Here it is -- "Homebrew" animated KP flicks

[fazhou]

Two weeks ago I would never have imagined I'd be announcing my making fully-animated Kim Possible videos, but here we are.

Through DDR, I've gotten hooked on the song "Firefly" (by Jpop group BeForU) around 2 weeks ago, and about the same time I stumbled across a program called "iClone" that has been promoted as an easy way to create 3D videos, using real-looking people to "act" in them. I was impressed by the demo and so I bought iClone 1.5 (ver. 2.0 is the latest, but is more pricey). I thought perhaps I could do some sort of music video to "Firefly," and while experimenting with the program I noticed that one of their stock "pants" looked similar to Kim Possible's "mission" pants. iClone allows you to import pictures of real people's faces to integrate with their characters, but would they perhaps also integrate cartoon faces too?

After a number of attempts (the first few Kim faces were so hideous, they still give me nightmares), I finally found just the right screencap and just the right rendering to give a pretty decent likeness. After tinkering a while, I was able to design a "mission top" and gloves. From there I just placed Kim in a 3D set and selected some moves for Kim to do in her dance. For those of you who have played "Mad Dog Squad" at Disneychannel.com, the process is kind of like that, only far more sophisticated with far more selections.

I had to deal with a few iClone quirks along the way. For some reason iClone kept rejecting my "Firefly" .wav file, so instead I substituted the song "Dive," also by BeForU. Plus, iClone 1.5 doesn't have a very good hair editor, and so I just put Kim's hair in a ponytail. Still, I was rather satisfied with how it turned out. This is my first-ever AMV...of a fully-animated 3D Kim Possible:







Watch the video here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYVPW3lJ4U0

I admit it's not professional quality, but what more can you ask from a working budget of...um, 200 dollars? What I am not real happy about is the picture quality of the video. I looked online for tips, but no matter what I tried the video lost a lot of the crispness I saw on the iClone monitor (compare video with the screencap). I also wish I could get rid of that "DivX" watermark; it's annoying. If anyone knows a lot about digital video rendering, I'm all ears. That's the reason for the delay--I had finished the project in 3 days, but I've spent a week trying to find a decent rendering.

The program has limitations, but keep in mind that this technology is really in its infancy...consider this as "Pong," whereas the future will be like "Playstation 3," and that what you're viewing is just a few hours' work by somebody who has almost no experience in video-making.

Right now, what iClone would be best for is AMVs of characters dancing, singing, etc. and for brief skits and tableaus. If we stick with those things, I can turn out videos very rapidly. For example, I did this next clip in just 15 minutes using an already-established "set" and merely "dropped" Kim into the set:

s7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/fa_zhou/KP_AMVs/?action=view¤t=kpcathedraltitle.flv

iClone does lip-synch, too! Even though the lip-synching isn't always perfect, it's a snap to do...all I have to do is drop in a .wav file, and the computer does all the rest in seconds. This next video took me a total of 10 minutes of work. I like this so well, I'm going to do the whole song very soon.

s7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/fa_zhou/KP_AMVs/?action=view¤t=coulditbetitle.flv

So, with that in mind, I think it would be really cool to try some short "skits" (of less than 10 lines each or so, probably based on fanfics), and if anyone wants to help with voice acting, I would really appreciate that.

[Nulla]

That is really cool great work FaZhou.

Can you make custom models for iClone ? i.e. using something like 3DSMax or Lightwave for making characters from scratch.

edit: also mayb try using xvid to encode video

[Deleted]

Can't say i like the song but that was a really cool video. Great work.

[morefood2001]

Great video

I have a lot of experience with video editing and compositing and that DIVX always shows up at the beginning for 3 seconds when you have the professional version of Dr. DIVX. For the entire video though, you must have had a trial or standard version. Did you get an MPEG, WMV, or Uncompressed AVI rendering of the video at first then convert it? If so I can probably help you IM or email me, I will be happy to help ([e-mail] will probably be best)

I need to get poking around for a good 3d video simulator program, I have a good idea for a new Famousphil.com video, but I need to spend a lot of time to come up with the right design. One of these days

[Loser7]

OoOo, I really like Kim's ponytial for some reason- it's cute. This seems like it could potentially be extremely fun ;D

[fazhou]

loser7 said:

OoOo, I really like Kim's ponytial for some reason- it's cute. This seems like it could potentially be extremely fun ;D

Thanks! I agree, it's a blast, and I'm just getting warmed up. You maybe up to doing some storyboarding for a new AMV?

nulla said:

That is really cool great work FaZhou.

