So it’s time to talk about the first video I’ve chucked onto my portfolio site. The video is almost 3 years old now and was part of the August 07 competition over at the 11 Second Club.

I managed to pick up a third placing for it among some very good competition. But seriously, the level of quality at that website has sky rocketed over the last few years and I’m tempted to give it another go sometime soon.

There’s something about animating faces that I love. Sure, you can get a hell of a lot of character out of just a body, and some of the best animators out there will say that facial animation is something to add afterwards to help accentuate the body’s motion, but there’s definitely an art to bringing a face to life. Don’t get me wrong, I love animating bodies as well, but to make someone believe a character has emotions with subtle facials is something I get a lot of joy out of.

Looking back at this now I really should have done more with the male character on the right. I kinda animated the scene without him in mind. He was very much an after thought with very few keyframes and absolutely no tidy up. I was originally just going to have him standing completely still but the more I worked on the female the stranger that looked (even though he was never meant to be a part of it). If you look through my youtube account you can see how I progressed with not only the motion of the girl but also the camera moves.

Early on I was too focused on showing the expression of her face that I kinda let myself be blinded to the fact that the camera motion looked terrible. I’ve had a lot more experience with camera movement these days (as I’m sure my future videos to this site will attest) so I hope I don’t let myself fall into that same blindness again.