I certainly knew that it would look neat to those who didn’t know what they were looking at (e.g., family and friends) and I hoped it would be ‘good for a newbie’ from the people who did know what they are looking at (e,g., this forum).
Thanks for noticing the dissolve while starting the rings, I liked that part as well. The second establishing shot is what starts while the rings are started and I was trying to give a hint of the length of the track, and introduce this poor, clueless camel. I kind of liked that shot as well, can you tell me how you would have moved that camera differently? Or was this the specific one that you were refering to?
The cart was a dissapointment for me. If you check out the model, the wheels, axels, and the braces to hold things are actually modeled fairly accurately. The cart itself does look like it was made from a cardboard box. I think that something like a jet cockpit with an open front would work better, then (assuming the camel model was updated magically as well) I could show the poor beast reacting to the intense acceleration.
One thing I ran into was exactly how to slow the time for the shot down the track. It happens really fast, as you probably noticed. I used a Time IPO for the ‘matrix’ shot, I need to get better at them. My Time IPO boxed me into a corner that I didn’t have the time to work my way out of. I may do a mini app that can allow you to construct a ‘real’ timeline, and then insert segments of accelerated time for slo-mo sequences. It would then write all of the Time IPO curves. However, this may be a high tech solution to what is really an artistic problem. Perhpas the best way to do a slo -mo is simply to slow everything down at that point, and not mess with the Time IPO.
The matrix attempt was a victim of a mistake in the layout of the course. I set up the rings too close to the end of the track, and had done a lot of work with IPOs before I got to the matrix cam and realized there was no way I could go around the front of the camel like I wanted to. Incidentally, I also wanted to have the camel wiggle his toes right before shooting through the rings (in an echo of the Road Runner cartoons). Alas, I had boxed myself in with the Time IPO and couldn’t quite figure a way out. That’s also why the shot seems to hold a bit longer than you would expect, I had put in some time for that motion, but then I couldn’t get it to happen. Arrrgh.
Of course, harkyman’s suggestion made the most sense, I should have done the matrix thing as his head went through the needle. My reaction upon reading that, was why the heck didn’t I think of that?
And the not quite fitting, I knew I should have clipped those frames. There seemed to be a certain limit to how far an object can be crushed by a size IPO, it seemed that if I took it any further, the reaction was really strange. Of course, now I realize that what I probably should have done was dup the objects into a separate scene and scale them up, so the camel didn’t have to be crushed down quite so far.
There’s a saying that I keep in my office by John Holt, “We learn something by doing it. There is no other way.” A sincere thank you to all for helping me learn.
-Andy
