movement

He gets up from his chair and sits down nearer the music box.
He slowly gets up from his chair and drags it closer to the music box.
He jumps up, excited, and leaps over to the music box.
He grumbles as he stumbles to the music box.
He tiptoes quietly to the nearby music box.
He shuffles listlessly to the seemingly distant music box.
He mumbles as he makes his way to the music box.
He sighs and drags himself over to the music box.
He gently maneuvers to the music box.
He dances towards the music box.
He leans towards the music box.

This is why I'm really enjoying storyboarding - it's realizing all these options for each movement - noone simply gets up and does something - they do it with a style!

Side note - has anyone tried wooden armatures? I'm going to try making one, if only for the learning experience, but hopefully to work with ;)

storyboarding

Okay, I've got 2 minutes of storyboarding done! It's a rough time estimate, as I'll tweak all the timing when it's done, but it's giving me a good sense of flow. As frustrating as it is to try to draw it all out (I want to build everything instead!) it's been good for thinking more about camera angles, length of shots, etc.
Attached is one of the frames - as you can see, very very simple drawing style - the cat's sneaking back out of a cupboard after getting stuck inside, as seen through a Polaroid camera. We've actually got one kicking around, so I might try and see if I can take pictures with my DSLR through the Polaroid view finder for the shots - if not I'll fudge a frame for it.

Cats

So, a call for help from anyone reading this! I need cat stories! My new piece is about, among other things, the relationship between an older artist and his cat. I really want to play up the dynamic between the two, and I think the cat is a great potential source of humour in the film, but ours tend to sleep more than do anything ;) (And I'm allergic which limits things a bit)
So anyone who has stories about their cats they'd like to share, and are okay with potentially ending up in a piece, please share! Any animal that random has to have some entertaining moments ;)

NSI Online film festival - online now!

Wahoo! So the NSI film festival I got into is showing Judder now, as well as hosting my de-mysteriousness online (producer pic required) as well as having an audio interview - you get to hear me say 'um' quite a bit, good times :P But if you want to check it out the link is:
http://www.nsi-canada.ca/judder.aspx
EDIT - apparently it's only available in Canada, one of the geographical blockers! But the interview's still accessible if anyone's interested.

Just finished basic scriptwriting for the whole story, need to start doing more storyboards now - I'm also going to start taking more photographs of just anything in and out of the house - start establishing the graphic feel I want for the film - should be fun to be able to bump the camera after a shot and not worry :P

beginning storyboarding

So this is the beginning of my storyboarding for my new animation. They won't all be drawn in as much as this, but the intro scene has some panning shots of the set, and I'd like to time those out on the drawing first, get a sense of it all.
I think I'd read that for some movies a storyboard will be sync'd to the audio, then as each clip is filmed it's swapped out, until the animation is complete. I'm thinking of trying this way for the piece - right now I see some parts soo clearly, and others not at all - and I found Judder really frustrating in not having the timing near as clear as I'd like. So - going to try this way - it's looking at being around a 3 min piece so should have new drawings soon to start blocking it in!

Preview Link

The video preview for the next few films for the NSI online film festival is up, and I'm excited that Judder is part of it! Here's the video:

I'll post once the full video and interview are up!

Also have some new storyboards to post in a few days for a new animation *about time!*

Editing in TVPaint

I created a quick video of the editing process for blending mouth lines - it's just the events, so it doesn't show selecting the areas/brushes, but it gives a good idea of how to blend them using samples of surrounding skin tone.

I also did some screengrabs from the program and posted them on SMA.

wahoo!

Laptop is back and repaired! And today I got to see clips of Judder on tv - for the first time without having to press play first :P I was accepted into an online film festival for the NSI (National Screen Institute of Canada) and Judder'll be streaming online in a few weeks, along with a phone interview I did (which was a very stressful few minutes!)
A local TV station interviewed the head of the festival (as it's head office is in Winnipeg) and they used clips of Judder in the interview! Really exciting to see it on tv :)