Relax and Smile (a morbidly upbeat animation)

Artwork Finished Projects
1

This is my first attempt at a full length animation. I stared this around March, but i sorta put it aside for quite a while, I’ve probably put a good solid month of work into this. This was sort of an experimental animation. I wanted to do try to do an animation by using only carefully arranged 2d objects. The result was this highly stylized short.

All art work and animation was done in Blender. The song is Relax and Smile by the very talented Haniahttp://hania.newgrounds.com/. I have it uploaded on Newgrounds and YouTube. The YouTube link is alot clearer IMHO, but if you guys have a NG account, don’t be afraid to give me a shout. Please rate, review, question, comment, criticize, and/or anything else you guys can think of that might be constructive.

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w67/CrazyDave001/3d%20stuff/RelaxSmile.jpg
RelaxSmile.jpg800×600 63.5 KB

youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIdFkaD8Pv0

newgrounds link:


2

I like the flat style you have achieved, and the monochrome as well. I think the poses could use some work, but they fit with the paper cutout look of the characters. Little morbid for my taste overall, but well executed.

3

Man, I loved! The dark humor is not the point for me, but the art in general is very pretty! I liked movements of the characters because they have a style, looks like you did on porpose to not feel natural. The script is great too. Congratulations!

4

I’m glad you guys like it. I realize the poses could have been better in a few places. One of the problems I ran into with the 2D was that I had to keep the rotation of everything(including armatures) around less than 20° from parallel to the camera, or the object would end up looking skewed and disproportional. Personally, I think I found a happy medium, but I expect other people will say otherwise.

When I decided to go with the silhouette animation style, I realized immediately that it would be extremely difficult to go for realism. So, I decided to favor style over detail. I was quite pleased with the result, especially since it let me cut a few corners without being noticeable. :wink:

5

Wow! that’s some skills you’ve got there. I found the video both funny and well animated, and at the same time it had some sort of messager in it too.

good job!

6

Awesome! The result is really nice and I love the music. That kind of style is very elegant and the animation and music combines perfectly. Good job.

7

I like the look, but the animation is way too smooth - I would suggest you go in and mess with the key frames - stagger them so everything isn’t so robotic.