Final Film

Chimi's Little Helpers

Bronwyn Dowle - My colouring gal. She has taken most of my frames and coloured them in with Photoshop. Bron also helped with sound design and arranging my thumbnail storyboards in the very early stages of the film. She spent 17 hours on this (some of which were spent as a human rig for Claire's stop motion shot).

Claire Burn - My stop motioner. Who also helped with sound design, storboarding and general assissting.

Laurie Priest - My techie. He built my CG Chimi rig, and has spent ages developing Shake scripts for me and Bronny. All together he has spent 45 hours with me.

Ashley Meyer - Has spent 10 hours assisting me with general skivvy work, rubbing out my pencil lines on my inked frames and capturing them into the computer, ready for Shake.

Natasha Adiletta - Has spent 16 hours with me editing my final film, and adapting Laurie's Shake scripts. She has also written my treatment and script.

Steve White - Spent 8 hours with me editing my animatic for the assessment.

Richard Butler - Designed and created the space backgrounds, supernova and black hole, and animated them in After Effects.

Final Final Poster

This is the very last version of the poster, I swear. The logo was designed by me, but Antony Manley smartened it up, and added the star background by Richard Butler. The "A Film By..." typography was also by Antony Manley, who took the idea from the logo, and stylized it. Both the logo and the type are part of the titles and credit sequence (by Antony Manley).

My Contribution To Pest Control

These are actual frames and a clip from Claire's film. I did the sky backgrounds with chalk pastel. See Claire Burn's blog.

Richard's Space Designs

These are Richard Butler's concept designs for the space world, done in Photoshop.

Treatment and Script by Natasha Adiletta

My contribution to Pinny Gig

I have spent the majority of my hour allowance on Bron's film, colouring in all of her 2D frames with Photoshop. I had to colour all the areas that were going to be white, bright green, because the background is white in the frames, and that will be keyed out in Shake so the Maya backgrounds can show through. Bit complicated, and we could have just coloured the backgrounds green in Photoshop, but oh well. Bron has done the same for mine, but I have very few different colours in my film, where she has 10. See Bronwyn Dowle's blog.

Animation Passes

This is the first shot from my film, from Keys to Coloured frames, to show the process and development.

1. Key frames

2. Keys and Breakdowns

3. Finished Animation

4. Inked and put through Shake

5. Photoshop colouring

6. Complete shot.

Animatic

This is the most recent animatic, as I am making changes all the time. When I edit the final film together I will use this version as reference.

Amazing!

In the last 2 weeks I have managed to tween 23 out of those 26 seconds of keys and ink another 19 seconds. That means all together I have inked 33 seconds, and have 22 ready to ink. I still have 38 to key, but I think if I have another productive weekend, then I’ve got no problems.

The Shake script is working fine, and I have given Bron a chunk of work that is ready to colour in. She said she will have all her animation done by the end of the week (11th April) and so she can start putting it into the computer and preparing it for colouring. I think she wants shading on hers though, and we had a play with Shake to see if that could do it; the results were alright, but not brilliant. She might have to play with that after it’s coloured, if there’s time.

I got my dissertation bound today! Finally, after having the library printer break yesterday. Glad its done, but I did notice a goof when I was making sure the pages were in the right order, but I think it should be ok, its just a presentation thing…
Anyway, time for me to get back on with animating. Don’t need to worry about the essay now, so just gotta get on with my film, straight ‘til the end. We hand in in 4 weeks and 6 days!

The Last Month

It has been mental trying to get everything done. Last night I managed to key out another 14 seconds, but I’ve not been able to test it yet. All in all I have inked 14 secs, have 16 secs ready to ink, and 26 secs keyed out. That means I’ve got 38 still to start, and 7 for Claire to do in stop motion.

Claire has made the armature, and will start putting it together pretty soon. I picked out the plasticine last week, its less purple, and more PURPLE!!!

