Time in Motion

  My original idea for this infamous second chunk of the opening, was for it to be one long take in which the animation would come in. For the most part I still want to do that, but I need to think about how I could keep the frame interesting over the length of this part of the opening. One thing that's subtle, but can do a lot is gradually moving closer or further away. If I could I'd love to physically move the camera closer, but that'd be another moving factor in this mini stage play I'd have to do for this shot. I'll try it, but if its not working I'll probably just resort to filming the shot from a wide angle, and zoom in/out digitally in post.

Bo Burnham used digital zooms for much of Inside (2021)

    I've also spent today making a test video for the timings list I made yesterday. Now listen, I'll be first to admit it doesn't look too clean, but that's okay. The main reason I made this video was to see whether the timings would work and if the flow wasn't too slow or too fast. It really just translates the list into a visual format that's easier to digest. 

    I myself like how it came out for the most part. There are some portions that seem a bit fast, but I'm taking the video with a grain of salt because the actual movement of elements weren't touched up. Typically in animation, things very rarely move at a constant/linear rate. Instead they often have smooth rate of change/interpolation. Besides a handful of moments, nearly every movement had linear interpolation. The final opening will have some form of smooth interpolation for most moving elements.

    On the topic of animation, I actually went ahead and drew out some possible movements for some of the characters. In the video reference, Box Boy's seems to appear out of thin air, but because of the way I had drawn it in my sketchbook. It'd first be his head that spins into place and his body would follow. Either by the body dropping from below the box or the body being ragdolled into place. Eventually the lines will come in and screw his head off, in which his head will follow a similar pattern just with some more motion trails.

    For Hot Head, I wanted the flame is sort of spin into place; sort of like a solar prominence. For Line Guy, I was a bit halted by the fact that I could only use vertical lines. Personally for me I love creating form in when I draw, but it's a lot harder to do that with just pain lines that don't intersect. To help convey the turn of the head, I'd heavily rely on the position of the eyes to serve as a basis to which way he's facing.

    

    I'm not completely ready to begin filming, but I'm getting there which is cool and kind of scary. I'm going to try to finalize the storyboard tomorrow, so that I can finalize some of the animated elements and their movements. After that I'd probably just finalize some decisions about the location and costumes, but until then I'm going to leave you. See you soon.