Can you make custom models for iClone ? i.e. using something like 3DSMax or Lightwave for making characters from scratch.

edit: also mayb try using xvid to encode video

Yeah, Xvid was one option I hadn't yet tried, although the actual putting the file onto my hard drive wasn't the biggest problem (see below).

Custom models, you mean like characters? What iClone can do is--they give you some generic body models to work with and you can adjust their overall sizes, or the head sizes (I set Kim's at 119% so she looks a little younger than full grown adult), hand size or feet size, and you can set the character to "thin," "muscular," or "heavy." I can't yet create a whole new body shape from scratch, though (Kim's torso is that of a full-grown woman and there's no easy way to change it), but they plan on fixing that when iClone 3.0 comes out.

The face is a whole 'nother matter. You can customize facial features to your heart's content and make incredibly grotesque distortions if you want; you can use a photo as a template (and usually the likeness is quite striking). I think the original purpose was for people to create walking, talking "clones" of themselves to put on their websites (hence the name "iClone," and in fact the original name for it was "It's Me"), and they only recently saw the potential for making animated movies with it.

morefood2001 said:

Great video

I have a lot of experience with video editing and compositing and that DIVX always shows up at the beginning for 3 seconds when you have the professional version of Dr. DIVX. For the entire video though, you must have had a trial or standard version. Did you get an MPEG, WMV, or Uncompressed AVI rendering of the video at first then convert it? If so I can probably help you IM or email me, I will be happy to help ([e-mail] will probably be best)

I need to get poking around for a good 3d video simulator program, I have a good idea for a new Famousphil.com video, but I need to spend a lot of time to come up with the right design. One of these days

I did several formats and nearly all showed major deterioration in either video or audio quality. One of the .wmv settings--I think it was "High motion video for broadband PAL (768 kbps)" was beautiful, but it was square! Majorly frustrating.

The rendering I settled on which was farily good, was a 320x240 .avi using DivX at extremely high bitrate--like 3000. Then I did the titles on Windows Movie Maker and used the output setting "High quality video (small)" which gave me a 320x240 .wmv file of about 700 kbps. The quality at that point was still not too bad--most of the deterioration happened when I submitted the video either to Photbucket or Youtube, where they convert it to a low-quality Flash video. I think that is about 75% of the problem right there. I also submitted to Revver.com, which I hear is a lot better quality, but I have to wait until they "approve" it before it gets posted, and they're not nearly as well known as Youtube. Grrrrr....

[Rose Hunts]

Wow, That was awesome!! At one part the moves seemed to be the exact ones disney drew Jake doing on the Ep "Switcheroo". Strange. You did GREAT!!!

[nabusan]

*jaw drops*

This is even bigger than I thought it was!!! Bravo!! Love the videos!

[Darth_Comrade]

Fazhou, I recommend u watch this fan made animation...look at the speed the motion goes in and such.

I hope you find it useful.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAQDYlAjX6Q

[morefood2001]

fazhou said:

I did several formats and nearly all showed major deterioration in either video or audio quality. One of the .wmv settings--I think it was "High motion video for broadband PAL (768 kbps)" was beautiful, but it was square! Majorly frustrating.

The rendering I settled on which was farily good, was a 320x240 .avi using DivX at extremely high bitrate--like 3000. Then I did the titles on Windows Movie Maker and used the output setting "High quality video (small)" which gave me a 320x240 .wmv file of about 700 kbps. The quality at that point was still not too bad--most of the deterioration happened when I submitted the video either to Photbucket or Youtube, where they convert it to a low-quality Flash video. I think that is about 75% of the problem right there. I also submitted to Revver.com, which I hear is a lot better quality, but I have to wait until they "approve" it before it gets posted, and they're not nearly as well known as Youtube. Grrrrr....

Pal is the format for Europe and many other foreign countries. I would not be surprised if it turned out square when viewing on an NTSC TV (As I am assuming you are). I would try rendering in uncompressed AVI as NTSC video at 640x480 at a bitrate of about 3000 kbps. That will give you about a 1200MB file (Just a rough guess). This will assure us that the file is big enough to convert again downhill without quality loss. Then I would go back to Windows Movie Maker and convert it there to fit the size of about 15MB in WMV format. If you get it looking like this, then it should be relatively easy to put up on RS videos.

I am willing to bet that the reason for the DIVX logo is your initial conversion in DIVX.

I will probably get a trial of IClone to play around with and then I will be able to give you a better idea of how to get good quality video. There are a lot of advanced settings which I have when I do renderings of my videos and I have found that the different kinds of frames and their frequency makes a big difference in the final product.

