The Making Of Hanging Fan (2008)

I considered necessary to share with you all the complete process of making of the 5-min shortfilm I did for the last two terms in AnimationMentor, since we entered the Twilight Zone and I felt that it was important to ensure the reliability of my word. Mark and I shared some e-mails about this and I can honestly say, he's a great animator and a very responsible and honest person, and I share completely his concern: I would have done exactly the same thing in his position, to go ahead and contact the person who did the film; and ask politely to give a response and act accordingly, instead of just pointing fingers and blame without asking first. Since I want him to feel comfortable that my work wasn't a rip off of his, I'll dedicate this new section to the complete process of Making Of "Hanging Fan" (2008)

1.Story

2.Story Pitch

3.Final Idea

4.Schedule

5.Storyboard And Animatic

6.3d Layout

7.Blocking

8.Blocking Plus

9.Polishing

10.Final

The Making of Hanging Fan (10)

10. Final version

This took a while and a lot more tweaking (especially on the antenna cable) but at the end, this is what I got.

Glad I have this documented now :)

PREVIOUS: 9.Polishing

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The Making of Hanging Fan (9)

9. Polishing

Time to scream!

This is the hardest and most challenging part of any animation. You've got a cute nice blocked scene, the keyframes and important poses showing up. It's very beautiful to watch and it gives you the sensation of movement, although they're still images, separated by several frames, which makes the whole thing look like you're seeing a comic strip really fast.

Then, you take all your keyframes, make the interpolation become a curve spline instead of a stepped sequence, and voila! Madness.

Madness? This... is... Splining!



This took forever! And the damn splines were so difficult to predict. I found myself doing test over test over test to get the interpolations work right. It was really challenging and a bit fun (in a masochist way) but I can honestly say this was the part where I learned the most.

For example, no. 1 rule when you make the poses in blocking mode: Never ever rotate something freely. Do it so by rotating each axis. It takes longer but believe me, it's worth it.

PREVIOUS: 8.Blocking Plus
NEXT: 10.Final

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