I was on vacation last week in Washington so not a lot of work got done animation wise. However I did manage to work some upcoming shots out in my sketchbook. I also managed to get a second or two done yesterday.

Above is the opening sequence. I am much happier with the new direction and the changes I have made. Still very excited to be working on it. 

This week starts my journey on the Animation Mentor program. I am starting the Maya springboard class. Starting now time will now be limited on when I can work on Babaloo. I still hope to try and crank out the rest and get it done before the class kicks into high gear. However the class comes first.

Over the last couple of months I had been slowly loosing steam on the Babaloo project. The further along I went the less happy I was with how the project was unfolding.  I knew when I started I believed it was a good idea... but a few adds and snips to the project really made it not read the way I intended. The gag seemed flat and it I felt it was running too slow.  At this point I was not sure what to do. Well the remedy was a dose of The Animation Show .  Went down to see the annual Animation Show year 4 in San Diego.  Being able to see a crowd react to other well done animated short with great timing really helped. On the drive back  I was replaying mr. Babaloo in my head the way I intended it. All of a sudden I was excited for the project again. I could see it working in my head again. So as soon as I got home I quickly sketched all my new ideas out. This cause me to trash most of what I had animated all ready. However that did not bother me as I was excited to be re-energized and moving again!

Speaking of the Animation Show I highly recommend checking it out if it comes to a city near you! Great line up of animation. Only a couple I thought were a little lackluster. However I was still able to find something enjoyable in them. It was great to see Bill Plympton's latest Hot Dog from his dog trilogy.

Below a working shot of Mr. Babaloo in progress.

After watching Mr. Babaloo over and over I am starting to think the pacing is running long. After all it is meant to be a quick gag.

I have an equation that I have come up with. It is "XHumor + XTime= Payoff". Really it can all be filed under "timing". However If you doing an animated short that has a gag ending you have to be aware of Humor + Time= Payoff.  Will the viewer find the payoff (gag) at the end worth the amount of time they invested watching it.  This rings true especially when it comes to animation on the internet. You have to realize people have a very low attention span when surfing the net and are NOT a captive audience.  So you have to constantly ask yourself "Is the end funny enough for the time it takes to it set up?". Sometimes the exact same gag can be funny depending on the set up time. If it took only 15 seconds to get to the gag people may feel they did not invest a lot of time and find it funny. The same gag could fail if it takes 45 seconds. That's where the tough part comes in. Is the gag funny enough?  Funny enough to make people wait a minute of set up? If not, is it possible to set it up in less time and still have the viewer understand and follow in a believable manner? In the case of Mr. Babaloo there is a abrupt ending. If it is short I believe viewers will get it and find it funny. If I make them wait too long they will feel gypped like there should have been more.  So now I have to decide if I cut out a few seconds of animation for pacing.

 

On side note I changed the color of the carpet for the background. It was brown. I felt the overall background was too warm color wise. So I changed it to add some cooler colors to the pallet.  To see the old one you can scroll down to an older post.

Animation Mentor starts on June 30th. Once that begins there wont be anytime to work on Mr. Babaloo. Which means I have a little over two months to finish. It is a tight schedule and will be a challenge. I got a few more seconds completed over the weekend as well as polishing up some of the existing shots. I also have the music score finally selected. Now it is just a matter of acquiring the rights to use it.

Looking to scrape some more time this week and get more done. I have freelance work as well so time will be limited. You may notice the post-it note on the computer? It reads "water the jasmine plant".  Below you can see how well I have done thus far pre note...

Yeah, it's that twig in the middle of the pot. We took the dead leaves off and moved it to the backyard.  Backyard + Puppy = empty pot. So we moved it to the front of the house.  We will see if it lives.

Here is a shot of the background for Mr. Babaloo the Balloon.

Finally got a good start on the animation.  I have completed roughly 10-12 seconds worth. Although there are still some parts that I would like to go back and  polish up. Hope to have another 10 or so completed by next week if time permits.

-z-