Trailer!

Updated Work Reel for End of March

It's been far too long since the last work reel post. There is still a lot of things not in the reel yet like cleaned and colored animations. I'm still looking for folks who can help me with that. There's a lot to color and the more help I get the faster the film gets done. There is still a little more than 30 days left to work on the film before the deadline so it's back to the animation table for me!

Compositing in After Effects

I spent about 6 hours this morning taking a lot of the colored frames and renaming them, sequencing them, and then compositing them in After Effects. My clean up animator, Paul Blair, has also offered his services with batching the clean ups in Photoshop and coloring them too. SERIOUS TEAMWORK!! About 1 minute of the film is completely finished. Here are four of the finished shots I worked on this morning.

Leaping into the Last Few Weeks

Even though spring break has been a nice little vacation from scheduled classes, that doesn't mean I've taken time off from working on the film. I've redesigned the first 35 or so seconds of the film so that it's a little more photo roman-ish and I've worked on several shots of rough and tie down animation.

Also, you may have noticed a few changes made to the blog, especially the HELP WANTED column on the left side of the blog. I am searching for a few animators that can help out with a few simple shots such as a paper falling or a hand grabbing a handle. There are other jobs that people can lend a hand with such as illustration work. Let me know if anyone is interested!

AND WHY IS BLOGGER ENDING THE VIDEO HALFWAY THROUGH THE FALL!?!

Experimenting with Compositing Modes = Awesome!

So while tweaking my work reel I thought I'd find a way to make the colored animation tests of the acrobats doing their stuff blend in a little more seamlessly. Normally you would drop all the PNGs into After Effects and sequence them into a video there but I did it in iStopmotion as a test and planned to do it in AE later. Lo and behold something strangely cool resulted on this. Even though this images were PNG files (which preserves the transparency) and had no background, iStopmotion hasn't figured this out yet and just fills the empty space with black. This wouldn't be the case with After Effects. I put the test into the work reel for a temporary placeholder and I tried playing around with the compositing modes so you can at least see the watercolor background beneath it. I was surprised by the results.

This is what the original test looks like. Note the black background.

The watercolor painting is brought into Final Cut and placed beneath the video clip.

Right clicking on the video clip and then selecting Difference in the Composite drop down menu.

See the difference! (^_^ lol, no pun intended)

It looks really interesting now because the inverted texture of the watercolor in the background can be seen in the acrobat. So spooky! But now the colors need a little adjusting. In the Effects menu, scroll down to Video Filters followed by Color Correction and selected the Color Corrector filter.

Using this tool I can change the color and value a bit to make the acrobat a little easier to see. I'm just going to adjust the value and saturation controls.

Here are the comparisons between the different stages.

And here is the final product.

A Little Help With Clean Up Animation

I'd like to Introduce CCS freshman Paul Blair aboard the Dark Circus crew. He has been a HUGE help so far handling clean up work while I focus on other animation and a bountiful source of enthusiasm for the project even when I'm feeling a little drained. Thanks a lot, Paul!

Cleaned up frame from Shot 73

OMG Colors!

Check it out! I colored a couple animations yesterday morning and I think they turned out all right. I had to re-learn batching in Photoshop in less than an hour though. With the exceptions of about three separate animations which are still in the roughing stage, this is the whole fourth scene of the film.

So, What Have I been Up To?

Oh my! So long since my last post! That's because I've been doing a lot of animation for the acrobats scene. Normally I would just key all the shots out and then go back to them once the whole film is keyed but I'd rather do some damage now while I'm still in the loosey-goosey flow of things and just keep going. Some of the shots are keys, some are tied down, some are clean, and some aren't even here in the video. I'll have more tests up soon!

Man! Blogger is NOT KIND to video quality!

Shot 35 and 36 Keys

Completion of keys in the second scene is so close I can taste it. There is still many more shots to key frame so I shall leave you with a few of the most recent shots I've down. I have 2 weeks left in the semester to get as much done as possible. Oh the madness!

Shot 35 Keys

"Macey on the Delivery Dock"

Shot 36 Keys

"Leaping to work"

Keyin' Like a Crazy Person

Great googley moogely! It's been almost two weeks since my last post! I'm sorry everybody, I've been thinking so much about key frames and animation that I sort of forgot to tell you all about it!

Shot 20 key frame test

As far as how much is done with keyframing, the first two scenes are as stands:

Scene 1 (Macey's Bedroom at sunrise): Keys completed

Scene 2: (Family in the Bakery): Keys 80% done

I'll have some more tests up here on the blog soon once I get them all shot and rendered to video. Finals are creeping up on me but I'll do my best to keep the updates rolling. Speaking of updates, it's snowing! I'm surprised that we didn't really see any until the first day of December. I love snow, it puts me in a working mood and makes coffee taste even better. Also, the fall semester ends on December 18, which means that the school year is almost half over. In a rush to get as much done before winter break as possible, the goals for the next few weeks are:

1. Key Frames for Scenes 1-4
2. Updated Work Reel
3. Theater Promo Poster
4. Artist Statement
5. Artist Bio

Wish me luck!

Animation! Making the Proof of Concept.

Slooooooooooow moooooooooooootion!! This is rough animation for my Proof of Concept animation. Once it's all clean and finished, I'll make sure it plays at the right speed. Look at them fly! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!