Storyboard to Film Comparison

I made a side-by-side comparison chart for my film. The images on the left are panels from my preliminary storyboard from last July, and the images on the right are from the finished film, 10 months later.

These few examples are special because they pretty much stayed the same from my first pass (albeit a few minor changes here and there). Not every shot in the film was copied verbatim from the storyboard. Some of my original ideas for how shots were going to be laid out were either too flat and uninteresting (like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon) or so complicated that it would've been a real pain to animate once I got up to layout and animation later on.

That's why it's always good to get a second opinion on things. That's why I had my thesis advisor (and good friend) Howard Beckerman help me out on every step of the process. To me, Howard was my "test audience" to see whether things were working or not. If he didn't understand what was going on, that's when I knew that I needed to make some changes so he would understand it.

Whenever I had an issue, I went to Howard for advice on how to fix it, and every time we would straighten things out so they worked. Sometimes it would be a minor tweak in the camera angle or a pose, and other times whole story ideas were thrown out the window. It's hard to let some things go, but for the sake of clarity it's important to fix things so the audience won't be left scratching their heads and asking questions.

Lions

Lately I've been doing a lot of brainstorming on a film I'm working on (correction: should be working on), for Howard Beckerman's 3rd year animation class. Howard's basically letting us run loose & come up with whatever we want. The only direction Howard gave us was that the film has to be exactly 90 seconds. After thinking it over for a little while, I had a slight inkling of what I wanted to do...

Ever since seeing Fantasia for the first time many years ago, I always wanted to try animating to music. I love pantomime & the timing is already there to work off of. Why not give it a try now? So I picked a piece of music that was fun to listen to, had a solid beat to follow, had little quirks in the melody that could supply plenty of opportunities for gags & was EXACTLY 90 seconds long: 'The Royal March of the Lion' from Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals suite.

In a nutshell, the story is about this smug lion that goes around the jungle scaring the other animals out of their wits by roaring at them. He's pretty cocky & overly confident with himself, until he hears something louder than he is...

I've already storyboarded the entire thing & made a rough animatic to follow, but before I can start animating the characters, I need to pinpoint their final designs first. At this point I think I'm really close, but I want to play around a bit & get comfortable with something before I start animating them. I'm looking at a lot T.S. Sullivant & Bill Peet stuff for inspiration, & my awesome character-designer friend Kaukab has been helping me out a bit too.

I sketched these out in Photoshop earlier this evening, playing around a bit with the designs. I think I'm aiming a bit towards the one on the lower right, middle left & bottom (or some sort of combination between the three). Something appealing, yet flexible & fun to draw a million times in a row without getting too hung up on detail.

I also got to work on layouts & backgrounds. I never really did backgrounds before, so it's definitely going to be a big obstacle to get through. The neurotic in me wants to make this process as easy & pain-free as possible, but the masochist in me loves a good challenge. I've been studying a lot of pictures of jungles & some old Disney backgrounds for reference, so maybe that'll help me out a bit, or at least give me something to aim for or to jump off of.

I'm hoping to get started this weekend, & I need as much time as I can get. The films are supposed to be done by the end of April, so once that's done with I'll put mine up here, as well as provide links to the other's when/if they put theirs online too. I'll post more stuff from this project when it comes through.

SCRAMBLE!!!

I've been in a bit of a creative slump these past few weeks. I've lost my drive, & I haven't been animating at all. But after attending Bunny Hoest's ( of The Lockhorns & Howard Huge fame) annual "Bunny Bash", my creative juices began flowing again. I just needed a bit of a jump start from Bunny, Howard Beckerman, Stephen Silver & company to get me going again.

I sat down at my Cintiq & immediately started animating. In about an hour, I animated this little bit of my circus dog doing a surprised take & scrambling off-screen.

(Click on the Image to see him scramble!)

My first pass was in green, & my "tweak pass" was drawn over it in purple. If you watch closely, you can see what changes I made in the latter pass compared to the first.

I'm starting to get back into the groove again. & with Tom Sito's animation class coming up in a few weeks, I need as much practice as I can get. If I keep this energy up, I may finally be able to finish that troubled film of mine before the year's up! Here's hoping!

For the Birds Goes to the Dogs

Uh oh... here it comes...

This year, us second year animation students have been in the process of creating our own little animated films. & I, being one of those eager beaver animators, is completely ecstatic over the it. Back at the beginning of the semester, I was all set to get this production running at full throttle. I had my story down pat, my characters all designed & I was just about to start animating shots. Everything was going alright.

Then my heart nearly stopped.

Since my little heart scare back in February, I haven't felt quite the same. I've been considerably weaker, my sleeping & eating tracks have been knocked off kilter & I've become a bit more moody & emotional, which to me is very uncommon. I've even had a good amount of nightmares since I got out of the hospital. But worst of all, due to my lack of energy (emotional, mental & physical), I've neglected my little film (as well as some of my other projects for school). Work has slowed down to a crawl & I've actually gotten to the point where I've lost almost complete interest in it. Long story short, I won't be able to complete my film by the end of the school year. I'll be lucky if I get at least a minute out of the intended 2-3 minutes completed by then. 

