We got the award for daily 1st on Newgrounds, and also put on the frontpage, which was really nice because I always felt it was the right home for the film. It's where I learnt to animate, too, so nice to get something on there.
We got some really favourable reviews from the film, a very humbling breath to take, after the film had been left to stagnate for so long (we finished it back in February). It's good to see people enjoy it, I don't really like it myself, but I spose it's always like that. I think there's some bits in it that i'm really proud of animating, and others... not so much. Ha!
But, my final feeling with the film, is just being resoundingly proud of the ridiculous effort me and Miguel put into it. I think the production time would be around 9 months, and considering it was essentially made by just the two of us is nuts. There were times when we got pretty stressed and strained (mainly me), and there were times when we laughed n' learnt (Mig taught me all about WW2, I taught him all about the 60's) but we stuck it out and that's what I am most proud about.
Here's some of the reviews, starting with possibly the most humbling review either of us will ever get;
"So I created an account just to thank you properly. I am usually on this site to kill time and get a laugh. And I watched this simply because it was the first one shown. But quickly I was drawn into the story and how it relates to me personally. I have been struggling with PTSD for a few years, and always find it hard to express myself to my wife. My thoughts and emotions are lost in translation to her. But this is the closest relationship I have ever felt to true understanding of what I am dealing with. Me and my wife watched this, and all I could say is "that is me". The therapeutic value of this is amazing.
Myself and my wife have been drawn closer together with this true work of art. I will share this with others I know who are experiencing the same condition as myself. And I truly just want to say thank you for providing this to the world."
"this animation, the graphics, the music, the storytelling was nothing short of amazing"
"Wow. It's been a long time since I've felt this kind of emotion when I'm looking a short movie on NG. With not even a word, you've told a more powerful story than most movies. Bravo"
"Incredible work. The end was really touching, and though I could analyze and interpret it, I don't think there's a need to. Your ability to show emotion without facial expressions other than the eyes was impressive. The soundtrack fit, as did the lack of at certain points. The animation was original, and all backgrounds were nicely made. Definitely one of my favorite animations here on Newgrounds, nice to see a change from the crap put on here half the time. Your effort has surely shown through in this piece."
And the exact reason the dog made it into the film:
"Man dies? we've seen it, we don't care. Dog? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
"awesome creative artwork, but why leave the dog alone in the end??????
i mean i had my dog on my lap the whole time!!!really made me sorry for the dog... but everything else...masterpiece"
Hello hello. Wanted to post some pictures of our place of work. I like to think of us more akin to a garage band than a two man studio. The lady's prefer it atleast.
Animators aid & directors aid
The setup
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Work on the films going swimmingly We got two weeks to finish it. For the first time on the project I can see the end, which feels great. We're going to push ourselves this week, and hopefully, come this time next week, all the animation will be done (thirteen minutes of it) and all the backgrounds will be done.
We've also got a great composer on board and we both feel really great about the music.
We watched through the film yesterday and both felt really chuffed with it. The common mantra is - it could be rubbish, it could be great, we don't know. Can't see the wood from the tree's as the saying goes. Either way, we're both resolutely proud of the commitment & effort we've put in over the course of the last 3/4 months, not to mention the work we did back at uni.
To put it in perspective, On monday we both worked for 27 hours straight. Finished in time to watch Villa lose to Newcastle.
It's been three solid months of hard work (with a 2/3 week break between over christmas). My dad summed it up nicely saying about the Stones when they first got together: They locked themselves in a flat (Mick Keith & Brian) and just played. This is our equivalent.
Anyway, I want to reiterate a belief I felt strongly through uni. I feel now more than ever (with higher tuition fees) this is true. You don't find real artists/creative's at university, you find them in the dole office's & public libraries. They lock themselves away in books or songs or make films with buddies. Most people (but not everyone) go to uni because they didn't know what else to do. People who want to do it will do it anyway.
`Sukie was a kid who liked to hang out in the art school.. she didn't enrol, but wiped the floor with all the arseholes`
Just a quick one. Films getting there, I think i've literally only... 3 more shots to animate now, 1 is relatively difficult, the other two are simple ones of the dog.
