Love Hate (Teaser) from Alice Nightingale on Vimeo.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
A much needed update.
Life after graduation has been depressingly unrelated to animation thus far.
After a summer spent using the last of my house deposit to enter Love Hate into as many festivals as possible, it seemed inevitable I had to get a job. So I'm back at faithful Waitrose once more.
There was however, a little light at the end of the tunnel as myself and fellow coursemate Nigel (one of Love Hate's animators), were accepted to work as volunteers to the 12th Cornish Film Festival which took place in November. (I've got amazingly slow with these updates).
Excitingly, Love Hate was also accepted into the festival, screening in both the "Made in Kernow" category and the Eye-Toons Animation shorts category.
However, the festival became even more exciting as Love Hate went on to WIN the award for the "Made in Kernow" category.
A complete surprise to me as I hadn't even known it was shortlisted! (Poor Nigel however had been told earlier in the day and had to struggle to keep it a secret!)
This win gave us a nice shiny trophy and £400 in prize money, which was split between the team and kept to bankroll the film into future animation festivals (at £10-30 a pop to enter - as well as postage, DVDs and printer ink - it's not cheap!).
Sadly things after Chritsmas haven't been quite so rosy, and I had to postpone working as a volunteer for Animated Exeter in order to attend Jury Duty (thankfully far better, and a little shorter, than I anticipated!).
However, things are beginning to look up again with the news that Love Hate has been selected to screen at the Holland Animation Film Festival! And after working pretty much non-stop since the start of November, I'll be using my next week off to enter LH into as many more festivals as possible!
Sadly things after Chritsmas haven't been quite so rosy, and I had to postpone working as a volunteer for Animated Exeter in order to attend Jury Duty (thankfully far better, and a little shorter, than I anticipated!).
However, things are beginning to look up again with the news that Love Hate has been selected to screen at the Holland Animation Film Festival! And after working pretty much non-stop since the start of November, I'll be using my next week off to enter LH into as many more festivals as possible!
Wednesday, 26 September 2012
Friday, 1 June 2012
Not dead!
I realise it's been a long time since I posted, and a lot has happened in that time!
Thanks to my fabulous team:
HUGH
ELLIOT
LYDIA
DAN
NIGEL
...Love Hate was finihed with two days to spare! They really are a top bunch of animators and left me (relatively) stress free once I knew it was in their hands and I'm super proud of what we've managed to create.
And despite having a mad rush in the final week to write up 5000+ words worth of reports, I have now handed in every single bit of University work. Which has left me with mixed feelings about the whole thing, as stressful as this year has been I would gladly do it all over again (although, perhaps not the dissertation... you can keep that). The hardest thing has been adjusting to no deadlines and nothing to do now that my crazy 10am till 2am working days are over. Perhaps this summer I'll actually get a tan... Maybe. And now I've actually found I feel bad if I don't do anything, I redid my showreel today because I felt so guilty when I tried to play the Sims. I just hope this work ethic continues!
Now that the film and everything else is done, we're hoping Love Hate will be able to make a run of the festival circuit! It's been entered into Bristol's Animated Encounters, so time will tell! (Sadly this means you won't be able to see it online, but there are snippets packed into both mine and Hugh's showreels).
Now I must go and pack, for Hugh, Dan and I are off to Annecy! An exciting, but also scary prospect, so if there are any other animators out there who are reading this and are going, hopefully we'll meet!
Saturday, 12 May 2012
Monday, 30 April 2012
Business
So, I've been really rather quiet recently on the blogging front. Scarily we only have 17 days left of production time!
However, I took time out yesterday in order to create a...
PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE
Expect this blog to get an overhaul in the future so I can be all matching. I'm also working on matching business cards as part of our Professional Practice module.
Professional practice is designed to get us in contact with people in the "business" before we become part of the "business" ourselves. This constant thinking of business reminded me of THIS (Lets pretend Andy Wyatt is Sam the Eagle and I'm Scrooge, and instead of saying the "American way", he would say "the Animated way").
Anyway, here's a couple of shots I've been working on in the past week.
(Blogger's new editing system is disgusting).
PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE
Expect this blog to get an overhaul in the future so I can be all matching. I'm also working on matching business cards as part of our Professional Practice module.
Professional practice is designed to get us in contact with people in the "business" before we become part of the "business" ourselves. This constant thinking of business reminded me of THIS (Lets pretend Andy Wyatt is Sam the Eagle and I'm Scrooge, and instead of saying the "American way", he would say "the Animated way").
Anyway, here's a couple of shots I've been working on in the past week.
(Blogger's new editing system is disgusting).
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Dinosaurs
The past few days I've been playing with Dinosaurs.
Original photograph:
Separate parts for puppeting in ToonBoom Animate (the final one has more - the leg is in 3 spearate bits):
One of the first videos (the dinosaur was then edited to look more like the original drawing, larger head, larger belly, for a bit more characterisation):
It's actually a lot of fun doing puppet animation. It takes quite a while to set up, but after working on Barista and only figuring out how to do puppets 3/4 of the way through last year, the amount of time it saves animating is worth the amount of time it takes to set up. The final animation will probably have an outline around the dinosaur - I'm thinking graphite stick or biro, but considering the edit here is only done with the original photograph, I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. I've also been playing around with the credits, but dinosaurs are much cooler.
Original photograph:
Separate parts for puppeting in ToonBoom Animate (the final one has more - the leg is in 3 spearate bits):
One of the first videos (the dinosaur was then edited to look more like the original drawing, larger head, larger belly, for a bit more characterisation):
It's actually a lot of fun doing puppet animation. It takes quite a while to set up, but after working on Barista and only figuring out how to do puppets 3/4 of the way through last year, the amount of time it saves animating is worth the amount of time it takes to set up. The final animation will probably have an outline around the dinosaur - I'm thinking graphite stick or biro, but considering the edit here is only done with the original photograph, I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. I've also been playing around with the credits, but dinosaurs are much cooler.
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Easter Update
So the blog has been poorly neglected these past couple of months, which I tried to not let happen, but the juggle of dissertation, team management and animating in time for a professional guest sweatbox meant that the blog was last on a list of higher priorities. Now dissertation is done and dusted which means there's A. time and B. less pressure now I just have to concentrate completely on Love Hate.
There's a more up-to-date version of our work in progress, but this is the version we showed at the Sweatbox (and the latest online version):
(In an attempt to be a bit more professional, I'm gradually migrating to Vimeo, got to love those YouTube names created by your 15-year-old self).
Love Hate was well recieved by the guy from Industry (whose name escapes me at the moment, this is what happens if I don't write everything down), with only a few suggestions for change, some me and Hugh had already discussed before the sweatbox screening. The main concern is getting rid of the swearword in the beginning (I have promised the school I recorded at to send them a copy, however as it's a primary school the edit really needs to be clean). Since this is the only slip up language wise, we're going to hide it with the sound effect of steam (the coffee cup is going to morph to a teapot - or kettle - that spouts steam, thus to a 'sh---' noise. Cheeky.
This section of animation is being done by Lydia, my second year who has stepped aboard. She has been super speedy to recitify any changes I've suggested and she's not afraid of After Effects which is a big help. She's done some cool tests for the coffee already, using pastels (which fits great with the whole hand-drawn/graphicy style I want the film to reflect).
Lydia is also working on the fish falling onto the girl (another shot with suggested changes, the shot is no longer cut between the shot of the bird dropping the fish, but now a single shot):
Other team members who've been given things to work on over Easter are Dan and Paddy, Dan is set to work on the Slot Machine/Purple boy sequence and
Paddy is working on the bird catching the fish.
The goal over Easter is to get all the rough animation done, and then proceed to get as much of the neat animation done as possible for the rough cut deadline on the 27th of April. I leave you with some shots that I've been working on the past two weeks, so you can see how far it's come along since the Sweatbox.
Bus design:
For the credits I'm contemplating using the speech bubbles I designed as concept art for the pitch:
Puddle Girl is now completely (fingers crossed) finished:
There's a more up-to-date version of our work in progress, but this is the version we showed at the Sweatbox (and the latest online version):
(In an attempt to be a bit more professional, I'm gradually migrating to Vimeo, got to love those YouTube names created by your 15-year-old self).
