frustrated and confused...

What the hell is going onnnnnn?!? I've been working on this scene forever and what the fuck. It's super hard to find the time to work on it so it's coming along so damn slowly. And I just shot a quick pencil test and it's hard to tell if it's crap or if it's ok. o_0 I'm just sayin'.

I've been working...

 a breakdown wip

a clean up drawing

breakdown drawing wip

dim sum and animation... are they not besties?

 

my favourite pencils and pencil sharpeners

Busy Recently

Adventures in San Francisco have been keeping me very busy recently. Also I've been catching up on Breaking Bad.

New Pencil Test - scenes 5 - 6

Well, my craigslist ad got flagged and taken down by someone grouchy, twice. Oh well. Let me know if you want to try inbetweening or clean up on my hand drawn short film. I'm pretty sure that we can learn from each other. I would love to hear about other people's animation and clean up methods. I recently posted that I've decided to fully animate and take to clean up only a handful of scenes. A day after that I had the brilliant idea to animate the rest of the scenes that I want to but keep them as pencil tests and release the whole film as a special edition pencil test version! I love pencils tests. Everyone does. Don't you?

Please enjoy this latest pencil test of scenes 5 and 6. This time there is zero warping of the image since these drawings were scanned and not quickly shot with a blurry and crooked webcam. There are no inbetweens so it's looking chunkier than the last pencil test... but it does have a line drawing version of the background!!

Pickled Scene 6: Updated Pencil Test

Aw shit, it's 5am. I stayed up way too late watching Breaking Bad. That show is amazing! Here is an updated pencil test. Next step, I'll clean up the keys, finish the breakdowns and then bust out the inbetweens. So glad to FINALLY have the keys how I want them. I was being perfectionist. Also, when you have shows on in the background you work much slower. I need to keep the netflix away.

Thinking about Birdie's Arc

I've been working a bit on Pickled recently but it's slow going. I've been working for a long time on a pencil test of two shots that hookup. It's coming along technically. My recent task is to really think about how Birdie feels and what she's projecting in the film and in this shot. I feel like I should do rough pencil tests of her throughout the film before focusing in on any given shots. Which seems overwhelming. Creating pencils tests for 3 minutes of screen time and then going back to those tests later, scene by scene will probably be a bit confusing. I think the benefits will outweigh the negatives though. Visually rough blocking out a clear character arc in detail before focusing in seems like a great idea.

This week I watched Indie Game: The Movie and Brave

On Monday I purchased and watched Indie Game: The Movie and last night I was lucky enough to see an advance screening of Brave! Both were awesome and inspirational. You can purchase Indie Game: The Movie here: http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/. The film follows several game makers while they are working on their independent projects. I love seeing their devotion, drive and perfectionism. Brave was not the action packed mysterious fairy tale I had imagined, but more of a situation comedy and heavy on character interactions. I guess I had imagined something heavier and darker. I really enjoyed the mom and dad characters as well as the clan leaders. Well... Merida and her brothers and the clan leader's sons were all awesome too. A lot of really entertaining characters. There was one shot in the film that is utterly breathtaking in terms of animation quality. The shot when young Merida sits on the grass and her dad has just gifted her a bow. Her reaction. I have to see that again.

WIP

Digging for Artifacts (rediscovering old work is scary)

I finally opened up the plastic bag of drawings I brought with me here from Australia... all the paper inside feels so precious! I feel like I need to wear special gloves and keep them away from harsh light and keep them in their plastic home, away from air... I started to animate 2 scenes while still in Oz and now I'm settled and prepared enough to start on them again. But it's been about 6 months since I drew the keys!!! ARGH! It's scary going back to work that is so old now and I'm going to have to remember where I was at... 

Here's my new desk! I've got my work laptop and my light tracer there. I'm going through everything.

Here are some of the backgrounds. I'd love to give them away one day as gifts or something... Like I said, they feel precious... I spent a lot of time fleshing out bg's before finally cleaning them all up digitally.

And here is my paper punching station on the floor! I've got a lot less space here in San Francisco and a much smaller desk. I do actually have a little cabinet that I bought to store stuff from Ikea when I moved here a few months ago and haven't put it together yet... Old punchy should probably find a home there.

slow but steady

I'm still struggling, as usual, to balance all the aspects in my life. But since my last post I feel pretty good about the amount of work I've done on Pickled! This past weekend I did work, for my job. But the previous two weekends were all about Pickled. Part of the reason I was doing work over the weekend was because I had a massive headache on Friday and had to take the day off. And on President's Day weekend I was really sick. So with all the down time, I needed to do some catch up.

But anyway, I've put down at least basic rough paint for all the backgrounds now (well except the montage ones), I prettied up the leica/animatic enough to show to a couple friends at work and I punched a stack of animation paper.

Next time I make a film... I will definitely use a different approach. I'm dying to put together a piece FAST! (Well, not necessarily the story elements), but to just crank out some emotional stuff that's relevant to me or fun or experimental... Maybe just do pencil tests and no clean up... Something less all consuming.

12 days, Pickle Free

UGH. It's been 12 days since I have been able to work on Pickled. My dad was in town the past couple weekends and I had a major deadline at work yesterday. I feel chaotic... I need to clean and do laundry, get groceries and friends are asking me out for drinks... Oh yeah, my personal trainer who I regret signing up for 3 sessions with is going to kill me for eating the whole world yesterday and not exercising enough. I'm angry that I never have time to draw... or play my ukelele... or work on Pickled.

Balance! There's been little 'semblence of it for me recently.

On Thursday I went to a mini concert by Lana Del Rey and then waitied 3.5 hours to meet her and get her signature. I wore my 6 inch platform heels. Actually they aren't that bad in terms of pain due to longterm standing up, but 3.5 hours of not walking/sitting and just standing will suck no matter what shoes you're wearing. I got there a couple minutes late and only heard 3 songs. I guess her song list that evening was very short, meant as a bonus to the real event of the evening; the signing! We weren't allowed to take photos which sucked as I lugged my Polaroid around the whole night. I got a snap with my phone while in line before realising the no photo rule. (She's in the center of the photo above in white!) She really was sweet and gave some time to every person in line. All 300 people! It meant she missed her flight home :P It was totally worth it to wait in line. Now on to some background painting!!!