Mig posted an update the other day with some nice images which you can check out here.. ...As did Em, she's jumped onboard to help get the colouring finished off along with Darrien & Luke too, all under the watchful eyes of Grethe, the Norwegian Colourmatron.
Its really cool to see things coloured for me, really bring it to life. Loving Mig's backgrounds also.
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Anywho here's the draft for the last difficult shot i'm working on.
I've just slept for about 16 hours, so no doubt am going to be awake till friday now on. I'm not really worrying, I think for the first time in my life i've worked as hard as you do in the final week, the whole way through. Once i've finished the animation will help Mig get all the compositing done and jump on any last little jobs that need doing. I may do the backgrounds for Scene 7 too which would be nice, we've still that to do, it's only 3/4 shots though mind.
Rozi has jumped on board to do the sound effects. Have also told her to get some music recorded, and she's told me she's got some nice violin/achordian stuff done today, so am excited to hear that.
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Gunna be really nice to get this all finished and shiny, has been a long long process, but most certainly fun.
Here's the old man come the end of the film. He's meant to be all broken down and beaten.
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One week left today. Got 2 or 3 more old man shots to do... 4 more dog shots... and the few shots of the ghoul's. It's quite strange to think that we got to this point and i've done all the animation (besides bits here and there from Luke and a walk cycle from Thomas). I wasn't expecting that atall when I came onboard, the idea was to get a team of animators together, but clearly the course isn't layed out for that. I don't blame the second years in the slightest, they're lesson plan only leaves one day to work on the 3rd year productions, which isn't enough in the slightest. It's quite irritating also, since I may aswell have just made my own film. Oh well, anywho, am very grateful to have been able to work closely with Mig on it and I think we've made a good team, along with Grethe blitzing through the colouring, and Kirk also now who's really taken up the baton on the special effects.
Still though, you sit at home working all day, thinking to yourself... the constant question in your head.. 'I pay £3,000 a year to do this... is it really worth coming to uni?'.
If I were a student applying for universities now, I wouldn't be. £9,000 tuition fees are a joke. Don't come to uni, rinse your local library & Amazon for books, and practice practice practice.
Have agreed with Mig to do the dog. Agreement being i'd do it if we changed him to a Welsh Springer. Essentially is my cheap bargain just so I can get my dog in the film.
Here's how he's gunna look:
Keeping him simple, did 6 shots of him in 2 days, so fair to say he's not the toughest of characters. Has actually been a fun experience because I don't usually draw dogs, so has been a nice little learning curve.
..
However, if we had more time....:
No doubt he'd be looking a little somethin like this.
But he wont because there's two weeks left. So instead weve gone more 'rigomortis the dog' rather than 101 Dalmations.
Long post coming up... so here's a song to whistle your way through it..
Originally when I came on board, my intention was to really push the whole metaphor idea in the film. I really liked the film as an embodiment of when you just lose it mentally and feel like being a bull in a china shop on your way down... I wanted the ending to be the old man in the cabin, furious at his encapsulation by this gripping fear, thrashing about destroying what he had. I wanted him to seem like he just couldnt continue anymore, and I wanted, by that point, the audience to clearly realise that the whole struggle was a mental issue rather than any sort of physical one. I wanted him to not only be angry and aggressive, but upset, at his end, teary eye'd and tired.
That dwindled as time went on, we decided to have him outside the cabin at the end, so my above idea wouldn't really work in that situation. As the project developed along with the weeks, the rudimentary aim became more about 'getting it done', getting the shots down. I think perhaps the audience will register some of the above intention, but its so hard to say. I feel like its harder to know whether an idea is consistent in the film when you are so close to it.. 'cant see the wood from the trees' sums it up. (ta to Rosa for that one)
However anywho, here's my goals for the film:
Get better.
I wanna get better at animation. Simple really? I can already see the difference, no so much in my work but in my opinion. I used to be less confident with it. I think this is the main problem with our course, we don't animate nearly enough. If you ask most people in the 3rd year if they like animating/if there up for animating, they say they're not very good at it or cant do it. This is really poor for students of an animation course to feel this way in their third year. The antidote? Just do it. I think this is what alot of the Kernel crew have found, eg Jake wouldn't have been up for it, but he has pressed on, and look at what he can do, and what's more, look at what he has realised he can do. This is how we should be coming out the course feeling, and I think currently most people in the class do not feel this way.
