The Galaxy Just Got Smaller part II

[Solarbaby]

Hey peeps happy new year.

Here's the 2nd episode of Star Trek: Absolution.
There's a huge difference in the sound quality thanks to sound editor Tony Lunn.

Enjoy....

Edit** Hmmph embedding isn't working.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkYFVMbF7f4

 

[Solarbaby]

3rd time lucky?

 

[Maurice]

Hey peeps happy new year.

Here's the 2nd episode of Star Trek: Absolution.
There's a huge difference in the sound quality thanks to sound editor Tony Lunn.

Enjoy....

Edit** Hmmph embedding isn't working.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkYFVMbF7f4[/yt]

There ya go.

 

[Solarbaby]

Thanks. The video showed up like that in the preview. But when I posted it disappeared.

 

[batboy853]

Im glad you guys were able to release a second episode! Audio is definitely improved! Next thing I would suggest focusing improvement on is your phoneme animation. While it looks like your animation is going on a standard 24 frame per second, the animations of the characters talk do not seem to be matching that, which is ok! Phoneme Animation is the most challenging part of 2d animation.

From a story standpoint, and I admit it has been a while since i've watched part 1... I am confused as to the backstory when was the Bajoran wormhole sealed? Also why would the federation counsel sanction an attack on the dominion after the treaty of bajor? "Yay we just won the worst war in our history, lets celebrate victory by violating our new treaty there for inviting mistrust for our future treaties!"

On a separate note, was it just me or did the Admiral sound like Herbert from Family Guy?

Again congrats guys, this production has a lot of potential. A future episode I would like to see what happened to Sito after the events of lower decks

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

The story takes place before the end of Deep Space Nine. I forget exactly when the Prophets sealed the Bajoran Wormhole, but I want to say the second half of Season 5 or so? And the project definetly isn't sanctioned by the Federation Counsel. This is a Section 31 operation that has drawn in extra Starfleet officers.

And btw, this awesome! Congrats.

 

[batboy853]

Thanks newspaper taxi, I'll have to rewatch part 1, could have sworn it at one point mentioned the return of voyager in that part. Continuity concern if this is during ds9 then no one would know of captain proton as it was authored by Tom Paris while in the delta quadrant.

 

[Solarbaby]

Thanks for the advice. I'm not familiar with phoneme. I haven't found a way to lip sync the audio. The process to do it all manually is just too time consuming and its an artistic sacrifice I felt justified to make.

This takes place in the 6th season of DS9 and 4th season of Voyager. In the 1st episode the Admiral reveals they've recently heard from Voyager via the Hirogen relay platform.

And we've seen so far that Admiral ALWAYS tells the truth. If she is then I don't see its far stretch for a clandestine fleet to use the wormhole drive as a weapon. This episode occurs a month after In the Pale Moonlight. Of course only Sisko knows what lengths he went to to drag the Romulans into the war. This shows how badly the war was going, and if Sisko could be so underhand to protect the Federation; one can only imagine what the hierarchy were prepared to do. The main problem would be accountability when it became knowledge. It would turn the Federation into the 1 we see in the Abrams films. A military org rather than a scientific exploratory one. Plus if that weapon was public knowledge then the Federation would have to protect it from their enemies forever holding it over them to keep them in place; a never ending cold war.

If she isn't telling the truth then she's a very naughty treasonous admiral.

 

[Solarbaby]

Thanks newspaper taxi, I'll have to rewatch part 1, could have sworn it at one point mentioned the return of voyager in that part. Continuity concern if this is during ds9 then no one would know of captain proton as it was authored by Tom Paris while in the delta quadrant.

Yikes I didn't realise that. I'm nore of a DS9 fan than Voyager. I always remember it was a holoprogram Paris used that was based on Flash Gordon serials. Maybe he sent the program in his allocated message to the Alpha quadrant since he didn't speak to his father and it became an instant hit back home.

 

[batboy853]

In s7, "Author, Author," it had not been shared with the Alpha Quadrant at that point, Paris asks the Doctor if the Doctor could help him get Captain Proton published at one point in the episode. But I'm sure the average viewer will overlook it. But checking Memory Alpha suggests that Paris may have based it off of a movie, as apparently Bride Of Chaotica! was in the NX-01 Enterprise's computer in Cogenitor. But this could have been the graphics team putting an Easter egg in the graphics too.

A phoneme in animation terms is the shape for each type of sounds used to form speech. This picture I used as reference when I experimented with 2D animation in flash.

Your phoneme shapes look good but the animation kind of looks rather choppy from one phoneme to the other. Again, nothing wrong with it all part of the learning curve. In flash you can sometimes use tweening to help the transition between phonemes, for others you can use the onion tool (which you can use to show previous frames transparent on the current one for reference) and do frame by frame adjustments

I forget, what program are you using for the animation again? I could perhaps find some learning material to help!

