September Summary

So much work still left to do and deadlines are looming!

With that in mind this monthly summary is going to be short on detail and long on visuals because I need to go get back to work!

In September,  I finished shooting all the shots for scene 5 that used only the bakery set. The last shot in the scene involves another building in the background, so I spent most of the month working on set design and fabrication both for the end of scene 5 and for the sets I will need for my October shooting goal which is scene 9.

Sleepy Dave’s Mattress (for end of scene 5 beginning of scene 6)

I also needed two lampposts, one full sized and one scaled down to match the background buildings.

The next set of sets I’m going to be building and shooting on this month are for my final scene. There will be a combination set of stores and an ATM in the background when my main character finally reaches the mailbox he’s been running towards.

And here’s the up to date work in progress version of the film from my vimeo page and my tracking pencils. See you in November!

https://vimeo.com/141964985

Posthaste July and August wrap-up

Since my last post was published in the middle of July, it didn’t seem worth posting again at the end of the month so I decided to save up my progress pics to upload here at the end of August, and oh look it’s September already! <insert mild freak out about impending deadlines>

Things have been going pretty well. I got almost all of the shots I’d planned on completing in August finished. The set for the bakery scene came out really well, though I made the unfortunate discovery that I’d miscalculated my size ratios and it was proportionally larger than I’d intended. As a result, there were some quick modifications made and some fudging with the photography, but I think it looks alright in the shots I’ve completed so I’m busting through and moving on to getting more things done.

Here are some pictures of the end of the bakery set being built and the final look of it all put together and lit.window sign

Pieces  of the cupcake door. (mmmmmm….cupcake door)

Bottom edge and trim attached

Pastries case

Papered case and background wall

Platter/cone things (made of plaster and wrapped in paper)

Pre-pastries

Tiny plates!Plates and platters on their platformPlates, platters, platform, and pastries!Look at the tiny bakery! I want to go visit there and eat all the tiny baked goods.

Lit and ready for animating! With tons and tons of thanks to my friends who’ve come out multiple times for my monthly set-building get-togethers and have been helping me get these sets done so much faster than I could do just by myself.

Speaking of friends, all my stores in the sets are inspired by my friends who’ve been so helpful in the course of getting my masters and working on the thesis itself. The Byte-sized Bakery is actually a shout-out to my fellow RIT classmate Vijay who’s been my critique-buddy throughout both of out thesis projects and has been helping me with some of my 3D shots. I created a brownie-loving monster in him at school which is where the whole bakery-as-Vijay’s-store concept came from.

I have really awesome friends. =)

https://vimeo.com/138385553

Here’s the long animation shot that goes into the full version of the film.

https://vimeo.com/138385904

Short version of the intro to scene 5 for the version of the film that cuts out the rock and roll fantasy sequence.

Full version work-in-progress cut.

https://vimeo.com/138388954

Short version work-in-progress cut.

In the last month and a half I’ve managed to fill out a few more sections on my tracking chart. I’m just waiting to get one shot back from my compositer for scene 1 and that will soon be locked and ready for sound, and hopefully the short version of scene 5 will follow soon! In the meantime I’m now focused on finishing the last shot for scene 5 and then I’ll be building my set for scene 9 which is the final scene in the film so it’s a very important one. Wish my luck!

Posthaste May and June Summary

It’s been a hectic two months over here in my world. At the beginning of May I had just finished building my set for scene 1 and had started animating some of the opening shots.  I felt like I was making some good progress on the animation and would be able to finish it by the end of May only to get walloped by a month long monster flare. Then, when I was finally able to start animating again in smaller time chunks, my dastardly puppet went and snapped both his knee joints simultaneously. Bad puppet! Finally, after several weeks of dealing with troublesome joints of both the human and puppet variety I managed to get scene 1 shot 3 finished which is one of the longer and more complex shots in my project. Yay!

https://vimeo.com/133379552

I have only one more shot left to shoot for scene 1 which is a quick insert shot of the puppet’s backpack being dropped to the ground and then I just need a still frame of the hallway set through the door to be composited into scene 2. If luck and my health holds, I should be able to get those completed this week.

