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).

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

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:

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.

Dissertation

My Draft is in a week tomorrow.

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 - 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:

Love Hate - Animatic Storyboard

Blam! You might want to full-screen it...

LOVEHATE Animatic Storyboard