Don't buy from here

So this is a non animation related post about a company called SMKSuperStore. I recently purchased a ton of computer parts from them to make a new machine to work at home. I wanted to build a serious machine so that I don't have to buy another one for a few years. I've bought parts from them many times before and had a great experience. Not this time..... I bought a very expensive video card (with the rest of the computer parts) and guess what?? They apparently didn't have it in stock so they replaced it with a cheaper, lower end card and charged the same!! I call them back and they said, "let me talk to my supervisor and maybe we can buy it from an outside vendor and send it to you..." I'm like ok fine whatever. My wife calls back because they didn't call us and the women said their was nothing she could do. Nothing she could do? No apology, no discount on an even more expensive card? I almost send it all back but decided to keep everything but the video card. I needed it badly for a long 20sec shot I'm working on. Long shots like that require a powerful computer to handle all those keys. I was able to find an even better card then what I purchased for a bit cheaper from tigerdirect. Lesson here is, DONT BUY FROM SMKSUPERSTORE.COM They are sneaky people. They didn't call me to ask if it was ok to substitute the card that I wanted. They also charged me more for the crappier card they put in the case! Everything else was at a great price. The video cards were more expensive from SMK but I thought they were good people. For all the money I spent, they should've given me a video card for free. It's cool and now everything is fine but I wanted the very few people that read this or accidently read this NOT to buy from them. Word up.

Horton Breakdown list

It will be a little while before I get my shots so I decided to post a quick breakdown list. These are in order from the begining to the end. I'm doing this from memory so hopefully I get it all right :D I did everything in the shot unless noted.

***I realized after the post that a ton are out of order. Sorry :P

-I did the speck shot in the begining where the speck passes two rocks and reveals the whole jungle of nool.

-After Horton tells the kids to jump on his back, the yellow girl (Katie) does a weird noise. I did the shot after that which has the kids on his back and Horton reacts and says "ooooookay" and walks off screen right.

-Horton explains about the leaf bugs and Tommy and the kids watch horton in awe. I did the two shots with the kids watching Horton.

-As Horton tells the kangaroo mom no (about giving the clover to her) Monkeys come out of the forest. I did the monkeys

-The kangaroo mom has cornered Horton and in the previous shot says (something like, "you don't want to mess with me Horton.") My shot is the Kangaroo mom walking toward Horton and says "You don't" as Horton backs up into a tree.

-4 kids walk out to Horton. This is when he has the speck and they say. "Hey Horton whatcha got there.

-Vlad is Chasing Horton in the Bamboo. I did the side shot where he is flying and gets stopped.

-I did Vlad trapped in the Bamboo right after he gets stopped. He's blocked and yells "Horton!!"

-I did the shot of Horton walking toward mount nool as he says "I will create a world where every who....." and the camera pans up to the mountain

-I did the two shots in the snow sequence where the mayor says "Oh horton" then Dr Laru puts her glasses up and says "what?"

-I did one shot in the cloverfield sequence where Horton looks up from the ground and says "Anyone?"

-When the kangaroo mom gives the jungle a speech, the animals come out from the trees. I did 3 shots of the monkeys climbing, jumping and swinging down the trees. Then the monkeys jump on the backs of Yaks. I only did the main monkeys and not the background characters. In the Yak shot, I only did the main monkeys and Yaks.

-After Horton says "a persons a person, no matter how small." Rudy (kangaroo boy) says "Huh" and starts to realize the message. Then the kangaroo mom looks down and freaks out. Then she covers Rudys ears and then Horton reacts to what she did. I only did the main characters.

-The mayor is in the bedroom with his 96 kids and they all just asked for water. I did the last shot where he agrees to get them all water.

-After horton finds the clover and realizes that the mayor is ok he jumps around which shakes whoville. I did the shot of the mayor yelling at horton to stop. (I also did the buildings bouncing in the background) "horton, horton, stop, stop it!"

-Mayor wife shot where she is banging pans together toward the sky

-I did a lot of monkey stuff. I did a lot of the monkey walking and idle monkey cycles used all through the movie.

-The mayor and Jojo are on the bike bouncing and riding to get to the people of whoville. I did the first two bike shots of the mayor and jojo bouncing in and falling down the hill and riding along the road.

-The kangaroo mom says to bring out the beezlenut oil. I did next shot of the monkeys carring the pot of oil and a few other monkeys. It's 2 shots. The monkeys step aside and the big monkey walks in the middle of them carrying the pot and then the next overhead shot of the monkey carrying the pot as he walks screen right.

-I did the shot after rudy says "i hear them" and the jungle animals each turn their heads screen left to the kangaroo mom as she reacts. I did about 10 characters including the kangaroo mom and rudy.

-A couple shots were cut but might make it onto the dvd. I'm missing a ton of shots but thats a good amount of them.

Few things

First thing is Horton is out today. Go see it! As soon as I get my shots I will cut a new reel :D

The second thing is something that I feel is important in animation. Lead and follow. When animating a character in the pose to pose method it is sometimes hard to break up the different body parts. The common result is animation that looks like every pose is hitting at the same time. The solution is not to just offset keys a few frames. It might work sometimes but you have to know why you are doing it. The thing that I find helpful is the idea of lead and follow. To me, lead and follow is the idea that a body part will lead an action and then something else will follow it. For example: A character raising his hand. The arm will begin the action (shoulder lifts, upper arm, etc) and then the body. This is just an example and can be animated many different ways including having the body start the action. So for this example, the arm leads the body up. The way that I think of it sometimes is that the arm is an important part of the scene and I want the viewer to look at it right away. Thus, I will lead with the arm. It's not a science and I usually go for what looks the most appealing at the end. The reason this is helpful to me is because when I block out an action, I already know if a body part is going to lead a gesture or move. Knowing this will allow me to isolate movements in my blocking so that I don't go to spline and have poses hitting at the same time. Personally, I don't always have every single part of a character moving on the same pose. Sometimes only an arm or hand will move in stepped mode. This assures me that I won't have the problem with twinning or robotic poses. Hope this helps! Werd.

Anticipation

When I saw Balls of fury I thought this part was a great use of anticipation and then changing up the result. I was super lucky to find the clip on Youtube and thought that I would share it. Notice how Fogler gets upset in the begining of the clip and starts messing up the plant. From the tone of his voice and that action of slapping the plant, we get a sense that he is upset but in a comical way. He's slapping a plant for cying out loud! If it were more serious, he might have thrown something or would've been more violent to the plant or to Lopez. Notice how we have a nice build up of comedy from him slapping the plant, then the plant falls and he has to readjust it. (If he were really pissed he wouldn't think twice of fixing the plant. He obviously wouldn't slap the plant either) The next thing he does, I thought was great. He still tries to be pissed off and quickly opens the door wide and he anticipates a big slam closed. What does Fogler do? He does a big anticipation then does something we didn't expect. He slowly closes the door. This is a great comedic tool and a good way to throw the audience off. When the audience expects something to happen, it doesn't do much for the entertainment value. When the character does something unexpected, the audience is put into a different mind set. (This is probably what the brain is thinking when watching this clip. "ok, he's a silly man slapping the plant. Oh, now he's going to slam the door really loud. Whoa....what? Oh snap...I didn't expect that to happen.") Ok, maybe this is just what my brain was thinking when watching this clip. I just felt that we don't see that style of comedy in films today. Fun! Fun!! Now use this tool in your animation! Word.