In the final stretch

So we have less two weeks left and I'm feeling fairly confident I can get my animation done. I've only got eight more shots to do and they're fairly simple ones.

I also have to go back and fix up a few things in previous shots but all of that is quick fixes and maintaining continuity of shots.

Oh wait there's other assignments that need to be done? Well damn, that might slow things down a bit. Now I'm starting to get a bit stressed.

Another crisis has occurred my music man Matt has had to cancel on me at the last minute throwing a bit of a spanner into the works, thankfully he pointed me in the direction of some decent royalty free music and create a new piece of music for my animation at a later date. Nathan Puglisi has offered to help out with my music also, in exchange for helping him with his animation which I'm happy to do.

New Running Comp

The latest running comp is up

It's Tuesday

So it's Tuesday and no new running comp, my bad. I hope to put the new one up tonight but to compensate here's some pretty pictures.

New Running Comp (finally)

The Running Comp has been updated! But don't get too used to this version because I want to put up a new one on Monday along with a rant.

Week 10 Milestones

Week 10 is fast approaching so it's a good time to look at my milestones:

• 50% of 'real world' animation completed (inked and coloured)
• Completed 'fantasy world' assets.
• 50% of 'fantasy world' animation completed

Running Comp Update

The running comp has been updated to the 20/09/13 version.

"Sorry I'm late"

It's been a while I know but I've working hard, honest. So let me catch you up:

• I've been given the green-light to clean up and finalise my pencil tests for the 'real world' portions of my animation.
• I'm currently working on the fantasy portions and spending far too much time making things look pretty. After a great suggestion by Darren I've been using the walk cycles from 'Brother Bear' for my bear as seen below

You can see more when I put up my brand new running comp at the end of the week.

• I'm struggling to work out how I want my music to sound and I am quickly running out of time.

Not sure what else to put down for now so enjoy some pictures and expect a running comp and rant later in the week.

Tracking Documentaion

Remember when I did my pre porduction plan, laying out my plans for design, data management and file naming? Yeah me neither, well now it's time to look back and see how well I kept to that plan.

Production Management Plan

Tracking Documentation.

Design

There are two different worlds that my characters inhabit one is a grey drab bedroom in a high rise apartment and the other is a bright and colourful medieval fantasy world. To differentiate between the two worlds there will be drastic visual differences in both colour and animation style, the fantasy world is designed to look like a combination of shadow puppets and pop-up books, looking simple and childlike as if it was drawn by her.

I have kept to this visual design with some changes, I have toned down the use of shadow puppets and pop-up book designs.

The choice to use Photoshop for the animation of the real world is because it allows me to achieve a natural hand drawn effect. The choice for Photoshop is that it will play to my strengths helping to ensure a swifter and hassle-free production. 

I have kept to this plan.

The choice to use Photoshop and After Effects to animate the fantasy world is to create a look of similar to shadow puppets with backgrounds and the transitions looking like a pop-up book. After Effects allows me to create a 2.5D effect.

As I said before I have toned down the concept of pop-up books for both the backgrounds and transitions. I will continue to use a 2.5D effect with After Effects.

Character designs and animations

·         Real World Character Design

1.       The girl, the teddy bear and her brother will be built and animated in 2D using Photoshop.

·         Fantasy World Character Design

1.       The girl, her bear and the monster they confront will be built in Photoshop and animated in After Effects using the puppet tool or a better equivalent.

Backgrounds

·         Fantasy World

1.       The fantasy world background will be created in Photoshop and later comped into 3D layers in After Effects.

·         Real World

1.       The real world environment will be created in Photoshop and later comped into 3D layers in After Effects.

Transition Animation

§  The transition between the fantasy world and the real world will be animated in After Effects but built in Photoshop using the background and animation builds.

Character designs plans have not changed but once again the transition effects have been removed to help blend more smoothly between worlds.

Soundtrack

The music for my animation will be out-sourced to Matt Serpel as like last year. This year I will work with Matt earlier on during the pre production phase so that he doesn’t have to rush my entire animation soundtrack last minute. I intend to keep him up to date with scripts, character designs, storyboards and any material that inspires me.

I have yet to contact Matt Serpel about doing the music for the animation. This is something I must do soon to give him as much time as possible to work on it. If Matt is unable to do it I need time to search for another musician.

