Acorns Production

It's been a while since I've had time to update my production blog here, I've been animating solidly for the past two months, including over Easter break and it's all starting to come to a close. Monday 23rd April was our rough cut critique which went really well for everyone. We all got good feedback and there were no real drastic situations where work was scrapped although some got suggestions for minor changes.

My rough cut was a mixture of finished composited shots, line tests and still quite a few pieces of animatic, though there wasn't time to add some of my work, so it wasn't an accurate portrayal of my progress. Nonetheless my fellow students and tutors seemed very pleased with my progress and although my film will not be completely coloured and composited by the deadline (14th May!!), it will definitely be animated which is fine, as long as it is complete for our grad show and festival submissions! It's all very exciting!

Here is my shot list as of today. The turquoise pen marks everything that is completed through various stages. The first three columns are the most important right now as that entails all of the drawing which is nearly done now.

Clearly there is still much to do overall, but I am confident that the animation aspect will be at the very least, completely keyed out by the deadline. I am getting a tighter edit together for this Tuesday (8th) so that my composer can get a timed soundtrack together as my animation has lengthened the runtime of my film again! What I was hoping to keep under four minutes is now four and a half minutes, but it called for longer pauses here and there so it is for the best. After that it will be a week of colouring and compositing, the May Ball and then Joanna Quinn's Masterclass!

The composited shots so far are looking great and I cannot wait to get some previews up and some stills when I get the time, for now, I'm motoring on with the animation in time for our last Uni deadline! There's a whole lot more I'd like to talk about but I will have to update with it another time... but for now, everything is going smoothly and in other news I got engaged to my boyfriend of four years a few weeks ago so there's lots going on but too much to do!

I will end this post with the first still from my film. :)

I'll be updating again soon with lots of cool things and hopefully more pictures!
Bye for now! :)

Autumn Colour Palette

Well there's no more denying it, production has officially begun on Acorns! I already have some interest from 2nd years and MA students at Newport willing to help with colouring and effects, so I'm getting everything organised so they can get started as well as animating new shots to be cleaned and coloured.

For this I have completed a colour sheet for the three Autumn scenes to make the production process easier when enlisting the help of digital colourists! I included the # number of the colours as well so that it will stay consistent.

Should have more of these (and eventually some pencil tests too) very soon!

Schedule

In our Monday seminars a couple of weeks ago, Caroline Parsons suggested we get some production schedules done for next semester. I have been reading a production design book by Hans Bacher called Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation which had this really helpful graph roughly plotting the production pipeline for an animated feature made in 18 months.



I used this as a template to make my own production pipeline, but condensed it to a 9 month schedule for my film.

 Once I had done this, I went into Microsoft Excel to make a more detailed Production schedule, referencing my blog, calender and notes to input the dates for my work thus far and then roughly plot the work I'll be doing next semester with room for contingency time on weekends and Dissertation writing and deadlines.

It took a lot longer than I originally thought, but it is much more detailed than the pipeline and goes from the start of year in September, right through to our deadline in May.

Ideas Pitch

Hello and welcome to the production blog for my final film at Newport University. :)

Today was the pitching session for my fellow third years and I. Overall our ideas were well-received but there is still much to do to make our films stand out from the crowd!

My film is about an unlikely friendship between girl and tree spirit, how they grow up together and eventually move on from the loss of that friendship.

This is the synopsis that I presented today:

Upon a hill grows an ancient Oak tree, which also happens to be  home to a playful tree Spirit. Amber, an imaginative and curious youngster, befriends this Spirit and through the years and seasons they form the strongest of friendships. Eventually Amber reaches adulthood and although her personality is no different from the little girl she once was, the Spirit knows it’s time for her to grow up.

One night, the Oak and Spirit that was once the centre of Amber’s life is struck down by lightning. Heartbroken at the loss of her dearest friend, she breaks down. But when she sees a tiny sapling tree rising from the destruction, the seed of change starts to grow inside her.

And here is some of my initial concept art for my main character, Amber, and the grand old Oak Tree.

My feedback basically suggested that I put limitations on my animation to reduce the workload and avoid the "full" Disney-style animation that I'm used to as I'm working individually on this. Possibly even animating mostly in silhouette... all these decisions will be worked through in the coming months. All my progress will be posted here so do check back for more updates.

Thanks for reading, see you again soon!
Gemma