in front of the sun...I just copying a version of the siloette animation, flipped it and made it transparent.

After showing my animation to someone I was given the suggestions to break up the first scene more to get a better panorama effect, and to record some silence.