[rough shot]

Only one shot done this week, since I was busy stuffing my face and sleeping. This is rough animation of Claire running into the forest. Also features the first fully coloured background!

[rough shots]

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

This is after the boy says "follow my voice" and Claire walks offscreen. The next video is afterwards--she walks towards the camera, it blurs out, and we see her again from behind walking off.

This is after her mom yells at her and we see Claire running back to the well.

[animatic v6]

This is the tweaked version of the animatic from last night and is the version I'll be showing the grads tomorrow!

[animatic v5]

There's still some tweaks I want to accomplish before the grad review on Wednesday, but in the sake of posting before 5pm...this one includes some more rough animation I've done and some shots have been re-staged. There's still some timing issues I'm working on, but I'll upload that version later tonight. Enjoy!

Oh, also, here's two colour tests I roughed out super quickly a week or so ago:

[new animatic]

Added some stuff as per Dave's notes on the climactic rope scene! The total running time is now 5:18 minutes.

[rough footage]

Bunch of rough shots!

The mother first entering Claire's room.

The bunny hopping across the screen! I had one with more squash and stretch, but it just looked too cartoony for my taste.

Rough of her climbing onto the well. The well needs to be a bit bigger, and I need to add a frame or two of anticipation before she swings herself up there.

Pretty self-explanatory: Claire blinking sadly down at the well.

Doing all this super rough animation is making me a bit nervous, but I know that it is actually helping me in the long run with making sure the movements are better and the like! 

[rough footage]

These are the two main shots I did this week, both mostly rough. I did two other shots too, but they're very short and for some reason aren't uploading properly here, so I'm just glad these two are.

I need to fix the timing on this, and there's no audio yet, but this is when Claire's mom says she's grounded and walks past, picking up the dinosaur toys and exiting. Claire yells "that's not fair" at the end, but it's not synced yet. 

And this a rough of the mother exiting Claire's room with the toys.

I'll try to figure out how to upload the other shots I did for next week's blog, but it's almost 5 and I don't think I'll get them working in time to have them up this week. As I'm moving into shots with more complicated movements, I think I'm going to have to do animation that's way more rough than what I've been outputting so far. For example, this week I have to do the shot where she climbs up onto the well while talking, so that'll need a few passes before the move is clean.

[rough footage]

I'm no longer technically ahead of schedule, since I've been going home a lot this month and doing other fun things, but I re-scheduled out some shots and if I keep going into Christmas break, I should be done with all my rough animation by January. As of now, I have a minute and twenty seconds of rough footage done. Here are the three shots I did this week:

This is her looking down into the well at the boy, after walking up to the well in the previous shot.

This is...quite frankly, appalling; I need to redo it and fix the volume and frame rates, but I figured I'd put it up here to prove that I had actually done it, haha.

This is as she's walking away after having jumped off the well; the boy says "Will you be back?" and this is her response.

[two rough shots]

Not much this week! Two shots done. The first is Claire talking to her mother and then turning her head to listen as her mother's footsteps fade away, the second is when she's down in the well clutching her broken ankle and hears the boy's voice.

[revised animatic]

Probably could have revised the existing storyboards...but here it is with my rough animation and the dialogue cut in!

I'm going to try and re-board a lot of stuff, like the sequence where she's walking through the forest. But this is my temporary revised animatic.

[rough footage]

I was getting over a cold this entire week, so my output probably wasn't what it could have been. But I still got some rough stuff done!

From when we're looking into the well. This is just the rough lineart/texture for the background; I'm planning on touching up the well's interior in Photoshop.

This is only about half the scene. I still need to animate her doing some action I haven't decided (maybe brushing off her dress?) and reacting to hearing her mother come up the stairs.

Super boring footage of Claire from the mom's POV, as she's berating her for not cleaning her room.

Rough animation of after Claire has fallen in the well, when she opens her eyes.

Hopefully this coming week will be more productive than this last one has been, haha.

[backgrounds + footage]

I didn't get a chance to work much this weekend, but I'm still technically ahead of schedule, so I don't feel that bad! Mostly backgrounds were done anyway. These aren't colour corrected, so next time you see them they'll be more black and white and less sepia. More in keeping with the others you've seen.

The first time we see the well. I'm still tweaking it a little. Claire's head would be in the bottom right-hand corner.

View up from the well at Claire's face, when she's talking.

