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Greetings!
This is my thirteenth chess animation. I try to publish them every Saturday night. Today is Sunday. I was trying to be too creative with my work.
I watched this for the smashing of the king.
I couldn’t get the smashed king to stay on the board. I will try it next time.
@sozap I watched the videos that you sent me and really tried to make the chess game easier to follow. I worked more on “Anti-ci ( Long pause)- pation” (If you don’t get that reference, it is okay.) On the next video, I will try to include a longer focus on staging. I always appreciate your advice and try to incorporate it into my next project. Do you think as a non-chess play that it was easier to understand?
To everyone else, all C and C are welcome. I know the lighting is bad. I have two lights that are too strong, and the board is too reflective. The samples were low to get it finished on time.
Thanks!
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Hello !
It’s cool ! it gets clearer indeed, and you made some cool camera moves !
Maybe the shot toward 6s ends a bit too quickly. You can add like 6/12 images of pause .
In the shot after this one , it takes a bit of time to see where the camera as moved.
Because you start to make more interesting shots now, one thing to keep in mind is helping the viewer to get a good sense of space. Before this was less the case because we were always in wide shots.
But always having wide shots is a bit boring.
This can be either by letting the viewer the time to adapt to the next shot, or , finishing one action in the next shot. You did that in other videos. You can make the move a little bit slower and you switch camera a little bit before the animation settle. So we instantly get better sense of space.
All that said, it’s getting better ! You can always let a bit of time at the beginning and at the end of shots so people have the time to adapt to the transition. One rule is that it takes like 12 frames for the viewer to adapt to a shot and in these 12 frames it’s best to avoid very important action. Which is what you did most of the time !
Editor and directors have little tricks to reduce this time and manage to control the viewer eyes, but for now I think it’s better to be a little more longer than shorter.
Did you get feedback from non-cg people, chess enthusiasts ? how do they find each videos ?
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Thanks again. I got a little lazy on 6s. I will try to work on staging/space on the next one. I am going to try to make the videos longer next time. I think I am just going to Crtl C/ Crtl P the same image more times to make the video last longer.
I have never heard the 12 frames rule. That makes sense.
My videos have gone from very bad to less very bad. Most chess enthusiasts politely comment positively on the colors and then move on to the next topic.
“How do they find each videos?” Right now, they don’t find them at all. A few of my friends have commented on them.
There is making art and then advertising that art. Right now, I have enough hobby time just to make the art (poorly).
Anyways, time to get back to thinking about the next one.
Cheers and take care!
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Cool !
Do you do all the video in the same .blend ? Ideally it’s best to output each shot with a little margin like 1s before and after. And put all the renders in an editing software. That way it’s always possible to tweak the timings without having to redo all the animation. But it’s a bit more involved to setup.
At least if you manage to do what you want that’s fine !
Yes I was talking about that ! How do people not especially related to movie making relate to your videos. Sometime it’s great to show your work to non-professional and get feedback. Family , friends are totally fine for that !
Generally they feel that something is wrong or can be improved, and it’s then up to you to translate that in movie making terms. Most of the time they’ll find good issues, but it’s more difficult for them to provide appropriate solutions. But that’s a good pointer to see if you’re on the right path !
And yess, trying making them a little bit longer the next time could be great !
Good luck and see you soon !
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Thanks again!
I save the files as png and then put them together using blender. Blender Guru, praise donuts on him, told me to is his tutorial. I still don’t know why or how to edit it the png files. I probably need to work on that next after staging.
I will ask more people about them. Feedback can definitely help.
My goal for this week is 30 s.
I always appreciate your insights.
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Cool !
Yes using .png sequences is a good practice rather than exporting movies.
Because it’s .png the image is lossless, you don’t loose quality between the render and the edit.
And if your computer crash while rendering, or you need to re-render a part you can render only that .
There are other benefits of using image sequences, like transparency, and a few other things that you don’t have to deal with for now.
In the video sequence editor of blender (VSE) you can go to a particular frame, select the .png sequence and it K to split it. So you can reduce your shot.
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Thanks, I will try to figure it out. I am 400 frames into it. I really appreciate your advice.
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