Scene 11 V11 — V13

Hey guys!

Following my previous post here're the first few attempts at getting those wings onto the crow. I'm afraid that, even though it's a relatively simple thing, it's actually been causing me some problems. I don't know if it's just where I'm so tired but I'm just having trouble trying to figure out exactly what they should be doing...

Version 11



First attempt — not too sure, it just seems really off to me. I think it might be because the shoulders seem too static — also, perhaps I got the movement of the wings the wrong way around? they sort of flex upwards as her body rises which I don't think makes too much sense... they should probably flex up as she drops to the ground, where the wind resistance pulls them upwards. Or something...

Version 12



Same sort of thing, only now the wings are slightly spread which might look a little better. I definitely need to limber up those shoulders a bit. Again, some problem — think the wings are backwards — they flex outwards as she rises up rather than the other way around.

Version 13



Sort of a combination — tried to speed up the wings a little to make them slightly more frantic and got them to sort of bend backwards/downwards as she rises. I think it makes more sense but it still looks REALLY weird to me — something about the wings just doesn't match up with the whole scene. Maybe it's where I've been staring at it so long but it just seems really hard to watch? Seems to be a lot going on — maybe with the wings it's just too "busy"?

I'll keep playing around with it a little, but any critique or thoughts are more than welcome... as always :]

[Scene 10] v4

You don't need to tell me, the jump is slow and the run is still slow. I do know :] I'm just putting this up to show the progress because I'm still looking around the keyframes at the moment, before I mess around with the timings. That should be fun because I need to make sure all of the corresponding frames are still in sync once I've tweaked them.

The jump is really bothering me because I would like her to go a bit higher but once I did that in the Pre-Comp layers her head disappeared LOL I think I'll try putting a keyframe in on the Pre-Comp with the backgrounds... it's a bit hard to explain what I'm trying to say here. I'll show you once I've tried it ^^;
You wouldn't believe how much my head hurt when setting key frames for the jump. Crow's of course don't naturally jump like that so it's denying the crow's biology for a second and I don't really think it works... I'm not entirely proud with it, I can tell you that much lol

The run is slightly different here than my previous because when I was walking home from the library yesterday, I saw a crow in the next field move really quickly like this:

I didn't have my camera with me regrettably, and even if I did I wouldn't have been able to get it all set up and start recording before he/she stopped ;P

However it was quite interesting for me to see that and I revised some key frames in my head from what I saw and immediately jotted them down on paper when I got home. 

If we decided to use this walk it would mean that, again, the next sequence would have to be tweaked. This continuity is a nightmare, eh?

Scene 11 V6

Hey guys! I've been slogging away over the past week, trying to pump out as many rough blocks of each of my scenes as I possibly can. I'm going to post 'em all individually rather than in one huge post, so they're easier to find later on.

Here's a rough draft of the chase scene so far...

Scene 11



I spent the better part of two days mucking around with those bushes and this is the absolute best I can do (in terms of composition). I'm really sorry, I know it's not exactly what we wanted, but either I'm not clever enough to figure out anything better or there are no other ways of doing it...! This something like my 6th attempt, and I know there are plenty of problems with it — I just thought it would be a good idea to take a break from it for a while...!

I think I need to extend the bushes into the distance a little more so they don't cut off so suddenly, and I should also make them a little smaller on the horizon too.

I tried to at least add a little depth by creating multiple rows of bushes so that they wouldn't appear so flat. At the moment they all move perfectly in time with each other which looks a bit silly, so I'll offset them a little so that the rows at the back move a bit slower or something.

The speed of the ground and the bushes isn't quite synchronised with the crow just yet; I still need to make a lot of speed adjustments, but at least they move relatively seamlessly.

I'm not sure about the crow's run cycle; it took me ages to try and get it looking right and I'm still not totally happy with it. I tried to "animate" it a little more so that it wasn't so choppy and lifeless! I'm not keen on the head — it's a bit static, so maybe I'll try and loosen that up a little more. I think once we get the scarecrow in there though it won't matter so much!

Still... it's a start...! :]