Sound clip: None.
What I like:
I should do a section called "What my Mom likes" cause she's the only fan of this one. I like my flipbook planning test, which I followed maybe way too close. I was fascinated with Jason Ryan's approach of the whole Flipbook planning thing and I used it for three pieces on my reel. It worked on one, helped out a bit on the other and on this one, it ended up being better than the final. Here's the flipbook test:
This piece was filled with so many friggin' problems it was insane. I also chose this one to do LAST, when I was obviously beyond burnt out. Horses are INFINITELY hard to animate. They're also harder to animate if you have a shit rig. They're also harder to animate if the guy who made the rig doesn't understand basic horse anatomy. So I bought this "Realistic horse" model, as it was labelled for WAY too much $$$ off of Turbosquid. Why? because it was rigged and ready to go. Or so I thought. I bought the rig because I didn't want to start a horse rig from the ground up and I wanted to finish the reel asap. When I got it downloaded I played around with it, it seemed ok. Then I put it away and worked on other pieces. Came back to it and noticed that the most important action this horse needed to do, something a horse does all the goddamn time, was IMPOSSIBLE. 
See my problem? yeah I was freaking out. I dug online and found the guy, he was in Europe somewhere and sent him an email, seeing as he labelled it as a "realistic horse rig" and I paid MONEY for this piece of shit, I'm entitled to getting what I PAID for. He responded told me he would get back to me and "see what he can do..." Well a year or so has gone by...nothing. So I had some rigger experts look at it and they even tried to fix it without re-riggin it. No dice. Not only would it have to be remodelled and the head rescaled, the neck rig placement was NOT where it should have been. Also there was a saddle rig and reins rig on there as well to consider. Major pain in the ass. So I re-rigged it with the Setup machine. That was a bloody nightmare. I spent weeks Remodelling AND rerigging AND reweighting the sunnuvabitch. It was a pain trying to make the legs work the right way, seeing as the set up machine doesn't do four legged animals very well(shoulder/scapula guys? COME ON). I busted my ass trying to make it work and eventually I got something that wasn't totally shitty. Then I key framed the thing, sorting out all kinds of friggin issues. Keying two characters that interact and one has so many bones to worry about=>major headache. Took forever. So bottomline, what I like about this is.....I got the stupid thing DONE.
...Oh and the head shake, cause that's what my Mom's horses would do. In fact, this is based off EXACTLY what they do in this situation. Sons of bitches!
What I don't like:
Besides, EVERYTHING?
I've been told before that my animation is very..."Stop-motiony". I think this is the best example of that. Obviously, it feels clunky. It is. It's also a friggin' hard piece, lets see you do it! also it drags near the end, a lot more than I planned. Shoulda had the guy drag the chair so it was closer when he fell or just cut the whole piece earlier, like after he slaps him. The slap on the ass is slow and almost effeminate.
Probably could have spent more time on the tail and ears. As a lot of a horse's attitudes are told through both. The spaz out after the slap could have been better but I was DYING to get that thing off the screen so bad, it was a bitch to animate. A BITCH.
The lighting sucks. That's for sure.
I could retime this piece and fix a few things but who the hell cares. Not too long after this was finished there was a free horse rig thrown up on High end 3d that was WAY better than the rig and model I had, but once again, it's head couldn't reach the ground. Does nobody LOOK at what they are modelling/rigging anymore?
When my reel was shown to a guy from Bluesky through a buddy of mine, the Bluesky guy said bluntly "cut the last two pieces they're crap" or something to that effect. While I couldn't agree more....those two pieces amounted to more half a YEAR of my life. That's heart breaking. I was depressed for months. But big whoop, move onto the next thing. Animation is a bitch. Maybe next time I do a horse it won't suck as bad as this.
Conclusion:
Hell on earth. Shoulda put the flipbook test on the reel.
Here's some of the ten trillion thumbnails I did for this.
