For Tuesday's Crit

Paperrrr

The paper alternative I found on Tuesday is starting to sound like the best idea. Will get some use out of the green screen.
The storyboard from Tuesday is still relevant except everything will look like paper I won't have to worry about using particular.
I have a few ideas for where to start, but I want the music to influence where I take it. I want it to be more of an interpretation of the music rather than a solid narrative.
Still not sure on the political statement thing.

Here's another story board for one of the starting ideas. Will probably change but best I have so far.

Tues Crit

Have been brain storming all weekend and haven't been able to come up with a concept. Although, I'm pretty sure that I want the video to be based off a Flying Lotus song: Zodiac Shit. My idea so far is to start out walking down the street (or green screen) with camera filming from the side, and at 25 seconds, there is a great moment in the song that I want everything to change into some kind of digital, colorful, boarder line acid trip world (without all the tie dye and bubble letters), and myself explode into particles or something. Not sure about the political statement yet. Have been researching my options and limitations or AE's particle plugins. Downloaded a free trial of particular and form but i don't think i'll be able to render without getting a red X on my movie.
If particles are a problem, I saw a cool tutorial on making footage into paper animation. Might be an alternative.

For Tuesday's Crit

Since Friday I've fixed a few problems I came across when doing the storyboard/animation. First, added a joint to the legs which will allow for much more natural movement when the bird is jumping around. I added some IK constraints (the orange part of the leg in picture 1) to make the animation process a great deal easier.
I assigned vertex groups to the bones so the mesh deformations will make sense.
The beak is now closed and a bit smaller. Head has been shaped up as well.

Project 2: In Progress

Idea for project 2:
Crumpled piece of paper thrown on side of the road. Bird appears and starts pecking at it (as if it was going to eat it or something). "10 minutes later," Bird has made a origami crane out of the paper. "Don't Litter. This almost never happens".

The animation is being done in 3D with Blender. After effects will definitely be used for color correction, text play, and possibly some dust effects. I'll need to find some other ways to get some more use out of after effects for this project.

Just finished a rough animation/storyboard to get a better idea for how much time I'm filling up. I'm thrilled that after hours of rendering, blender did not crash.

Current issues:
Not sure yet how to get a real time preview out of blender. As it is, I always get a faster animation than expected. I can, and have, slowed it down in AE but it's not as smooth as it could be.

Project 2

Starting on new project. Haven't come up with good idea yet. Have a few potentials though. Two involving flash animation so I'm not sure how they will work out. One filming with no idea how I would incorporate aftereffects. I really want to do some camera tracking but haven't yet found an idea to go along with it.