Jasmine Works on Backgrounds

Week twelve has come and gone. I have officially finished two full backgrounds, the sketch of the third and have started on the line art for that one as well. So far I’m just on schedule. I think I may run a week over for backgrounds but cutting a week into concepts shouldn't put me too far behind schedule as I've already done some concept sketches on the side. Hopefully next week I can get the opportunity to speak with someone from backgrounds because I have a few logistical issues I need help with. That's pretty much it so far, wish me luck!

- Jasmine

Jasmine Tackles Backgrounds!

Week ten is all gone and the time for my backgrounds to be finished is fast approaching. They’re taking me a surprisingly long time to complete but that's mostly due to me never having done one as seriously as the ones I'm doing now. Usually, a background is a kinda last minute affair for me but I want these ones to actually be good so I'm taking a bit longer on them. Things like perspective and making sure that if I make a chair, that my character can believably fit in it are things that I haven't had to think about when drawing before but are important now. So far I've completed one full background and gotten about ¾ of the line art for the second one done. I have 2 more to complete afterward so hopefully, I finish this one next week. Wish me luck!

- Jasmine

Jasmine Finishes her Animatic!

November 13th and 15th

Week 8 is over (I forgot to make one of these last week, oops) and with it, I have officially finished my animatic and started on my background concepts/ sketches. Hopefully next week I get the opportunity to speak with someone in the background area so that I have a bit of a better understanding of what’s going on. On other notes, I’m also very tired… probably because I’ve recently been affiliating myself with cringy children’s superhero cartoons into the wee hours of the morning and or re-watching some of my favourite Dreamworks animations (how to train your dragon and rise of the guardians were amazing). As such my sleep schedule has been a little lacking and my eyes like to do this thing where colours mush together when I’m tired. Good thing I have a PD day tomorrow. I will finally be able to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Next week is more backgrounds, let’s hope they go well!

- Jasmine

Molly Wraps Concept Art & Starts Storyboarding.

My art block seems to have resolved itself, so I've been able to finish most of the concept art this week. I decided to start storyboarding on my own so I didn't get too off track, so I surfed google for a solid 20 minutes trying to figure out how to show camera movements on individual shots and how to cut down on unnecessary frames. One thing I realized was that you have to be really efficient when storyboarding, which apparently means short-handing the drawings. I had to simplify my art style a lot for the concept art itself (I usually go towards realism), so the storyboards look nothing like the original designs lol

At the beginning of the placement, I told myself to have everything finished by the end of November so I could have more time to animate, but I doubt that's going to happen at this point, considering that I spent a month working on character design and procrastinating on storyboards. I think I only have backgrounds to work on before I start builds though, so I'm not as far behind as I thought. I'll try to work more efficiently over the next 5 weeks, and maybe I'll be ready to animate by the new year.

- Molly

Molly Needs a Break from Design

This week wasn't as busy as the last few, partially because it was a two-day week, and because I've spent most of my time fixing the concept art from last week. I'm having a bit of art block, which would be fine if it didn't affect how I draw the face (not surprised at this point). I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time on consistency when I should have moved on to backgrounds or something along those lines. I'll probably take a break from the design over the weekend, and hopefully, I'll finish by Thursday so I can move forward with the project.

- Molly

Rae Dabbles in After Effects

Hi! 

 

I only have about a month left to finish my film, I'm a little behind schedule, but I really want to complete the whole thing by my original deadline. I've been working on backgrounds for the past few weeks, as well as starting to put together some shots at home. I just started learning how to use After Effects to composite my shots, It's a really cool program, and I'm really excited to try out a bunch of effects on my film as I put it together. I started doing the first shot, and it was really cool to see all the elements I had done separately come together to bring the shot to life. I'm still working out the timing, but it's getting me more excited to finish the rest of my shots! Here is one of the unfinished backgrounds that I am working on! I'll have more finished backgrounds and stills to show next week!

 

 

-Rae"

Rae Explores Photoshop

Hi! 

It's been a while since my last blog post, I've finished my animatic, and it's given me a better grasp on what I want to do. I've hit a little bit of a wall, where I haven't been able to get much done, or spend as much time on it. So far I've just been working on my backgrounds and further developing the style I want for my film. I've been exploring with different ways to paint and use texture in Photoshop, and I've learned some new tricks and tips from some of the people here.  I don't have much time left, but I'm still determined to finish it! I set up a system to organize my shots, so I know exactly what I have to do for each one and when I should get it done, and which ones need to be done first. There are a few complicated shots that I am going to try and get done first. I'm really looking forward to everything coming together in the end, and hopefully I can pull it off! Here is an updated version of the opening shot and the background for the second shot that I am currently working on. I'll have more to show next time!

-Rae

Rae Gets Perspective.

