So this week I've been cracking on with animation tests, but I've also got back into producing and organising everything for when we start animating (next week - fingers crossed).
After our meeting with Andy a week ago, we set out a production pipeline...
... which has been a blessing for creating the final schedule.
I've also done a breakdown of every shot in the production, and have a nicely organised folder with the voiceclip quote and the corressponding storyboard for it:
I've also created a form that can be used to document the individual shot's progress.
Which will probably end up looking a little something like this:
After posting so many schedules I'm feeling rather OCD, but this one is a weekly plan that I can give to crew members to outline the project's overall goal for that week, and they can use to fill in what they do each day... which is going to be a big help when it comes to writing the horribly long production report at the end of term and no-one can remember when they did anything (been there - don't want to repeat).
Aaaand, finally, a nice table to chart the overall progress of the project:
Right, now for the fun stuff, the moving pictures!
A video documenting the animation test progress of the Cannibal Pig... She loves bacon:
And, using the Cannibal Pig, a background texture test:
As per Rosa's suggestion, every week or so, I'm going to make an edit of everything we have so far, this is yesterday's one (and it's already had some more storyboarding done since then).
To save my sanity, Hugh has been an absolute hero this past week while I pieced together my draft dissertation for Monday. The final voicetrack (for the forseeable future) is now in place and we're going to be working to it (perhaps with a few twaeaks here and there for timing).
When we showed them on Friday, Rosa and Derek seemed pleased with what we've accomplished so far, and the track got a few laughs even without the visuals to accompany it...
(The video is rather boring, but has some storyboard of what we've got planned thus far).
We're still looking for ideas for some sections of audio, but this next week is going to be about animation tests, ready for when we get our second years sometime next week.
(It glitches slightly as I hadn't realised there was an additional frame when I switched from 25 to 12fps).
The pleasing thing is that these ones didn't take very long at all... I find it much easier to make my animation neater on paper than I do on computer, there's just something about having it there physically on the paper that makes it easier than a graphics tablet for me.
So, apologies for the lack of blog updates, but the past week has been dedicated to finishing (and starting) the animatic for Love Hate.
Today we had to present our animatics in front of our year, tutors and an industry professional (Morgan Francis - not Freeman as I accidently typed before - Co-Director at Spider Eye). After this the number of final projects going forth to production will be cut down to around 10 from the 16 that got through the pitching stage.
The animatic was made alone by yours truly and I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. I wasn't particularly keen on the first 'doorknob' section, but after a few people have each said this was their favourite bit, I've had my faith reassured in it. Not bad for six days of solid work. Even if it meant I didn't leave the house for a couple of days in a row. I swear when/if I get a job in inudstry I may forget what sunlight looks like!
Quite alot of people used Storyboard Pro to create their animatics, but since I have never used it and get easily distracted when I attempt to work in the studio... (it appears solitary confinement is the best way for me to get stuff done), I created it using a mash of all my program knowledge: Flash, Animate, After Effects and Premiere. A wise choice since these will be the programs I use to make the actual thing (if it gets picked...).
So, we shall find out by the end of the week which films are going through. If mine isn't picked I have my eye on a couple of other projects I'd love to help out on. But we shall see.
Alas, this doesn't mean the workload is over. Far from it. We have a deadline on friday for the pre-production deadline where we have to produce a bible of nearly all the pre-production work we have so far. Currently mine is about 55 pages (mainly because I've had to include the 30 pages of storyboards! To be honest I think I'll have to separate it into lots of separate parts to get the file size to fit the upload limit!).
Aaand, to finish up, here's a new and improved taster of the music, since I changed the soundtrack the visuals play to, I couldn't use this version since it wouldn't match up! Pretty pleased with how it's gone though:
So, there's been quite alot of changes since I last updated, and it feels like time is fast slipping away, as it always does when a deadline is rapidly approaching and my timetables are looking more and more scarier... After realising quite early on I wouldn't be able to accomplish everything I want to do for the piece on time, I asked Hugh Herbert to be my co-director. Hugh has helped to give the project a bit more of a boost to the (and I use the term loosely here...) 'narrative' of the piece, helping to come up with new sequences, something I was struggling with when sat on my own with the original ten page transcript of quotes.