I don't know what part of my heart hurts more, the physical or the metaphorical.

Yet, there's a little flame in me that still has emotional backing in this project, & I still want to go ahead & finish it, deadline or not. One of the few things that I could never let myself do is quit. I wouldn't be able to live it down if I did. So no matter what, even if I'm nearly struck dead by an act of some unspeakable force, I'm gonna finish this film. I've decided that I'm gonna make this a little summer project, something to keep my hands & mind busy the four months I'm away from school.

It was decided pretty late in the game that I was going to animate the whole thing in Flash. I already had about 3 or 4 scenes already animated on paper, ready to be shot. But when I began to think of all the trouble I'd have to go through to complete a shot, I had second thoughts. For a scene, each drawing would have to be 

1) animated & tested until it looks just right

2) cleaned up 

3) scanned into the computer

4) colored in Photoshop

5) composited into After Effects

& repeat until the whole film is complete. 

& for someone like me, who just happens to enjoy animating on ones, this would take an incomprehensible amount of time & effort to tackle. In Flash, you kill about 4 birds with one stone, all in one program. So, I threw al my completed scenes in the trash & started over.

For me, my use of Flash is a love-hate relationship. While you can accomplish basically the same exact things in Flash as you could traditionally drawing on paper, the program still doesn't suite me right. It almost feels like I'm cheating. Besides, I don't want to be solely attached to the computer. I want to have a thorough grounding in doing it the traditional way with good ol' pencil n' paper. Starting next year, I'm gonna stay as far away from the computer as I possibly can. 

But for now I got a film that needs finishing, so Flash is my last resort. & so far, I'm pretty satisfied with what I've animated. If I can spend at least 3 hours a day working on this cartoon, I may have something decent to show off. 'Til then, I'll be working my ass off (or at least whatever's left of it)

Earlier today, I animated in the Cintiq lab for about 5 hours straight. & of course, I had to have a doodle break:

It's almost like a sneak peek, but it's not. 

& so, I'm off to draw more doggies!

Ciao!

An MJR Life Update...

It's been extremely busy for me these past few weeks. School's been as busy as ever, my personal life has been turned upside-down & right side-up again, & while my health has been gradually improving since leaving the hospital, my body doesn't quite seem to have that same vim & vigor that I used to. Very hectic.

My film for school has been inching along at what seems to be a snail's pace. After thinking about it throughout the course of my hospital stay, I decided to scrap everything I had thus far & start over. I didn't lose much, but I'm still basically starting from scratch again. 

After learning a few new tricks & a bit of on-site practice, I've definitely believed that I've improved somewhat in Flash. & although I'm really ruing the idea, I'm gonna do my whole film in Flash. While I'm animating in Flash like I would on paper, it feels like I'm taking the easy way out or I'm cheating.  It shouldn't really bother me, but it does. Either way, it'll save me loads of time & hopefully with the upcoming spring break, I can really hunker down & get as much of it done as I can. As more of it comes through, I'll make sure to put bits & pieces of it up here to show progress.

(speaking of Flash, here's a little test I did as an assignment for a class. As far as animation goes, this'll probably be close to what my final film'll look like: LINK)

I've also got a truckload of drawings & art I've been looking forward to scanning. Hopefully I'll scan as much of it as I can tomorrow & that'll provide a few weeks worth of stuff to post here. 

-& just to throw it out there, I watched all 16 DVD's of the Richard Williams Master Class. They've been a real inspiration & help for me. I highly recommend them, so if you can, get your hands on them & lend an ear to the master himself. 

To finish up for today, I just want to say that I've had a lot on my mind over the past month & I'd like to share at least a small fraction of my thoughts here, whether it's worth it or not. It probably won't be to prolific or well worded, but getting even just a portion of it helps me feel a little bit better. Keep an eye open for that.

Cheers n' cheerio!

For the Birds to the Dogs...

These last few weeks have been so busy I haven't had any time to post anything. But fortunately, most of the work is finally done with & out of the way, including my segments for $ooPaH NIN10Doh!, which I shall elaborate on soon. But for now, the new main event in my life is this:

This little guy is the star of my FIRST REAL FILM! Until April of next year, I shall be hard at work on a 2-3 minute film here at SVA. I just completed the rough storyboard for the film & presented it to the class, which was accepted fairly well. Now I'm just fine tuning a few bits of the story, & then I'll start production! If anyone would like to see/hear the story, let me know & I'll write it out &/or post a few panels of my storyboard up to check out.

I plan on having the film being almost completely without dialogue (maybe a background voice or two in the beginning, but nothing important to the story). I wanna try doing something without dialogue & to just tell the story with actions, poses & expressions. I already know that it's gonna be a difficult film to animate, but I like a good challenge. I don't do something because I feel obliged or pressured to do it. I WANT to do it! Sure, it'll be a living hell to make, but the payoff at the end when I see it up on the screen is always worth the labor pains.

***By the way, I'm going to be posting my latest sketchbooks bit by bit up here in the next few days & I'd like an opinion....would you rather have each individual page posted on it's own or would you rather have me compile the "good" images all together in Photoshop & post them all on one/two pages?