Seeing it all together!

Hey guys, I just put some of the animation in the animatic to see how these shots look next to the film. Some of the pacing were a bit off. They looked OK on their own but with the other scenes next to them some parts need to be held longer or cut down. Nothing wrong with the action though.
For shot 4, the master starts to move too early. The audience would have just about taken in what the boy is doing in the previous scene and they need a little rest before the master makes his moves. So for the start of this scene just hold him a bit longer before making the big movements.
Same can be applied to the end of shot 40. Thats when the boy reacts to the falling girl. We dont have enough time to register the final facial expression and the scene cuts. These issues came up because the actual animation moves more than I imagined it. So for this we can hold the end frame just a bit longer again.
However the end of shot 12, where the girl brushes the mop off her head, can have the end shortened. The brushing off motion looks slow compared to the scenes that follows it.
I'll talk to you in more details about it tomorrow!

Animation to Animatic

Hey guys! Since we are now getting underway with the animation stuff. It would be good to start putting footage of the animation into the animatic so we get a better idea of how everything is together. So when you have finished a shot, please save it off as a movie file using the DivX Logical codex, video size is the biggest available (640x???). Make sure you keep these in our production's folder under animation and your name. Im sure you all know how to use them.
We need to refine and update the animatic constantly with new animation as the change in timing is something our musician must know. We have some new music sample from him and we are now in agreement over the style and are now going ahead to develop something close to the final idea of the score. First, he will be focusing on the first scene all the way to the fourth scene wher the master is shaking his head.
The timing for the first scene is pretty set. The second scene has no animation in. Keith is already into the fourth scene, so Hozen can start the third scene soon and we can probably get the final music for this section done.

Production Still

The production still is here!!! Im thrilled that we are now into the animation stage, its one thing to have the whole idea in your head, but to see it actually moving is rewarding! This is the hard (albeit fun) part. So have work hard and have fun guys :D

More colours for characters

Something for TJ to look at as he is making a production still for us. These are my new attempts at the colours. Hope you like :D I looked at the live action stuff. Pretty funny stuff! Im gonna keep them as separate files rather than edit them together as one film. And to all your relief I wont be showing them in production meeting :D Though the scene where Keith slaps me is pretty hilarious :D

Phase Two!

OK guys. You have braved your way up to this point, as we prepare to say good bye to the comforts of pre-production. Now, I ask you to brave through this stage. The meat of the production! Animation can fully begin on Wednesday. Before then... We are thinking of meeting at my house on Sunday 1pm. And we can film some references n work out some of the acting to help us as guidelines.
The composer said he will get us some music samples soon. I have timed the animatic as close to the way I want it. Some of the acting may mean we have to expand the timing a bit. But stick to the time on the animatic until I checked the animation and think there needs to be more frames involved.
Spoke to Paul Hilton this week. He is happy about how the team is going despite some hard time they tried to give us :D So keep up the good work! We can do it!!!!

Colour testy test test

Here's a colour test of the boy I put together with one of Ben's layouts. Could probably do with making his trousers a different shade of green to his top half, see what you guys think.

Collaborative Layout

Something I collaborated on with our first year assistant, Rogie. I did the lines, he did the paints. I edited bits of it with photoshop tricks to tie it in with the other backgrounds.

Background again!

Something a bit more recent. I also have the help of a talented first year. We will see how he copes with the challenges thrown his way.

Colourful People!

My take on the character colours. Some textures involved that ToonBoom can handle.
Regarding the girl's dress. There is still some debate going on... Well the concern is if we can handle the extra secondary actions involved. So for Tegan and Hozen... Im afraid you may have a extra task at hand. Try thumbnailing the girl in poses with the split in the dress. This way we can see how you guys cope with the dress and we can make a clearer decision from that. Its just like drawing the keyframes and breakdowns:)

Whoa!

The image above is a lil thumbnail I did for the boy jumping on the walls. This was to show how I approached the storyboard and how you could apply that to your animation. It is a method Tim Hollyman has taught me. By just thumbnailing a simple figure, you can focus entirely on the pose and get something really dynamic about it. Because this film is all about those dynamic poses, this is going to be an important stage for the animation. So when tackling a scene, do try this out.
And there are some colours for the boy.
And the storyboard for the end is done. If yu dont understand it, I can talk you through it in class. Im a bit lazy about adding captions in atm.
OK, Im gonna work on the animatic now.
The plan for the rest of the week is... well... you know by now:P I think we may even have the practicing characters go into next week as well. No point rushing into the animation when we can be better equiped by learning the characters more. When we are at a more comfortable state of drawing them, we may begin.
And news on the girl character: She may undergo some changes, perhaps minor. Basically we are trying to get the face more easier for people to work with. And... sorry to seem so indecisive but... the girl's dress might just remain with the splits in. I have spoken with TJ and Keith after Keith did an animation test of the dress. We all prefer the look of it, it was just a case of if it would become something complicated to animate. But this animation seemed to work. I dont think it took long to do, but we can see what the rest of the team thinks about it.