After constructive feedback from my tutors, the structure of the project has also changed somewhat, instead of having the whole piece just continaully morph from one thing to the next, it's going to be more segmented - kind of like a little sketch show - with different scenarios in each bit. This should make for much more interesting viewing, giving me the oppurtunity play around with the pacing and timing as well. Hugh has also suggested tweaking the style slighty for each segment, so that the piece has the same kind of style throughout, but different variations and themes for individual love/hates, hopefully this too will make the piece more interesting than just "I love A, I hate B, etc...".
The frustrating thing about working with a soundlead piece is that it feels like I'm working backwards, normally you have the narrative idea, then storyboard/animatic from that and worry about the sound last. However, I'm having to figure out the order the soundclips are going in, which clip flows into which, can I use both the love/hate they say in the clip or just the one, how will it morph to the next one - if it does at all, and so on and so forth. Only once that's all sorted can storyboarding any visuals begin. This is why Hugh has been so helpful, just having someone to bounce ideas with makes the whole process much quicker and the visuals come along more naturally.
Trying to put voiceclips into a logical order: Another problem that has arisen by working on a soundbased project is what to actually put into the animatic. I still want to go out and record more people so I can get the largest possible source of material to work with for the final film, which means there's no final narrative or soundtrack to work to yet. This poses a problem for my friend Rob, the music man, as I can't give him anything definitvie to work with. However, since we need to hand in a scratchtrack with our Animatics, to give a sense of what the final thing will be like, I put together a 3 & a half minute set of clips for him to work with, which is working well so far:
This again has affected what I am able to do for the animatic: after speaking to Derek and showing him the animatic script; he asked if it was going to be the same for the final film; after I said no, he suggested just making an animatic just for the clips I would like to use in the final film. This has made it much easier to figure out which clips I need to properly storyboard and work on (more schedules!.
I've started mocking up some parts of the animatic with my storyboards...
And have have also done one bit of the real animatic so far:
(Virtual cookies for you if you can tell which famous horror film that shot pays homage to...)
I'll post another update sometime later on this week focused more on the design-y side of things.
So, Love Hate (I'm still not sure whether to refer to it as lovehate or LoveHate or Love Hate...), has been picked to go into the prelimary stages of production!
There were so many that the tutors wanted to put through, that sixteen projects have been asked to work up until the animatic stage. Where the projects will be reviewed on the strength of their stories and animatics which will be used to review and cut down the number of projects down to ten. I think this is a pretty good idea since some of the projects last year had already began to slip their original scheduling about this time.
So, speaking of scheduling, now that my fate has been determined, this week is all about organising. Something that, as sad as it is, I rather enjoy doing as it feels like you're actually getting somewhere, even if you have a bomb of stuff still to do, (something working on Barista taught me pretty early on). And after discovering today that there's just 28 weeks until the final projects are handed in, which, in theory, seems like a very long time, it's probably a good thing I get organised asap.
The animatic deadline is on December the 5th, just over three weeks away and requires are rough sound scratchtrack to accompany it, (some people, like Dan, whose project Fentil: Another Life has also been picked for production, are ahead of the game there as he prepped his animatic in time for the pitch). As mine is all about the sound I'm currently editing through all of my voiceclips: trying to link ones together where I can visualise the imagery of one flowing into the other; some are naturally linking together rather well, others - not so much. And meanwhile my friend Rob is busy making music, so I need to give him the final order asap. So far, so stressed.
To help me try and get organised, I've typed up transcripts of all the voice recordings I've done so far...
This morning I created a proper schedule! (Scary). It'll probably be revised countless times, but it will serve for now. How much I'll stick to it though is another matter (I haven't been great at sticking to my plan of doing bi-weekly blog updates, but my blogging has always been sporadic, and it means I've posted more than I would've done, so it's not a negative in my book).
Here's my plan for my plan:
And the actual thing itself:
(I like making things colour co-ordinated, can you tell? The darker a colour is, the more important the task is, except green - that's in Rob's hands not mine - and orange is holidays!)
It's been a while blog, I've been busy neglecting you and half starting and not finishing everything else...
So, here's an updated version of the Barista Animatic, the first minute and a half is by Alex and the rest is by me...
