Final 3D Animatic This Year

This is going to be a big update.  I have been very busy with this film, working on everything from modeling to basic animation to character rigging and more.  I plan to do more work to prepare for the final animation and lighting over the winter break, but this will be the last update to my animatic this year.  I would like to thank everyone involved so far in this film this quarter, including Michelle Ionescu, who has been helping me with the design, modeling, and sound; Raymond McCoy-Sanders, who helped with modeling so far; Dennis McCoy, who also helped with modeling; China Nadeau, who made my beautiful backgrounds; Nora Graven for helping with rigging my character; and my professor, Mathew Maloney, who has been giving me great feedback and ideas to make this a much stronger film.

There is still a LOT of work to do.  Next quarter I am going to focus on getting all the rigging finalized, getting the animation finished, getting as many of the backgrounds finished as I can, and finish as much texturing as I can, as well as starting preliminary lighting.  Over the break I am going to work on some minor fixes and tweaks and getting feedback.

I can't promise I will have another update to the blog this year, but I will make sure to keep any significant updates posted here.

Last Light 3D Animatic with sound from Last Light Film on Vimeo.

3D animatic updates

I should be able to upload a new 3D animatic very soon.  I have been getting some very good feedback, and am actually making some large story changes, without having to completely redo all my work so far.  I must say this is getting very exciting, and I can't wait to get the animatic finished.  I am already getting some work done on my style guides and my modeling, with the help of Michell and Raymond.  I should have another update this weekend with the entire aniamtic finished, but first I have the Generate 24 hour competition to compete in this weekend.

Wish me luck!

New and improved

It's new!  It's improved!  It's 3D!!

It's my all new handy-dandy little-giant new and improved 3D Animatic!  (Yes, I said new twice, it's that new.)  Well it isn't done yet, but I am working on it now.  The original animatic is a great starting point for me, but I need to have a starting point for 3D, plus I've been getting a lot of good feedback from people, so I have ideas on what I can do to improve the story and flow.

But what is an animatic you ask?  In short, it's a rough idea of what the film will look like... but not actually look like.  More like an idea of the flow, timing, camera direction, staging, and so forth, as opposed to the look and style.  Still don't get it?  It's really just behind-the-scenes stuff, so don't worry about it.  Just know that this is a vital step, and the sooner I finish it the better.

My goal is to complete the all new animatic by Tuesday, but only with blocked in shapes.  That means it will only have a few basic shapes and colors, and most of it will not look anything like what it is supposed to look like.  It is just enough to get an idea, so I can get started with modeling the actual 3D assets.

Speaking of which, I have to make a whole new list of assets as well, but that will be for the next stage.  I need to make sure I have all the props, sets, background elements, characters, and even effects accounted for so I know where to go next.  I will also work on style frames so I will actually know what it has to look like.  But that is another goal for another week.  This is all really early production work right now, converting the original concept into 3D and making adjustments as needed.  Important, but not that impressive looking.  Yet.

Well I have a lot of work to do in order to get this ready.  Back to the grind...

Cha- Cha- Cha- Changes

While I have had my first rough animatic for a while, getting people to look at it and give me feedback without hearing the story first has really given me interesting result.  Some people understood my original intent, but most only got part of it or interpreted something completely different.

So on order to remedy this, I have ears advice and suggestions from a number of people, and I have worked with my friend Michelle to come up with a solution.  I am not sure I will be revising my 2D animatic to show this, but I may have to.  Either way, there are big changes to te timing and flow, and minor story changes as well.

Professor Maloney suggested I take the opposite approach and have the ray of light light up the city because the lighthouse broke and a ship was heading to town.  While I like that idea a lot, it is a different story.  Another friend say the light as the firs evening star, lighting up the town but getting frustrated at the human element getting in the way.

I've decided to take a different approach, where the light will first run into a cabin in the woods where it will see a candle in a cabin and try to light it up, but can't get trough the window and then gets visibly frustrated when someone else lights it.  I will then adjust the timing and acting of the scenes to really pick up the beat/flow until it gets hectic and culminates in getting zapped by the bug zapper.  I then will show the ray flickering on and off, almost out of juice as he finds a broken and well-worn lighthouse.  As he flies in to the lamp, he fizzles out to nothingness, and the I really plan to hold it like this for a long time, several seconds, before the lighthouse abruptly turns on.

So that will require more drawings, more timing, and a new animatic.  I'd love to do the new animatic in 3D, but I haven't decided if I will yet.  For now I have to fill out a production schedule and work on figuring out my milestones.  Then I can worry about the little details.