Rough footage!

The scene where she walks to the windowsill and hoists herself up. I haven't added the dress yet and I think I might keep going with the animation and include her swinging both her legs over the sill. Also, the colour's probably won't be that saturated? We'll see.

Her walking to the well for the first time.

I'm still feeling pretty good about all this. I'm taking revision notes as I go along. My goal is to finish all the rough animation, or at least most of it, this semestre, and spend next semestre colouring and adding the revisions people have suggested.

[rough footage]

I was going to have three videos to show you guys, but I saved wrong and lost twelve seconds of footage, aka the scene where she gets up, looks around, and walks off. I have an older video version of it I'll post here, but I need to redo it all again.

A rather floaty run cycle, but I'm trying to just get all the rough animation done right now.

The background will be changed stylistically, but this is where she's laughing, playing with her dinosaurs, then hears her mother coming up the stairs.

The older version of the lost scene. The newer version had the walk cycle fixed.

Another test background image.

EDIT: I FOUND THE FRAMES OH MY GOD. I almost died. I have to re-composite them all, but still. Whew.

[thumbnails]

One of the things I'm really struggling with right now is interesting shots and camera angles. This week I'm planning to watch some movies and take some notes, try to figure out how to nail down the mood. Until then, here's some thumbnails I did in an attempt to "spice up" some previously boring shots. I'm going to be doing this all next week as well, so these are just the first few.

[new concept art]

still working on better compositions and trying to figure out colour. WE SHALL SEEEE!!!!!

Unfinished. Just put up for class. Will remove later.

[a bit of viz-dev]

Just some more stuff I've been working on. Foliage studies, colour schemes, a bit more Claire stuff, with and without the hairpin.

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[character turnaround]

Here we go! This is the tentative colour scheme. I really like it, but I still have no idea how the backgrounds are gonna look, so it might change.

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EDIT: Because we're looking at blogs in the Toon Boom class right now--more concept art! 

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[colour help]

I'm still working on it, but right now I've definitely hit a colour rut. These are the schemes I've liked the most so far out of the several that I've done. Anyone have any thoughts? Help would be much appreciated. Thank you!

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EDIT: what do you guys think about this?

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[character designs: round 2 + first concept art]

Okay! I tweaked the design a bit. She might be a bit too tall now though. I also think I'm going to add some more fat on the arms and legs; I want her to be about 8-10 years old. What I need help on (besides any thoughts you guys have) is hair colour. I'm leaning away from the brown because I envision the scenes and colours of the backgrounds to be kind of darker, and I want her to be the lightest thing in the film. What do you guys think?

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Also, here's the first piece of concept art!

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[script treatment]

So obviously, I don't know quite how I'm going to handle the middle yet. But here's everything else!

___________

Mid-day. We open on a shot of a girl sitting in the centre of a very messy room. There are piles of toys and junk everywhere; clothes are haphazardly strewn about. The girl has cleared out a circle and is playing with two dinosaur dolls. The sun shines through the window and casts a shadow on her pale blonde hair as she chatters away, gesturing each doll in turn. All is well until heavy footsteps are heard ascending the stairs. The girl stops playing and looks at her door as it is opened, her mother trying (and failing) to step into the extremely messy room. She tells the girl that she has to clean her room today and the girl agrees. The mother shuts the door and the girl listens attentively, head cocked in the direction of the retreating parent, until the sound of footsteps has faded away. The girl then gets up and looks around her room, eyebrows furrowed as she silently counts each pile of junk in her room. Then, with a shrug, she makes her way to the window, opens it, and slides out.

As she runs away from the house, a mischievous smile on her lips, we pull back to see a wide expanse of forest, stark against a bright watercolour landscape. The trees are dark and threatening but the girl doesn’t hesitate, plunging right in. 

We hear a running stream as the girl walks through the forest, smiling and closing her eyes as the wind ruffles through her hair. A rabbit runs by and startles her, but she shakes it off quickly and keeps going. Suddenly, we hear the voice of a young boy wafting on the wind: “Hello?” The girl blinks and looks around. The voice continues: “Is anybody there?”

