The Wedding Online Premiere

My graduate film The Wedding has just premiered online through Short of the Week!

They have a really flattering write up/review on it too.

So here the sucker finally is (I finished it like a year ago!)

The Wedding from Simon Cottee on Vimeo.

And also a super all over the place, long and totally out of focus Duck video update that I probably should have never uploaded!


Oh and a new Beast Chorus entry!

Ducks, Vikings and Monsters

Hey, just an update of some art and stuff.
OH and the Wedding was recently screened at Brisbane RAW's event:

It was very cool, and the US section of the site interviewed me here.

I've also just found out that the Wedding is nominated for an ATOM Award and official selection at the Brisbane International Film Festival. Super excited.

The Duck is almost at v3 animatic, close to starting animation! Nerve wracking, haha.

HEY here is some recent very rough art and junk. Big strong men only?

And an exciting new project I plan to start with my man Skydekkerix / Sam.

Oh and I've been reading way too much American Elf.

The Wedding at Cannes and Tel-Aviv

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:

Also I did another batch of RP Speed Portraits!

The Wedding Festival Update

Last night was the West End Film Festival, my very first festival and it was a blast. So many great live action short films in there, very inspiring. It was an extra blast because my graduate film The Wedding took home the best Animation prize!

The cash prize will be injected directly into my next film, which I am going to start getting a kickstarter crowd funding project together for. Hopefully I can get some interest in the project, because it's going to be something really special and dear to me. I'm planning on adapting an amazing little short story you may have even heard...
Mysterious.

The Wedding has also been accepted into the Tel-Aviv student film festival. Who wants to go to Israel with me!? I would love to go... but I could not afford those flights.

The Wedding Festival Run

So my film the Wedding has started being accepted into some film festivals.
So far it is the West End Film Festival and the Gold Coast Film Festival
I'm pretty excited! I've never been in one before.

I'm also the featured illustrator on the 2nd edition Stilts Journal! A Brisbane based writers journal, the people who run it are all my friends and very nice! And very soon to get an exciting new website.
http://underthestilts.com/

Here is also a little concepty image for a new big exciting project I will HOPEFULLY be starting soon!

And I recently did a bunch of dumb internet drawings. Here are two!

Film Submitted

So my film the wedding is all submitted for the screening and I'm practically on holidays now. But it aaaaaint over. I'm now shading the film, something that I didn't get time to, it's going pretty quick, I did 3 scenes in like half a day so that's cool.
I could probably finish it off tomorrow if I work hard. I also inbetweened a tiny bit more and am going to redo my credits and tweak some other things.

OH and I'm now looking into film festivals I can submit to.

Film FINISHED and Demo Reel

Hooray! My film the Wedding has been completed, now I need to sit on it and work out what I can do with it regarding film festivals and the like.
We have to present our work and demo reels and stuff immediately after finishing it, so here is a kinda goofy demo reel I busted together in a semi delirious sleep deprived state. It cracks me up so I'm happy!

the wedding post pro

Here is two post comp tests. I think I will go for a mix of the two, as the second is a bit too digital for me, I don't think I will use the Depth of Field either.

The Wedding Colouring progress

colouring colouring colouring.
I have been working like literally non stop from 10am-3am for 3 days in a row now. I've never worked so hard on something, it's great! I've been home alone for 3 weeks now too so I've gone a little weird, but I'm having so much fun. It's frantic to get this thing finished.
Here is a quick test for my colouring! I'm a bit more than half way through the colouring now thank god. Then it's comp city. I want to do a shading pass, but we will see if I have the time and how quick it will be.

The Wedding Colouring

Ok, I'm prepping to colour my animation in TVPaint.
I only just then finalized my character colour palettes. Here they are!

I was playing around with using the "official" Griffith University red, but it's a bit too light and weak.
YOU HEARD ME GRIFFITH.

The Wedding CLEANS DONE

OH BOY! Huge milestone today. I finished all the animation! Cleans dooone. It took forever jeesus, haha. I've basically been working non stop for 2 weeks now, like from the moment I wake up till sleep.

Now it's time to try implementing the music and start my colouring tomorrow. Only 12 days till the film needs to be completed so it's absolute non stop work madness at the moment. I hope I can finish the colouring by in 4-5 days. God I hope so.

Here is a commemorative drawing of all of our uni films, done by my boy Cameron.

The Wedding Update

I am almost finished my cleans, it's been an intense clean journey I will tell you what.
Then I'm onto colouring.
My musician vanished which totally sucks, but luckily I managed to get onto a fantastic French musician who I think will be much better than my original one!
Sound stuff is also going ahead and I had a skype meeting with my radical sound guy Dan Brumm.
Here is a sample image I had to produce for a EPK (electronic press kit).

 The final coulouring style will probably be a bit different, as I'm using TV paint to do it.
This was coloured in Photoshop

The Wedding BBW and Backgrounds

I've got 2 more scenes to do some degree of rough animation on and my animatic is completely locked down now, which feels great! I've also been trying to work my way through all these backgrounds, there are like 50.

And here is some BBW walk test!

Wedding Background progress

I have been working away on my film, making a move on animation and backgrounds.
Today I've been experimenting with background styles and dimensions so that I can have some cool camera moves if I need to.
Here are some of my experiments.

And here is a (slightly) moving background test:


I had a great meeting today with film editor Mary Stephen and it was really rewarding and helpful!
I will finalising my animatic tomorrow and sending it off for score and sound!

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

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.

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!