Hi,

For a long time I've been wanting to start animating a story I've done, broken down in to smaller 3 to 5 minute shorts for each little scene.  The idea is that, over time, I will become better at animation and also, being shorter forms, I can actually accomplish something.

Questions and Obsticles I've run into are that the Victoria 4 rig, though it has IK, I need to use target helpers to actually do normal type animation movement. What I find, often, is that it seems to 'break' the mesh sometimes arount the ankles, sometimes the hips.  So I am thinking of other ways.

I love doing my work in Carrara as I have invested much time on my characters in it and developing some proficency with the program. Until I learn, say lightwave and actually create my own meshes and learn how to use that program, I am working in Carrara for my animation project.

I am thinking of several things to at least get me going:

One- Do the first scene (which I've already scripted and broken down to a rough animatic) initially at 2 fps, just to get me moving. I have some some tests and though it is more of an elaborate GIF animation, it does give me direct control over each pose.   The idea then would be to add to the key frams to 6 then 12 then 24, cleaning it up as I go along.

I am avoiding the DS /Animate workflow as I would like to create unique movements that fit my story.

Anyway, I would love to hear what other workflows those of you who have animated in Carrara use. I really have not done much actual animation so your inpute would be helpful.

Thanks for reading and any ideas/suggestions!

Sounds good if you are trying to "sell" the story concept to a client, but since you are doing this for yourself, I'd jump right in and render each scene at the full frame rate.

You'll get a better feel for timing and flow this way.

The animatic or even a story board, will help if you are working out the flow of your story, but is not always necessary.  When I do an animation for myself, I almost always just jump right in without even a storyboard and only use a script to work from.

Best of luck with your project!

Thanks for the insight. I certainly would like to go straight to 24 or 30 fps and will strongly concider that.  I just get frustrated at times and also, sometimes, it is very overwhelming.  But I am commited to doing this.

Thanks again!

even when you do the higher fps  you don't have to render with high settings if your testing scenes.  I was watching the extras for beowolf and the extras had some scenes sometimes the chars just moved from point A to point B not even walking just getting the timing with the audio right.  very simple shading lighting.  then they went and refined it.

That is a good point too. I certainly expect to work form General movemnts and refine it to the final product. I forgot about seeing that in the special features. Thanks