A Few More Tests

So I've been doing a few more tests for the MA film Trail of Crimson. The first is trying to get a bird to blink, which has been a lot harder than anticipated -_- I think the movement and timing are ok now (after many many tries!) but the shading on the half-closed position is not right - it needs to be lighter on the lid, so I'll be fixing that shortly.

EDIT: here's a newer, hopefully somewhat better one ~

The next is the final shot which will lead into the credits. I don't yet have a list but when I do I'll be trying different things with the text. For now I've just tried a sink into the blood and then fade to black, nice and simple. But of course, it'll depend on the music and feel of the scene, which the Director will be able to enlighten me on soon. EDIT: for some reason the fade to black doesn't seem to come in, so...will have to check that out -_-

Another shot I'm working on is a death shot that I don't really want to put up as I don't want to spoil the film! But for that I'm going to have to do a frame by frame edit of the colour, adding in a red tint for each part. 

Of course I've been working on the write-on effect with the text, and have now added a reverse bleed to give it a nice way of fading out. Below is the basic test.

For some reason it won't let me upload a decent quality video of the scene itself. I'm going to try making it smaller to see if that's an issue. For the effect itself, I was trying a few things with the mask - putting the text in a way that suggested it was being written on the mask itself, but it just wasn't working at all. So the title is larger and visible here, with a bit of a red blur/glow and subtracted so that it fades into the scene itself....

Ah so it may have been the size issue, as here is a much smaller one. Unfortunately this means the quality is veeeery low -_- but hopefully you'll get an idea and I'll try get a better quality one up soon :)

EDIT: for some reason the dot on the i disappears and then reappears, causes a flicker. I think I know what the issue is, so I'll fix that and then re-upload ~_~

Last Day on Work Experience

Sadly another week has gone rapidly by and it's Friday already!! It's been so busy again, hence the lack of updating, but this week has been very much art based in contrast to the production work I did last week.

I started off with an animatic for Soli and Mo, just a test so Lucy could see how I managed. It took me most of the day so that was Monday done, but when Lucy checked it she said she was really pleased ^_^ As Soli and Mo has been aired already, she said it was fine for me to put it up here (though if there are any problems I can take it down anytime)

On Tuesday I was introduced to the new show The Abadas and spent the day doing character sketches to get used to the style and shapes so that I could spend the rest of the week storyboarding. I worked on the second scene of episode two, though of course it won't be used or anything, it's just so Lucy can again see how I manage. I'm not the biggest fan of storyboarding, and it's certainly not a talent of mine, but I love the characters so I enjoyed doing it. I did about 30 pages of elements which took me all of Wednesday. My biggest issue was that I chose to do it traditionally as I can't draw digitally, which meant it needed a lot of compositing and clean up in Photoshop, which I spent all of Thursday doing - 43 final panels.

Of course, as Abadas is a new show I can't put up any of the sketches or storyboards on here, but Lucy's been very kind and allowed me to take what I've done to show my tutors, meaning that these two weeks can go properly towards my degree ^_^

This afternoon I'm going to put my storyboards into an animatic, as I was going to continue storyboarding but someone else needed the script. I may get a chance to continue later, but for now I'll try timing out what I've done in Premiere.

Overall I've adored my time at Dinamo - it really surprised me how much I enjoyed everything I've done and how great a place it is to work. As I mentioned before, everyone here is so awesome and made me feel so welcome, and I really appreciate all the help everyone gave me. It was cool meeting artists that I've admired for a while on places like Deviant Art and stuff, and seeing how relaxed and yet focused and hardworking a real studio is. It's got a very different atmosphere than University, but at the same time everyone is happy and friendly, and it feels like it would be very easy to become part of the team ^_^

As far as myself goes, Lucy has mentioned a few things she wants me to look at, though nothing is concrete yet, but I know that as soon a chance arrives, I'll be trying my best to get back in to Dinamo!!

Dinamo Update :)

Ok so it's Sunday and thankfully I took the day off work - so tired!! Dinamo has been very busy and I had a family reunion yesterday, so this is my first chance for a break really >.<

But yes, Dinamo. So as I mentioned I was doing a lot of audio cutting, which continued til Thursday lunchtime, at which point I finished all the current recordings for Soli and Mo ^_^ The next job I was given was to transfer all of the schedule for the new show Abadas over onto Lucy's personal schedule, week by week, for every job throughout production (outlines, scripts, layouts, audio, dialogue, animation, cg, comping, etc etc so many!!).

That took until Friday lunchtime, and it was quite relaxing and really informative as I got to see exactly how each part of the process is structured and arranged, working with each other section and of course, how each episode's production relates to the next.

After I'd finished with that, Lucy showed me how to do the script breakdowns for the animators - using an example episode that had already been animated for the Welsh version, I had to go through, time each shot, write out what format it was in, and then write down everything that happened in it - dialogue, actions etc. Well, I think that's what I was meant to do anyway - I finished it just as the work day ended so I haven't had feedback from Lucy yet. I'm hoping I did ok!!

Anyway, Lucy said she'll go through the entire production process with me at the beginning of this week, so that should be awesome ^_^ I'm hoping then that I can just get on with more work and show how much I really want to be there!!

I'll be very sad when I have to go back to Uni...Dinamo is just such a great place and everyone there is awesome ^_^ Roll on the time when I can apply for a job!!

Dinamo Update

I said I'd blog every night after Dinamo but as of yet I don't have much to put up on here. I have been reeeeeeaally busy - currently cut audio for about 5 episodes of their children's cartoon Soli and Mo, and the actors are so cute with their lines, it's been fun ^_^ though hurting my back a lot -_- Also being doing bits of research and things, but hopefully I'll have more variety after the audio has all be done.

Dinamo itself is awesome - I love the place and everyone's really nice :) been having lunch in different places - there's a lot more around that industrial estate than you first realise!

Anyway, that's all for now. I'd planned to do some Uni work in the evenings but I'm so tired, I haven't done any yet. Hopefully I'll get used to the routine and can catch up soon :)

Character Work

Well I was uploading tests for Trail of Crimson, but Blogger seems to have decided that videos are the devil's work and cannot be uploaded -_-

So, seeing as how I haven't updated my character work in an awfully long time, I figured I'd do that instead ^_^ Below are the development and colour keys for Rae, Lucian, the Monarch and Niamh, with annotations that you can hopefully still read (not sure on the resolution of the uploads on this -_-).

Quick Tests

OK so another addition to my variety of projects is a MA film called Trail of Crimson. Writer/Director Victoria Rodway and Producer Glen Biseker asked me on board to complete a shot of a bird in the film by making it blink, and then I ended up doing both the opening and closing sequences too! I'm really happy about this as the film looks amazing (see the website at www.trailofcrimson.co.uk) and it's very much in my area of interest, so I'm pleased to be able to work on something like this, and also it let's me use the After Effects skills I built up in previous projects.

The only issue at the moment is that they're not quite sure what they'd like for the sequences, and as they're unfamiliar with After Effects' capabilities they don't know what they can ask for, so I decided to a number of quick tests to help them think of what they'd like in the sequences. At the moment I've just looked at text possibilities, a few examples of camera moves and the write on 'stroke' effect, which looks pretty successful.

I still have a lot to do of course, and I'd like to show them some examples of nice flowing shapes around the theme of ink, blood and handwriting - something artistic, smooth and gothic, matching the film itself. I'm exploring examples online and looking at what I can work with, so hopefully I'll have some more tests up soon, but I thought I'd pop these simple ones up for now!