Also uploading to youtube, google videos, and others does produce poor quality. RS and KPFW both have the room to host your video if you wish to have it there. My guess is that the RS video section would be the best place, and you can do that

Off topic: BTW, that uploader program for RS Videos that I am working on is almost done Just a few kinks in the Netscape Browser testing

[spacefreak]

Wow, that's awesome. I was wondering if we can do two basic sets, namely a street fight between Kim and Shego, and then try to replicate the dance scene in StD with Kim and Ron, just to test things out.

Can the characters only do dances, or can you do fight scenes or acrobatics (for Kim's cheerleading skills), or simply two people talking to each other?

This program seems to have a LOT of potential, I'm looking forward to it.

[fazhou]

morefood2001 said:

fazhou said:

I did several formats and nearly all showed major deterioration in either video or audio quality. One of the .wmv settings--I think it was "High motion video for broadband PAL (768 kbps)" was beautiful, but it was square! Majorly frustrating.

The rendering I settled on which was farily good, was a 320x240 .avi using DivX at extremely high bitrate--like 3000. Then I did the titles on Windows Movie Maker and used the output setting "High quality video (small)" which gave me a 320x240 .wmv file of about 700 kbps. The quality at that point was still not too bad--most of the deterioration happened when I submitted the video either to Photbucket or Youtube, where they convert it to a low-quality Flash video. I think that is about 75% of the problem right there. I also submitted to Revver.com, which I hear is a lot better quality, but I have to wait until they "approve" it before it gets posted, and they're not nearly as well known as Youtube. Grrrrr....

Pal is the format for Europe and many other foreign countries. I would not be surprised if it turned out square when viewing on an NTSC TV (As I am assuming you are). I would try rendering in uncompressed AVI as NTSC video at 640x480 at a bitrate of about 3000 kbps. That will give you about a 1200MB file (Just a rough guess). This will assure us that the file is big enough to convert again downhill without quality loss. Then I would go back to Windows Movie Maker and convert it there to fit the size of about 15MB in WMV format. If you get it looking like this, then it should be relatively easy to put up on RS videos.

I am willing to bet that the reason for the DIVX logo is your initial conversion in DIVX.

I will probably get a trial of IClone to play around with and then I will be able to give you a better idea of how to get good quality video. There are a lot of advanced settings which I have when I do renderings of my videos and I have found that the different kinds of frames and their frequency makes a big difference in the final product.

Also uploading to youtube, google videos, and others does produce poor quality. RS and KPFW both have the room to host your video if you wish to have it there. My guess is that the RS video section would be the best place, and you can do that

Off topic: BTW, that uploader program for RS Videos that I am working on is almost done Just a few kinks in the Netscape Browser testing

Gah, I never even thought about hosting it on RS! I'll bet the quality is way better. I'll do another rendering on Xvid this weekend and re-post it on RS. Thanks for the tips!

[morefood2001]

When you do backend work for sites, I guess you know some helpful suggestions No Problem Let me know how you make out.

[wallaceb]

yep, between Phil and Myself, we can help you with just about any tech problem you have, and i would be very very happy to have that video and others on the KPFW server heck that is what it is there for

[spacefreak]

Wow, after watching that link you gave me in another thread (the Pirates of the Caribbean one), I can definitely see some potential. Is there a way to zoom in on the characters to just see their faces, or are we always going to see full body shots? Also, is there a way for three or more characters to interact, or in their interactions, is one talking and the others simply standing around?

I think I'm going to run through some KP episodes to see the animation styles and see if I can help at all. I wouldn't mind helping with the storyboarding and basic plots. I wonder if Swenlin can give me a crash course on this stuff.... man this is going to be fun.

[dracko19]

Hey there Fazhou! This looks like a fun project.

One of my questions is...aren't you trying to reinvent the wheel here? Did you see this?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_NiPC41cdQ

Seems like you could do this way easier with sets already created in the Sims world. The face isn't perfect, but its as good (or better) than what you have with Iclone.

Just a thought.

[morefood2001]

I will take a peek at the Sims also I know that Tuc is doing a big Sims project (simpossible2.kpfanworld.com) and I think that I would like to give it a try

Tech problems are not a problem for wallaceb and I I don't know if there is much that we haven't seen

[fazhou]

spacefreak said:

Wow, that's awesome. I was wondering if we can do two basic sets, namely a street fight between Kim and Shego, and then try to replicate the dance scene in StD with Kim and Ron, just to test things out.

As for "fight scenes," here's a quick video I whipped up in a few seconds just to answer your question, of Kim doing some martial arts motions:
s7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/fa_zhou/KP_AMVs/?action=view¤t=kpkarate.flv

All you'd need to do is add another character like Shego doing their own moves, and voila, you have a fight scene.

Can the characters only do dances, or can you do fight scenes or acrobatics (for Kim's cheerleading skills), or simply two people talking to each other?

