Acorns is now Online! DVD Pre-Order!

Guess what everyone? Acorns is finally online! Most of the festivals I've entered are over now so I thought it was about time I got it online! Hope you enjoy it :)

A year of very hard work, my sisters, lecturers, friends and a small army of colourists and my devoted 'scanner' made this film possible and I'm very pleased with what we were able to accomplish. A year and a half on, sure there are some things I would change but I think it's done well for what it is. :)

"Upon a hill grows a grand Oak tree, which also happens to be home to a playful tree Spirit. Amber, a curious youngster, befriends this Spirit and throughout the seasons they form the strongest of friendships. Every day the Spirit gives Amber an acorn to plant, but the little girl is naive and threads them onto a necklace instead. One night, disaster strikes and Amber must realise the importance of caring for nature."

Winner of the Royal Television Society Wales Centre 2012 Award for Student Animation.

“Well told and animated with just the sort of design and animation idiosyncrasies that tickle my fancy. Brilliant.”  

Robin Shaw, Co-Director of "The Snowman and the Snowdog" (2012)

Please watch/like/share/insert-social-networking-norm-here and most of all, hope you like it! I'd really appreciate any comments you might have so I can take note for my next film. :)

In other news, I also have a Pre-Order for the DVD on my Storenvy page! If you use the Early Bird code ACORNFILM2014 you can get 20% off at the checkout!

Acorns [DVD] Storenvy Pre-Order

I've worked very hard to get a professional product together with nice motion menus on the DVD and it will have a mini full-colour art booklet too so it's not to be missed!! I plan to have the DVDs ready to dispatch early this year! Also note that although the currency on Storenvy is in US Dollars, the DVD will ship from the UK!

Hope you enjoy it! :)
Love Gemma, Amber and the Tree Spirit x

Acorns Official Trailer

At last, here it is! I finally found some time this afternoon to edit a trailer for my graduation film, Acorns. It's a short 30 second mash-up that hopefully establishes the story enough to keep you interested! Enjoy!

It was difficult to edit to say the least as I needed to keep it very short but also cohesive. Other short film trailers just have an excerpt from the very beginning of the film, but I felt that didn't work here so I had to experiment with different shots and kept cutting lots out until it worked (which hopefully it does!). Expect the full film to make its' online debut sometime next year! :)

Comments and feedback welcome as always!

Another Rough Animatic

The past week and a half has all gone into redrawing my storyboard from scratch working from my new synopsis and shot list, which has been roughly edited into my third animatic, see below. It's much longer than what I had before (199 drawings instead of 174 and 5:10mins instead of 3:44mins), which will be a problem if I don't cut it down!

I showed it to James Manning yesterday for feedback and we agreed it was an improvement from the previous animatic. The structure makes a lot more sense with the acorns as a device. His main comments was to give the right moments more space, specifically drawing out the ending so that there is enough time for the emotions to play out. The middle montage segment also requires sharper editing so that we don't spend too much time on what's not as important.

James also noticed that the Spirit is not acting "Spirit-like" at the moment and performs so much like a squirrel that it might as well be a squirrel as a metaphor for the spirit instead of a spirit acting as nature. I will consider this as an option, but I did want to express a magical/mystical side to the story and Amber's imagination, so I will also see about making it more spirit-like in movement and design. This is not the final design for the Spirit anyway, but was a temporary solution for my storyboard.

We also spoke about introducing the Spirit into the story first instead of the girl like in my previous animatic as it was a more interesting perspective. I changed it this time around because I thought it would be better to show the ordinary and then the extra-ordinary, but then it might be seen as odd.

I will also need to look at films such as The Sword in the Stone (1963) for their squirrel scenes and begin pre-vis tests in soft, pastel colour like in my animatic.

After seeing James, myself and Jessica Leslau went to Leonie Sharrock's lecture for the MA animation students to show them our animatics. We caught the end of their lecture which was about composition in Cinderella and going from written scripts to visual storyboards. It was similar to a lecture I had in first year, but was more detailed and very interesting.

Jess showed her animatic first; Leonie wanted each of us to play them without preamble, so the MA's had no idea what our stories were about so they could judge them visually as outsiders. The students understood Jess' film about Babbit (http://arabbitcalledbabbit.blogspot.com/) pretty much immediately. There were some film language issues (crossing the line, continuity etc) but these were minor and can easily be addressed.

My film was not as instantly apparent as Babbit, the message (caring for nature, not abusing it) was confused, and I think this is largely because my Spirit reacts differently to Amber's selfishness... sometimes it is angry, other times forgiving and will switch between giving her acorns, having her take them away and reluctantly giving them to her. The Spirit is supposed to give them to her willingly to teach her and is exasperated with her abuse of nature. So that needs to be more obvious.

The characters came across well, the students agreed that Amber needs to be very selfish and greedy but still very young, so the audience sees her as a poor naive girl, rather than a mean one: "Aww bless her".

Finally, the tree needs to definitely be destroyed: completely burned and in pieces, rather than still standing and with leaves still on. I also need to redo my character designs still, playing with style and proportions of Amber to make her more interesting/likeable and the Spirit more spirit-like.

I've been compiling an image of character art and film stills that inspire me for Amber, particularly with younger girl characters that are more like Amber now that she will be 5-6 years old. I found it very difficult to find 5 year old female characters in the leading role of a film or series in Britain. There's Mei in My Neighbour Totoro, Ponyo, Aisling in The Secret of Kells, Boo in Monsters Inc., Bonnie in Toy Story 3 and Lilo in Lilo & Stitch, but these are all American, Japanese or Irish so it will be tricky to find a point of reference to make Amber feel more British. Here's the compilation, I'll be using it this week to redesign my style and characters. I'll make another one for my Spirit and for style/colour shortly.