Buoy: Production update

Attendance was low at our latest production meeting for this project.

We have missed our goals of blocking the entire film and completing all backgrounds by the beginning of June. However, we do have all of Olly’s priority scenes AT LEAST (blocked if not complete) which is great! Olly also has 80% of the backgrounds complete and is still experimenting with the sea bed.

Although Natasha was not in attendance Olly assures me that she has told him her tasks from last week- and then some, are complete. Although i originally set her the task of blocking the boy’s animation for all the crab fight scenes, and also completing the crab puppet and animating him in these scenes in after effects; Olly decided after the meeting to tell Natasha to focus on animating the boy and put the crab puppet completion and animation to one side. I have heard but not seen evidence of Natasha having complete the blocking of the crab fight scenes (25-31) and also the boy walking on the sea bed scenes (21-23). Olly will meet with her later today or tomorrow when the whole team is required to attend a timetabled meeting with Mark Grindle, and we expect will set tasks for her to clean up her keys on some of her blocked scenes.

Although Annita was absent from the meeting she messaged the group letting us know her tasks were complete (fish boat model and movement tests) and she would send Olly what she had to look at and meet with us in person tomorrow. We will talk about what she can focus on next, tomorrow.

Fincher has been given keyed scenes 8 + 10 to inbetween.

Olly is working on completing his Backgrounds and also animating (as close as possible to completion) scenes 11-16 (these are very short scenes but important to tell the story).

Ritchie is continuing to work on scene 1, Olly has already received tests from him and relayed notes.

Olly has asked Niall Calder, a recent animation undergrad. graduate to help him form the soundtrack for his film by adding droning, atmospheric accordion to the parts of his film that aren’t set under water. However there is no base score for Niall to work from for these parts so what he will produce for Olly will be guess work.

Deadlines for these tasks are Monday 8th June when there will be another production meeting.

Buoy: production updates

Minutes from today’s meeting:

Olly has blocked scene 8 and 10 and is moving on to focus on backgrounds in the final week of May. there are roughly 9 backgrounds but the plan is to reuse some of the underwater landscapes as much as possible, also the under-water objects: houses and sea plants, are part of a library that can be added in on layers and swapped around to look different. A good portion of this library is complete in his sketchbook.

Olly has completed the final boat texture this week aswell.

Natasha has completed scene 3 which was due a week ago, but without some shading and colours; She has also blocked out scenes 4 and 17, however Olly has given notes for some cleaner keys to be added and hopefully the scene will be fixed to his satisfaction by the end of today . We asked Natasha to move on to more blocking tasks after this is complete: She has agreed to finish the crab puppet (his legs still need to be drawn and scanned) after this she should animate the puppet in the crab scenes: 25-29/ 31-33. Natasha will also be working on blocking the boy’s animation in these scenes.

Ritchie will be working on Scene 1: animating the Seagull gliding over the water, making the water effect in after effects, and animating the buoy bobbing in the water. He is busy with his primary project so cannot take on anymore tasks atm.

Annita is also busy with her primary project but has agreed to work on completing the fish boat model and make some movement tests for it.

Fincher is tied up with her primary project all of this week so has no tasks for now.

All new tasks are due for Monday 1st June at which point there will be a meeting and we will review how successful our goals have been. At this point i’m already aware that we will be missing some high priority scenes. This is due to an absence of team members for the past 2- 3 weeks.

Once Bitten: Script breakdown & New schedule

I had a production meeting with myself and took note of: Everything i said i would achieve by this point- completed or not and if so whether it still needs to be completed. The old schedule looked like this:

FOTW production schedule_new

Final 2D animatic is complete (recently updated to include 2 new scenes with one old scene that was really annoying me cut. The new scenes are important- they show the 2 main characters together in the same shot as equals seeing each other for the first time and their first cautious exchange)

New schedule with updated hierarchy: green means high priority, yellow is medium, red is low. i plan to push for having 62 secs of complete animation by the beginning of July. This way i hope to at least have a film that makes some sense to start putting together a month before deadline.

Once Bitten production schedule

Based on the new animatic i made up a script breakdown (as detailed as i could manage) which will hopefully help me keep track of my film requirements scene by scene and will help when it comes to filming my live action footage. I have arranged a meeting with Adam Morrow who is leading the live action footage team for this project to discuss how the script breakdown and new schedule is working for him.

Once Bitten Script Breakdown

I have acquired a live action reference actress for my wolf pup character! Her name is Kira and her and her owner Kerri have kindly agreed to accompany us on our filming days. Having footage of Kira for reference will help me scale/ place/ animate & composite my wolf pup character.

