Finished!

Here's the final animation. I'll conclude it after you've watched it .

(Apologies for the poor narration).

List of things I'm unhappy with-

• The voice over was a last minute thing (I knew I'd need narrations from the very start, but instead of recording my sound in the first few weeks in the booth at Uni, i waited until the last minute and used my headset which in turn means poor quality).
• The music although passable, isn't matched to the animation. Getting someone to watch my animation and write a piece of music to it would of probably been the best choice.

That's pretty much it, the sound side of things I'm stupidly out of my comfort zone and i have no real idea of how to work with it inside Flash (or outside).

I'm happy with the style that was eventually used, you can see it get progressively better through the animation, the first background for example looks worse than the second and third backgrounds. I doesn't look BAD, but the second and third backgrounds were better (in my opinion).

In terms of animation, due to me leaving it to the last minute (again) (as always) (idiot) i had to use a few shortcuts like doing less inbetweens than i would have liked to (or in some cases doing none at all (cookie jar/Stroppy cross arms).

All in all it's been fun doing this animation and if it had a little better narration (Which i may change in the future) it's done it's job. Numerous people have said "Aww, naughty baby" which was the reaction i wanted (which means it's done it's job). The moral i feel is there (not as forward as I'd like) but it's noticeable. I just feel pacing it differently would of been a better idea.

Next time i really need to stop working backwards and work the NORMAL way. It's used by animators world-wide for a reason, who am i to break a working methodology?

V-CAM! SAVIOR!

http://bryanheisey.com/blog/?page_id=19 

This little tool saved me a lot of hastle in the second scene.
 

Late addition!

Boiling.

I've known about boiling for a long time now and loved the way it looked, with boiling nothing is ever truley static. Big Trains - Staring contest is a absolutely PERFECT example of this. The "animation" is pretty much a still. Boiling makes it less static however and gives it some life.

Now although this isn't everyones cup of tea, i was at a loss when it came to still shots in my animation. I hate when nothing is happening on screen so i decided to add this boiling effect. Although it's a lot slower on Big Train and to be honest a lot more noticable there's still enough there to keep it "moving".

(Appologies for the weird twitch, Flash's exporting is failing a little).

Now i personally believe that it works better than having still frames, and in a way it a little nostalgic look back at hand drawn cel animation.

I work so backwards it's scary.

So yeah, during animating (THE END PROCESS) I decided that i wasn't happy with the background and went back into GIMP.

I produced 2 backgrounds (The 2nd BLUE one of which i'm most happy with) the problem came when i threw my character onto it. The styles did-not-mix at all...Not even a little. It's too late now to reanimate the character in a new style so i'll have to leave it but now i know not to work backwards (I knew not to work backwards before i started but i did it anyway....Self sabotuer?)