Stress? What stress?

Some repainted versions of the backgrounds. Parr seemed OK with these. A tiny bit of issues raised about them but not much to consider otherwise. I'll get on with re-storyboarding the end. I just need you guys to stick to the plan. If all goes well, we can animate in a week and a half.

Near Death Experience

Well, what a day today has been! The film nearly got cut! Problems with work being shown on youtube, animatics not showing on the presentations, last minute editing, being lambasted by the tutors, yayayayayayayayayya...
But miraculously... we are still here! But.... we have to keep this place private. I have put a privacy thing on this blog for now. Its a bit of a shame that we cant even show our own work but that is the case Im afraid. Soooo... Bye bye to all the guys who used to lurk around here secretly! Its just the 5 of us now.

Heads Up!

Based off the mocel sheet Zen did of the girl. These are some constructions and measurements. We decided to change the dress a bit also. We r going to do away with the splits there and just go for a nice simple dress without any splits. If shes doing any high kicks just think of Princess Peach's moves in Smash Bros. We have a lot of the background people designed, and we will contact a model maker soon.

The Temple!

This layout is appears at the end where the master stands before the two characters and they bow to him. As you can probably see, the style is a little different to the other layouts. The dark lines are gone and the values are lighter.

Girly Stuff

Well, here it is. Finally! Some model sheets for the girl. And some concepts that Hozen did. All we need now are a few angles of the face and the constructions for it. And I think we can call the model sheets all done after that. For the next two weeks, the plan is to practice the characters and perform some animation tests. Try drawing the three characters in poses, try get some dynamic ones and get the whole body moving with the action. Apply a few facial expressions too. The details dont really matter, as long as you can nail down the proportions of each characters you wont notice if the shoes are actually wrong! BUT! The face is the only detail we cant get away with. That is why we must pay extra attention to their faces.
So the main areas are: The full body proportions and the face.
Animation tests are also going on for a day or two towards the end of the 2 weeks. The idea is to get you working under a time limit (10 min) so you will have to think about the overall form rather than little details from the start.
Tegan, you can continue with the production still as part of this. And if you can bring in the sheets with the eyes and hands, I can scan them all in for everyone. So in the coming weeks you can expect a crew-pack to be ready for you :) W00t! Its nearly 2am, I got to research my essay... Chow!
EDIT: Added a new image there that I forgot about.

Linezzzzzz

Some more layouts. Nearly finished another painting, this one is quite a lot more lighter than the rest and probably too colourful in places so I will adjust it for a bit first. We may have a first year helping us with the layouts too. At the moment the numbers are quite manageable but it would mean I would probably rush parts of it so I thought extra help would be good for us. It could mean I would get more time to help you guys out and do my essay :P
At the moment, I will try to sort out some model sheets for the girl. Zen, if you could post up that drawing of the girl u have, then I can compare the proportions and get this done.

Reloaded!

Soo, we have the changes made now. Tried to make them lighter, done away with the harsh black outlines. Added more variety to the colours. Now hopefully when it comes to the other paintings, I'll remember to do these. Meeting with the editor needs to be arranged so we can get the animatic timed out to what the final film should be.

Revamped!

In our first production meeting we had a few suggestions to alter some issues with the background. I dont think we need to make any major changes. The main thing was to have it more lighter and keeping the mood happy and therefore helping keeping with the mood of the story and fitting in with the animation. I will be reworking into the other paintings but heres what the changes look so far.
I still think the style of the characters fit each other. I think most people got confused by the wide variety of concepts we shown, which is what Peter Parr thought too. I dont believe we need to change the designs we have already. No, smoothing the boy's hair out because the girl has smooth hair (we might as well give him long hair like her too in that case). We could however tweak bits like incorporating some of the overlapping shapes in the boy's costume into the masters and girl. But be careful not to over do this.
So the plan now is to continue as we were. I heard Parr wasn't sure about our progress recently. I know we are in quite a good position at this point but apparently we haven't kept that pace up?!?!
But some good news... Jon Turner loved the idea of the film and gave us the all-clear on the storyboard so that is virtually complete. Same with the animatic except we need to run it pass the editor so we can fix up bits of the timing. That will begin next week.
Looking at the time table, we have another week to make more model sheets. 2 weeks after that to practice the characters to a quality that will prepare you for the animation stage. Also on that week, there will be animation tests going on. After that we exit the pre-production stage and enter the real production!

