The Day Before Hand In!

My final post! Just seems so weird, what now? have i truly finished? Yes i have, i have no more time left, i have a fully finished film, thats it...

Just feels so surreal, 3 years of university all to come to an end so quickly. Going out with a bang with my final short. I have enjoyed every minute of this process and will be sad to leave the studio for the last time.

I feel more inspired than ever though funnily enough, i thought i would be tired and fed up with any kind of animation but i want to get stuck in with a new project.

Hello Again

Oops,

So i haven't been updating for a while, but this is simply because I've been pushing forward with this project, and i think its going well.

I've had ups and downs with this project, but overall i think i'm doing well. Less than 3 weeks left (Holy Hell) and i'm almost at the finish line, which is both exciting and absolutely terrifying!!

I'm currently at the point of putting my animation together, hopefully I've shot all i need to and can just put it together easily... wait? EASILY? No really, i think?

I was slightly worried last week on the last day before we could get back into the studio during the Easter hols, I'm back in again tomorrow. Yes it was a dark time, i had trouble when looking at all my animations roughly put together in premiere pro (Uh oh) it looks rubbish i told myself, its doesn't flow together, IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!! So i decided to have time away from my project and try to forget about it for the first time in months. I then showed a clip of my puppet Nan to my Mother, which went down.. well? Almost making her cry! Oh dear!! It most definitely touched a soft spot, which gave me hope that i can make this work!!

I've been looking at making my cut outs 3D in after effects, which i practiced with one scene and it seemed to work pretty well, not sure if it will work on everything but i'm going to experiment tomorrow with the backgrounds. I still need to trace the backgrounds so i can create a boil effect to make it a bit more interesting.

Today I've been trying to put my puppet scenes together, and i think they worked well.

I can't wait to finish my film just so i can add sound!!!!

SOUND!!!!

I met with the sound guy today to talk music for my piece. Originally i wanted a musical piece and dialog spoken by a little girl, however i don't want to over kill with this and i know how effective a small bit of music can be,

My tutor for sound talked about create atmospheric stuff for my piece, maybe even experiment with different sounds and mix the sounds to what you actually see on screen, so creating another sense of place to what you see ( if that makes sense) which got me quite excited to get started with that! i'm thinking maybe give the dialog a miss, and experiment with sounds more and simple melodies and possible build up the film and create lots of emotion through it.

I mentioned Hans Zimmer as inspiration i know he's slightly other the top (but only slightly) but i do love his stuff and want to build up emotion with my piece like he does. He told me to listen to Max Richter and Clint Mansell which i'm currently doing, Rickter is awesome!! Almost perfect for what i want to create (some of his songs)

EXCITING!!!!!!

So Far...

I've not written on here for a while so i've kind of forgotten where i'm at, so i'm just going to update thus far.

The last week or so i've been practising with after effects, i used premiere pro the week before just to see how the piece is sowing together, but i'm preferring after effects at the moment as theres a lot more i can do with my cut outs.

The cut outs themselves are working really well, some minor problems and errors, for example not conforming from dragon frame then adding a image sequence only to play back and find dragon frame has kept all the deleted images i'd taken, so it jumped around, ALWAYS REMEMBER TO CONFORM!

I'd been worrying about backgrounds for a while, until i had an idea that i wasn't sure if would work or not? i've tried some test images, and i think they look quite nice, basic my image on the letter, after the first ones i did someone gave me the idea to zoom even more into the letter for the background so i tried that later.

I'm not too sure how the puppet will look on this background also, so i was thinking of having her immersed in blackness pretty much, with a spot light on her and the bed, then when the camera moves away from her it will fade into the letter backgrounds. 

In the most recent thing i've done i've put together the beginning shots and added a little fog effect and a background to see what it would turn out like

Here that is..

I need to double check i'm rendering right, or exporting etc, before doing any final pieces. i need to reopen a couple of my scenes to conform, try and somehow removed the number 2 from the bird scene in after effects and add more fog as its a bit too subtle. 

My stop motion puppet of the Grandma... what can i say about that? Well, for starters some of the compositions i've been using on some of the shots work brilliantly, more than just to cover bits that are wrong, just to add more to the final output and emotion i think. 

Sadly as i watch my stop motion animating with the puppet i see more and more thats wrong with it, and i know i can do a lot better!! So as of next week i shall be re shooting my puppet, hopefully with more smoother actions, i really need to take my time with each individual shot.

Green screening is going well, removing isn't a problem, the reflection on the metal isn't too bad either, which is something less to worry about! 

The background i'm still unsure if its too dull? or it needs something more? an effect? border? what else could i do to push it? maybe do some more research into this, possibly add a stroke on the animation cut outs?

MORE TESTS AND EXPERIMENTS!! yey me...

On a more personal level, i'm finding this process extremely emotionally draining!! Simple because of the story behind my project and the hours being put in to create such scenes, i'm enjoying every minute of it though, its tough at times but things seems to work out really well. I keep going from it looks awful, to it looks brilliant, so i'm not sure if i'm maybe being too harsh on myself, or simply know when something isn't working.

Only 1 week till easter, oh man oh man!!

Testing a scene

Yup, that's right! after 2 weeks of shootings I'm seeing what they could look like when put together, so I opened up premiere pro and began...

Some of the shots work really well, others I'm not too sure yet. Whether I'm being to picky or they simply don't work I'm also not sure.

Yeh it's pretty bad I think, but just for a test it gives me a good idea on what I'm going to be ending up with in the end.

I think the hands close up and the close up of her face when she has her hands on her face works really well, the more wider shots of the full bed seem a bit odd for some reason and I'm not too sure why yet.

Puppet animation so far...

So I've been animating my puppet for the past week and its had its ups and downs. I feel like im starting to get to know my puppet and animating is slowly becoming... not easier because its a difficult process but definitely more easier to get stuck into? are those the words I'm looking for?

Anyways, yesterday I did a really good few seconds of animation, well I think so need to get someone to check it out. The only issues I've had are the materials on the puppet. I'm learning that with a puppet the movements have to be ridiculously miniscule to look right on camera. The quilt and her gown are becoming a slight problem, but if I keep focused when animating a shot I can generally get away with these tiny errors, for example, if I accidentally move the quilt I will move her hands so it appears like a secondary motion of the hands moving onto the bed, which is working thus far... PHEW! Sadly though when you change something too much, there's no going back, I hate that jumpiness of the materials, so I need to be sooooooo careful when altering my puppet for the next shot!

So far its been the full shot of my puppet in the bed, so I'm thinking of trying some different angles today to see what I can do and really push the composition, may make it that more interesting to view.

Close up of the eyes, moving and blinking
The hands moving
back of head shot (which I need anyways)

I'm quite excited to see what happens this morning.

Animating Puppets!

So today I planned a full sess of animating my puppet, sadly though I completely forgot that I had a full day of classes..

Freelance talk this afternoon, shortly followed by a 2 hour presenting class thing for the 1st and 2nd years, which was quite enjoyable actually.

So when I finally got to shoot something in the studio at 8pm at night, I learnt quite a bit.

The pillows and the mattress i've made doesn't really work, but I ended up using the mattress as a suspension for the quilt so it stayed up and didn't flop inside the frame for the mo.

I need to fix my puppet somehow, move the bed more into the centre so there are no shadows behind her and possible fill the bed sheet so its a bit more poofy.