Character redesigns, animatics and shaving

Hello hello. Lotsa progress has been made of late.
I have my animatic in a real good place. Basically it is the first final candidate animatic. I've been showing it to classmates and trying to get as much feedback as possible. I am also about to send it off to a bunch of industry animators to try get their feedback too! One point I am still trying to make my mind up on is my narration. I just worry it is currently my weakest point and may need to look at finding a proper narrator real soon. Stressssful!

I have also shaved my moustache, sideburns and got a haircut as I am having my "Beardstones" or facial hair milestones linked to my film, so I got my animatic done so now I'm fresh and clean to grow my beard until my film is finished. It's going to get rough...

I have also been revisiting my character designs and updating them. I find they grow organically as I do my animatic and end up drawing them a bunch. The biggest change is perhaps the wife. I also just had an idea for a new hairstyle as I never liked my old one.

And I updated the boy a little, to make him looser and gave him tails.

 

I've been diving back into pixel art and tried recreating my characters as just a warm up exercise

Greedo Wallpaper

So continues a strange Greedo infactuation. NOW IN WALLPAPER FORMAT!

Click for big ol size.

  I don't have much more to say now sorry.

Colour Script v1 and Greedo

I really think Greedo is an interesting guy. He is a character I would like to explore further (disregarding actual canon).

My colour board is now in some kind of version. I don't know how indicitive it will be of the final piece or anything. I discovered that having intense tones to then paint over created some interesting results. ie. me fighting with colour constantly.

And here is an amazing animation that my friend Alex shared with me (be sure to check out her production blog).




[Director] SUGIMOTO Kousuke
[Music] MANABE Takayuki

Post Progress Pitch and Boards

Last week was our follow up progress pitch. I'm happy with how I went and people seemed responsive.
For it I finished my layout/storyboards so here they all are together!

 

 

 

So on a basic level that is my film. I am now going through the process of doing colour research and looking at lots of colour boards and theory. Then I will colour these boards to get a vibe for the mood and emotion of each shot.

I'm also going to be starting up a side short film project in collaboration for something much more exciting which I will reveal eventually. It's going to be all pixel animation! But a bit more artistic and abstract hopefully than your stock standard stuff.
Ok... I need to go try work in the small amount of time I have until Portal 2 releases. OH NO.

Wedding Compositions

I had gotten into a semi rut with my film recently. It came about from iterating my animatic too much and losing a little faith in my narration. I had recorded my writer Jack doing a narration and I had thought it was pretty good. But upon getting some fresh eyes on it and then really looking at it I realized it was both too fast and sounded a little forced. I have now taken a step back and decided that my film length shall be completely dictated by what should be the appropriate pacing to make it as good as it can be and that perhaps I should narrate it myself (I'm undecided). So to give me a break from all this I have started working out my shot compositions.
I started by making a complete list of all my shots and taking inspiration from Pixar's process begun creating the foundations for a colour script/story board. Here is my first page.

It is unfinished obviously and uncoloured.

I was in a bit of a panic about how I would go about framing these shots. I felt I had infinite possibilities and perhaps not the skill to pull it off interestingly. Then I found an amazing blog by Up! Colour board artist Lou Romano. It is his second blog and called CINEMOSAIC.
Basically he has been making collections of shots from great movies and throwing them together in a kinda colour script style. He has heeeaps. Basically when I need to make a shot I look through all these panels and find other examples of similar scenes or shots for inspiration. That way I have some degree of confidence with my composition due to being able to say "Well Citizen Kane bloody well did it!". I watched Citizen Kane last night actually, I've been meaning too since forever. It was great. Unreal sets and scope.

Here is another stupid animation line test.


Simon C Head Moves line test from Simon Cottee on Vimeo.

I've also discovered that Joe Brumm's friend Damian Pin has joined our vimeo line test group to check out our stuff, Damian recently won the 11 second club and has some INSANE 3D Animation. Oh gawd.

Production update again

Lots to do and lots done. I'm a little stuck in the cycle with my animatic at the moment, constantly recording new dialogues and rejigging my animatic and the timing. My latest dialogue was discovered to be too quick and after a meeting with script writer Priscilla I came to the realization that my film has to be as long as it is needed to make it as good as it can be. Yesterday I recorded myself in the sound booth, but I'm not sure if I will use it. I'm starting to think I might just narrate it myself as I will then be able to make constant changes with ease.
I've been animating a lot for Joe Brumm's animation class. Here are some very rough walks:



3 Walks Line test from Simon Cottee on Vimeo.

I think I will now do a kind of colour script for my film after being inspired by some Pixar stuff. Also to work out the layout and compositions of my shots.
I'm also growing my moustache and hair until I finish my animatic. Then I'm going to completely shave and grow my beard until my film is finished I think. My moustache is pretty insane at the moment. I'll put a pic up when it's about to go.