Love Hate was well recieved by the guy from Industry (whose name escapes me at the moment, this is what happens if I don't write everything down), with only a few suggestions for change, some me and Hugh had already discussed before the sweatbox screening. The main concern is getting rid of the swearword in the beginning (I have promised the school I recorded at to send them a copy, however as it's a primary school the edit really needs to be clean). Since this is the only slip up language wise, we're going to hide it with the sound effect of steam (the coffee cup is going to morph to a teapot - or kettle - that spouts steam, thus to a 'sh---' noise. Cheeky.
This section of animation is being done by Lydia, my second year who has stepped aboard. She has been super speedy to recitify any changes I've suggested and she's not afraid of After Effects which is a big help. She's done some cool tests for the coffee already, using pastels (which fits great with the whole hand-drawn/graphicy style I want the film to reflect).
Lydia is also working on the fish falling onto the girl (another shot with suggested changes, the shot is no longer cut between the shot of the bird dropping the fish, but now a single shot):
Other team members who've been given things to work on over Easter are Dan and Paddy, Dan is set to work on the Slot Machine/Purple boy sequence and
Paddy is working on the bird catching the fish.
The goal over Easter is to get all the rough animation done, and then proceed to get as much of the neat animation done as possible for the rough cut deadline on the 27th of April. I leave you with some shots that I've been working on the past two weeks, so you can see how far it's come along since the Sweatbox.
Bus design:
For the credits I'm contemplating using the speech bubbles I designed as concept art for the pitch:
Puddle Girl is now completely (fingers crossed) finished:
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Animation Tests and Organisation
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:
LH_PRODUCTION - Shot List, Description, Designation
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).
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:
LH_PRODUCTION - Shot List, Description, Designation
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).
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Production Transcript
So, here's what Love Hate consists of at the minute, if anyone has any ideas for storyboarding sections, getting in contact with me and/or Hugh would be great.
Production Transcript
Production Transcript
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Cracking On
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.
Here's two Hugh made last week:
And two I made today:
(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.
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.
Here's two Hugh made last week:
Donut Run Test. from Hugh Herbert on Vimeo.
Old Lady transformation test from Hugh Herbert on Vimeo.
And two I made today:
(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.
Sunday, 29 January 2012
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Into Production
So, it's already one week into term and I'm falling behind with the blog updates, somewhat hindered by my later than expected return to Falmouth due to a chest infection. That was fun.
Love Hate has been one of the final ten projects to go into production, (something that is both pleasing and extremely stressful when I stop long enough to think about it). Although it's unfortunate that a lot of my favourite projects didn't go through, this has only spurred me on to make sure this film gets completed to the highest possible standard, and some of those whose projects didn't get picked will help me on the way to achieving this.
Hugh is staying on as my Co-director and this week our job is to sort out the soundtrack and get it as finalised as possible. This will mean that we can really get to grips with pacing and storyboarding the entire film ready to start dishing out the animation asap, and give it to Rob to start playing around with some music for it. It also means organising and editing all the voice clips I collected over Christmas from my Mum's lovely workmates at Carers Gloucestershire, who allowed me to interview them all!
Emily has kindly offered her services to me and will be handling some of the design elements, this primarily consists of Character Designs, and she'll be giving my brief little stick figures an injection of much needed personality.
Currently I have no full time animators on my project, but Dan Emmerson & Tom Gameson have said they will lend themselves to a few scenes. Since the scenes are going to be short in length, I've pitched it to the other third years that while they work on longer, more animation heavy and time consuming projects, if they wanted to have a bit of a break and doing something a bit more free and fluid, they can work on a scene of mine , not only will this give them a much needed break, (this comes from personal experience of working on Barista last year - working in one rigid style of animation that you aren't necessarily comfortable with can get you into a bit of a creative rut, so it's nice to just have fun and do something different for a couple of days to get you back into the swing of things)but it will also greatly help to move my project along nicely. Although this is going to mean that the style of drawings varies from person to person, I think it will lend itself to the piece since all of the voiceclips belong to different individuals and no-one really sounds the same.
