I realized that over the last few weeks updates to my blog had come to a standstill, and it's mostly because of the deadline for both my animation and the sound design accompanying it fast approaching (14th of Jan). I have just under a working week now, and though I'm seriously concerned as to whether I'm going to get this beast finished, all I can really do is make sure I cover as many of the learning requirements as possible.
The animation itself has been shortened. In the animatic I made, the Eagle would give Ratatosk a rock which he would throw at Nidhogg, then in retaliation Nidhogg would give Ratatosk a rock to throw at the Eagle. Upon having a stone thrown at it, the Eagle then gives Ratatosk a second rock to throw at Nidhogg, and the second time around Nidhogg retaliates by hurling a boulder (reason No. 53 for Why You Don't Mess With a Dragon). However in the animation I've decided to cut out the second phase of rock-throwing entirely. Now, The Eagle gives Ratatosk a rock to throw at Nidhogg, and Nidhogg has a quick revenge when he up and hurls his boulder immediately.
With that taken into consideration, I'm probably almost halfway through. The areas that are currently more or less finished are
-The opening scene; camera pans through a forest following wisps, zooms in on a sleeping Nidhogg and then pans up the Yggdrasil tree to reveal the Eagle and Ratatosk sitting up in the branches, looking down. -- I've ran into issues with animating the characters in this scene in Cinema 4D, as they are separate planes from their background and when they move, Cinema 4D automatically resizes the images to fit in their plane. Which means the characters just won't stay still or in proportion. Wobble wobble. I think I can fix this if I recreate the images with their own background plane in Adobe Photoshop, but I'm going to look into fixes in Cinema 4D before I resort to that. I'm anticipating the same problems with a lot of my other scenes, so it's important that I find a fix quickly.
-Ratatosk is given a rock; a scene I made entirely in Adobe Photoshop because the angle is impossible in the main Cinema 4D scene model. It shows Ratatosk sitting, and he flicks his ear back towards the viewer; the Eagle's foot, acting as a hand, extends from behind the camera to hand Ratatosk a stone. Since the characters and their backgrounds aren't seperated, I don't see myself running into any problems when it comes to rendering this scene.
-Ratatosk throws the rock; he jumps down to the base beside the sleeping Nidhogg and hurls the stone; Nidhogg glares at him so he points upwards towards the Eagle. I was considering also having a shot of the Eagle laughing, to make it clearer to the viewer what Ratatosk means when he's pointing (the Eagle is the baddie and not him) but since it's not hugely important to the story I'll see if I have time to slot it in at the end of the week.
Scenes that are still in progress are as follows:
-Nidhogg picks up the boulder; Because of the differences in the scene layout between the animatic and the final, this shot is both more tricky and less tricky at the same time. Good news is that falling water is much easier to animate than crumbling earth, but it's slightly less obvious than the original version (which is one of the reasons I inserted the boulder into the scene where it originally was not there).
-Rat gets splatted; Nidhogg tries to hand the boulder to Ratatosk, but ends up squishing him. I haven't focused on this scene too much because, depending on how things go, I might snip it entirely.
-Nidhogg throws the boulder; Subject to constant resketching because an upward shot of a dragon throwing a giant rock is tricky to make look right. Luckily it's a quick shot though. Less drawings!
-Eagle gets splatted; Not started quite yet, but it shouldn't be too hard because of the speed the character moves at.
-Nid and Ratatosk settle; Because it's more or less a reverse of the opening scene, except this time with Ratatosk sitting beside Nidhogg, I don't see any problems.
So completion is roughly 4/8, so half way there. I can't be sure whether I'll be able to finish this, and I have to remember not to forget about the sound design.
Plan for this week:
-Monday: Already passed, I finished two scenes (Rat receiving and throwing rock)
-Tuesday: Make sure all the necessary scenes have their animation finalized, if possible begin on lining and colouring as many as possible.
-Wednesday: Ensure sound design is complete; all sounds collected and all research adequately presented. If I finish early, continue with animation work.
-Thursday: Render scenes, apply final edits and ensure all paperwork is absolutely finished
-Friday: Any final preparations before hand in
It's not going to finish itself. Wish me luck!