I used a program called papagayo to help determine what animation shapes to use at what frame on the audio. There is a fully automated program that does all the work called Crazy Talk, but I never was able to get it to integrate properly into flash so gave up. If you are using After-Effects there is a Auto-Lipsync Script out there, but it costs 40 bucks per license, and I am not sure how it works...

In college I originally was going to go to school for Animation, but instead settled on IT with a certificate in Film / Digital arts. My final year I took a year long course that first focused on character design, and then the final semester we had to create a 5 minute animation using those characters. While everyone in the course did claymation, stop-motion, or hand drawn cell animation, I chose to do it all by computer, using Adobe Illustrator and Flash. Turned out pretty well and was featured in a local student animation festival, but I could probably do better today. But yeah lip-syncing and the animation to go with it, is definitely the most challenging part of 2d animation.

 

[Solarbaby]

In s7, "Author, Author," it had not been shared with the Alpha Quadrant at that point, Paris asks the Doctor if the Doctor could help him get Captain Proton published at one point in the episode. But I'm sure the average viewer will overlook it. But checking Memory Alpha suggests that Paris may have based it off of a movie, as apparently Bride Of Chaotica! was in the NX-01 Enterprise's computer in Cogenitor. But this could have been the graphics team putting an Easter egg in the graphics too.

A phoneme in animation terms is the shape for each type of sounds used to form speech. This picture I used as reference when I experimented with 2D animation in flash.

Your phoneme shapes look good but the animation kind of looks rather choppy from one phoneme to the other. Again, nothing wrong with it all part of the learning curve. In flash you can sometimes use tweening to help the transition between phonemes, for others you can use the onion tool (which you can use to show previous frames transparent on the current one for reference) and do frame by frame adjustments

I forget, what program are you using for the animation again? I could perhaps find some learning material to help!

I used a program called papagayo to help determine what animation shapes to use at what point of dialog. There is a fully automated program called Crazy Talk, but I never was able to get it to integrate properly into flash so gave up. If you are using After-Effects there is a Auto-Lipsync Script out there, but it costs 40 bucks per license, and I am not sure how it works...

In college I originally was going to go to school for Animation, but instead settled on IT with a certificate in Film / Digital arts. My final year I took a year long course the first focused on character design, and then the final semester we had to create a 5 minute animation using those characters. While everyone in the course did claymation, stop-motion, or hand drawn cell animation, I chose to do it all by computer, using Adobe Illustrator and Flash. Turned out pretty well and was featured in a local student animation festival, but I could probably do better today. But yeah lip-syncing and the animation to go with it, is definitely the most challenging part of 2d animation.

I've seen that before. I wasnt aware if the name. Before I learned to animate I used gonaimates Star Trek theme with premade characters. I was given a sample of the mouth talking fla. file and have used it ever since.
I'm still using goanimate to host the series whilst making 99% of the assets in Adobe flash cs5.5

As of Jan 4th goanimate is going to stop allowing any importing of new swf files . They are switching to HTML5. So I'm not sure where thats going to leave me atm. I'm hoping to be able to convert the swf to a HTML5 based file. I may have to continue the series in another platform, maybe try out some new software.

Back to the phoneme- At present it's not something I'd be able to do using flash, maybe a HTML5 animation studio is the answer. I am limited to what I can do with flash. I really pushed the studio with the space battle scenes. I wanted a lot more weapon fire but I couldn't add any more without flash plugins crashing.

 

[batboy853]

You can do full animation in flash and export to video, then upload to where-ever. Most 2d production companies use something like toonboom other productions use Adobe After Effects.

 

[Solarbaby]

You can do full animation in flash and export to video, then upload to where-ever. Most 2d production companies use something like toonboom other productions use Adobe After Effects.

That only works if you turn every symbol into a graphic rather than a movie clip. Movie clips play the action script fx. Graphic wont. And a lot of the stuff uses action script. This is why I use goanimate. The screen capture somehow captures all the action script. Adobe flash wont export the AS.

I have looked at toon boom before. I am weary of new software it took me 2 years to really get to grip with Adobe. But i ahould push myself. Thanks again for your input.

 

[batboy853]

Oh interesting, I do not recall having that problem in the past with flash, but it has been a few years since i've worked with it. With that program too, it could all depend on what version you are using as well. I was on CS 5.5.

Anyways, looking forward to the next episode!

 

[Solarbaby]

I'm using cs5.5. Thanks. Not sure when I'll start the next episode but ive written 20 epsiofes so far

 

[Christopher Miles]

Wow. Even commercial breaks. Great music, and a diversity of voices.

Nice work- thanks for posting this. Some good entertainment right there.

 

[Solarbaby]

Wow. Even commercial breaks. Great music, and a diversity of voices.

Nice work- thanks for posting this. Some good entertainment right there.

Thanks. Commercial breaks??

 

[Tuskin38]

But checking Memory Alpha suggests that Paris may have based it off of a movie, as apparently Bride Of Chaotica! was in the NX-01 Enterprise's computer in Cogenitor. But this could have been the graphics team putting an Easter egg in the graphics too.

Well in the novel verse it is based off a fictional series from the early 1900s