So, watch this space.
Love Hate has been one of the final ten projects to go into production, (something that is both pleasing and extremely stressful when I stop long enough to think about it). Although it's unfortunate that a lot of my favourite projects didn't go through, this has only spurred me on to make sure this film gets completed to the highest possible standard, and some of those whose projects didn't get picked will help me on the way to achieving this.
Hugh is staying on as my Co-director and this week our job is to sort out the soundtrack and get it as finalised as possible. This will mean that we can really get to grips with pacing and storyboarding the entire film ready to start dishing out the animation asap, and give it to Rob to start playing around with some music for it. It also means organising and editing all the voice clips I collected over Christmas from my Mum's lovely workmates at Carers Gloucestershire, who allowed me to interview them all!
Emily has kindly offered her services to me and will be handling some of the design elements, this primarily consists of Character Designs, and she'll be giving my brief little stick figures an injection of much needed personality.
Currently I have no full time animators on my project, but Dan Emmerson & Tom Gameson have said they will lend themselves to a few scenes. Since the scenes are going to be short in length, I've pitched it to the other third years that while they work on longer, more animation heavy and time consuming projects, if they wanted to have a bit of a break and doing something a bit more free and fluid, they can work on a scene of mine , not only will this give them a much needed break, (this comes from personal experience of working on Barista last year - working in one rigid style of animation that you aren't necessarily comfortable with can get you into a bit of a creative rut, so it's nice to just have fun and do something different for a couple of days to get you back into the swing of things)but it will also greatly help to move my project along nicely. Although this is going to mean that the style of drawings varies from person to person, I think it will lend itself to the piece since all of the voiceclips belong to different individuals and no-one really sounds the same.
So, watch this space.
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Love Hate - Animatic
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:
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:
Monday, 28 November 2011
Sunday, 27 November 2011
[Insert witty Pre-Production joke/pun here]
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.
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.
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Once more unto the breach...
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...
Transcript - All
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!)
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...
Transcript - All
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!)
Sunday, 6 November 2011
Tomorrow is Judgement Day...
Well, the last week has been a pretty eventful one and been super busy all in the run up to the pitch on friday.
Since my last blog post I've created a whole load more of concept art and some test animations...
Kathy suggested I put together a visual research file of the things that had inspired me to create the concept art, some are more relevant now than others, but in the process of trying to get the look for my project, they all inspired me in some way.
Style Inspiration Bible
One of my own loves (which I'm told by my housemates is very weird...):
"I love watching the sun rise" Sequence:
Newer version of Birds (as it would be animated):
"I hate fish":
Sea animation test done in After Effects:
The fish I hand animated... It was super frustrating, because it took me two hours to scan in, only to discover that it didn't work... it's not great: the tail flops around all over the place, but I feel my timing has vastly improved since last year.
I think now, (well, all depending if my project is picked...) that any rough animation I do will be done in Flash or ToonBoom Animate and then, when I know the timing is correct, I'll draw the animation in graphite or whatever other medium I'm using for that section.
The fish and sea combined look a little something like this:
Ah, I'd almost forgotten to add this, a video of the rough soundtrack that my good friend Rob Allen has been working on for me, which I was contemplating playing it at the pitch, but I have collected many more voiceclips since sending him the (very) rough edit I put together for him to play around with. This is only a rough version done in Midi, put gives an inkling as to what the final thing could sound like, however I think I need to spread the soundclips out a bit more, it's really rather quick at the moment.
_____________________________________________
So, this is something I forgot to write on here earlier, but a couple of weeks ago I emailed six local primary schools asking if I would be allowed to come to the school and ask the children (and staff) the love/hate questions. I had two responses, one yes and one no.
Paula Ross, the deputy Head Marlborough School, was kind enough to invite me to the school on Thursday to record the students. The students were forewarned of my arrival in asssembly and many had already thought of things to say when I turned up at lunchtime. Paula's class separated into two groups and sat in a circle as I recorded them one by one, which worked really well, although the children who couldn't think of anything quite often said similar things (it turns out, alot of boys hate the colour purple...), Paula then led me around the rest of the school to interview smaller groups of children which provided a much larger range of responses and some absolute gems which I'm certain will go into the final film (if it gets picked). After interviewing the children, who ranged from 4-11, I asked the staff the same questions. The school was so helpful and accomdating, the whole thing was much easier to pull off than I expected thanks to Paula's organising. If the film gets put into Production, I'm going to keep in contact with the school and send them updates as progess (hopefully) continues, however it may not go anywhere, it's beyond my control now!