I’m almost done my animatic! I've been working on it for the past few weeks, and this week I showed it to Rich for him to review it. He gave me some really good ideas, and advice about which shots don't need to be there,  and how to make things clearer. It’s hard to see what doesn't work when you’ve seen it too many times, so it was nice to see it from a fresh perspective. There are a lot of things that need tweaking, and the timing needs to be fixed, but i’m almost ready to move onto the next step! I’ve already done a few backgrounds, and began planning out my layouts for each shot. It's a little overwhelming to think about how much needs to be done to finish it, but i'm having a lot of fun making it, and it's really cool seeing it sort of come together. Here is the concept art for my opening shot, and the layout that I did after, I'll have more to show next week!

-Rae 

Juhi Works and Plays Pokemon Go!

This week zipped by so quickly! With the launch of Pokemon GO, everyone has been catching the craze left and right. In the midst of it all, I've been working on revising background characters and designing new ones to populate Todd's school. It's fun making up characters in the style and reusing assets wherever I can. Efficiency!

I can't believe it's nearing the end of the internship...the whole period has been a wild ride and I've enjoyed every minute of it. It feels much, much too soon. I hope the next week feels at a normal pace. I feel like pokemon is to blame.

~Juhi Out~

Elise is a Trekkie!

My second-last week as an intern is over! I'm excited for the weekend (I'm gonna go watch the new
Trek movie!) but I'm also very sad that my time here is almost over.

I did more work on the background characters for Todd. Not much new to report, it's mostly been
revision work. There was some confusion about whether one background character was supposed to
be wearing clothes or not. After some debate, it was agreed that he would be naked. I had to
re-pose everyone around him to censor him, which was kind of tedious, but also pretty funny.

Earl survived last week's mystery plant massacre and is growing a new leaf to celebrate. He is
tall and wise now.

Mandy and the Shadow's in the Dark

This week, I completed a layout test on Monday, so mostly this week I was working on the
background characters and the Indiegogo Winners. Shadows in the Dark is the one of the scene’s
 name in Todd project. This scene is an important one which I spent a lot of time on. Each
character has to be rebuilt, since the angle in the scene is ¾ front, but the characters were
already built as front views, so they have to be rebuilt and fixed. As I mentioned before,
I like designing characters and posing them out, therefore, I am quite enjoying working on the
Shadow's in the Dark.

Mandy Creates The Mood!

This week we were working on the revised files, fixing some parts of drawings, and modeling the characters according to the rough drawing. On Wednesday, we had a short meeting on animation on how to do the animation, how to make the animation perfect, and also some tips on how to fix the symbols in Flash. The meeting took an hour long, and I gained a lot of knowledge and experience.

On Thursday, I started working on the layout test for the Todd project. The layout style is based on Hellboy, specifically focusing on creating the mood within the background. Because there are a lot of actions and emotions in the Todd project, so we are looking for more mood creations.

Elise Waits in Anticipation!

This week was pretty standard stuff. I worked some more on background characters for Todd mostly.
We also had a background painting test, which was fun! They haven't been reviewed yet, but I'm
hoping I did alright.

There was a big meeting yesterday where the animating process for Todd was discussed. They explained a lot of stuff about how to reuse animation effectively and how to hybridize. It was interesting, and there were some very impressive test animations!

On a less fun note, one of our office plants got beat up last night. Earl is fine, but I am concerned for his safety. Erin made him a nice name tag to try and scare off the attacker. Hopefully
he will be okay.

Juhi and the Background Test

This week we were assigned a background test so I've been working on creating a layout for the Todd feature. The style we're going for is Mike Mignola's use of harsh black shadows and bold colors for dramatic effect. I personally love the look and it's an inspiration for my style development. I think it fits the comic book style of Todd really well, and I am further excited to see the film in color!

I have also continued to work on designing and flashifying background characters, paying special attention to the Indie GoGo Funders. It was fun adapting to less exaggerated styles and getting the likeliness of the actual people.

~Juhi out~

Mandy Likes to Design!

After a long weekend, we got back to work. Instead of working on the main props and main characters, this week we were working on the background stuff, like background characters. There are a lot of passersby in the film, some of them have only one shot, and some have two to three shots or different angles. Compared with the main characters in the film, working on the passersby characters has more creative latitude. Since most of those passersby characters doesn’t have their own designed poses, I can design them based on the style of the main characters or by myself. It is really fun to work on, because I feel like I am playing a Role-playing game, and I can decide what stuff should put on my characters, and pick up the color I prefer. Moreover, I will get notes of how to modify those characters’ poses and designs to make them better, which is really helpful to improve my skills and I enjoy it. 

Juhi Loves to learn!

