Hi. Hi guys. I've been a little nonbloggy I'm sorry.
I'm soon to put together a new video update for the Duck and talking about my amazing experiences at the Munich Film Festivals of Schools, which was literally the best time of my life. What a year.
I'm currently crunching like mad on my backgrounds for the Duck. ALMOST done. We are also fair behind schedule and currently looking into getting some Screen Australia funding to finish us off, which would also afford some awesome stuff for the film.
So here is a recap because lots of cool stuff is going on. My pen and paper bro Sam "Skydekkerix" Maguire and I have started a new collab site called Beast Chorus. It's sorta like a high concept webcomic/fantasy journal. It's a bestiary of fantastical creatures for a pen and paper RPG setting, Sam and I come up with the monster, Sam writes them up wonderfully and then I illustrate them. It's so much fun! So go check it out for some excitin writin and artin. HERE!
I've also got some illustrations from whatever:
This guy, an illustration of a character from a story for my buddies at Stilts.
And here is a silly picture from a drawjam.
AND here are two characters you may recognise for a freelance project that fell through:
Here is a bad drawing of Greedo!
AND here is a rough walk cycle test for the Duck!
AND here are two images nearing a final look and style! WOAOAOA!
OH and there is a chance I may be going to Munich in November with the Wedding. I'm also in a bunch more festivals and award things yaaaay.
Here are some for fun character sketches for a Kids in Danger 80's style adventure.
I'm planning on running this as a pen and paper game for some buddies, I'll assign them these characters for their SP-SP-SPOOOKY adventure!
So I'ma workin guys. YES THAT IS RIGHT.
I've even got a first draft animatic and story board together!
I'm now in the process of creating placeholder backgrounds, that I will also turn into colour boards.
This means I can get into animating as I know the staging of each shot.
Here are some example:
You can see I am using the anamorphic widescreen on this one.
I added the characters there to demonstrate the shot.
This is 2.35:1 aspect ratio or 1920x817 effectively. Look at all that SPACE!
A multiplane placeholder background, the characters will be added in the animatic.
And revising the rough storyboard panels. A big part for me is just diving in and getting something down,
even if it's horrible. Then I go back and redo it all.
Been a little slack with my blog sorry, I've started using twitter again and running the kickstarter site.
HERE ARE SOME NEW THINGS.
Video of funding ending:
Latest video update:
And some new concept art:
New Protagonist designs
New Other Ducks. you can see my embarrassing old designs too.
I started to do some tests with water colours while down the coast. This Duck looks... deformed.
Testing again, rushed this one so it came out a bit of a mess.
So I have the cash now, I have a producer, I have nothing to work on but the Duck and am ready to become a recluse and get to work. Super pumped. I just have to resist video games and tv Shows a little more than I am.
And my head with my Duck's colour palette for fun.
I can safely say I have seen enough amazing short animations in the last month that I question why I even bother sometimes. SO HERE ARE SOME OF THEM!
Swelter by Jacob Streilein
This really flawed me with it's palette, ambience and use of shadow. The character animation is fantastic too and I loved the ambiguity of the whole thing (personally I would have loved a darker ending. BUT hey, I'm the guy about to make a Duck love story film).
Chop Chop by Bird Box Studio
Bird Box are masters of timing and telling amazingly effective little stories with so little. The choreography of the fight is unreal too, note how three dimensional those simple characters are. Charming!
The Eagleman Stag by Mikey Please
This absolutely flawed me. I almost don't want to say anything about it because you should just experience it fresh. So I won't. But absolutely sublime.
Mafuta by Kyler Spears
Like Jacob Streilein this is another Calarts student. I really want to go to that school...
Check this character animation and volumes control. BOW BEFORE IT.
Beat by Or Bar-El
From looking at the time line I thought "Seven and a half minutes! I dunno about this." But in the first 30 seconds I was totally sold, and it only got better. Bar-El also says this is his first 3D attempt. Sonuvagun.
Legs by Alexander Pettersson
This is just so much fun, short and incredibly sweet. What energy!
Epilogue by Kris Anka
This one is a bit of a slow burn but has some amazing compositions and style. I think this could have been pushed over the edge to amazing with some better sound engineering and maybe a very subtle score. Love the wide screen.
Nocturne by La Poudriere (I think)
I loooove this. The style is so unique and the sound and score incredible. The kind of idea you wish you had.
I've got a really good feeling about this, even if I am really nervous at the same time.
I'm headed off to the Cannes film festival on the 15th then off to the Tel-Aviv student festival.
So it's pretty much the most exciting time in my life ever right now.
Hey guys, I'll be at the Cannes Film Festival film corner and the Israel Tel-Aviv Student Film festival may and june with my first film The Wedding. Amazingly exciting. Here is a poster:
Just a little more DUCKIN. I've been slowly organising a bunch of the less exciting stuff this last week so I haven't gotten around to producing too much art, but I've slowly been whittling away at design and collecting a huge reference library.
Oh yeah, and my Uni is sending me to the Cannes film festival next month... that's pretty neat.
Here are two proof of concept shots for my new film. Is that the right word for them... Colour boards? Mood boards? I have been a little nervous about how I am going to approach the backgrounds, today I went through every image on the amazing Animation Backgrounds blog. My main challenge is interesting comps that feel organic and natural, while still being economical and simple to produce. I think these tests are a step in the right direction.
I just wrapped up Mass Effect 3 (I know I'm a little late to the party, but I just replayed ME2 to prepare)
I don't really know how I feel! I was way too invested in my character and her friends.
So much so I decided to draw her as a means to put her to rest. Cya shep shep!
Want to enhance your drawing day? Get some great new music! I like to theme my music on what I'm drawing,
so I've been listening to lots of Louis Armstrong and Pixar soundtracks. Here are my first Duck turnarounds.
I'm fairly happy with the design, I had a realization that the side view of my duck his body is almost a perfect circle with a bite outta it!
I've also started reading In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch on my buddy Alex Gee's recommendation.
Fantastic stuff, will be very useful when I start my animatic. It's super interesting reading the perspective of editing when you are given all this footage and have to pick and choose, opposed to animation where you create all your footage from scratch and where cutting out finished shots is incredibly hard and costly to do.
Posts