Which leads onto the deciding power...
____________________________________________
The PITCH. Both Kathy and Derek said that I should create some more concept art to show at the pitch, which made me think, why can't I explain my idea through concept art? So, to explain the process behind lovehate, I decided to do just that, have a corresponding picture to what I was saying.
My actual pitch was really quite short, my idea was very simple to explain, so it really didn't need long. I thought I'd try and keep it short and punchy, and the corrseponding pictures helped to do just that and even got a few laughs which was great (and intended I might add).
I was second to last in the pitching order, which made me mildly annoyed (I really wanted to just get the thing over with - I tend to get more nervous the longer that I have to wait to do something), it was probably better, as the rest of the third years relaxed around me, I felt alot calmer when it finally was my turn...
Lovehate Pitch
The presentation probably needs some explanation, so here's a small summary essentially of what I said:
- Everyone in this room has at least one thing they really love and one thing they really hate: it might be something completely unique to you, or something that you share with others. My current hate is standing in front of a room full of people and trying to explain my idea, something the other third years will share with me. I want to make these individual love and hates come to life on the screen. So the idea behind lovehate is quite simple:
- I will take a number of peolpe of different ages,
- Stick a microphone in front of their face,
- Ask them to tell me one thing they love,
- Ask them to tell me one thing they hate,
- Record their reply.
- Think about their reply.
- Visualise their idea.
- Storyboard the idea.
- Animate the idea, taking the last frame and morphing it...
- ...So that it becomes the first frame of the next sequence.
And then I showed the concept art of previous answers.
The panel (made up of 4 industry professionals), complimented me on my pitch and (I think) overall were fairly positive and quite liked the idea. I feel I got away quite lightly, quite a few people got some grilling from them and struggled to answer some of the trickier questions. I feel I did quite well, but I guess we shall see tomorrow when we discover which projects are going through to production. If my project hasn't been chosen, there's a multitude of other ideas I would love to be able to help out on. But then, if mine is chosen, that's a whole new fear altogether!
Since my last blog post I've created a whole load more of concept art and some test animations...
Kathy suggested I put together a visual research file of the things that had inspired me to create the concept art, some are more relevant now than others, but in the process of trying to get the look for my project, they all inspired me in some way.
Style Inspiration Bible
One of my own loves (which I'm told by my housemates is very weird...):
"I love watching the sun rise" Sequence:
Newer version of Birds (as it would be animated):
"I hate fish":
Sea animation test done in After Effects:
The fish I hand animated... It was super frustrating, because it took me two hours to scan in, only to discover that it didn't work...
Lovehate Pitch
The presentation probably needs some explanation, so here's a small summary essentially of what I said:
Friday, 21 October 2011
Concept Art [1]
So this week has mainly consisted of trying to transform my scribbly doodles into [hopefully] nice pieces of concept work.
First up, is the bacon:
Birds:
Toilets:
I've also been spending a lot of time trying to come up with a logo and playing around with different typefaces, I know some people think it's silly to spend hours agonising over a typeface, but I feel that having the wrong font can break a project, or misrepresent it entirely.
I asked the good people of facebook to pick their favourites, and now it's just down to these two, (currently B is in the lead, but [ironically] I'm in love with the 'love' font in A). So, you could help by voting for your favourite in the comments...
First up, is the bacon:
Birds:
Toilets:
I've also been spending a lot of time trying to come up with a logo and playing around with different typefaces, I know some people think it's silly to spend hours agonising over a typeface, but I feel that having the wrong font can break a project, or misrepresent it entirely.
I asked the good people of facebook to pick their favourites, and now it's just down to these two, (currently B is in the lead, but [ironically] I'm in love with the 'love' font in A). So, you could help by voting for your favourite in the comments...
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