Data Management

With the majority of my animation and assets being digital my data management will be entirely on folders across several hard drives.  My files will be distributed into folders:

·         Photoshop files

o   Fantasy World

§  Pre production

·         Concept art

o   Characters

o   Backgrounds

·         Character build

·         Pencil tests

§  Production

·         Backgrounds

o   Real World

§  Pre production

·         Concept art

o   Characters

o   Backgrounds

·         Character art

§  Production

·         Animation

·         Backgrounds

·         After Effects comps

o   Fantasy World

o   Real World

o   Transitions

·         Audio

o   Sound Effects

o   Score

·         Story

o   Script

o   Thumbnails

o   Storyboard

o   Video Block

o   Animatic

The file extension I intend to use for the pencil tests, coloured and final comped animations will be:

·         fallenheroes_penciltest_SC01_SH01

·         fallenheroes_coloured_SC01_SH01

·         fallenheroes _SC01_SH01

I have been terrible with file management so far everything is clumped into one folder that covers all my subjects. I have also been bad with file naming which has caused me to having trouble remembering what the name of a file is. This of course is making it hard to find files; I cannot afford to do this again next semester.

Potential Disasters

There are plenty of thing that can go wrong during production, most of these problems can be resolved through better time management but the two greatest issues that I will most likely face will be file and equipment failure or loss.

·         To prevent the loss of files or file corruption I will have my files on three hard drives. I will work mostly from my 64GB USB stick. At the end of every week on Friday I’ll backup my files to a 360GB hard drive, my laptop computer and my desktop PC. The folder on my desktop PC will connected to a Dropbox account.  To help ensure that I actually go through with this plan I will have a reminder to pop up on my desktop PC every Friday evening at 8:00pm.

·         The use of multiple file storage devices will help should one of the hard drives is broken, lost or stolen. Most of my work will be done on a desktop PC should that fail I have a laptop as a backup that has the same programs so that I can continue work until the desktop gets fixed. This process should also cover me should my computer ever get stolen.

I have also been a bit slack with my backup plans. I have purchased more space on Dropbox and have been uploading my files onto it but not as often as I should. I have not implemented my reminder plan yet. I also haven’t backed up onto my hardrives.

So I guess it was a 50/50 adherence to the plan. I kept to my plan for the visual look and feel for the animation as well as the process I intend to create it but I have been very slack when it comes to managing the files.

 

Model Sheets

Production Proof

 Here's my production proof.

Mid Year Reflections

The first semester is nearly over, week 12 is finished and everything is due in at the end of week 13 and I'm finally starting to panic, which is about time. I need this panic and stress to focus me. Now is the time to take a moment to reflect on the project and see where I am with it.

Let's start with the script; I'm pretty happy with the script, it took a while to get down and has changed a lot from my initial idea but I'm surprisingly happy with it. I thought I'd never change much from my first idea.

Next the storyboards; all the artwork for the storyboards are complete I just need to finish filling out all the shot information on them, I'm about half way through so I'm not concerned. I know this is a part component of the process but it is a tedious one. The artwork went through various revisions from the littlest tweaks to complete re-draw but 70% of the shots didn't change from my initial thumbnail sketches which is great.

I guess the next part is the animatic. This year I planned out my storyboards so that they could be easily used in the animatic. Because I would be using the storyboard panels for several purposes (animatic, layout, backgrounds, character poses) I decided to make the image twice has big as they needed to be. This allowed me to keep the quality of the shots if I needed to zoom in on a particular or have characters walk towards camera for the animatic. It also allowed me to reposition depth of the composition of a shot without losing quality. The greatest drawback of course is that big files mean slow computers, just opening or saving the photoshop file would take several minutes. When it came to making the animatic in After Effects every PC I had access to would crash almost instantly, so it was off to the Mac labs. Working on the Macs meant that I would have to either stay longer at school or work during class times. But all those complaints aside the animatic is edited together I just need to work on a scratch track and render it off.

Speaking of sound I've yet to contact Matt Serpell to see if he'll do the music for my animation again this year. I hope that he agrees to do it I don't have a backup plan if he won't.

The video block is something I don't think I'll ever get right, I didn't like my shots from last year and I'm not that fond on them this year. The stuff I shot this year was better and I can get more reference from it than the footage form last year. For now it's good enough for submission and I'll shoot more throughout next semester. I think I might try and get down to the studio to shoot the reference, the white walls will allow me to see the silhouettes of the performance and the better lighting will also help. This is not something that can be shot in a couple of hours, I'd need a full day to work on it.

One area I'm not having issues with is the character designs, I've been working on them for a few years. I've got the look for Grace and her brother (he needs a name) I've also worked out the look for Grace and her bear when in the fantasy land. The turnarounds for Grace, fantasy Grace and her brother have been completed.

I have been rather lazy when it comes to my file backup plan, I've only backed up twice so far. Considering I paid for more space on Dropbox I should be using it more often. I think I need to be more paranoid about losing everything that might encourage me to backup more often.

So with pre production coming to an end how do I feel about my progress? The panic and stress is starting to set in but I think I can pull this off without too much hassle. Of course when all my pre production stuff is finished and handed in it means I'll start getting the production underway. I hope to use the break to get backgrounds and pencil testing done.

