Progress 1 from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Happily, I can genuinely call this progress. Focusing on walk cycles sounded like a great idea and a perfect fit for this assignment. It is…and in so many ways it is Driving Me Crazy!

I see the improvements I am making, but I really must find a way to crank up the speed. The concept behind this project is to provide a short narrative that tells a man’s life (very briefly) through walk cycles at different stages in his life.

The video is roughly 60% done. I just need to: work the problems out of this last under-layer (the cane walk), drop two characters, include transitions, and see how many secondary actions I can include.

Cane Walk Study from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.
This is a small video I recorded as a reference for a walk cycle. The shorter steps show that this is an elderly character.

Here are more studies of landscapes to improve on composition. I photographed some of the same scenes, because the change of seasons greatly alters the mood of the environment.

Elements from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Wow, what an engaging assignment. What brings me no end of frustration is the cropping of these studies. Once again iMovie takes pleasure in removing a sizable portion of my material. The smoke effect, which turned out beautifully on the preview screen, has been cropped out almost 50%!

No fear. I simply need to reshoot the frames once I figure out how to get my laptop “uncrashed” and booted up.

I plan to perfect a full color study of each of these elements so that I have some nice work for my portfolio.

Visual Research: Smoke from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

It’s not everyday you happen to come across a smoker’s pavilion that is ironically burning on the inside. I only wish I had adjusted the white balance on my camera so that the smoke would not have turned out so green. I’ll soon upload a version of this study played back at different speeds.