We had lots of fun and games a couple of weeks ago, trying to sort out the line testers so we get a nice contrast between the white of the paper and the black ink. That all seems to be sorted now, and we’ve got a nice script to use in Shake. We just plonk the jpegs into Shake, it crops it, and does various other things that leaves us with an alpha channel black outline, that we export as targa, stick into Photoshop to colour it, and then stick it all back into Shake to fix something else… its all a bit complicated, but as long as I know what to do and when I don’t think it matters if I know how it works. I just know the result is good, but we’re going to do some more tests tomorrow, and adapt the script to work for Bron’s film – obviously we’re swapping films to colour them, so we both need to know what to do. If it all works then its going to give us so much more time, and help lower stress levels.

I think we are all feeling the pressure now, just to get the films finished. It hasn’t really sunk in that this is the end of uni, and our films are going to be shown to loads of people. The website for the degree show is up and running, and our posters and synopsis will be going on there pretty soon. I need to start thinking about business cards and some kind of advertisement gimmick for my work. Bron had a cool idea about making badges…
I’m a bit dubious about these “awards” – “the peggies” (I’m sorry, but I can not take that name seriously. For 1, my nan’s name is Peggy, and 2 nobody is going to know what on earth a peggie is, or who we are. At least we could make LAFTA stand for something to represent us).

Poster 2

I thought I would put up the poster, this one has the final colours that I've decided on.

(I wasn't happy leaving the Blog with 13 posts)

I'll need to re-do this, the proportions are out - the frame is too thick and Chimi's legs are too long. The door is also too short - when Chimi stands his eye level is meant to match the position of the spyhole.

It's been a while...

... but I have been working hard. Spent some time redoing my animatic, needed to jig a few things and it now has the extended ending, which I’m quite happy about (but it means more work). I’ve spent a lot of time on my dissertation, so animating has taken a back seat, but now the draft has been handed in I’m going to work exclusively on my film.
Did Claire’s sky backgrounds last week, it was good to get messy with pastels again, I miss doing my fine art.

So on now with the animation. I have 5 weeks to do it all…


Oh dear.

This is the latest version of my animatic, with the extended ending, and an original piece of music by Bronwyn Dowle, Claire Burn and myself.

Hours

Nat's going to be working on my film too. She's going to write me a new treatment and script, and help me edit the final film.

For my hours, I am going to ink and colour Bron's film "Pinny Gig", and I am going to paint the backgrounds for Claire's film "Pest Control". Still unsure about working with Ste, not spoken to him for a while.

I have an idea for my title sequence,  which I might give to one of the first years - they have to do stings for our films, so I could kill two birds with one stone. 

Summative Assessment

Well.... I got my grade back. 64% which is 5% off a 1st. Not bad. It just means I'm going to have to nail this animation lark and do a top job on the final film to get that 1st.



We were told that this blog is going to be part of our mark for "Client Orientation and Professional Practice" and that it should be kept formal... so far, this is not. As you would know if you are reading this, I have been treating it more like a diary, and this has really helped me. I type out reams of waffle, but these are the internal debates I'm going through, that would consume me if I didn't post on here. I think its important that I include everything, otherwise my decisions would seem to come out of nowhere, and the blog would be lacking.



So, until I get told off, I'm going to keep it as it is.



As for the comments the tutors made...



Simon pointed out that once Chimi got to his space world, there would be no gravity. A fair comment. I hadn't even considered that! I've just got him landing on this invisible plane among the stars. BUT, if I changed it so he "floated" into his world, then he would surely have never known gravity, and would therefore be completely freaked out by the gravity in the rest of the film. The door changes the gravity around it, so it can mess Chimi about, thats one of the main themes (the spyglass is the other), Chimi then learns from this and is able to use it to his advantage. Would he come from a world that has no gravity and be able to understand what was happening? No gravity would mean no up or down (or even left and right). I think I'm going to leave that as it is.



I noticed that, as we were watching the animatics, my film got laughs! This was certainly not intended. The audience is supposed to feel uneasy and disorientated, but instead they laughed at the "slapstick" humour... What? When I showed people the animatic before Christmas, they said they felt sorry for him, but NOBODY laughed. I had no idea...