Running Comp Update

The running comp has been updated once again.

Stay tuned later this week when hopefully I will have my animatic uploaded.

Dragon Head Animation Test

Here's an animation test I did for the dragon's head. I used Photoshop for the design and animated it with 3D layers in After Effects. It needs a bit more tweaking but the concept works.

The Running Comp is up!

The running comp is now available for viewing in the link above.

Production Proof

Here's a screenshot of my production proof which shows how I plan to set out my layers and files in After Effects.

Bedroom Design Concept

I've been trying to get the look of the bedroom right but still haven't nailed it.

I want it look like some art I did a couple of years ago but that was done with ink on bank (or bond) paper and I'm having troubling replicating it digitally. I might end up going old school with my backgrounds and doing them by hand.

Not a great pic but this is all I have of the artwork I did.

Progress Update

Firstly the script is finally done! 

I'm now working on thumbnails and a running comp and if I can get After Effects to work for five minutes without crashing I can upload the running comp today.

I've been doing some animation tests using the concept art of the fantasy world and once again I hope to upload test footage soon but I'm at the mercy of After Effects temperamental nature right now.

Armoured Bear Concept

I've taken several elements from Nathan's design of the fantasy world armoured bear to create my look for the bear. There's still some work to be done on it but you get the idea.

Bear Designs

Nathan has also been working on some concepts for Grace's bear while in the fantasy world.

Updated Concept Art

I've updated the concept art I did for the dragon guarding the tower. It now includes Grace in her armour riding her bear. There have been a few other minor changes suggested by Jack Parry.

Dragon Designs

It's be far too long between posts so I thought I'd share some of the concept art being done by Nathan Puglisi, in particular the dragon.

I've used elments of these designs to make my dragon, which looks a lot like the dragon in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. It may look like I'm ripping them off but it's the type of dragon I wanted I don't want to change it yet.

Concept Art

Here's an in-progress bit of concept art for the fantasy world. This will be for when Grace first enters her fantasy.

Just a quickie

The script has been updated again and can be seen by clicking the tab above.

The final draft of the script is due this week and I'm pretty happy with it but I'm sure I'll find plenty of faults throughout the storyboard and animatic stages and I shall continue to tweak it as I go along.

Week five is well underway so lets see where we're at:

• The script is nearly finished, hopefully only a few more tweaks to go.
• I'm about to break down the script to work out shots.
• I'm working on concepts for characters and backgrounds.

The concept art for the backgrounds is my main concern at the moment, I've been struggling to find the look for the bedroom and need to look around for ideas.

On the other hand I've found plenty of inspiration for the backgrounds of the fantasy land.

My the two greatest inspiration for the fantasy world is Disney's Sleeping Beauty

and the works of Eyvind Earle on the backgrounds.

The other artist to inspire me is Scott Wills who created the backgrounds for Samurai Jack

Due to complaints of lack of posts I've decided to upload a picture that has been inspiring me during the early stages of this animation.

The original artwork can be found here http://begemott.deviantart.com/art/sweet-halloween-dreams-42197587

Week Three

So it's week three and things are going slow or least it feels that way. I'm working on the third draft of the script which is sure to get torn to shreds by Neale and/or Jack, it's becoming a process of one step forward and two steps back. At this early stage it's frustrating but ultimately necessary.

I think this year I'm going to tackle pre-production differently, I've decided to do thumbnails simultaneously with script writing. I've found that drawing things out help me to work out any script issues I've had.

I had originally planned to film puppets for the real world elements of the animation and 2D animation for the fantasy world elements but now I've decided to stick to 2D animation only. I didn't want to waste my time trying to get puppets to perform the way I want, so now I'll focus on doing great animation.

I still want the real world and fantasy world to have two different animation styles. In the early phases of this story I was playing with the idea of using shadow puppets for the fantasy world and after seeing this video I'm planning on using 'fake' paper puppets using After Effects.

 

So it begins....

Another year, another animation begins and this is the big one.

Finally the third year has arrived and it's time for me to make the animation I've wanted to make for nearly 4 years.

Back in 2010 I wanted to tell the story of a little girl who loses her teddy bear under the bed and has to face many obstacles to get it back. The story has been altered many times during the past 3 years:

• The first version of this story had her travelling through a cave under her bed and emerging on the other side to great desert, she teamed up with a tin soldier and other lost toys under the bed to finally retrieve her bear from the lair of the shadow monster.
• Next version of this story the girl threw her bear under the bed out of anger and the monster under the bed was also a little girl who had built her own bear out of spare parts and needed an arm to finish her bear.
• In the final version the girl's brother causes the bear to be lost and the little girl gets revenge on her brother and steals his bear.

So the plan is to make the final version this year but the other versions will hopefully be animated later on.