Teddy Bears Picnic

Early sketches and storyboards for my new production to be created in 3D animation (Blender).

This is the sketch of the bear I want to model in Blender.  He is a bit wonky right now but I love his character.

He is also the basic template for all the bears.  I plan to create hats and bows etc to differentiate the sexes.  This template will be used for both the adults and children.

The first two sketches of my storyboards.

When you go down to the woods today, you'd better go in disguise.  Can you see Foo in the second shot?

This is the original storyboard idea I had for my 3D animation but was advised to simplify it for the actual animation.  I will probably use the the bottom storyboard as a closeup of the picnic and what the bears are going to eat.

Every teddy bear who's been good is sure of a treat today.  There's lots of marvelous things to eat.

Starting with After Effects

Todays class was working with Adobe After Affects.  We were given some exercises to create an effect with a logo and played with animating a Superman logo.

After Effects is essentially a swiss army knife for video. It can do lots of different things, and it can do many of those things very well. It is not always the best tool for the job. The first thing that you need to realize is that After Effects is not designed for editing video. Editing, in this sense, refers to the most basic operations that you would perform when creating a movie video -- dropping clips onto the timeline, chopping them up into pieces, cross-fading between them, etc. For these basic types of things, you should use an NLE (non-linear editor) such as Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, or perhaps even Windows Movie Maker. As I said before, After Effects can do many things. You CAN edit video in it--but the experience will be very frustrating!