Well this one is going to get nerdy, so if you aren’t interested in the technical details of animating with Blender, skip past this post or consider yourself warned.

For reference purposes, I’m using Blender version 2.49.  There is a 2.5 Alpha version available, but I’m not needing to be cutting edge here.

So what was Marie’s problem?

Here is what I was trying to do.  First you have to know that I’ve been using Shape Keys on Marie’s Mesh for the last, say 1000 frames or so, to animate her face while she scolds poor Douglas (her husband, read the last post to catch up on the soap opera).

In those frames she was standing in one location, all be it she does move her arms around, specifically to slap around Douglas.

Then we get to my hours of frustation this evening.  Now on frame 2300 I want to start moving Marie’s Mesh, along with her Armature and clothes of course, lest this become an R rated animatic.

However once I inserted the first key frame for the location of Marie’s Mesh, it seemed to lock her there.  That is, I advanced to frame 2325 moved Marie’s object, the armature and clothes object to a new location and then inserted the key frame.  All looked good until you advance another frame and then Marie’s mesh (not the clothes or armature) would pop back to the first location I keyed framed.  Upon analysis of the IPOs and action window for Marie’s Mesh and several tests it became clear that although I physically changing her location in the 3D window, every key frame I inserted was being coded at the same location as the first.

I poked around for about an hour and then realized in the IPO window a particular setting.  Marie’s IPO was set to be linked to an Action.  In fact.  Marie’s mesh object was linked to the same action as the shapes for her facial expression were linked to.  I unlinked Marie’s IPO from the action in the IPO window and Walla, problem solved. 

Don’t ask me why, or how at this point, its too late at night, but I suspect her object IPO can’t share an action with the shape keys. 

So I’ll look at this again tomorrow in hopes of fixing the scene file, since all this testing was done in a separate file.  And, if I come to some more illuminating conclusions I’ll of course post an update.

Domestic violence isn’t a laughing matter in real life, but in the XandY film the relationship between Marie Clarkson a woman of relative small stature and her taller but awkwardly weak husband Douglas brings comic relief to the otherwise serious tone of the film.

Marie slaps Douglas

To animate the slapping motion, I started Douglas moving before the actual sound of the slap to create anticipation in his movement.  It took about 1/2 hour to key the basic movements.  I then moved onto the next shot which Douglas delivers a short 20 second line.  To lipsync the dialog I used the Blender Shape Key function for Douglas’s mesh. 

I did this while watching the Golden Globe awards, which I didn’t find entertaining.  This awards program doesn’t actually have any entertaining like singing or dancing in between the industry patting itself on the back. 

Anyway, back to the couple of shots I worked on this evening for the XandY Film.  I don’t have any interesting challenges to report.  The whole exercise was rather routine actually, so I’ll sign off with that and try to think of ways to make the dry busy work of translating my vision to the animatic more interesting.

Making the X&Y film continues to be a rewarding journey and I’m attempting to share what I’m learning here in the X&Y Journal.

Currently I’m using Blender 3D to producing a 3D animatic in episodes as a preproduction tool for the “X and Y,” film project.

http://blender3d.org

The final film will be produced as a live action feature with Visual Fx. 

Browse the journal belowl for preproduction media including concept art, storyboard sketches, animatics, temp track music clips and documentary photos/videos.

Story Vids are internet media that I have embedded here for your enjoyment.

Each review includes my reason for selecting the internet media for this collection.  Video sharing websites are a promising outlet for showcasing creativity.  I’m personally interested in finding media with story content.  I’m particularly partial to Science Fiction or Fantasy related stories executed with Visual Fx, but not exclusively.

Unfortunately, real works of story based creativity (Story Vids) seem to be buried in large quantities of what I describe as  noise media.  So I search out Story Vids for my own enjoyment and while doing so, provide them here if they meet my criteria for being worth the effort of a Story Vid Review.  The length of my reviews vary.  Some selections may be entertaining but not deep enough to provoke anything more than one to two lines of commentary.  Of course you’re free to disagree.  Register and comment to let me know what you think.

The work below has been selected based on a four broad criteria of personal tastes.

1. The work must be a production of passion, not a hollywood studio commercial film.
2. The work has to have a discernible (to me) story and that story has to be compelling enough to keep me interested in experiencing the entire work.
3. The work must be complete.  No trailers. 
4. The work should have reasonable production quality, but this can vary depending on the strength of the story.

Producer’s wanting to submit their own work for a Story Vid Review can email me. submit@imaginariumfoundation.org

I.M.P.S. The Relentless Chapter 2 from Blacksheep Productions on Vimeo.

In this Starwars based vid, you travel along with the Empire, “Discovery Channel,” style as they pursue Rebels on a forbidding planet.  This vid is a faux documentary with a professional look.

Captain Valedor – full movie from Kent Sanderson on Vimeo.

In the words of the director, “A young boy in the 1950s re-imagines a family conflict as a rollicking, black and white outer space serial.”

I’ve been accused before of liking Buck Rogers style nonesense, but the “real” action set in the 1950’s is reasonably footed.  The Sci-Fi action sequences are intentionally campy.

Marauder’s Mistake from Christina Beard on Vimeo.

Maruader’s Mistake is a short animation set to classical music.  I chose this film because I enjoyed how the Director placed the action with the soundtrack.  There is no dialog or sound effects, so it’s like getting a visual intepretation of a classical piece. 

The story follows the exploits of a male “Marauder,” who steals a gem and fights with a band of theives for its protection.  What happens to the prized possession?  I’ll let you watch to find out.

Instead of celebrating everytime a scene is completed as a previs animatic, I’ve buckled down to focus on developing at least 10-15 minutes of content at a time to share. 

X and Y, Previs Episode 1 from XandY Film on Vimeo.

A couple of interesting points about video editing with blender came to my attention in putting this together.

1.  It doesn’t appear you can import raw video editing data from one blend file to the next.  So I had to render out seperate mpegs and then combine the rendered video in a master blend file.

2.  A video with audio will come into the blender editor as two seperate data pieces.  So you can render video and sound seperately and then combine to make better transitions.  I didn’t do this in the interest of time.  Instead you’ll notice I just left a quick black break between each scene.

That’s all for now.  I’ll plan on posting when the next previs episode is ready which is probably a couple a months away.