Paul told me to change the character, to make him less "cartoony", mainly by changing the eyes and making them smaller, but this just makes him look evil, and I think the audience would find it harder to connect with him - the "Simpsons" eyes give him an innocent look, wide eyed, naive, and above all, likeable. I am going to stick with them, but I wish people had been honest with me from the start.



Sean wants me to put in the original ending - the Extended Edition if you like. This would have been cool, but I dont think I'm going to have enough time. It has been suggested that I cut out some bits from earlier on in the film, but I'm too close to see what can go.

Assessed Animatic

This is the version of the animatic that was handed in for assessment. The music was ripped from a meditation CD, but for the final film I will write an original piece. This soundtrack gives an idea of what I want.

Assessments

Yesterday we watched all the animatics from the year, and had to talk about them... always a lovely experience.

My main problem is that all throughout the year (since September) we were told that this would be a "Formative" assessment, which gives us an idea of our marks, as opposed to "Summative" which is an actual mark. Then, on the first day back (one week before the hand in) Sean announced that this was, in fact, going to be Summative assessment... right.

Major panic ensues.

I had not, at that point, throught about what soundtrack I was going to use, or whether or not to use sound effects. After much messing around I found a soundtrack, and decided that seeing as my film is set in Nothing and space, that sound effects would be useless (because sound cannot carry through space). The soundtrack was only there to provide ambience, because it was a bit bare without it, but the track I picked out, amazingly, fitted almost perfectly with the actions.

Sorted.

I edited it all together, and was happy with the result. I got to the computer to put my animatic on the uni harddrive... and put the wrong file on. The file I handed in was the one devoid of any sound at all.

Typical.

But I actually dont think anybody noticed... I guess my result will tell.

"Group Project"

Here is a picture of the character Laurie built me in Maya, I was originally going to use this for the film, but now, as things have changed, I will now use the model to help me draw in 2D - I can pose him to get a better idea of proportions and help with foreshortening (which is always a real pain).

This will also help Claire with building the model for Stop Motion - see how the feet are huge? Well thats so he doesn't fall over.

To build up Claire's hours, she is going to make the 3D (wire and wood) model, and has a segment of my film to animate (about 7 or 8 seconds). I have told her roughly what I want from the shot, but really given her free reign (because I have no idea what is possible in Stop Mo).

I also have Bron working on my film! Seeing as we are both working in 2D, we have the same processes to go through -

Animate

Ink

Scan

Colour

Edit

So, we thought that if we animate our films, we can swap over and ink-colour eachother's, and then edit our own. This is so we can both gain hours - and by the time we finish animating we are going to be sick to the back teeth of our films, so the swap means we get a break, and only have to worry about it when it comes to editing it all together.

What else do we have to do?

Theres the -

Dissertation, which we hand in after Easter, leaving 4 weeks before handing in our films.

I think we have to do a CV as part of the group project,

and probably a load of personal reviews and assess the work we do for others, and what people do for us.

We probably have to do showreels, but they cannot actually be completed without our films being done - does that mean we have to add work from the last 2 years? Will I need to make time to improve on some of that stuff?

I also dont know if I am meant to be working on Ste's showreel; originally he wanted me to animate a section, but after watching his animatic I have no idea what he would want me to do.

Hopefully these questions will be answered in the lectures to come, but I am really impatient - I like to get everything organised, because I cant plan my time when I dont know exactly what I need to do.

I (fingers crossed) will have finished animating before Easter, but I dont know how long inking and colouring will take (scanning will only take a couple of hours using one of the line testers).

New Year, Change of Plan

OK, OK. You might have seen this coming, but I've changed my mind, and I am going to do the film in 2D afterall...

You see, my computer broke a couple of weeks before the Xmas break, so I didn't get chance to practice on Maya. While I was home for Xmas I managed to get this sodding thing fixed, but I lost everything, including Maya, and all the files for installing it. I still dont have it running on here.

This got me to thinking that I was in over my head, trying to learn a new program and making my most important film to date. So, I'm going to do it in 2D, where I feel comfortable and confident.

Anyway, thats enough of that, because in the end, it doesn't really matter what medium I use, as long as the film is good when it's finished.