Kung fu panda character designs

Kung fu Panda link :D http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=photoGalleryAlbum&galleryid=1523&order=0 as requested by TJ. Enjoy.

Back to work :D

Hey guys, hope you all enjoyed trashing my house :D Hahaha, nah it was all in good fun! Anyway Ive re-timed the animatic somewhat and will show the Jon on Thursday at 11am. The length of the animatic is 2:03 which includes the title shot in the end. Some of the scenes may be a little too fast so I hope Jon can give us some advice on where to slow it down a bit. But I think maybe the start can slow a bit.
And here is another layout.
Other progress news: We have a final design for the boy and master. Still a bit to do on ze girl. We already produced a few model sheets for the boy and master. Well done on that. Some of you have been practicing the characters too which is great. We will be needing to do this for a large part of the beginning. Maybe around Christmas time you will begin to get used to it all, I think thats what happened with Seiji's team last year. So do keep that up.
So for this coming week we follow our original plan with producing more model sheets for hands, feet, eyes, faces etc. This also involve drawing the characters in various poses and facial expressions. Plus, we need to construct the girl. Yeah, shes been the most problematic of the characters, we pretty much have the design down. We just need those model sheets and an entire body shot of her.
As a side project there are still those smaller characters to toy with. We had an idea that we could give cameo roles to each of our team members and famous martial artists like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan!
Andddddddddd.... Thursday production meeting! I'll need to scan work in from you guys! Dunno if the school computers are working, but I think I heard that there are scanners in the library. So if I can get some scans for me before the meet then that would be awesome! Cya tomorrow!

Party Time!

Im sure most of you know anyway but.... theres a house party at my house this Friday. Do drop by! And have fun! Thats an order!
This layout was a bit of a pain. I realised some bits that didnt match up with the other layouts so I had to redraw this one. But its no big problem:) Looks like we may need to reassess the girl design. The face is probably still too complex to draw so we probably should take the design we have now and simplify it some more. Or some other way we can get everyone to be comfortable with drawing them.
Oh! And a big welcome to our latest recruit! Veronica Chen will be designing the sounds in our film. Its all coming together nicely so far. Hope youre not too stressed out already :)

Working through the limit:D

I tell you now, painting with a sore neck is a pain! But we managed to get there in the end!!!!!

We Are...

Poster for our lil team :D And something to show how the layouts are progressing from thumbnail colourkeys to finished paintings.
I came in today, it was raining like mad! And I some how suddenly got a stiff neck and couldn't look down for too long. So I thought sod the dissertation today, I'll fit it into another day. So Im working at home today, painting some backgrounds. I'll show ye when it be done yar? I sure hope I wasn't missed in the production meeting!

Another One Bites The Dust

Yeah, another layout down. Time out today, I'll be working on my dissertation. Happy life drawings Tegan n Hozen! Keith n TJ, maybe this is a good time to work on the essay yar? If youre not working on them, you pretty much know what to do anyway :) Let the fun begin!

Model Sheets Coming Soon

Hi team! Just to update on what we need to do. The boy design is as good as done! TJ will be on the job to produce some model sheets so you can all start practicing that on Wednesday. The girl design is as good as done too. Zen's just having a bit of trouble drawing her consistently. But once we find a formula for drawing her it should be easier. So I guess all thats left is the master character and the odd background guys. We could base some of them on the team members, this should be less tricky to design as we dont need a strong model sheet for them.
So plan for now is: Practice drawing the characters. Make model sheets to show how you would construct the characters. And try drawing the character's with expressions and in poses too.

That should continue for another 3 weeks according to our initial schedule. But I think we may just be ahead of that schedule so if we keep it up we can go to the animation proper soonish! Do constantly practice drawing the characters, I think TJ said that throughout the Bird team they practiced the characters throughout the production. If you havent drawn the boy much then now is the time to have a go. Youmay not be used to drawing these different characters but with enough attempts under your belt, you will get a better hang of it. So now is the time ladies and gentlemen!

Tuesday as I mentioned before is now my dissertation day and your life drawing day. So I may not be in tomorrow. But I hope you all know what you can do. See ya laterz!

P.S. Keith!!!! Why O WHYYYYYYYY did you leave smash bros in Spain :(((((((

P.S.S. We got a sound designer now! W000000000T! We just need a composer and the crew is complete!

What Have I Done?!?!?!