Hey check out this cool blog! It is a film condensed into strips that come together to create a barcode of all the colour in the film.
http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com

Here is Pinocchio!

The Wedding Update Whatever

So all kinds of things have been going down. Production has started proper now so it's starting to get stressful. I'm currently going through all kinds of narration tests.
I originally got my housemate Jack to do one, then I did one myself that I used for my first version animatic, then the script was revised so I did a new recording of myself. Then yesterday I got my friend Michelle Law to narrate it using the proper uni sound booth, but listening back to it I'm not sure using a female voice is gonna work without too much confusion, so I just hounded Jack to come in and do a impromptu recording session at uni. He was home doing our dishes so I feel kinda mean.

So we had to pitch our films to our tutors, students and a few industry peeps. My pitch went pretty well I think and it was a lot of fun! I am permitted to make mine on my own and got a 10/10 mark for the pitch! I was amazed, I assumed I just pissed the tutors off due to my cockiness and perhaps perceived unrealistic ambition.
But there you go!

I've been iterating my animatic at the moment, I have a real basic version going. I showed it to Joe Brumm and he had heaps of cool input and seemed genuinely excited and encouraging about it. I've also met with script writer Priscilla to go over the deeper motivations and direction of my story. It was very intense but useful to work out character direction.
I told myself I would have my animatic at a close to ready point by the end of this month, it's the 23rd so if I want to achieve that... I need to get working. But I think that is unrealistic now as I want to iterate it as much as possible. I plan on getting Joe's wife Suzie to have a look over it too, she has been a story board artist for some time.

We are also all animating like hell for Joe's animation class, I'm currently trying to animate a toddler, adult and old man walk. HARD!

Here is an AMAZING animation I stumbled onto that I can only hope mine has such rendering:


Old Fangs from adrien merigeau on Vimeo.

Divine.

Pig Patrol

This was just for fun, I only intended to do one character then I got addicted and busted them all out.
3 buddies and myself have been running a pen and paper Warhammer Fantasy Role Play v2 game for about 2 years now. I have had some of the most fun during it I will tell you what. This is the first time I have digitally drawn our characters. They have gone through so much and are all now mentally ill and very socially unstable.
The best of friends.

CLICK TO BIGGEN

Pig Patrol: Wiegel the Tomb Robber, Janusch the Physician (myself), Helmet the Knight, Donny the Manchild, Mengot the Undead Hunter

The Wedding Update and albums

I've been very busy indeed. Been back for a week at uni and this coming Wednesday I need to pitch my film to my tutors and classmates. I'm lucky I have done a chunk of work over the holidays so I have it a little easy.
My script has been going through a bunch of revisions too, and my first crap draught of my animatic is almost done. I've also modelled a 3D yacht in Maya for my sets.

Here is a colour panel for an idea of the art direction and perhaps final design.
I've been very inspired by Graham Annable's amazing paintings as seen here.
One of my classes is crazy intensive with 2D animation, at the moment I am trying to figure out how to animate a pole vaulter. If that wasn't hard enough I have to do it with crazy perspective! ARGH! 

I have also turned my recent Chiptune Poster into album art for my buddy Dot.AY's new release!

Poster Finished (I believe)

It took a while (mostly me just lying around watching movies due to heat) to finish it.
I'm fairly happy with it. I will probably look at it in a weak and dislike the overlayie stuff. I'm starting to get into this incorporation if pixel aspects into standard cartoony stuff. I guess it should only be in there for a good reason though, like this being for a chiptune gig!

Click for full res
And for kicks here is a PIXEL VERSION.
Resizing an image using Nearest Neighbour does wonders.

Also, I am considering starting a video blog soon on the development of my Animation. I have to keep a journal for uni anyway, so I figure this might be a funner way to do that.

I've also been thinking, do I need an artist alias?! So many cool digital dudes have them... I wonder if my work would become more easily recognisable and rememberable if I did.
I don't know, I will think on it.

ALSO. Be sure to check out 2 player productions awesome proof of concept minecraft documentary.

New Poster WIP

Working on a new poster/album cover for a chiptune collection for my buddy buddy dot.ay.
It's based off probably my favourite piece of fine art, Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David.

BM update and Animatic Progress

Hello THERE.
SO the my animatic for my film is SLOWLY coming together. It's tough to figure out how to frame shots I am telling you! I found the Brad Bird's storyboard guide a real useful refresher before I started.

REGARDING BOAT MURDERED ANIMATION
SO. Tom and I got real lazy. I'll tell you what. We started working on our new films and everything kinda got put under the rug for a while. It wasn't until our friend John Grist, through attempting to motivate me to finish it somehow got conned into helping us! SO, we now have another great animator on board to do the character shots. We plan to meet later in the week to start production.
Sorry we have been such lazy arseholes. Here is a little ANIMATED SAMPLE I did.