Final Post!

This is the final blog entry because we are done! Yay! How exciting! So this is one last entry to evaluate the whole experience.
This was really good. Andrew and I make a really good team, we both pulled our weight and fed off each others’ strengths. We started by dividing the jobs evenly between us and then whoever found a particular strength there took over. For example, I ended up doing all the character designs and writing the script, Andrew did the backgrounds and the animatics and so on. I was really pleased to be working with Andrew, we could discuss problems really easily, we both had the same sort of goals for this film and we could depend on each other. Out of all the group projects that I have done at uni, this was the best. I had a partner that I could rely on and Andrew really impressed me with both the quality and quantity of his work. The backgrounds were just amazing and the storyboards that Andrew did helped us to rethink our treatment, making it so much better.
At first the script had me worried, having to rework it again and again to get it right, I was sure we were running horribly behind with it. Charlie and Andi were a massive help with the script and with their feedback I got the script ready before a lot of other groups, which surprised me.
We should have started animating during the mid semester holidays but we were foolish. If only we had! Burn the Witch could have been so much better. Still, we picked up the slack really well and I was surprised with how well we caught up to where we were meant to be. I was really impressed with Andrew’s animations, they all looked so much fuller than mine. Curse him! Haha. Nah, it was really good, I enjoyed everything he did and I wish mine looked better. Although, after taking a break from working on it and hearing feedback from others, I am pretty pleased with how mine looks and I really like my lip-synch. But I love Andrew’s animation, they all look so soft and real, I think that mine look rather stiff by comparison.
I was really happy to discover that I can do clean up really well and really quickly. I did most of the clean up for our film. The scene were Sir Brave is thanking the Witch for the drink and half of the Viking’s walk cycle were cleaned up by Andrew and I cleaned up the rest. Totally impressed with myself! But don’t think Andrew slacked off, the two of us were working constantly, we just divided things according to personal strengths.
When it was time to capture everything, someone in the compositing class suggested that we line up all the peg holes using Shake. We tried this and it was a MASSIVE pain in the butt to try and get into a computer lab in the film school, apparently the only place with Shake. So we said bugger it and captured everything on the line tester. By getting distracted with Shake we didn’t think to look at what Toonboom had to offer. So we tried capturing everything on the line tester…with horrible results. Luckily, our good friend John Eyely helped us out and thanks to him we were able to scan everything in and line it up in Toonboom. We had to pull a couple of all nighters (during which I spent eleven hours straight just SCANNING), but I actually enjoyed those a lot. I wish I had looked into Toonboom earlier, a lot of my peg holes had lines crossing over them, or ink around them and because of this I spent a lot of time gluing new peg holes on so that Toonboom could pick up on them and line them up. That first scene with the witch, where she’s talking to the viewer, all of that needed the peg holes to be fixed. Ugh. Nice one Alexis.
We worked really well during those two all nighters, Andrew impressed me beyond belief with the amount of work that he put in. I scanned and when a scene was scanned, he would clean it up and colour it. Then when I was done scanning, I took over the colouring and timed the scenes out while Andrew put the backgrounds in, did a quality check and rendered them all out. Andrew was a total life saver when it came to a lot of the post production things and technical aspects. I suck at all that stuff and while I would freak out if something stuffed up, he would figure it out. Thank you so much Andrew!
We should have kept in closer contact with our sound guy. The music he gave us was tops but the effort he put into the sound was disappointing to say the least. So I started working on the sound and then Andrew did the rest, saving my butt once again! I don’t think I’m any great shakes at sound stuff.
All in all, it was a great experience, we didn’t have any team problems like a lot of other groups. Andrew was an awesome person to work with, he helped to make this an experience to remember for all the right reasons. Thanks to our great teamwork and our strict time management, we got it all done on time without rushing everything at the last minute. Go team!

Textures and Post Production

I never update this thing, bad me. It's because Andrew and I are always working on the project, so there's no time for frivolous things like blogs. Haha.

Anyway. We pulled two massive all-nighters to get the post production underway. I spent eleven hours scanning at some point. Argh! We got seventy to eighty percent scanned, vectorized, coloured and timed out. A lot of the scenes are also rendered out, ready to be put together in After Effects. We worked so hard and it really paid off. Yay!

I gotta say, this has been an awesome group project. We've been doing an equal share of work and we've been using each other's strengths to the projects advantage. Huzzah!

We've also decided to show 'bloopers' in the credits, still images made to look like they happened 'on set'. Like the end of the Daria movie, 'Is it Fall Yet?'

Here's a couple:

I also used them to test out the colouring style for the project.

Eyebrows aren't necessary.

I shaved off my eyebrows so that I can draw swirly ones on each day. Y'know what I discovered? I don't need eyebrows to define my face, the BIG FAT RINGS around my eyes do that already.

Animation almost complete. We're aiming to have all the actual animation finished by the end of this week. We can do it!

Haven't posted for so long.

I haven't posted here for SO LONG. But that's because I've been busy, busy, busy animating. We slacked off in the holidays, but we got the new witch voice recorded (it's very nice and crazy Scottish) pretty soon after coming back. Then after the first review meeting we've been working like CRAZY. We showed off our stuff in a really bad way, so it looked like we'd done less than we had. But at the same time, we had slacked off. So we've been working our butts off ever since and I am pleased with the progress we've made. Very pleased. So much has been done! I have nothing to post on this blog at the moment, but rest assured there is a lot that has been done. Anyway, I must go animate now, hooroo!