Another update of where we are with the layout stuff. I repainted parts of the first layout again. I dug through some of my Photoshop brush collection and found some neat ones that I thought I could use on this layout. And here's another line drawing for one of the interior shots. This one is when the master is pointing furiously at the boy.

EDIT: Changed a bit of the painting again. I remember Hozen spotting something wrong with the pots. Just fixed that now, but I cant be bothered reposting it. Just take my word that its been seen to :)

Mondays

Hey crew! The third years have Mondays to work on their dissertations but I might swap my schedules for Mondays and Tuesdays around. That means I will be working on my dissertation on Tuesdays when the second years have life drawing all day. And if I forget, remind me that we need to check our animatic with Jon Turner for the timing. We need the timing to be spot on to avoid the over-animating that the P-man warns everyone about.
Other than the timing, I think the storyboard is complete. Parr seems to like it and said it is clear. He did raise a few ideas to consider but if everyone reads it clearly anyway, there isn't much wrong. So fixing it might help, but nothing is broken! So lets continue as we planned.
P.S. Monday is the return of a certain member of the squad I believe. This crew just got a whole lot more awesome!

Painting Lesson With Uncle Ben Part 3

Want to know another trick? Im just spoiling you guys. Dont worry if you think theres too much to learn already, remember, I was a lil noob too! With more experience, you'll start to learn things like this for yourself. Anyway, remember that thing I said about separating surfaces like on a cube so they become more readable? Well I thought I needed more of that for part of the panels on the walls since there are a few bumps and separation going on. I already changed the levels (value) of the panels a slight tad. But I decided to also change the colour slightly too. First, we need to select the panel so we can alter it without affecting the other parts of the painting. The lasso tool is used for this. You can find it on your toolbar on the side (or just by pressing 'l' on the keyboard). If you click and hold the lasso icon on the toolbar you can change the type of lasso tool to use: freehand lasso, polygon lasso or magnetic lasso. Any would do, use it to draw a selection arund the panel like I have done in the image. Then to change the colour, we use colour balance which can be accessed via the top toolbar but I just hit ctl+b. You should get a window that lets you slide a few bars around. If you slide the slider towards red, the selection will receive more red, or if you slide it towards blue it will become more bluer. Be wary of the 'temperature' of the painting. Colours has a warm or cool look to them and you need a decent balance of the two in a painting. If the reds are all looking bright and hot, we should probably cool parts of it down using the colour balance and adding more blues, magenta or cyan.


Heres the almost completed piece with a texture applied on top of it.


How do I apply texture? Bring in an image you want as the texture. Put this image on top of the other layers and set the blend option to 'Overlay' like I have. You can play with the other options too but it seems overlay is the commonly used method. But sometimes you may not want the colour this texture brings in. Well if thats the case just adjust the hue+saturation. Pull the slider for the saturation down to make it grayscale and therefore not affecting the colour of the image. And you may want to alter the levels too by pulling the triangles around until the value of the texture s the same as the value of the painting. This was the texture doesnt affect the values. Makes sense ya? Then you can pull the opacity of the layer down too and maybe erase parts of it where there shouldnt be any textures. I also add a little trick in there too. By going to Edit > Transform > Skew I can change the perspective of the texture so it doesnt look too flat when I apply it.


So thats all done. I leave the painting for a bit and then realized that somethings missing. The distance, and the sky seems a bit empty so I add in a few big buildings in the distance and more trees behind the wall on the left. And I think we are done :)
Hope that was useful and maybe you can go on to put me out of a business now hahahahha!..... why am I laughing?

Painting Lesson With Uncle Ben Part 2

Painting more details. Slowly spreading out into the rest of the painting.


Still rendering. I add some dabs of other colours into some areas like those greens in the red wall. This is just something I do sometimes to add a bit of interest in an otherwise quite boring paint job for me :P I like the randomness you can get from traditional painting so this is kinda inspired by them.


Another Photoshop trick here. This is something I started to use only quite recently. I make a layer that darkens the whole painting and then I erase parts of that layer to reveal the original painting beneath. This way I can darken the shadows without repainting it by erasing where the light is. I also do this with the highlights too. You can make another one of this layer and use it to lighten the whole piece and erase where the darks are. Of course, you mustnt depend on this to paint the shadows for you. Its just something to boost the contrast when it is needed. Its a good way to vary your values in a painting. So how do we get this layer? Its similar to the hue and saturation thing that makes the painting a grayscale. Go to Layer > Add New Adjustment Layer > Levels. You should have a window with three triangles. Dragging the black triangle alters the dark values, the gray alters midtones and the white alters the lights. So if you are making a layer to adjust the darks, pull the black triangle around (and maybe the gray one too) till you get the right darkness for the shadows. And then erase baby!