This program seems to have a LOT of potential, I'm looking forward to it.

I already have made a video of Kim doing the dance in the original video with Ron. I haven't yet released it because I want to improve Ron's look first. They dance side-by-side...it's a little more difficult to have them dance "cheek to cheek" because you edit their movements separately and have to coordinate them, but it's quite do-able.

[spacefreak]

Oh wow, awesome. I posted this in another thread before I saw this, but the basic stances look great. Is there a way to add in the trademark gymnastics skills?

To create the basic plot line for our "fan-created S5" I'd want to wait until after the finale to see what plot lines haven't already been tied up. If they have been, then we can start in a fresh direction, or go with what seem to be the two most popular themes: K/R in college, or K/R on summer vacation.

One of the advantages of K/R in college is that we might be able to design new characters and not have to worry about keeping many of the side characters.

Personally, I see KP as having primary and secondary characters, and then everyone else. I'll make the claim that the primary characters are Kim, Ron, Rufus, Wade, Drakken, Shego. The secondary characters would be Mrs. Dr. P, Mr. Dr. P, the tweebs, Monique, Bonnie, Steve Barkin, Yori, Dementor, Monkey Fist, and SSS / SSJ. Finally, we have everyone else, which includes Camille Leon, Motor Ed, DNAmy, Duff Killigan, Lucre, Felix, Team Go, Dr. Director, Gemini, and then any other characters I've missed.

Obviously, we have to find people for the primary tier, and then have people from the secondary characters and everyone else pop in from time to time. This would be the case if we are going to try to keep this true to the KP storylines so far.

Ofcourse, if we want to deviate from this, based upon the desires of the fans, we can, and for example, see less Dementor and Drakken, and more Felix and Camille Leon, then we would typically see in the series. (I personally prefer Drakken, Shego, Dementor, and Monkey Fist as the main villains)

This also gives us a chance to play with the characters a bit. Since Bob, Mark, and Steve have stated that Kim and Ron will always be together, I personally would like to keep it that way. However, that doesn't mean they can't have side arguments where they are upset at each other every once in a while.

For those who want to see Drakken and Shego, we can try a bit of shippiness there, but unless we go some route a la moodulator, this one would take some work and be a long process, not an overnight or single episode thing. It would have to be an evolving storyline.

Same for Monique. She might be Miss Independent, but I'm sure she'd like to find someone someday. I've heard people say they'd like to see Monique and Felix, or Monique and Wade together. If someone can come up with the appropriate voices for each, as well as the ability to keep things in character, I'm all ears.

And finally, some KiGo here and there. Since TPTB have stated that Kim and Ron will always be together, I don't see anything physically developing there. BUT, I am sure during the fight scenes and regular taunting, we can add in some suggestive lines by either person, with the usual odd looks from Drakken and Ron.

If we do Kim and Ron on their summer vacation, we'd have to find a place for them to have it. Are they going to be going around the world on vacation, only to be interrupted by villians, or are we going to have them bumming around the house or working somewhere in Middleton? Again, its up to the fans which direction we want to go, but which ever we decide, we have to keep with it. One of the best parts of Season 4 in my opinion is that there is continuity, and we can see how the dynamics of the characters evolve over time.

To get some practice, I'd recommend we develop the following scenes to test the feasibility of this:

*A simple fight scene between Kim and Shego. It could be in a factory, in a parking lot, in a bank, museum, take your pick. We need to see if the animation program (iClone) will let us do this.

*A recreation of the dance scene from StD. We need to see if we can get Kim and Ron together in a few shots.

*A simple conversation between Kim and Ron at a booth at Bueno Nacho. Again, a staple of the show.

*Kim talking to Wade on the Kimmunicator, as well as some shots of Wade talking on the computer, and Wade in his room in front of the computer.

*Kim driving in her car, both exterior and interior shots. Since this seems to be Kim's new mode of transportation around the Middleton Area, we need to make sure this works.

*Kim using her grappling gun to get up a building and or rock formation. Again, critical to her missions.

*Kim using her jet pack. Not used so much in S4, but I miss that thing, it was cool.

*Drakken and Shego arguing over something in one of Drakken's lairs. Pick a favorite one and go for it.

Most of these clips shouldn't be longer than thirty seconds, but from how these basic clips of KP work out, I think we can make this as close to the KP animation style as possible.

[slicknickshady]

spacefreak said:

And finally, some KiGo here and there. BUT, I am sure during the fight scenes and regular taunting, we can add in some suggestive lines by either person, with the usual odd looks from Drakken and Ron.

No thank you. If it would not happen in the show i don't want it to happen here. If this happens all this will be is fan fiction.