Animation Line Tests

The scenes I've been working on the past couple of days, which I compiled for the peer review. Quite a few simple scenes so far, but I've just been working through the scenes as they appear on the storyboard, minus the ones Tom, Tom or Lynsey (my team thus far) are working on.

There's still some inbetweening to be done so some bits aren't as smooth as they will be.

Animatic, Progress

All the scenes have been laid out (bar one which will be done while animating) so they are ready for the animation team. I've added them to the live action shoot to produce a new animatic for editing, animation and music purposes. I've also done some work on the live action to remove strings, props, reflections of the camera and a rather embarrassing tripod leg.

I've still not decided on a title for the film. I also need to figure out a working title to place in the film itself without giving away the ending. Contrary to this animatic, I'm leaning towards 'Conflicting Ideas', with 'Stars of the Show' being the working title. I'm totally open to suggestions though! Also, I'm thinking about shortening up the first few shots, maybe taking one out, just to tighten up the pace. What do you think?

And while I'm asking questions - how important do you think it is that a short film has the title at the beginning? I don't think it's working here. I'd like to move it to the end, before the credits. Thoughts?

Character Model Sheets

Some overall drawings of the two characters. A lot of the necessary poses will be described in the layout drawings so I haven't included any here. For Elwood, a lot of reference can be taken from the comic strip. I'm going to compile a few strips for this purpose.

Full S-Team Ahead!

Just a little update on the production front. All the other modules are done so it's fall go on the film now. I've got a good few undergrads (and some imminent grads) interesting in helping me with the animation, which is going to help a lot with the short amount of time we have left. I've posted the abridged production chart online that has a breakdown of everything needed in each shot, which can be seen here.

More to follow.

Getting Back to 2D Animation

Some 2D effects animation I did for an undergraduate film. The environment here it only a temporary render for layout purposes, it's not the look of the final film. No sound effects or camera shake were added for this render, but will be added in the final composite of the film.

Direction Workshop

In February we (MAV and MMA) undertook a direction workshop. This involved developing and producing a 60-second film in a week. Our team (Paul Creegan as director, Omar Arshad as producer, Mark Mulligan as editor and myself as director of photographer) worked on turning Adam Thomson's script into a finished film. This project was good in terms of gaining experience of working with a team to produce a live action film, and gave me a good opportunity to experience lighting and shooting a film (not that we had much time or ability to control our surroundings), both of which proved useful when it came to shooting my own film for the Advanced Production module.

Do It in Post

The live action portion of my film, cut together as it will appear in the final thing. Certain shots have rigs, crew or other things in the scene that will either be edited out or obscured with animation. Also, a few shots were taken on a tripod out of a necessaity for the visual effects, so camera movement will be applied digitally. There also appears to be a flash of black about half way through, I must have left a slight gap between shots in the edit.

I'm really keen to go ahead and start the VFX mentioned now, but I don't know if I should leave that till the compositing stage and start the animation layouts now instead.