I wanted to get better in the industrial sense too. A big part of animation is the ability to knuckle down and crack on with it. You're half labourer half artist really. You can't just flunk off if the juices dont flow, you have to roll up the sleeves and get on with it.
Get it finished
Else what's the point? I may aswell be on the beach.
Make people feel emotion definitely.. I want them to feel that genuine horrorifying feeling... that terror that comes on slow and you want to leave but cant look away.. leaves you frozen. I dont want to just resort to cheap jumps 'scary movie' style. Genuine horrific feeling to me is best epitomised in Psycho... not in the shower scene, but in the last scene, where Bates is sat in the police station and the camera slowly trains in.
Im not a big horror movie fan mainly because they usually just resort to the cheap tricks (scary movie style) and I dont watch them often because of this, so hopefully we can have a good attempt at this.
Horrorified isn't the only feeling I want to command.. I want people to feel sorry for the character breaking down on screen. This is the biggest challenge for me I think, because it involves genuine acting with the character. I feel like i've got away with alot of the film thus far not having to 'act', most shots are short for me (3 seconds average) and its the character moving from A to B. Acting involved, but more in the characterisation sense.. 'This is how he moves', 'this is how he stands' etc. I'm really chomping at the bit to get going on one specific shot, which is the apex of the characters emotion, when he gives in to the 'dark' and goes under. If I can create emotion here i'll be really happy.
Animation isn't typical for enticing strong negative emotion in adults. I can't think of alot of examples where it has, except for Toy Story 3 and past Disney films (eg, Bambi's mum). I think one thing i'd really like to tackle throughout my life is using animation for creating strong emotion in film. It's up for debate whether it can rouse stronger emotion than film can... Film has going for it that (surely I presume) we naturally feel a greater sense of empathy for human beings.. It comes down to an atavistic response to feel sympathy for someone who appears hurt. However as a counter to this, i'd say one thing animation has in its favour is that by limiting the visuals and making them more iconic (less detailed, therefore more 'specific' of what's important - EG, the smiley face) the audience are quicker to understand the feeling, quicker to read it.
It's just a hunch but I suppose that it is possible for animation to trump film in this department. Another thing that it has going for it is the complete control we animators have. We can manipulate each and every frame, making emotion stronger. I think that's very useful when you think of the gentle nuiances of the human face.. a split second (or in our terms.. 3 outta 24fps) expression can tell the viewer of a hidden secret, a lie, an alterier motif, etc.
As far as I know, Disney have come closest at pulling at the heart strings, here's a really good example:
If anyone's got an opinion on this or know's a better example of animations acting possibilities, please please post below.
Get better in other areas
Eg collaboration, team management, communication etc. These are things that I hadn't considered when joining Mig's project, but have come to light during. I've half-heartedly handled some of the 'producer' roles, mainly just in the document sense (sheduling, shot lists, etc etc)
Collaboration though also in another sense besides communicating, collaboration of ability. I think me and Mig are both consistently 'good' at what we do, but working together I hope we can push onto the next plateau and make something 'great'. Maybe this whole film wont be great, maybe it'll be a load of rubbish, but hopefully there'll be a few gems in there. Also in relation to this, am really looking forward to Grethe getting her teeth into the colouring now that the block colouring is completely caught up with the animation. Her job now is to work on shadow/highlights, so am very keen to see what she cooks up.
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That about sums it up.
I feel like we're about 70% done on the film. I'm nearing the end of the animation.. I'm hoping to bosh it out within two weeks. I have 14 or so more shots to do, so atleast one a day from now on. I've also taken on the editing, it was just temporary but tbh am quite happy doing it. I've had a few issues, but nothing to much, and plus its a nice alternative to animating - collating the recent work and then seeing how its coming along. Emily is coming on board tomorrow, which means the block colouring will keep right on my heels, while Grethe catches up with the highlighting. Also, the effects are starting to pick up, Kirk has been very pro-active and is cracking on with some, and the twins (Kai & Liam) are also working on some bits.
