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[ENSONIQ5]

G'day.  I have been working on this animation for the past 4 weeks, for the Animanon.com "Brought to Life" contest, and since it is more or less finished (more work to be done on the soundtrack) and was by far the most complicated and difficult animation I have produced so far, I wanted to share it with the Anim8or community.  It was produced entirely with Anim8or v0.97c (though it uses Scanline not ART) with a very small amount of 2D work in Corel PhotoPaint.  I would appreciate constructive criticism, and if you would like to see more of the excellent work done by other competitors in this contest and the previous ones, please visit Animanon, using the link at the left of the screen.

Eraser Man

[RudySchneider]

Bravo, Ensoniq5, bravo!  Great attention to timing, character expression, movement, and interaction with props.  I could find very little to fault; it was quite entertaining!  It's just too bad that you had to sacrifice one of the characters in the end.

[floyd86]

Haha, that was great. It shows how that with simple modeling and texturing you can make a great animation.
It made me laugh, that sweet little guy turns out to be pretty evil: killing innocent butterflies . As rudyschneider said, great attention to the timing and movement. I couldn't discover any fault, like the character going through the floor.
How did you made the character expressions, where it post effects or morphs?

[onespirit5777]

When you want to, you can!  Awesome stuff!

[3D Joe Wiltshire]

Awe-Some

Something to show the 'Blender vs Anim8or' videos.

I loved it, best anim8or movie i've seen yet.
And a good idea for a screensaver / one that i would like to see:

A single camera angle, focused on the pinned butterfly, moving his legs and fluttering a bit.
Just my strange imagination shining through.

[ENSONIQ5]

Thanks guys.

Floyd86:  The facial expressions were interesting to make.  I drew a series of expressions in Corel Draw and exported them as BMP's, which I used to generate transparency maps for a series of materials, each black in both ambient and diffuse, with zero specular.  When applied to a flat plane, the plane becomes like a sheet of transparent film with the facial expression on it.  I copied the plane as a set of individual objects, each with a different facial expression material applied to it.

In scene mode, I added all the facial expression "overlays" into the same physical space relative to the eraser, positioned over the blank face area.  Each overlay's visibility was set to "off".  Then, when it came to animating, I could change the expression by keyframing the visibility of each expression overlay, taking care not to overlap them or leave blank frames.

Once the scene was set up, animating was easy, so early on in the construction of this project I created a template scene, with the eraser man and all his faces in position, as well as the table top and light setup.  Then, for each new scene, I just had to import this basic scene into the project again, rename it, and I had a new blank scene ready to go.

[floyd86]

hmmm... indeed interesting. I already thought that was the best solution: keyframing the visibilty. But maybe you used a different better method.
Though this technic worked out great, I love the facial expressions: very basics and still you feel the character coming to live.

[falloffalot]

That is a fantastic piece of work.
The expressions on his face are great; the story line is simple, original and funny.
My 8 year old will love that when I show him and hopefully inspire him to continue with his animating.
Well done Ensoniq5

[VBSmiles]

Great vid! quite entertaining also

[CowTail]

Nice, I liked his little slow-motion tumble in the beginning

[ENSONIQ5]

Again, thanks guys.

CowTail:  The only problem with doing slow motion stuff is that it is really unforgiving.  If something is moving fast enough and the physics is a bit off, you can't really tell, but in slow motion scenes you have the time to really study the motion, and if it is wrong it stands out.  Since Anim8or lacks physics and collision detection (so far) you have to be really careful to get the physics right.  The physics is not terribly good in this animation, and it becomes quite obvious in the slow section.

[KiwiNM8OR]

Well, I was convinced by the physics but my imagination comes from an alternate reality where rules don't apply. Still, it was very comical and I loved the expressions and the use of the stapler. I was anticipating Eraser Man to catch the butterfly and finally take flight but clearly Eraser Man had enough of wanting to fly (hehe). Cool vid ENSONIQ5.

[falloffalot]

Heh ensoniq are you planning on a bit of a tut showing how you did the little dudes facial expressions?


Please?
Pretty please?

[ENSONIQ5]

I hadn't, but yeah, I would be happy to.  What I will probably do is submit it to Kreator for the Dotan8 magazine.  There are a couple of other little tricks I picked up while building this that probably aren't new, but were new to me, and they might be helpful to others, so I will include those as well.

[falloffalot]

Awesome. My lad (now 9) loves that animation and want's to make his own little character.

Thanks