Due to techincal problems and compatability issues, only me and Alex are going to be working on the final film, we're definitley animating up to the end of the animatic and anything after that will be a bonus! No more animatic we're heading straight into animating next!
Tomorrow, with the aide of Alex's girlfriend and armed with P2 cameras, we're roadtripping to some fancy coffee place Alex has got in contact with to shoot some refererence footage for the opening coffee-making sequence, so I'll be uploading some pictures of that soon :)
I'm currently working on pre-production like a boss, after my fairly successful pitch (I feel it went well... considering I didn't have a practice and Derek & Kathy hadn't heard anything about my change of idea...) things are coming together fairly quickly and easily.
Also going to be doing our second shoot for Cinematography tonight (our first was fairly successful, but there are a couple we need to reshoot). I'm also going to take my "monkey" camera and take pictures and do some interviews for our "behind the scenes" kind-of-thing we have to do to accompany it, as well as perform my role as shot keeper (or as Frankie says, 'shop keeper'), so that'll be up on here soon too.
I'm currently working on an Animatic for Tim's little Daydream sequence. I'm aiming to complete before next week when I have to go home for my Grandad's funeral. I'm going through what has so far been the worst three months of my life, I was hoping it would start to get a bit better, but I was given the news that one of my cats had to be put down today. Thanks life.
The video actually jerks and skips out a bit when the Angel is throwing the Harp away...
This is the only real part of the animation I needed to carefully study my reference video for, I made some sketches of the rough poses to help me get it right.
Also, totally unrelated, but this awesome advert appeared on YouTube when I went to upload the animatic.
Voice One: "You stole it! I..." Voice Two: "I thought you put it there!" Voice One: "Why would I put it there?!?" Voice Two: "Kindness?" Voice One: "Kindness?! You stole it! He stole it!!"
My initial idea was to have two squirrels arguing over a nut, pretty basic, but also pretty obvious so I'm glad I didn't use that idea (also I'd've had to try and animate squirrels, despite watching lots of Disney films throughout my youth, I doubt I'd probably fail epically). This idea arrived almost instantaneously after listening to the voice clip, (a transcript can be found above), which was a minor miracle as this was early Monday morning.
My second idea appeared not long after while we were in the 2D session breaking down the soundclip to begin the start of our dopesheets: An Angel and a Devil (like the two little guys who you always see in films acting as the characters conscience) arguing over a stolen "feeling", the ending, where the Devil would shout "He stole it!" would've panned out to reveal the character who was having a battle with their conscience, and the Angel and Devil had been sat/floating by their shoulders.
After speaking with Derek he raised some problems with my idea (he's good at doing that), in that it wasn't obvious what my characters were arguing over, whereas with the squirrel idea it was too obvious, this wan't obvious at all. He also suggested changing the Devil to the one who says "kindness?" to make it more ironic and add a bit of comedy to it. So, my revised idea is still having an Angel and a Devil arguing, but this time, the Angel is the angry one, because the Devil has stolen his Halo and got it stuck over his horns.
Now having finished the storyboard, I have recorded some reference material (with horrendous acting once again) in order to make a quick animatic this week. I still need to use After Effects to composite the two clips (since I couldn't act for the Angel & Devil at once), but I have the cut that I want to use to emphasise the "kindness" line. Also note my amazing props. Yeeeah.
Aaaand finally (this has been a mammoth update) this is a quick drawing I did in Photoshop to give a (very) rough idea of what the final thing will kind of look like:
(The background picture is from ForsakeWolf at Deviant Art who put this up as a Stock photo so that others can use it for free).
We're updating the formation blog pretty often, not everything is going to post everything here, so you might want to check it out.
It's a good thing the Animatic is completed, as in two hours time I'll be heading home to celebrate my (not-so) little brother's 18th birthday. (Don't worry, I'm taking my sketchbooks to hopefully abate my boredom on the trains...) Will be back ready on sunday to start the real animation on monday :)
This week I've gotten on a lot better with Kathy's project (largely due to Nigel & Olly coming up with a good idea to base this weeks drawing around). I've worked on it all over the weekend (also been working on some Animal Firm) so that I can spend this week cracking on with the Animatic I've just started for the "Formation" project, which we now have a blog for.
Anyway, sketchbook project this week, we drew an object beginning with the first letters of the alphabet.