...Go sit on a bench and sigh, go to Tescoes and buy more stuff you don't really need.
These are my tips for overcoming computer sickness.. I thought my Mum was just tryin' to scare me when she said about square eyes.. but she forgot to mention losing the ability to cohesively speak in words, the numb bum & the dizzyness.
Computer sickness is an infliction... I find myself increasingly doing stranger and stranger things.. at 2am.. marching round the kitchen chanting the grand Old Duke of York at a faster and faster speeds...
Anywho here's a comp of animation from saturday-thursday. Most aren't quite finished but you get the jist.
As always would be very happy for any comments/criticism
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Also, this is quite interesting to listen to. Glen Keane talking about animations capabilities. It's from 4 years before he left Disney, so with this in mind, will be interesting to see what he does now. http://animationpodcast.com/glen-keane-part-two/
For the dissertation hand in week, myself n Mig both agreed to prioritise our diss's. The following week, I had a break 'n went back home. This last week, have got back on it. Check out the vid above to see what i've been up to.
Luke from the second year has also done a nice bit of animation of the skull exploding for us which you'll be able to see in the latest edit (which i'll upload later this week). Sophie too is helping out with the colouring which is great, am really looking forward to seeing some more completed scenes.
More soon, enjoy.
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PS, while i've been working i've been watching lots of stuff. Netflix is a great little work companion. Despite the rumblings about it being 'best to animate in silence', I like to have something going on next to me when i'm doing some of the more lobotomous tasks.
I watched a good docu about Kurt Cobain yesterday, 'About a Son'. It gives a humbling view of him and his roots, worth checking out. I think overall stripping away the whole rockstar image, Kurt Cobain was just essentially a nice-humble friendly human being, much like all of us, and it's nice to listen to him talk about mundane things for a while.
This Doors documentary is pretty cool. Anything about the Doors is worth listening to though really isnt it. Great album.
Watched a few Hitchcock flicks too. I really like watching old films because they're alot more naive in their pursuit, and you get the sense that the studios weren't so heavy on them to do the 'same old same old' (perhaps because there was no same old same old). They try things out alot more (especially Hitchcock), sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. But eitherway its a pursuit of an interesting idea that is so fresh, even today.
This is interesting too.
Regardless of your stance on conspiracy theories (which I am open-ears too, although I don't like the hysteria/elitism that usually surrounds them), he brings forward some interesting ideas. Whether it's true or not (that there's some concious, sinisterintent to recruit people to join the army), it's just sad enough as it is.. It's sad that killing people would be so naively painted in such a way.. To quote Belle & Sebastian:
If you’re going off to war then I wish you wellBut don’t be soreIf I cheer the other teamKilling people’s not my sceneI prefer to give the inhabitants a sayBefore you blow their town awayI like to watch them playI like to marvel at the random beauty of a simple village girlWhy should she be the one who’s killed?
Ta to Mig for that one. He's been getting me onto all these videos. David Icke too. I think my postmen may be a lizard person but i'm not quite sure, he seems a little too curious of my tin-foil hat, I may have to follow him. Stay tuned.
Have been working hard on Migs film. It's all going good. I think working on a long project you postulate between two feelings: Stress & euphoria. Somewere between is where you rest, bouncing between the two. Because of the rediculous longevity in producing an animation(why oh why do we do it..!) , this is a constant battle. Its like climbing a mountain, you could walk for a whole day till your feet are bloody and your calf's are battered, but still your less than 30% of the way, so you go to sleep feeling the need to keep on walking. However, working to the schedule is the antidote to this, setting little milestones up the climb. By March the 2nd we hope to have atleast 1:20 of coloured animation.
The team dynamic is working really well, in many ways its felt like having extra arms at times - I finish off the animation, hand it over to Grethe, and almost instantly its coloured! And then suddenly theres a beautiful background for it to sit on! Brilliant. Its important that everyone is on the same wavelength and I feel we are
The production method is:
1) the layout is produced
2) from that the rough animation is created
3) the line is cleaned up..
4)..Then the block colour is applied in grey tones
5) Then the light & shade is applied.
During this time Mig works up a lovely background also.