Continuing on with Todd, I've got to tweaking and revising props, as well as going through the latest animatic and making additional angles. It's quite exciting to see the animatic as it update with early music and sound effects. I especially liked the match cuts supported by musical cues, as it brings the animatic that much closer to the final.

Currently, I'm on the task of designing background characters to populate the school. It's a fun challenge designing based on the established Todd style, gain feedback and designing with possible reuses in mind. And then, taking it straight to flashifying after approval. It's incredibly exciting to imagine the assets I create debut on the final!

I'm also constantly absorbing and learning new tips and tricks from the software. No matter how much you'd think you're used to working, it's always a joy finding out more faster, efficient tools that function the same. I will always be exploring and hoping to develop that level of workflow.

~Juhi out~

Callie is Flying Away...Again!

This week is particularly short (AKA 1 day), because on Thursday I have another plane to catch! It seems like I am always traveling so says Erin, but no matter, because I am up to date with my schedule! And she said it's coolio as long as everything gets finished in the end. Of course I'll stay extra time if I can't finish my project within co op hours, but I'm hoping I don't need to have too many long nights. Last week I added that change to my script about the last scene and modified a background to fit with it, and then today I animated it so I think I'm all done animation.

Even being done animation though, I feel as if I want to fix up a few background closeups. When I was painting in Photoshop, I didn't anticipate how every detail would be very pronounced when the camera zoomed in. So basically anywhere I got sloppy you can really tell. Especially because the main character is a bug so there are plenty of shots that are super zoomed in. Also there was the fact that my first background was a very experimental piece (I didn't know Photoshop at all) and I didn't know all the tricks to make it look clean.

So I'll fix those background issues that are bothering me and review my shots with Darien after. Darien would have reviewed my shots on Thursday but he happens to be on a cruise (lucky guy) and I will also be away visiting grandparents! So we will have to look over everything next week. Adios!

Callie is Determined

I'm writing my blog post today because Friday afternoon I'll be on a plane so it would be slightly difficult for me to come to co op. Monday was a very productive day for me because I finished my entire second background (it took me forever to do the first one)! SO that was good. Today not so much. I learned some more about Photoshop from Aramika but I kept trying to draw and then save my file and it would freeze every time. It's probably my fault though for making the file so large, but still, it's frustrating because I was supposed to get done and I spent so much time waiting for Photoshop to start working again.


I am pretty behind schedule, but I think that's because I forgot to even put backgrounds in my schedule or maybe I lumped it in with design. Apparently that was not smart. Rich says not to worry about being behind because it's most important that I am doing a good job and learning everything properly, but still I don't want to leave Smiley Guy with my film unfinished. I can't believe how fast the year has gone by, there are less than 3 months of school left! After the March break I'll come back and work super speedy. I'm very excited to start animation but the task seems daunting, It will be my longest stage yet and I find that by the end of the long stages I start to become less efficient. Probably because I just want to get it over with start something new. I must overcome that, I'm sure animation will be very interesting. See you next week!

Callie Battles Lighting and Perspective

This post will probably be very short because I am very tired and my ear hurts (I got a new piercing!!!) and because I haven't done much this week, except backgrounds. I discussed backgrounds in last weeks post and so there isn't much more to talk about, except that I think I'm finished my first background. Maybe not though, it's so freaking hard. I have very little experience with making up rooms and getting the perspective and lighting right.


I think next week I'll look up more reference images and try to make it more 3D or at least add some charm to it because right now it's sort of flat looking. I think I'll go back to my sketchbook and try out sketching different rooms in my house. Until next week!!

Callie Tackles Backgrounds

I believe that all of last week was spent doing backgrounds (a majority of that time figuring out how to use clipping masks). Typically, I don't really like drawing backgrounds because I'm not very good at it and because I have a obsession with drawing eyes and quite obviously there aren't many eyeballs present in backgrounds. So a lack of skill and no eyeballs to draw made me think that I wouldn't really like doing backgrounds, but oh on the contrary, backgrounds are really fun.


It's a challenge I will willingly accept to try over and over again to make the perspective of a room look proper when usually I can just guess at something and it turns out fine. To help myself out I looked up some background samples from animated movies and there's this one from Lilo and Stitch that is absolutely beautiful. Of course I wouldn't be able to use it as reference because it's not what my film looks like, and I highly doubt that with my limited knowledge of Photoshop I would even be able to recreate it. Clipping masks and remembering to put everything on separate layers is literally the bane of my existence. My first background is basically an amalgamation of rookie Ps mistakes, but I promise I will learn!! At least the next few won't be as terrible (AKA I will make more than one layer). I have a new found respect for background artists because everything is a detail that needs to be attended to and making all the components fit together (and look nice) is very difficult. Kudos to the background artists of the world! Peace out!