Showing Progress

We had another screening yesterday morning to see how we'd gotten on so far, these past eight weeks. This is what I had to show.

I've animated the majority of the first sequence, and a fair bit of the middle, but there's still a lot to do, including about half the shots, a lot of cleanup work, and I managed to misspell Russell Brown's name in the credits. My tutors say I won't have time to finish this unless I stop colouring, and choose a simpler aesthetic. But I've got a plan, I have two family members who have volunteered to do some of the colour work for me.

Making Progress

I've managed to get several shots done since the last update, this still is from one of them. My tutor warned me early on that he felt that shading the characters would be near impossible to get finished in time. Until I have everything else finished and coloured, the only things I will shade are the skeletons, and the sorcerer's emerald. The skeletons would be a totally flat colour otherwise, and the emerald needs to appear shiny and translucent.

He was unsure about my pipeline; that with photoshop I would have to render the colour separately from the line, use track mattes or clipping masks, and that rendering as png sequence wouldn't quite work. I did a little research. Since then I'm using a black solid under the line-art layer set to Luma Inverted.

The colour layer problem had me stumped for a while. I rendered as pngs, to test the theory. Black rectangles appeared behind every frame. Saving frames as pngs individually worked, but was time-consuming and I'd have to re-time it all in After Effects. Rendering it with a bright green background, and keying it out again was a pain. It worked, but was needlessly difficult to fine-tune the edges. I considered colouring in vectors to avoid the colour-blending of pixels, but decided instead to investigate the rendering panel. I found setting the Alpha Channel to Straight - Unmatted got rid of the black boxes. By that point I already had a few shots done, and had to fix them all to get rid of the mess of the green-screening. But that was a couple weeks back. I've got nine shots that I am happy with, and eight that are line-tested.

My tutor told me last week to have twenty finished by Thursday, to give me some breathing space in the next few weeks. Our deadline has been revealed as May first, and there's three weeks of Easter Holiday right before it, which will include my birthday and a trip to see distant relatives. I hope to get a few days worth of work done in that time.

Showreel 2013-2014

Music by Ok Go. I chose the track because I enjoy it, it's unusual, and it makes me think of the sorcerer in my film.

Production Bible

Click here to view my production bible.

Final Animatic

Here is my final animatic for hand-in submission. I am much happier with this edit, though I will need to put some polish on the sound effects when I come to make the finished film.

Sound Effects from iMovie, Hollywood Edge, and Soundideas.

Royalty-free music by Kevin MacLeod.

Aesthetic Tests

I tried a couple tests to see how my finished film would look.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I put my coloured characters into the frame, and added royalty-free textures to the background from CGTextures. I then added eye murals and wooden beams, and created a window with dark blurry corners to make it appear as if the scene is viewed through a lens. It adds a feeling of depth to what would otherwise be a very flat image.



 

 

Second Iteration Animatic

At this point my animatic was screened in the university cinema, which was rather daunting. However, it did mean I recieved a lot of feedback.

•  Although I have replaced most of the drawings and cut down the length, I may have cut it too closely to the music for certain scenes to read correctly.
• The scenes where the sorcerer is ready to kill him but is scared off or interrupted are too long. It seems he should have just killed him already. It needs to be clear he's scared off by the creatures in the walls, too.
• I didn't leave enough time for people to enjoy the horror / comedy of removing a man's brain. Laughter at the screening was cut short because the plot was still moving.
• It wasn't clear to some that the creatures from the walls were an entirely separate group- not on the sorcerer's side, just looking to deal with these intruders making all the noise and throwing caustic substances about. I need to have them attack the sorcerer.
• The creatures weren't scary enough. They look too cheerful and dimwitted. I want them to look crazed and tortured.

My tutor wants me to create a longer introduction, a 'fanfare', and just a little more time to linger on the ending. He's worried that at the rate I have been making new drawings I may not finish my film. I agreed. I resolved to come into the studio more often, daily if possible, and attempt to work without distraction. I want to add a few clarifying scenes that take as little work as possible to animate. We're a fairly ambitious group, choosing to go it alone as generalists, so it is imperative that I can get things done efficiently if I am to finish this by the end of the academic year.

Royalty-free music by Kevin MacLeod.