The Energon Pub

Fri Mar 30, 2007 8:46 am

News of the Live Action Movie inspired me to create this pilot episode here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1xneEZnaM8

Could anyone see this having any potential, or is it just plain awful?

More information found here:

http://www.myspace.com/tfshorts

News Credits: 2 · Fri Mar 30, 2007 9:14 am

That was AWESOME!!! I loved the whole thing. Ravage cleaning himself genius!! :lol:

How long did that take? I have always wanted to do that. Hope to see more. You guys need to do more.

News Credits: 1 · Fri Mar 30, 2007 9:19 am

nice. if you get jaguar ravage, are you going to replae battle ravage?

Fri Mar 30, 2007 10:46 am

As I did comment on youtube, it was a great job, but you might want to look into sound-filtering programs to lessen the background noise and improve the audio.

I look forward to future episodes.

Fri Mar 30, 2007 12:13 pm

Excellent work.

You had some real smooth animation, I'm impressed.

If you can spare the time, I would watch more episodes.

Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:13 pm

Wow, pretty amazing. The animation is excellent; it's extremely fluid, plus there are a whole bunch of nice subtle little touches that make it look better.

I like it how when a car stops, it dips a little bit like a real car does (how do you do that btw?), Hound's transformation is awesome when he swings his legs around, and I like it how Prowl kind of slides when he stops. Stuff like that make it almost look like a professional stop motion cartoon. I haven't seen any stop motion TF movies animated this well, and it's certainly better than anything I can do.

The only part of the whole thing that isn't surperbly animated is the close up of Prowl and Windcharger's feet, since they never lift off the ground, it doesn't look convincing. It might be easier said than done to make walking look convincing as far as balancing toys goes, but an easy way to avoid that is to simply not do closeups on their feet.

Still, it's not perfect. The sound and lighting need work. You also seem to be filming it on a cheapo low res webcam. Granted, this pertains more to equipment than skill, but with these things aside, it's just plain great.

Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:38 pm

Very nice work. It was great

News Credits: 104 · Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:04 pm

That was great!! Smooth animation plus lots of laughs. Thumbs up!

News Credits: 2 · Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:56 pm

That was awesome. The only problem was that the transformation sound was a little grainy.

I relly look forward to the next one. But what will you use for Megatron? Classics Megs for robot mode, then the Megs Pistol that come with Masterpiece Prime for Decepticons to hold?

I don't know how you'd get the two to work right, though, without a special effect program.

News Credits: 23 · Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:33 pm

You impressed me. Most rookie stop-motion animators don't even know how to focus their cameras! If you plan on making more, borrow a good digital camera from a friend, parent, older sibling, etc.

Sound needs work. Just record with a good headset or something. You don't need to bust your balls nor wallet to make fun animated production, just do your best and learn from each experience.

As for the animation, I must say that it is well done, particularly the transformation animations. However, the walking was lacking. I thought they were dancing. It is important to actually move the figures through real space so that the backgrounds don't always look the same.

Sat Mar 31, 2007 1:13 am

Oh yeah, speaking about sound effects, http://www.tfcog.com has a bunch of sounds and music you could use. The ripped music is a little iffy as far as quality, but they have just about every sound effect from the show, and a lot of them sound pretty good.

Sat Mar 31, 2007 2:30 am

Thank you all for the great comments and positive criticisms. I know for this being my first project there would be errors (or shortcomings I should say), and the only way to learn what improvements need to be made is through feedback. So this is all very helpful. I'm taking notes since these forums are my classrooms and the fans are my instructors.

Just as the stopmotion video was new to me, so was the audio recording, compilation and editing. I learned a lot from this go round and if I had to do it again, I could possibly do it better with what current cheap resources I have.

On a positive note, I can promise the next project will "look" much better since I finally have a real digital JVC camcorder now, and that's a big improvement over a webcam.

Oh and I'd love to have the Jag Ravage Alt. over the Vette Ravage Alt. anyday... (I should create an episode explaining that change one day.... hmmm.)

News Credits: 49 · Sat Mar 31, 2007 8:53 am

It's good. The only problems are what everyone else noticed. The audio was really hard to hear for me and muffled so they all ended up sounding like the same person.

As for the walking thing, it's pretty easy to fix, hold them up using fishing wire in order to be able to hold a foot up to make it look like they're walking.

Then you can edit out the fishing wire in a program like photoship.

News Credits: 23 · Sat Mar 31, 2007 10:07 am

For the walking thing, and all activity that can be hard to do, remember that the viewers only see what is in frame. So if you have something to hold them up, such as someone's hand, they won't notice if it is off the screen/out of frame. I tend to do this when I have objects/characters being thrown, such as the fire extinguisher in "Don't Fear the Reaper" (Stikfas animation I did, there a link to it in my sig).

Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:51 pm

E107_Theta wrote:Oh yeah, speaking about sound effects, http://www.tfcog.com has a bunch of sounds and music you could use. The ripped music is a little iffy as far as quality, but they have just about every sound effect from the show, and a lot of them sound pretty good.

I just noticed this, thanks for the site Theta! I've added it to my favorites and I will def. use these resources in future projects. :grin: