SOUND LOCK!! (Animatic v17)

Sound is LOCKED and it feels so good!

 

Now, I have a confession to make — I broke the rules of Picture Lock. In the past week, I took the edit of my film and revamped it pretty heavily (aka I shortened a lot of the shots) and the whole film is now 30 seconds shorter!!! And on top of that, the sounds are all different! I know, right?

 

With such radical changes made to my film in such a last-minute time period, you HAVE to check out my ~latest animatic~~~~

 

Woo!

 

Also, the music track is finalized and in the edit as well, and if I don’t say so myself — it’s a fabulous piece of work! Created by DJ Irias, I couldn’t be happier with the end-result.

 

Anyway, right now I’m focused on finishing all the animation of my film — I’m devoting tonight to getting all the 2D animation clean and ready, and after that, all I’ll have left is a bit of lighting, and a handful of little animation-bits I need to fix up before my final Thesis Review arrives on May 8th. AAaghh!! It’s all so soon! But I think I’m on schedule…

 

Anyway, yeap!

 

And as always, there is MORE TO COME! (but not that much more… we’re almost at the end!!)

PICTURE LOCK

Welp, here it is! Picture Lock is TODAY and this is my Picture Lock Animatic! Also known as Animatic v16.

 

What’s great about this animatic? I am done editing the timing of my film, and when everything happens is when it will happen in my final thesis film.

 

What’s terrifying about this animatic? I am not allowed to edit the timing of my film anymore. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

 

But luckily, I have a very simple mantra that helps me deal with the terror of not being allowed to edit my film anymore, and that mantra goes like this:

 

“Whatever.”

 

So without further adieu, check it out! Phantoms In The Dark~~~~

 

More to come 🙂

Animatic v15

Some kids go to Cabo for Spring Break. Some kids go to New York City, or Catalina Island.

 

I go to North Hollywood to spend the week with my boyfriend, and while he’s off at work ~12 hours a day, I sit in my underwear and fix up a new animatic for my thesis film. And I also do some 2D Animation. I’m working on it, I promise.

 

But what I’ve basically been working on for the last week is render out playblast after playblast after playblast, getting every moment from my film at every conceivable angle (but without breaking the 180 rule, though, don’t worry), and then once all of that was done, I mash them all together into something that… hopefully…. works much better than the last animatic.

 

Check it out here:

 

 

There’s a lot of different stuff in this one, so I strongly suggest you check it out. Also, since I like putting images in these posts, here’s one I captured when I was setting up the “DARK” animation for the opening title:

 

 

Not pictured there is the tiny camera that’s inside the hole of the letter A, haha.

 

Anyway, hope you enjoy it! Right now the two things I’m working feverishly towards are 1) getting the 2D animation up to speed so that it’s acceptable for picture lock (luckily the amount of 2D animation that my film needs has gone down pseudo-drastically since the last animatic), and 2) getting the edit of my film absolutely perfect. Because THAT’S what picture lock requires. Yikes! I’ll see y’all at the end of the tunnel.

 

But until then, I hope y’all have had good Spring Breaks, and if you aren’t a student/this week wasn’t your spring break, then I hope you had a good week anyway. And until next time — there’s more to come!

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. 🙂

A short text post

Hey! I haven’t posted in a week so I’m just gonna put out some words.

As usual, I’m just chugging along to the best of my ability. Right now I’m working solely on the shots that I plan on putting in my reel that I’ll use to apply to animation jobs after I graduate, so that’s… stressful. To say the least. haha. Those shots in question, by the way, are:

– Pretty much the entire scene when the hero is at school for the first time. It has a lot of great acting, dialogue, as well as a great shot of the Mean Girl kicking the ball which demonstrates good physicality

– The shot where the hero climbs over the wall, because as far as physicality goes, that’s pretty damned difficult to animate

– The shot where the hero gets thrown into the monster mansion, which I revamped actually, and made it better for a reel; instead of getting thrown into the house and then getting up, he instead does a double-take, gets up, runs back towards the door he flew through, bangs on it a couple times, pushes against it with his whole body weight, and then gives up and turns around. Bam! Animation.

Aaaand that’s actually pretty much it. The funny thing with an animation reel, is that really all you need to show is that you can animate body mechanics well, and that you can animate acting/dialogue scenes well. And as an added bonus, if you can animate both of those things in more than one animation style, then that’s even better. Right now, the animation style I’m going for is a more realistic, less-cartoony motion, so I may go and do some extra stuff to kick it up a notch, but we’ll see.

I also updated my animatic with a new version of Scene 23 (aka the scene when the hero is in bed contemplating after he runs away from the monster mansion) and I think it’s finally working this time around. Woohoo!

So yea. It’s weird to think that school has only been in session for 2 weeks, because it feels like it’s already been at least a month. I feel like I’m going to die of old age before this semester ends, haha. And I don’t wanna get too emotional, but the fact that my performance on these specific shots of my film will eventually determine what kinds of jobs I get once I’m out of college…. it’s something that haunts my mind every day, and I sort of wish I could fast-forward through all of this stress. But alas, this is life, and this too shall pass.

Sorry there aren’t any images in this post! I try to keep it visual but this time around I’m just sort of slowly losing my mind and don’t wanna have to spend the time racking up screencaps and stuff.

Well, OK fine, here’s ONE screencap I made:

This is a shot of the re-done roughing-out of the shot of the Hero climbing over the wall, and I noticed that this one particular pose he made was very… pin-up. So yea. Clearly I am losing it.

Anyway, that’s all for now! More to come. Especially very soon, since I have a new animatic that I’m not showing you right now for some reason, haha.

 

OH, AND SIDE-NOTE! I noticed that my computer was filling up to dangerous levels of information, so I decided to clear some shit out, and I deleted all the playblasts from Maya that I had made. And you know how much data that ended up getting rid of? Over 14 Gigabytes. I had created over 14 gigabytes of playblasts in the last few weeks. If that’s not proof that that I’ve been working hard, then I don’t know what is!

 

OK, that’s really all for now. More to come!

Mid-Year Review

Well, it’s official — I’m half-way done with my Thesis Film. I’ve gotten a rough-pass on pretty much all of the animation, and for the nest 2.5 months, I’m gonna be doing nothing but Final Animation, Final Animation, Final Animation!

Anyway, here’s the updated animatic that I’m going to show to the Faculty tomorrow at 3:30PM.

Yeap! Presenting it should be pretty easy. I’m just gonna come with this animatic + Some supplementary images (like a picture of the final version of the Monster Mansion, for example) to give as good of a sense of what the final film will be like as I can. Woohoo!

More to come. Oh and happy holidays!

As I Animate And Stuff

Like I said, all there is to do right now is finish my location models and do the damned animation for my film.

 

So first off, here’s the latest animatic with a couple more scenes animated (but everything’s at the utmost-roughest state of animation, so–)

 

 

And here are some images of the models I’ve been working on!

 

 

I’ve actually made texturing the Exterior of the Monster House my final project for my Lighting and Rendering class, which is great because A) it’ll force me to get that done, B) texturing this model is sure to be difficult due to how complex it is, and C) getting the texturing on this done correctly will be a HUGE help for my film, since making the Monster House look right and scary/the way the Monster House looks is a very important pivotal element of the film.

 

Also, here’s a close-up on some grunge I attempted with the golden grown above the central window:

 

…Yea, it all still needs work. But it definitely looks better than the colors I’d put on it before!

 

Also, my fabulous and super-talented visual designer friend, Theo Aretos, got some designs to me for the Monster Party Room! Here are the 2 paintings he did for it. One is more of a color-study and the other is a diagram-version of the central party area.

 

 

We met up this past Saturday at CTNX, though, and we both discussed/agreed that it needed an entrance-way appended to it so that there would be a better opportunity for camera angles showing the grandiose-ness of the party area.

 

Anyway, here is the progress I have so far on the Party Room:

 

Just the central cylindrical area (cut-out version):

 

Interior shot (with poor lighting) of the central area, including the appended entrance area:

 

So yea! Imagine that area full of crazy lights and shit. Also, it seems like the Disco Ball is working better than I anticipated as well! Hey heyyyy.

 

So yea. Just chuggin’ along.

 

More to come!

Animatic, Version 7!!

I now have the final audio put into the animatic!!! And this only means one thing:

I have no stumbling blocks ahead of me (aside from, you know, ANIMATING THE WHOLE THING)!!!!!!!!!!!! Literally all that’s left for me to do for now is:

1) Finish rigging the Mom

2) Finish modelling/texturing the environments (which will slowly happen over time as I animate, haha)

Aaaand

3) FUCKING. ANIMATE. LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER.

 

And after that, of course, comes lighting/rendering/compositing but that’s not something I’ll have to think much about for a while. For now though, really all I need to focus on is hunkering down with Maya (and occasionally Plastic Animation Paper) and GET CRACKING. ‘Cause I got no other excuse now haha.

 

More to come!!

Quickie Whatever Post

Here’s just an update on where I’m at on things.

 

1) I modeled the Hero’s Mom FINALLY!!! I won’t show it for a couple more days though because I feel like that deserves its own post. But I’ve gotten a really great first pass on the head/hair/body of the Mom character, and it’s actually looking really good… right now I’m just trying to come up with last changes to do to it but to be honest I’m not totally sure if I want to do much with it at all.

 

 

 

…Oh, OK fine here’s a render of what she looks like:

 

Notice how her hairline lifts from her forehead a bit there. Yea, I still need to fix a few things…

 

2)  I have FINISHED editing together the dialogue audio!!! What that means is that all the lines in my film that involve characters saying actual sentences, I now have final versions of those lines. Aaand I’m really happy with them! The audio for things like Gasps or Pantings or Screaming, though, I haven’t gotten final versions edited together of. But whatever. The dialogue is the more important stuff, I would say, haha.

 

3) I’m currently putting together the 7th version of my Animatic, which will include this finalized audio, and once it’s done, I’ll throw it up on this blog. So stay tuned, Phantoms! It gets brighter and brighter all the time. 😉

 

More to come.

Animatic_v6

Uhh this is my animatic so far. It incorporates the rough animation I’ve done for 4 of the shots. Progress!

Also this animatic is kind of shit because I didn’t really put time into timing it out right and making the whole thing flow well, but eh. I’m honestly just focusing on animation right now and getting that as beautiful and immaculate as I can make it. But on the up-side, the people in class today said my animation was looking good, especially considering that it’s just the first pass! Heeeeeeeeyyyyyy

 

 

More to come~