[100th post!] Pre-Production Complete

Celebrating my 100th Blog post AND the completion of my Pre-Production project. It's been a mission, but it's got done :)

The Final Design Bible:
Theatre of The People Design Bible
My Production Report:
AliceNightingale_ProductionReport
My Visual Research File:
Visual Research File
All my Sketchbook work for the Project:
Alice Pre Pro Sketch Book

Barista Work: Animatic

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.

Pre-Production: Sketchbook

Apologies for the post spamming today, but I was waiting for this to upload before I started my other two posts, aaaaand it only just finished. Here's a .pdf of all my sketchbook work for this project, so far:

Alice PrePro Sketch Book

Pre-Production: Inspiring Artwork.

So, had my internet been faster then I would've uploaded these last night...

A small section of some of my research, looking at watercolour artists and other artworks to inpsire me:
inspiringartworks
The artists, in order, are: Paul Cezanne, John Constable, William Blake, Whistler, Milford Zornes, Elliot O'Hara, J.W.S. Cox, Ernst Ludwig Kirschner, Joh Heartfield, George Grosz, Gustaf Tenggren, Mary Blair and Barney Tobey.

Pre-Production Inspiration/Research

Somehow, when Kathy told us to research Character Design, I don't think she would've expected this to pop up in what the website it's from calls "100 inspiring character designs".

However I did find an awesome blog that interviews different character/pre-production designers and showcases their work: http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/
It has quite a variety of different artists/animators on there, and the videos/pictures are really interesting, especially when you come across something you know and love. I especially enjoyed stumbling on the interview with Carlos Grangel who talked about his methods and designs for characters in The Corpse Bride (YAY BURTON!):



I recommend people check it out, it's a really cool website.

Workwise for this project so far I have been doing lots of research, mainly gathering images of wartime Berlin, watercolour artists, German wartime artists, concept art, clothing studies aaaand lots of doodles/mindmapping/scribbles.


I'm still a little hesitant to put things up on my blog at the moment, because things really are still in the rough stage, perhaps when I have more solid ideas and style I'll be a little braver.

Back in the Saddle.

So, after what was, due to lots of personal reasons, a fantastically crap Christmas break, I'm back at Uni, not feeling very refreshed, but keen to get on with anything.

This term we have to help the 3rd Years with their projects, I'm working on Alex Jolliffe's project, Barista.

My job is to animate a pigeon flying through the opening shot of a city which Alex has already been working on (and I helped cut out a few of the buildings!):

Untitled from Joleaf on Vimeo.

Just a little bird-y test to get back into things:


Alex thought I'd be good at the pigeon after seeing my experimental video :) when I've finished the opening scene I'll then move on and help with the character animation. To do this I'll be using Animate (once I learn a bit more about how it all works of course...) I downloaded my own copy since it's a better version of Flash, which I've enjoyed using for previous projects, despite its limitations (and crash count...!). I love the 2D vector style it can produce.

Also for this term I've decided to do the Pre-Production Project, although I still really want to learn how to Composite (not compost...) so I'm still going to try and attend as many Post lectures as possible.

I feel like the Pre-Production project will be a lot more interesting for me personally thanks to the cards I picked (in our seminar, Derek got us to pick 4 cards, one for setting/character/type of show/style). Originally the four I ended up with completely clashed with each other:

Setting: World War II Berlin
Character: Astral Body
Style: Hokusai (which I had no idea what it was!)
Show: Pre-School Children's Show.

I mean really, teaching pre-schoolers about WW2 Berlin with crazy spirits in an ancient Japanese art story style? I can't see myself being able to achieve that. Hats off to anyone else who can.

I swapped Hokusai (which I would epically fail at attempting) and got Watercolour, and swapped Pre-School to Music show. Again a little bit incensitive WW2 Berlin/Astral Body to music, but far more managable.
I'm also alot more excited about this project because A. I've actually visited Berlin when I was on my foundation course, so it feels a bit more personal and I can relate to it more, and B. The Second World War interested me already, so I feel I know a bit about it already and won't mind putting in the time it's going to take to do the research and C. I get to splash paint around (that last one was a joke - I suck at watercolours but at least I feel I'll actually be able to achieve the style).

Despite this picture suggesting otherwise, Berlin is in fact a very interesting place:









(gosh my hair was short).