Scene 03 Sequence 09 to Scene 05 Sequence 03

new test
http://vimeo.com/21359426

Scene 05 Sequence 02

Finished shot. I must say this shot was rather complicated. The costume was a massive amount of work, but also the movement is matched to the sound; there are three major points in the singing and therefore three major points in the choreography. For the first one I made the festival woman pauseat the right side of  Hiko. The next point is when the festival woman bows behind Hiko's back, and at the third one she appears from behind at the other side. It might only be slightly be noticable, but the animation this scene is purposely precisely timed to the track, and I think as far as the animation is concerned I'm quite happy with this shot. The look of the the festival woman in the background was a bit of a struggle, especially not to make the seem to flat and out of place. So far it is acceptable, but if I have much time left at the end, I might do some more changes.

What I quite like about this scene is Hiko's reactions. Actually I planned on almost having her as a still, but in the end animated her quite a lot. She is pridominately an observer, but from her reactions you can see how she perseves it. At the beginning when the festival woman comes in the scene, she is surprised as the danceers appearacnce is unexpected. She starts liking it and is amazed, with a shy smile, but when thewoman disaapears behind her back she wonders what's going on and shows being kind of intimidated with her coming that close.

Here's the link:
http://vimeo.com/21218495

Scene 05 Sequence 02 - Colour progression

These are the new updates of this scene. The dancing character is finally fully coloured. Was a massive amount of work, almost 60 frames of copying and transforming the pattern of the dress. Now only Hiko remains to be coloured...

The link to the video test:
http://vimeo.com/21154371

Scene 05 Sequence 01

 Here are two examples of the lined up festival women dance on two different backgrounds. I prefer the constallation of the picture above, yet thr BG is too simple. It matches to the design of the festival women, who are very block-like. However it does not match to the rest of the rather detailed animation. I will have to think what I will do with the festival woman, that they do not look so compact and chubby. I was considering in using a gradient for their hair, so that the black kind of fades out to the end. I tried it on one example and it does look a lot nicer. This however, also needs to be tested on a background, as I only tested it on a white back layer. And it means that I have to change the whole 52 frames again. View the test here:
http://vimeo.com/21147079

Set up on this reuse background the scene fits more to the rest of the animation, but the shot composition is not how I wanted it to be. As the ground is too flat and not deep enough, the festival woman only take up the bottom two thirds of the screen, and I want them to appear much larger and more impressive in this shot.

Here's the links to the vimeo test (without music still):
http://vimeo.com/21126024 

I might take the BG from the top one, transform it, and stick many lights on both side, so the shades of the flipped women works, too.

Scene 05 Sequence 02 - Colour progression tests

This scene is in progress at the moment. The background and animation is only half coloured, yet, so I put white behind the character that you can see the animation in the test version. Despite the pattern not being 100% accurately adapted to the movement in each frame, I think it is sufficiant as long as it kind of loosely moves with the character. So I transform it seperately in each of the 57 frames.

Here's the link on vimeo to the test in progress:

http://vimeo.com/20806330

Scene 05 Sequence 02 - Festival Woman Solo Dance

This is an example of how I would like the festival woman who does the solo dance to look. It might be possible in After Effects just to have the pattern as a mask on the dress. If not maybe I can just colour all frames seperately like this in Photoshop. I will have to test how it works in the actual animation, as of course the pattern is flat and will not follow the dresses motion. It might create a flimmering effect, and I will have to find out whether it is disturbing or does not really matter. Through a half transparent coloured shadow layer on the dress I try retain a sence of perspective.

Scene 05 Sequence 03

On the left are some extracts of my first coloured test of the circular group dance around Hiko. I animated the festival woman character only once and dublicated it in After Effects. Also the dancers still need shadow. On the right is the extract of the storyboard. Maybe I can even make some more seperate changes on the individual dublicates. Yet, I don't find it that disadvantageous that they all look the same as in group dances a uniform look of the dancers is welcome anyway. 

The perspective of this scene somehow offers a nice impression of a kaleidoscope.

This is the link for the test video: http://vimeo.com/20396808

Scene 05 Sequence 03

Looks like blogger will not upload my short test clip so I had to put it on vimeo again:

http://vimeo.com/20124458

In this shot the festival women are dancing around Hiko. As the dance is synchronized, it is enough to only animate one festival woman character and slightly displace some of them on the timeline that it does not look too unnatural.