Tiger Attack! (Part 1)

The Video

Have you ever seen a video from YouTube that ever make you wet your pants? Well, here's your chance:


Intense animal movement in slow motion? It BEGS to be animated. So, here we go.

Thumbnails

So, step one. I sat down with my pad and paper and did rapid succession start/stop with the YouTube player. Here's the results:

Then did a bit more sketching, redrawing the sequence in space:

Animation

Then I said, "Shoot! I'm ready to animate!" And low and behold, after many hours of working and reworking, this was the fruit of my labor:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.larkinheather.com/blog/entries/tigerattack_firstattempt.swf" height="333" width="500" /]

Hmmm. So. Not so great. And this was the best of many attempts. Something is just not working.

Back to the Drawing Board

I think that my preparation was insufficient. I think the problem is that my thumbnails were too sparse; I'm missing important frames that show that the flow of action and, to compensate, I tried unsuccessfully by making things up. So I need to re-analyze the video with more detail. One problem though: the YouTube controller doesn't allow for frame by frame playback.

Screen Recording

I know of a great screen recording program for Macs. Unfortunately, I don't have a mac. :( So, instead, I searched the web for a decent, free, screen recording program. I went with CamStudio, and downloaded a free trial of their software. I captured the YouTube video as an avi file and loaded it into Flash 8. There, I could scrub frame by frame. This makes a HUGE difference. By scrubbing you can pick up on some motion, scrub back to see where it starts, then scrub forward and see how it plays out. For example, I saw how the tiger was already pushing up on its front legs while the back legs were coming down. The switch from the front paws to the back paws on the ground was quick. I missed all these details when I watched the video initially.

New Thumbnails

Here are the notes from the second half of the video, things which popped out at me immediately.

Next Post

Having realized that there was so much more to study, I have decided to do more detailed thumbnails from the beginning to the end of the video. But not tonight.