Colours and Voices

Colours! The characters all have colours. They will be coloured while the background will remain black and white with ink and pencil.

We also recorded dialogue for Sir Brave and the Witch. Sir Brave's dialogue we can use. We might have to hire a proffessional for the Witch. We got the girl we found at Super Nova to do the Witch. It is awesome, but not quite what we need.

Props

More props! The props are now done, as there aren't all that many. Huzzah!

Andrew has been working on the backgrounds and I must say, they are fantastic. They're really beautiful and intricate and interesting to look at. Love them.

And now I must draw the still images, hoo-ray. We're hoping to start animating in the holidays and I think that is going to happen.

Quick Post

Just a small post. Started working on the props and Andrew is working on the backgrounds. There aren't too many props, so I should be able to smash them out and then get stuck into the still images.

Hopefully we will be recording voices next week, or the week after.

Model Sheets

The model sheets are ALL DONE. YAY.

We did have the model sheets divided into two, half for me, half for Andrew. But then it turned out that I had more of a natural flair for model sheets, so I took them all on and Andrew took the Animatic. (We were going to divide that one in half too.)

So now they are ALL DONE. I rescanned the ones I already posted here, because the last scans were kinda dirty and stuff, these are cleaner and nicer and all that.

Script and Character Turn Arounds!

The script is done! Draft eleven is the final draft! Well, everything is still subject to change, of course, but the script is done done done. So Andrew drew up the storyboards for it and the Animatic is being made as well. Huzzah!
Character turn arounds! We did have half the characters each to do, but now Andrew is working on the animatic, so I traded him for all the character model sheets. That's why Sir Brave has not been done yet, that was one of Andrew's. But my original half is done, so that's good.

What else do we have? Hmmm. Well we have our two female voice actors and we have also found a voice actor for Sir Brave. So we'll probably get him to do all the other male voices as well.

Oh and here's a really simple little test animation. I just wanted to see if we needed spot-on, anal retentive clean up. But we don't! It's fine being a little wobbly, I like it that way.

So yeah, lots of stuff has been happening, progress is good.

Ink and Brush

Oh, look at me, blogging again. I'm going to turn into a right little nerd.

WELL.

Andrew and I had a meeting with Andi today. (We meet her every week and sometimes wish we hadn't, lol. She is a hard taskmistress!) Anyway, as a direct result, we are now going to do our project on paper with brush and ink, instead of in flash. We're both a little apprihensive, because we both find flash easier than traditional hand drawn animation. But at the same time, we're both excited about it, because it will really help make our project uniquely ours. We both use liquid ink with paintbrushes A LOT and we both love it. It's very uniquely us and I think that our project will be much better if we use it. Oh yeah, and the script needs work, of course.

So yeah, BIG change, should work out okay though.

-Alexis

Here's some concept art by Andrew:

And here's his deviantart: http://poisonapples.deviantart.com/

Witch Turnaround

I finished breaking the witch down in Flash! In four different views. Excellent stuff. I like the colours that I chose, but they will be revisited when all the characters are broken down, so that they all compliment each other.

I've also been in contact with our female voice actors, sent them the script, they like it, all is great.

The production schedule needs to get done so that we can tell how we're going. Although, at the moment, I think we're going really well. The storyboard is done, the animatic will be done soon, we're breaking down characters, we're working really hard and I think we're doing really well. Mark took the project class last week instead of Andi and he seemed mildly impressed with how far we are into it.

Oh, and here's some more concept art:

Storyboard in progress

Andrew and I looked after the Griffith booth at Supanova over the weekend and met a couple a few voice actors. One was a guy who has graduated from the con and is a professional voice actor. The other two that we met were two girls who are voice actors from another uni and have a huge range of european accents at their disposal. This could prove to be very useful.

We added dialogue to the script and the witch does most of the talking, so it is important to find good voice actors, especially for the witch. We both want people who either have, or can do, british accents. We don't really want Australian accents in this film, as it has a medieval setting and Australian accents would not really work very well. So these two girls that we found would be great. We also have people to consider for male voices.

Draft ten of the script is complete, and it is now really, really good. It still needs to be shorter, but Andrew has started storyboarding and we can fiddle more with it in this form and when it is an animatic. We want to get a rough animatic done quickly so that we can send it to potential sound people and voice actors, to show them our project. The storyboards are looking really great, Andrew is doing them with ink and brush (we have both really latched on to that medium, seeing as it's AWESOME) and the storyboards are looking fantastic!

It's a nice division of work that we have at the moment, seeing as I wrote the script and Andrew is doing the storyboards and we both have input in each of these. We've also divided up the characters and started to break them down in flash.

We have also started a production schedule. This should have been done earlier, but we have been working on this project every week, so it isn't too bad.

Script in progress

Woo, stuff is getting done. Slowly. Once the script is 100% ready, we will hopefully go faster.

Andrew and I brainstormed some new ideas for the script and changed it so that it is much better. Only problem is that it's too long now. But we've sent it off to Charlie and we'll trim it back once we have feedback. Once the script is tightened, we can start the animatic!

We've also started drawing turn-arounds for Sir Brave and the Witch. Woo!

There may be another group member, Julie-Anne is looking for a group and is totally welcome and will perhaps be joining the team. That would be pretty good, three people would rock.

Well, that's all for now,
-Alexis

Concept Art

Well, I did a lot of concept art in the holidays, so I thought I'd start this blog off with that.
I shall post actual information about the project later. (Like, what it's about and what have you.)

If you want more art go to http://lemur-fox.deviantart.com/