We're looking for people to come on board in all of these stages (bar the layout & backgrounds). The main jobs are animation (rough & line) and colour (block & highlights). But mainly, what we're looking for is committed people, willing to really get stuck in.
We're also on the lookout for someone who's interested in compositing & effects: someone to bring each shot together.
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Anywho, more soon. It feels as if we're working on this a mile a minute, I'll try to post more, as the project is constantly evolving, and each little crevice we iron out every day is a little battle in its own way.
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Yesterday Ozzy Parker came into uni to do a talk. Was really great to hear from him, a real cool guy. I loved his whole work ethic, and his joy in doing it. Commercials & music videos for him are a joy to make, and are like short, personal work; only you're getting paid for it and get to work with Michael Jordan.
I liked how for him every project is new, a new attempt at an animation style, a new use for the medium. His student film was great; he built some scaffolding and animated old New York vintage clothes bopping along to jazz, what a great idea.
I loved how clearly developed his own style & method were to him, his paper cut out/stop motion stuff was dense with evolved creative ideas
Blurred overlay again, perhaps too dark for the day time scene.
Altho this doesn't work for the whole picture, I quite like the detail it adds to the old mans face, and think it could look good in motion..
Glowing edges, could work for reflections in the water?
Just a few effects tests to get ideas(aka to procrastinate away from the dissertation..). I really quite like the last one, think that could work really well with some sort of moving water effect overlayed...
Heleoey. Its been a constant bug-bear thing for us to keep in mind the style of the piece. It may seem a little cock handed the way we've gone about it, but the main thing is work is getting done and its not wasted time. We want to wait, a case of getting the shoe to fit the foot, once the team is fully pieced together, it makes sense for us then to work out the style proper.
Anywho here's some tests i've bin doing.
This is how I imagine the colouring to look. Its kind of what i've had in mind since day one, after seeing Migs fantastic pre production art. I like the painted look. The only problem tho; we have to make sure its simple enough to animate. I think this colouring style is quite simple, and I think a productive technique could be built up in TVP (block colouring, then shading each individual part to keep consistency, even down to individual brush strokes like we did with the Royal Wedding vid)
. I'm not sure on all aspects, the main one being line:- do we show line or not? I personally dont want to; I love the way Dice Tsutsumi paints, especially with the hard, computer-cut edge, and would love to do something in that direction.
This is a colouring test I did. Its incomplete but is getting there. I need to cut around the edge still like above, so imagine it like that.
Have got another one that i'll update the post with tomorrow.
Finally here's two little sketches we did in different styles
Waltz with Bashir colour
Sin Cityish
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PAINTING
The animation above counts for my 4th painting (Daily painting), and the old man is the 6th. And since the clock reads half 12, here's tomorrows/todays(?.. 25th..)
Tis from a life drawing sesh last wednesday, coloured in PS. Felt very rewarding to do actually.
I've bought quite a few books in the last year and getting a nice little library together. One of them was Egon Schiele, & the others was of Alphonse Mucha's work. I want to have a go at immitating the two of them's styles. There approach to the opposite sex is quite different from one another (Angelic womanlyness vs prostitute demon ladies) so should be good fun.
Here's those Life Drawings from the other day too:
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Just want to go back to style to finish off, and include a few animations i've seen recently.
First off, just saw this:
Really love this, one watch and i'm starting to think the Sin City route may be right for us. It would be quicker to produce, very stylistic, and fun I think.
Another, which i've been blown away by this last week:
Love the looseness. I can see this flowy style of animation working for us come the end of the film when things get a bit manic.
Al also suggested the other day we take a look at 30 days of summer. Its great, it has the contrast of Sin City, but instead of it being black/white, the white bits are essentially filled in. This is essentially a coming-together of the two styles.
I dont feel its such a tough decision, I think we're pretty clear, its a case of one or the other. I feel safe in the knowledge we can stamp it 100% once the team is together and we know, realistically, what we have time for and are capable of.
For the last week i've been keeping in mind 'how should the old man act', and now, i've got a pretty solid idea in mind. I found looking at him I was reminded of Keith Richards, the boneyness of him but also his elegance and vibrancy in movement... Have a look at this video
I want him to move alot like Keith Richards does.. imagine him by himself going about his home, routeing round his study looking for something. The only exception, is I imagine him to be a more depressed Keith Richards.., not so bouncy like he is. What I like is the way he flails his limbs about and is expressive in that way.