The girl follows the voice, responding hesitantly. The voice leads her to a clearing, with a slight hill in the centre. On the hill is an ordinary wishing well. It’s a bit old, with a deep brownish-red top and crumbling brick exterior. A worn bucket on a rope with a handle hangs above the mouth of the well. The grass in the clearing is lush and green, but wherever it touches the well, it is dead and prickly. The girl doesn’t notice; she follows the sound of the voice to the well and peers in. All she sees is blackness, but the voice keeps speaking. 

They talk the whole day, about parents and dinosaurs and all matter of different things. As the sun sets, the girl says that she has to leave. The boy wistfully asks her to say and she says she’d like to, but she really has to go home before her parents start to worry. She sneaks back into her window and climbs into bed.

A time-lapse or something showing the next week and her visits to the well coupled with not cleaning her room! The boy keeps telling her to come live with him away from nagging parents! She keeps refusing but hesitates more and more each time before saying no!

Nighttime. The girl is startled as her mother opens her door loudly. She tells the girl that she has been telling her to clean her room all week and she hasn’t done it. She works herself up into a motherly rage: nothing too mean or excessive, but clear exasperation. After she leaves, the girl slams the door behind her and climbs out her window, running to the well. She starts venting to the boy about parents and how mean they are and all the restrictions they put on her. He soothes her, saying that his parents were mean too and that’s why he ran away. He says that life really is perfect down in the well and she really should join him. She hesitates. Finally, she agrees. She turns the lever to lower the bucket until the rope is taut, then grabs onto it and begins to lower herself down. As she descends into blackness, the rope snaps. She screams as she falls.

We hear a sickening thud. As the full moon rises over the well, the girl is revealed at the bottom, clutching her ankle. She groans in pain, eyes clenching shut. The boy’s voice is heard again, reverberating through the well. He mentions that the girl is finally here and he’s so happy to meet her in person. As she opens her eyes and looks towards the voice, the moon rises higher, making the shadows fade from the spot where she’s looking. We look at her eyes as the shadows disappear and they widen in horror. The last shot of the film is the boy’s decaying skeleton: leg broken, jaw askew, cobwebs strung between bones and mossy wall. 

[character designs: round 1]

Just whipped this up! This is the design I'm thinking of working with for the Girl. I'm still tweaking it (i.e. I don't know if I'll go with that hair colour yet) and I'm aware of the discrepancies in height, dress length, etc. But I like to see all the steps of character evolution, so I'm posting step 1.

Thoughts?

[premises]

I have not given incredible thought to all of these yet. But they are my ideas. Yay?

1) Untitled Caterpillar Project

James and Larry are two best friends who also happen to be caterpillars. James is a quieter, more timid soul, while Larry wants to see the world. They grow up together and have lots of fun until one day, the inevitable happens: Larry turns into a butterfly. James has to cope with Larry's imminent departure and the fact that Larry is not as sad about it as James is.



2) Untitled Clock Horror Project

Amelia, a young girl, is very precocious and loves reading tales of the supernatural or fantastic. A story has been passed down her family for generations about a magical clock that has the ability to freeze time, either for yourself or another person, locking the person into one moment of time forever. This is Amelia's favourite story and the one that her mom tells her the most until, suddenly, her mother dies. Her dad marries his secretary from work. The story continues with Amelia's narration: she thinks that her stepmom doesn't like her until one day, for Amelia's twelfth birthday, her stepmom tells her that she has a present for her. She makes Amelia sit in a chair in the middle of a room with her eyes closed and says that she'll be back with her present soon. The ending line is "And I know that I'm just excited, and Dad says that makes time pass slower...but it feels like she's been gone for a very long time..." The camera pulls back to reveal that outside the waiting room, desolation and nuclear apocalypse has wreaked the city, leaving Amelia suspended forever in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.


3) The Boy in the Well

 The main character is an eight-year old girl. She is not a bad girl, but like most children, she doesn't like chores or responsibilities. She likes to get out of the house a lot and explore the woods behind her house as an escape from the grueling pressure (or so she sees it) of being at home. One day she discovers an old wishing well in the forest. There is the voice of a young boy emanating from the well. Over time the girl keeps coming back and talking to him, asking if he wants to get out of the well and go back to his home. He keeps insisting that it's better down in the well--there are no responsibilities, no parents, etc. After a scene where her parents yell at her, the girl decides to go into the well and join the boy...only to find that he's dead.  And there's no way out.

[test post]

Just testing out to see how this looks. I need a better blog title. Kristina Lendrum's Thesis Blog is so boring and obvious.