Our Most Up-To-Date Animatic YET

So we've finished the boards and have them proudly displayed above the Director's desk:

They loom over us as a giant reminder of all the work we still have to do.  In finishing the boards I've since been able to finalise the animatic too, making the last 30 seconds a lot more clearer than we had on the post-it boards.  Now it actually makes sense.  The timing's had to change a wee bit too, it was flying through the final reveal just a bit too quick for my liking.  Here is what we gots now:

Please let us know what you think.  The intro may be getting looked at... in fact, it will be getting looked at 'cause we've redesigned the town a bit, so please bear that in mind, the fly through will be better, or at the very least different.  We're still sitting at just one second under two minutes, so it's a very manageable piece.  Suba's working on our first layout as I type so doping and animating will be beginning forthwith! Hurrah!  

Again, please let us know what you think!  Any feedback is good feedback.

x L

Animatic Rewrite

Just a wee catch up after my last post on Friday.  Finished tweaking the new revise of the animatic today so storyboarding can continue tomorrow.  Hopefully I'll get them done for our production meeting at 3pm, but that may be a bit of a push, especially at it's our Background Artist's 21st birthday today coupled with Hallowe'en.  We'll be lucky if we're up tomorrow by 3pm...  But anyhow, here's how it's looking so far:

Please let me know what you think, all feedback would very much be appreciated!

x L

Peer Review Animatic

Had our peer review this past Monday (which I will update more on in another blog post soon) which we had been working our asses off to get some form of animatic ready for.  This is the animatic that we showed on the day.  Apologies in advance for the roughness of some of the boards.  The scribbles make sense to us, but not so much other people it seems.  This will rectified in due course.

Post peer review I added in some of the colour bleeding and fixed and finished the dog scenes:

More news to come soon so stay tuned! 

x L

Animatic Scenes to Date

Here is a wee compilation of all the scenes I've managed to draw in the last two and a bit weeks.  Bambi, our editor, has the complete animatic file with the rest of the boards and what not, but she has been sensible and decided to enjoy this unnaturally lovely sunshine we're having today by not being inside.  Our most complete animatic has to be ready for our peer review on Monday so it'll be up on our film blog when it's ready.

x L

Animatic See-Saw Third Revise

Okay, still working on our rough animatic.  Peer review is next Monday so I really have a shipload to get done before then.  This is my current revise of the girl on the see-saw scene.  Just away to start on the close up which follows directly after this clip, then onto her storming offscreen.  

Got three scenes left to sketch up before Monday and three characters to design and turn, and maybe have a look at colouring the boy.  Too much to do and not enough hours in the day.  The Beatles had it good with their 8 day weeks.

x L

More Animatic Clips

Just been continuing on from last week trying to time out the boards and get a wee semblance of an animatic on the go.  Got some lovely feedback from my very observant classmate Fraser Murdoch on my post with the wee girl on the see-saw.  With his advice, coupled with the advice of my director, I've played about with the clip and come up with this:

The bear is more obviously a useless see-saw companion, and I don't have to worry about timing a see-saw jump, so it's all much better.  There is still more to add but it will need to be tomorrow.  I've also been working on the scene where the girl goes to the bush and confronts the boy about hurting her teddy.  The boy hurting the teddy scene is still to be done, it comes directly after the girl on the see-saw scene hence why I haven't started it yet, but it will all make sense soon.

Originally we were going to have the boy hiding in the bush and when the girl confronts him he smiles and jovially 'tags' her before running off. The girl, still being mad, chases after him, but in them playing chase they eventually become friends.  I, apparently because I am in a 'soppy mood' today, suggested we make it a bit more light-hearted and instead of hitting her he kisses her on the cheek (like in kiss-chase) and the print he leaves on her face will stain her cheeks to look like she's blushing.

So yes, enjoy!  Again, any and all feedback would be very much welcome!  More to come soon.

x L

Girl on Seesaw

Or teeter-tot as they seem to call them in America (crazy Americans).  As a part of our new story, and so boards and animatic, we felt our little female protagonist would appear more lonelier if we put her and her wee teddy bear companion on a see-saw rather than a swing.  A swing can be played on quite happily by one person but a see-saw really does require two, and as we want to show the audience she has no friend to play with, a see-saw became our replacement.  Her loneliness becomes immediately apparent when we see that the bear makes a terrible see-saw partner, and it gives an understanding to her reaction to the boy when she sees him.  She is lonely and wants a friend, and he is lost and in need of a friendly face.  

I've been boarding and scheduling away these last few days (last week of course, the weekend was lost to far too much television and far too little dissertation) and have managed to cobble together the first wee clip of her and her bear on the see-saw.  There is something completely and utterly wrong with the timing somewhere but I've been looking at it too long to see exactly what.  

Feedback would be very, very welcome if anyone would care to give me some pointers.  I'll hopefully have more of a sequence tomorrow so I will try my best to upload that too if I can.

Enjoy! 

x L

Boy Jump

And we're back!  After a summer of far too much inactivity my group and I are finally back in the studio and back working on our film!  So far we've scrapped everything we worked on last semester and started for the third (and hopefully final) time working out our story and roughly boarding some scenes together.  I have started taking some of the rough ideas onto the computer and trying to time them out digitally.  

I have started with our simplest scene, which is the wee Boy jumping scared into a bush (or shrub as I am being asked to call it as 'bush' is apparently too lewd a word to say aloud).  We're still working on what might possibly be in the background so these are still rough too.  We're very much trying to work to the guidelines of the fabulous Mr. Bruce Block, playing with deep and flat spaces, etc, but are worried the film is becoming far too flat overall, so this scene may change to a slightly different perspective over time.

Anyway, it's only day three and it's not much to begin with but at least it's a start.  Expect more updates very soon, and please, please feel free to leave feedback as it is very much needed and appreciated!

x L

First Draft Animatic

So there's been nothing new here for a while, but this will all change as soon as the fourth years let go of the scanners :P  I have a whole load of new character stuff and the final storyboards are all complete and coloured and everything.  They will all go up asap.

Apart from that, myself and Jamie Bell have been working on the animatic for the last 3 weeks and finally got our first draft finished on Friday!  We realised there's a couple things we really should add/tweak so I'll be working on that the rest of this week I think.

Anyway let us know what you think, we missed out getting to show this at our mini peer review so feedback/crits/praise would be most welcome to help us move forward in the right direction.

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More stuff soon.

- Lynne