Speaking to Andy, he suggested a few things. The one thing that really stood out is the old man as being this kinda King Lear character, large, arched expressions & gestures. The wise old man.
I see him as about 75 (if only to directly compete with Kernel..), a bloke whos been a labourer his whole life, he's still got that strength and self assurance in his abilities, only now he's more fragile.
Derek suggested to me doping the character and this fits the bill perfect. This way he can still have these grand gestures and the self assurance to carry himself as he would do, except now he has a stutter to his movement, suggested fragility & effort.
When he walks, he walks from the hips. He kinda swings his torso about, and his shoulders arch to and throw. He holds his head high, wise & pride old man.
Kinda like how Jim Morrison arches about. I like the allusion to rock stars. I think the old man's got that in him, its much like how many of them tended towards growing a beard and long hair at one time in their life's..
It seems like a subconcious thing on their part to go this way... fitting the Jesus mould so to speak. The wise old man up on the podium or the stage spouting knowledge waiting to be a martyr.
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Productions going well on the project and i'm having fun with it. We're wanting to stick to the schedule I layed out, and are eager for February to come, when we can get the second years properly onboard. More soon.
Bonjour. Have been working on Miguel's film over crimbo. We managed to get the animatic down to 3:55, which is quite a chunk off the 10 minutes Mig originally presented. I'll post the vid up below. Excuse the slight errors but its just a dirty cut for us to work from. What is noticable in the shortened version (to me) is that you loose empathy for the character. This is down to the loss of build-up & the cutting of his wife from the film. I do think it still works as a short film however.
Essentially, this is the bare minimum that we need to make it work. Give or take a few shots, like I said its a dirty cut:
Its not half the film it could be, but its a finished film nonetheless.
Besides cutting the animatic, also have been getting to grips with drawing the main character. Made this little walk through for how to draw him, link!.
Tomorrow is go day on the project. Im going to get the turnarounds done, and hopefully begin animating. I really wanna just crack on with this, you can spend to long theorising, trying to get perfection, when really, the best philosophy is to think 'that'll do'.
'That'll do' with the animatic for now. Yes there's a few kinks, but if we create that and get it done early like planned, that leaves a further 3/4 weeks for adding the shots we cut, in order of necessity.
Here's a 1st edition of the pipeline for the project:
I had a good think about how long things should take (in theory) and this is the summary. From this, I can scratch up a job list:
4x animators
1 layout artist
1 background painter
2x stylists
1 Sound person
1 Compositor.
We're really wanting to put together a fun little team and want to be on the ball with it, weekly meetings over coffee; weekly sweatboxes; our own corner of the studio.
SO here's a bit of number crunching:
- 4/5 layouts a day (by Mig)
- 2.5 rough shots a week (for each animator) for the next 10 weeks.
Each shot lasts for an average of 2.25 seconds.
The shots are to be animated rough, for the stylists to work up into the finished thing.
These shots are split up into different catagories by there difficulty. From these 107 that we need, 23 are difficult shots. The rest are either static or there's little movement. For this reason it's quite difficult to accurately judge how long the animation will take, but talking purely from a numbers point of view, 2.5 shots a week per animator.
That breaks down as:
- 2 1/2 difficult shots a week produced as a team
- 8 1/2 simple/static shots a week produced as a team.
If all the animation is going to be finished in a 10 week window then we need four people. If there's only two, it'll take 20 weeks.
- 7 1/2 backgrounds produced a week (one a day) for seven weeks.
- 5 shots a week (for each style artist) over ten weeks
- Sound & compositing are being left till later, however i've left 3 weeks for compositing & 2 weeks for sound.
Im anticipating that the styling may take longer than i've alotted, and maybe the animation could be produced quicker (as its rough). It may be a good idea to get somebody else on board to help Mig out with the layouts also, that would free him up to animate too.
However, saying all this, it is quite difficult to judge, and we'll know much more by this friday after our first week in production.
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That'll do for now, will do an update at the end of tomorrow too with the stuff i've forgotten.