During some of my low energy periods, I did manage to finish the animation and coloring work on scene 2-3 where my character imagines the path to the mailbox in a 2D sequence. All that’s left if to add some textures to the shot and it will be completely locked and ready for sound and music.

https://vimeo.com/133376192

In between all that I also started to design and build my set for scene 5 which takes place in front of a bakery. I had a set building weekend where many of my most wonderful friends came by to help out with measuring, cutting, and gluing and saved me many hours of solitary work which allowed to catch up a little on my flare-induced deficit. Since my final deadline is swiftly approaching for this fall, I think I will continue to have some set-building weekends with friends to help push my project along to completion.

Here’s what I’ve got for the scene 5 set so far.

What I’ve spent most of my time on has been creating the various pastries that will be filling the window.

And here is the total work-in-progress video I have of everything I’ve laid into the final composition so far.

https://vimeo.com/133377344

Pencils to track my progress. =)

Posthaste March Wrap-up

Hello again blog followers and any new folks who may have wandered in. =)

Now that we’re a week into April I thought it would be a good time to post my summary of work from the month of March.

March was really split into 2 sections for me. The first half I spent building a small street set with some green screen behind it to shoot some animation of my mail truck which will be eventually composited into a 3D camera zoom shot.

Here is the final shot of the truck coming around the corner.

I also used the street set to take a POV shot of Randy’s hand to use as a transition into the 2D walkthrough sequence in scene 2 shot 3.
Here’s the connecting frame from the 2D sequence.

And here is the POV shot I will use to transition into the 2D.

Here’s a new version of my work-in-progress laid over the animatic so you can see where I’m at in terms of overall progress.

The second part of the month I spent building most of the next set I plan to use to shooting scene 1 of my project. I still have a little more work to go to fill in props and to build and test my moving camera rig, but I’m hoping to be able to begin animating on the new set soon.

My initial planning sketch. Later edited to add the additional doorframe.

These segments are for the wainscoting along the walls.

Here is the beginning structure for building the walls of the set.

The elbow belongs to my friend Jack who helped me with some of the construction and who is designing my titles and credits for me. Thanks, Jack!!

I’m using k’nex to build modular scaffolding for each of my sets moving forward. It’s a lot faster and cheaper than building a wooden frame for each set.

Pieces for the desk that holds the letter and various notes from Randy’s mother reminding him to mail the letter.

 

Hanging coat wrack made from foamboard and cut up scrapbooking thumbtacks.

Randy’s backpack which he unceremoniously drops by the front door instead of his shoes.

A little more prop work is still left to be done, but hopefully I’ll have those done soon and I can get my next scene at least partially animated in time for my next post. See you all next month!

 

Posthaste Post-February Post

So obviously the weekly blog post thing just doesn’t work for me. Part of it is just feeling like I need to actually be working on the project rather that writing about it. The other part of it is just that I’ve always been bad about diaries/journals/blogs and just don’t make it a priority. So I’m going to try a monthly wrap up. After each month of work has finished I’ll write up a little post with a summary of where the project is at. Plus it seems like a much better time frame for a project that takes so much time to make progress on. The updates will actually feel more like progress than the weekly ones would.

So here’s where things were at by the end of February.

Since my last post I have actually moved twice which meant packing up the whole studio and setting it up again two times. The second was actually another move across the country so it took a solid month for my studio to actually catch up with me so I did a lot of 2D work at that time (that time being fall 2014). The moves have caused delays but hopefully I’m going to be staying put until the project is finished from now on.

I’ve gotten most of scene 2 completely shot and the shot 2-3 which is the first 2D sequence mostly done outside of any later compositing/texturing. I’ve done two of my green screen sequences and built the mail truck for the project complete with the ability rumble up and down when the truck is idling in a shot.

I’ve also found several more minions to help me along with the project. I now have a sound designer, a composer, a compositor, and my friend Jack is doing my opening and closing credits. Up next is finishing the last shots needed for scene 2 and then building the set for scene 1. Once each scene is animated to a point where I can lock the timings I’ll be sending them to my sound designer to get started on the foley. My goal is be finished in time to screen at the end of the fall 2015 semester and be able to graduate then.

Here is the updated work in progress for the end of February:

https://vimeo.com/121429176

This is the current version of shot 2-3:

https://vimeo.com/121431613

Here are some of the progression pics for the construction of the mail truck:

And here is the rumble feature in action:

https://vimeo.com/121432388

 

So that’s it for my February round up. Hopefully next month’s will have an extra shot or two and some lovely set fabrication for you all to look at. See you later!