Almost There

Hey!

 

So really I’ve made not that much progress on my thesis film this past week, mainly because I’ve only been focusing on the 6 shots from my film that are going to be put in my animator’s reel:

 

– Mean Girl saying “Sure! Roll me the ball”

– Mean Girl kicking the ball

– Mean Girl saying “Oh I’m SO sorry! I didn’t mean to do that!”

– Mean Girl and Bil having their dialogue while sitting on the play structure in the schoolyard

– Hero climbing the wall

– Hero getting sucked into the mansion

 

Oh and if you wanna count EVERYTHING from the film that’s going into the reel, then I’m also putting the Hero’s Run Cycle and the Mean Girl’s Run Cycle into the reel as well, but those are both done/don’t require nearly as much work as the other shots.

 

Anyway, I’m about 90% done with all of those things, which is exciting because I have a lot of free time today to work on them, AND I have all of Friday to work on them as well, and possibly some of Saturday, so HOPEFULLY I’ll get them all done in the next few days. Or if not, I’ll certainly get them all done by some time next week. Which is exciting, because that means that I can finally embark on finishing the animation for the rest of my film! And it’s about time, since I only have a little over a month left to work, yikes.

 

However, just so that you can have something to look at, here’s the Hero’s House Exterior that I started modelling a couple days ago. Check it out!

(During the day)

(And at night)

Obviously it’s got a ways to go before looking finished, but the overall shape/composition of it is there, and I’m really happy with how it turned out! It’s very cute and normal looking. 🙂

OK, sorry for the lack of interesting stuff. There’ll be more to come I promise!

Animatic v14

That’s right, new animatic! But before I get to it, lemme tell a quick story.

 

So I had office hours yesterday with Michael Patterson, with the hopes of getting advice on camera direction/cinematography/editing of my piece to have the storytelling flow better. And what I got was that + even more!

 

For you see, one thing that Patterson noticed right off the bat was that my animatic was kind of unreadable, what with how none of the final locations had been imported into any of the scenes, and how a lot of the establishing shots were still just flat pink photoshop drawings that I made literally a year ago.

 

So after getting a fire lit under my ass to heavily revamp my animatic, that is exactly what I did — I spent all of yesterday importing the new locations into almost all of the scenes, and I even started up the Party Room scene of my film! And you get to see it AAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL together now, which is great because the resulting animatic was something that is one huge step closer to looking like what my final film will end up looking like come showtime in May.

 

But before giving the link to the animatic, here are two funny images:

 

This is a still from a scene with the OLD school-yard model (the stand-in version)

 

….And this is the exact same still, but with the old school model deleted, and the more finalized school model imported.

LOL. So yea, that’s the main logistical difference between the two models of the Schoolyard — the ground isn’t level in the new model. Which ultimately looks better, but it’s just funny because it meant that for a couple of scenes I had to re-position the God-Nodes of the characters so that they were standing correctly on the ground. Uneven terrain! Fun stuff! (not really, but it’s not really a big deal at the same time)

So yea, enough talky talky I guess. Here’s the 14th Animatic of my film. Look at how far it’s come!

And of course, as I always say…

…there is certainly more to come. 🙂

I’m Feeling Relaxed Right Now

Partially because I have a hangover.

 

But also for several other reasons:

 

1) I made a good first final pass on the shots that I want to use in my reel, and showed those to Angie Jones, a USC animation professor who’s really good with 3D character animation. Yesterday she gave really great critiques on it all, and I am now on my way to fixing the shots up and getting them ready for usage in my reel! Aaand once that’s ready, I’ll be able to start applying to jobs finally. Weee!

2) Earlier today I recorded some extra lines and some ad-libbed dialogue with a few of my fraternity brothers, Andrew Heiderscheit and Aidan Blant, for the party scene in my film. Which meeeeeeeeans that I am officially DONE recording audio for my film! Weeeeoooweeeooweeeooweeeoweeee!!!

 

And this is all such great fuckinng news because it just means that the end is in sight. I’m a little less than half-way done with the final animation of everything, and also the 2D animation sequences are coming along (I did a bunch of dance cycles that I’ll show on this blog later) and it’s just really exciting to see all of these assets I’ve been creating slowly getting ready to be put all together at once into a FILM! Aaahh! I’m still kind of freaking out about whether or not I’ll be able to finish it all in time, but I feel like I should be OK. I just gotta keep up the pace I’m going at and I should be good…

 

So yea. Just another simple verbal update. I’m in relaxation mode right now, especially after that recording session… recording sessions always take the piss outta ya, don’t they?

 

More to come!