For more details please see the post in my main project blog: http://fallofthewolf.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/script-breakdown-and-new-schedule.html

Once Bitten: Wrapping Up Pre- Production

I have hurried to complete the missing pre- production for my final project this past week or so. I am keen to move on to production as my animation time is running out and i am already behind my original schedule. This is due to Going Live taking up a lot of time in semester 2 and the un-forseen time in Germany, when the first schedule was made up.

For a full description of my process and decisions please see the post on my dedicated project blog: http://fallofthewolf.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/wrapping-up-pre-production.html

complete character turnarounds:

complete character sheets:

complete scale comparison:

Buoy Production Update

I’m very pleased with how strictly Olly is sticking to the deadlines i set him. He completed his trial of scene 6 (character animation fully cleaned and coloured) with a day to spare and since then has completed the additional scene i gave him plus his re-vamped whale asset is complete and ready to scan AND additional prop animation for scene 6 is nearly done.

Having a good idea of the pace at which Olly completes work i was hopeful that our goal of having 40 seconds of complete animation by June was achievable. However i mentioned the possibility of dropping our other goal of having the entire film blocked roughly by June aswell, in favour of 40 seconds complete (due to lack of man power available in the team until June) and Olly was of the opinion that focussing on blocking everything was more important than completing anything at this stage. So now, our goal is to have as much as possible of the film roughly blocked by June.

As for completing the backgrounds which Olly is concerned about and keen to complete by June ASWELL, since he is being fairly quick with his animation tasks i gave him 2 more high priority scenes to roughly block AND a background completion task due for our next production meeting on Tuesday 26th (due to assessment presentations taking place on the 25th).

Natasha was unable to make our production meeting today but did send ahead work for Olly to review, Olly spoke to her and gave her praise and feedback. She has not reached the goal i set her however has not been in dundee for the last week so full time focus on the task could not be guaranteed. I have set her the task of completing the scene she has been working on already for tomorrow. After that i have asked that she move on to blocking 2 more scenes amounting to roughly 5 secs for Tuesday 26th.

I am still concerned about the Crab asset which is designed but not drawn and ready to scan as the whale is (both these assets are necessary for the completion of several high priority scenes). I am not keen to assign Olly to the task until Natasha is back in Dundee and working full time on animating priority scenes.

Buoy: Animation commences

Going into our first production meeting of our last semester i prepared by noting down the topics i needed to be clear on in terms of progress before effectively setting tasks for animation:

After speaking with Olly i found that he was happy with the current story and was not keen to make any more changes. However i had some suggestions to make about the scene’s we should be focussing on and some scenes we could afford to cut completely, all in the aid of making this project more achievable and less stressful for our limited team.

This was Olly’s 2m 19 animatic as it stood before our meeting:

These were my notes including all the scenes i felt most necessary to complete the film. The notes rimmed in blue are slight scene alterations i suggested in order to tie together the story and allow us to cut entirely separate more high risk scenes. The notes with asterisk are ones i felt were high priority and that we should focus on completing first.

After the cuts i suggested and still using the rough timing Olly laid out for his edit, my cut-down animatic was 1 minute long (with 23 less scenes to animate):

Olly took my advice on board and cut his animatic down to 1m19, however this was done mainly by shortening rather than cutting scenes (7 scenes cut).

Despite disagreements about what was strictly necessary to complete the film and what we could achieve in the time remaining Olly has decided to let me decide the hierarchy and deal out animation tasks despite having his own ideas about what scenes are high priority. For the moment we are running with the scene hierarchy outlined roughly in this new schedule:

buoy production schedule_12.05

Olly made his goals clear at our meeting: film completion by the 27th July giving us 10 weeks of production time; The whole film roughly blocked and all backgrounds (9) complete by June, giving us 3 weeks; 40 seconds of complete, coloured and cleaned animation by June, giving us 3 weeks. Boat texture finalised by June.

I’ve allocated the task of completing 40secs to our 2 primary group members: Olly and Natasha. Working to these deadlines each person should be producing roughly 1 second of complete animation (cleaned and coloured) per DAY. I have set trial deadlines for each person to gage how possible this is.

More revelations from the meeting:

We still need one giant crab to be drawn and scanned to be made into an after effects puppet. At one point the Crabs and Whale assets were going to be 2.5D rigged and animated in Maya, but Olly seems keen to animate both these assets in After effects now. Designs for Crabs exist, drawn by Natasha who was originally working to produce several crabs: with our new cut only one crab is required.

We have a complete Whale asset however Olly wishes to re- design and draw this.

