Remember this?  :D  Just come to read this, went back to the OP, so before seeing anything anyone else's post, can I say, to the original question, that there is no difference between making any type of cinema.  None.  You still have to plan the thing out, write it, rewrite it, recruit, re-plan, rewrite, design stuff, build stuff, rewrite, shoot, edit (which is the actual directing bit), mix, re-edit, re-shoot, edit, title it, produce it, then promote it.  The scale and methodology is unique to every shoot, every project, regardless of how hard we might try to standardise it, and of course it doesn't always follow that a bigger budget makes for a better film.  Digital actors are also hard to deal with, and getting into their heads what you want them to do can be equally troublesome.  Lighting takes ages to get right.  Understanding how cameras work is important.  It always takes longer than you think it will.  I could go on in this vein, but I think you get what I'm saying.  There's no difference, really, between animation and film from the creators point of view, is what my answer would be.  You're still filling the magic oblong box with movement and colour, how you get there is half the fun :)



My YouTube Animations

Animating first with multiple cameras and cutting in various ways after is how TV soaps are made.  Storyboarded scenes for single camera (ie. audience) with extra cameras for coverage is how films are made (good or bad).  Not a dig... just the facts.

I agree with Kelley on storyboarding in Iclone. Do it if that's what you need to do but, as an amateur (and 67 years old) I haven't the time to
think everything out in advance, I'd be dead by the time I got around to animating. I have a very vague idea of where the story is to end up
but discovering how the story gets there is the fun in it for me. I have no background in film nor TV (I was a landscape and portrait artist for
most of my life) but I know a good story when I see one and I understand the camera mechanics it took to get it there. Many times I'll re-watch
 a presentation with the specific intent of watching the camera and how the director is making it tell his story.

The fact that I am not on a shooting schedule and that I can make in-camera adjustments or even scrap an entire scene without my stockholders
going ballistic, precludes the need for an accurate storyboard, leaving me free to fly with my intuition. Sometimes I get it wrong but most times
I'm happy with following my first thoughts. All the BIG guys, Tesla, Einstein, Bell, all believed in their intuition and followed it. They all felt that their
ability to create was 'hooked in' to a larger pool (GOD?) than the one inside their brains and I believe these great men knew what they were talking about.
No analogs or recipes here, I can afford to go on gut feeling so I do. (Of course I consider myself to be a story-teller and not an animator so...)

:cool: pete



http://www.youtube.com/user/peterblood50?feature=mhee

Do it if that's what you need to do but, as an amateur (and 67 years old) I haven't the time to
think everything out in advance

Hi pete I'm with you:)
Greets
Postfrosch (Werner)


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When you write or make a film (animation), you’re either trying  to inform, educate, entertain or inspire your audience. A starting point is to have  an audience in mind. Creating something for family and friends is different  than creating something for the general public. Family/friends most likely will  be kind; the general public will be more critical. A good or bad story is not  inherent but is selected by the masses for whatever reason. If you want to keep your sanity enjoy what you create with iClone,  because as an old song goes “ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please  yourself.”

Ultimately it's whatever works for you.  For me... drawing 20 panels with stick men and key props is done in the time it takes to open iClone and pull in the assets for a scene.  I got into iClone to make PreViz for live action shooting (particularly VFX) - I tried 'wingin' it' because time is always a factor... but soon realized that a basic road map will save me from going the wrong direction (or getting completely lost!).  If you have a great story, I believe, it's always worth going the 'extra mile' to tell it - why wait till you're editing to realize you could've done something better?

My appologies, I have misread what you were trying to say. The highlighted red parts is why I thought this was about what I thought it was about.


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I don't think anyone here has gone OT, as I said -- where I was trying to focus attention on was less the overall arc of storytelling (which would take hundreds and thousands of responses -- not bad, but I won't live that long LOL) but rather the difference between folks creating "animation" in iClone and trying to tell a story via the mechanics of doing so.  

The example I probably should have shown (but I'm lazy :> -- actually, I'm having a HORRIBLE time with a model export out of Daz and I wanted to use it to show.  I may give up or take another start at it) was a single animation, done extremely well, but from one camera angle.  It's not a story, it's not even a scene, but it's what a lot (not necessarily most, but most of what I see here) of animators do.  However that SAME EXACT ANIMATION *could* be a scene, could even be an entire story, with the right editing, camera angles, and pacing.

That's what I really want to talk about, and that was why the first clip I embedded (which got me thinking about this whole process) is a single master shot, but one that tells a story.  I think with very little effort most of the people who *can* animate well can also go that little extra bit (or big extra bit, depending on what they were animating) and create that filmic experience.

But all this discussion here is good -- it helps all of us to think about the craft of storytelling, which is as ancient as, well, the ancients.  And it's fascinating to see all the various aspects (I really like recently the compare and contrast between looking at things without audio, which is what I've been taught again and again, versus hearing ONLY the audio, which I used to do all the time before there were VCRs -- heck, I even went to drive-ins and recorded the movie on audio tape, and listened to it again and again.  It's kind of amazing the difference your imagination can make to just the audio track, and in many ways I got to know those films even better.  Or at least far differently than I would have expected).

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Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

KT.
Would an example of that be something like animating a character making a snack in the kitchen? That is a pretty common thing for sitcoms, for instance. A lot of sitcom activity is kitchen based. It can also be challenging to animate all the activity of it for people without animation experience. It is for me.

I think a great example of "animation" vs. "filmmaking" was mentioned a few pages ago...  The "Curve Editor" webinar that was held a few weeks ago.  The showcase was a great "animation" of a ninja type of character going through a series of deadly training obstacles.  On its own, it was a great animation, but without a story, it was nothing more than a technical demonstration.

So leads me to summarize this way:   "Filmmaking" requires a story, and "animation" is merely one of many methods that can be used to tell the story.

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