Thursday, February 24, 2011

Community Spirit

The past few weeks have been pretty hectic, trying to get all the scenes animated for keyframing and making sure everyone has time to work on their scenes. All-in-all, despite being a little behind, everyone is in good spirits that we can get the rough animation done on schedule.

On what days I'm not animating effects, I've been keyframing like the wind. And in good spirits for the production staff, I'd like to broadcast and encourage visual tomfoolery!

I'm pretty sure 19th century Ireland didn't have gangsters. Nonetheless, this made me glee. As did this:

Another wonderful piece by Kyle O'Neill, featuring one of the original concepts for the banshee.


Speaking of original concepts, this paniting of Aidan in the forest was one of the first concept pieces by the crew for how Aidan will look in the dark of the canopy! Matthew Luck did a series of these images for the film!


And this little doodle was sitting on Flash waiting for me when reviewing an animator's scene. It made my day!






















Alex Burslem has had a lot of patience with me, since I keep giving him a lot of the appendage-based scenes. Little did I know he could draw Aidan's face! Go Alex!

This is another one I found hiding off stage in Flash. I might have to ask Rachel Proctor what this is exactly. I think it's Aidan having a heart attack.





















These hilarious drawings are done by Caitlin Geels. Leave it to the washer woman to catch Aidan without his lasso of truth.

I wish I could remember who had this hiding next to the stage in one of the animations! I screen saved it for the blog and now I can't find their name!


If only things had turned out differently for Aidan - or he might have grown up to be a (bumBumBUM) secret agent.


I know there are more works by other staff members out there! I've seen them! And I've been trying to get a hold of them. If there are any members that would like to submit some great or even just derpy images of the film, I'd love to put them up on this blog!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Looking

The going is getting tough looking for a sound designer. It seems like everyone is too busy or just doesn't want to compose music. I've been getting the word out, but waiting for people to respond is killing me. I wish there was an easy "yes/no" button on people instead of getting wishy-washy answers all the time.

In other news, because of the sudden increase in the group of volunteers, the credits on the blog probably won't been updated. Keeping track of who did what might have to come later on in the process than I thought. But I'm really fortunate to have the group that I have.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Final Design Layout

As many of you may know, Sunday was the deadline for me to pick a solid design (provided by my wonderful layout crew) for the trees in the forest for the film. Pretty much everyone tackled the challenge, but only one could be chosen.

Everyone pulled a good run, but I had to go with the idea that followed the directions I gave the closest and shared my vision for the film. The design is by Kyle O'Neill.


Ignoring the color, this was basically what I was going for. It is simple without being too distracting and is strong and solid enough to be repeated and overlapped.

Through the process of submissions, I couldn't help but feel like the communication between the layout crew and I could have been stronger. So to keep everyone on the same page, I drew this sketchy, unofficial representation on how I would like everyone to deal with the layouts as they play in perspective:
Note that the layouts for the film are going to just be line art. I did this in color so you all will have a rough idea of how your layouts will be treated, complete with a little Aidan (note: it is not correctly to scale). Also note how the bottoms of the trees fade into the ground, but still receed as the trees go back. In case you cannot see it due to the knots, here is an idea of how the layering will work:


Most of you will only have 2-4 layers to your scenes. Do not draw in the fog, but if there is water in your scene you should show how the layers recede into space the same way you would the trees (remember water will be animated, but it is for the benefit of the animators).

A few of you at the meeting were asking me about branches. I was worried about it becoming too busy if each layer had branches, so I discovered this could be avoided (and still have the visual success the branches give) if only the first layer of trees had branches. In the example, they are designed to make Aidan the focus, and I would encourage all my layout artists to think along those lines with composition in mind. Remember: your layout (though extremely important) is not the star. The characters are the stars.

Normally I wouldn't put art-related announcements for the crew on this blog, but I would like to keep all of this in one simple package so we can refer back to it later.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Art Of...

So this is the week for solidifying of how the celtic knots will actually play a part in the design of the background. I'm excited and anxious at the same time. The usual "what if"s of production are of course taking their tole.

I hope when the designed are finalized, I can start putting some student work up here (with their permission, of course). In the mean time, here are some rough color designs I whipped up as reference for Cassandra.


Thursday, February 10, 2011

More Pitch Posters?

Now that I have a team of animators and layout artists working on the group, a lot of my attention has been focused on just story and animation. I don't necessarily feel comfortable just yet putting work up on this blog that isn't mine - but I'll do my best to keep the blog updated.

The animatic itself is finished and for a little break, I started tinkering around with the pitch poster again. A few people mentioned that the second version of the first poster wasn't as successful, so I played around a bit more. Let me know what you think!