By this point we also planned to have small pieces of 3D animation complete i.e. small fish boats: tests for these are complete by Annita however there are no finalised models due to a delay in a finalised design. The task of modelling from the now complete model sheets, i intend to give to Annita when she is available to commence working on the project again.

There are no character animation tests complete to date however there are mist and bird flight tests completed by Richie, which Olly has confidence in, in theory, but would prefer them to be re- done for the final film.

Assets we were hoping would be complete by this time:

Crab- not complete, but will fall to either Olly or Natasha to draw;

under water plants and other library under water items, i.e. houses- not complete but evidence of progression;

Fish boats- not complete, task will be Annita’s;

Crab pot- no need anymore since changes to story;

Whale- complete, but being re-done.

Olly also let me know about the sound recording him and Fiona McAndrew had been doing the day before. They have an under-water theme and an end credits theme complete with minor edits to make including the possibility of adding either a fiddle or accordion for tense points in the story. I am not concerned about pushing the music to completion at this point, there are more pressing concerns and since not a great deal of sync with the animation is required i am confident it can be easily slotted together close to the end of production.

That’s all for now folks!

Pictoplasma!

For (approximately) the past 2 weeks I have been in Germany, on a creative mission to expand my knowledge of character design, illustration and animation. This was my first time attending Pictoplasma, an annual art & culture festival/ conference held in Berlin. http://berlin.pictoplasma.com/

Previously i have attended 2 Annecy festivals http://www.annecy.org/home which inspired me while also allowing me to practice networking. They also provided experiences and knowledge which fed into my undergraduate animation studies directly.

This positive past experience encouraged me to attend Pictoplasma for a change of scenery.

I enjoyed the conference very much, although was sad that it lacked a careers fair. I found it far more design and illustration based than Annecy had been although it did still include animation screenings every day. The speakers were definitely the highlight for me.

As the conference is still relatively small in attendance any ticket holder was immediately guaranteed a space to listen/ watch/ take part in any of the events linked with it- i found this refreshing after memories of hours of queuing for left over seats at Annecy screenings/ talks with no guarantee of a space despite having a festival pass.

In particular i enjoyed talks given by:

Brosmind: an illustration and design company formed by two brothers. http://www.brosmind.com/

Animalitoland: an artist skilled in communicating her playful and beautiful style through traditional, digital and street art mediums. http://animalitoland.com/

Yves Geleyn: the man behind John Lewis’ award winning “Bear and the Hare” Christmas advert of 2014 http://yvesgeleyn.com/

By accident i also managed to visit a much smaller animation festival in Stuttgart http://www.itfs.de/en/, the weather had much improved since the beginning of my trip in Berlin so it was great to sit on the grass at Schlossplatz and watch the animation reels and feature films on the big screen outside.

More than anything, the time spent around fellow artists, animators and friends in this creative atmosphere was invaluable, as i embark on my final semester of MSc Animation i feel refreshed and inspired.

Going Live: finishing touches!

I had a little extra time on my hands as we near the finish line and after some feedback from the director i added some blood splatters as the wolf carcass i animated in 2D to place over the 3D animation hits the bed:

Sound Recording and Editing

About a week ago Fincher, Sandra and I recorded our voice actors (including myself) for our Going Live project!

Niall Calder as Grandma:

Joseph Black as Little Round Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf

Throughout the project Sandra and I have worked closely together on the script, I edited the final version in preparation for recording our voice actors, and Sandra made some notes including ideas for extra ambient sound the actors could provide as improv that may be useful for us in the final editing process.

Sandra and i are currently gathering final foley and slotting in our chosen voice clips in preparation for the final comped version of our film!

It ‘aint over until the fat wolf splats….?

The final shot of our film for Going Live shows the wolf’s corpse sliding off Grandma’s naked body as Little Round Riding hood looks on in horror and then spews in her basket. We debated doing the effect in either 3D or 2D,

A 3D initial test was produced by Olly, and then i added some additional movement to the head and arm, i also modelled temporary rough objects (legs, tail, blood, ribs) in order to make 2D rotoscope easier when the 3D camera moved: 

My 2D test i produced in Flash:

To help me animate the gross bloody effect i first looked at David Stodolny’s work on youtube- i admire his animation and especially love that he puts together detailed making-ofs to cover all of his FAQs. I particular i paid attention the the animation of the blood explosion effect he goes over in this video at around 8:00:

2D animation was approved and i produced the final effect in photoshop by keeping to the keys i set out when animating the wolf head and arm (which will remain as 3D animated objects in the final comp), i also added texture to the tail and grandma’s dress. i rotoscoped the 3D camera zoom frame by frame using the 3d objects i created. This is a low-res preview of the animation, which has been handed over for final comp on top of the 3D animated scene.