Latest Film Update

Animatic Dec.16 from Carolyn Fisk on Vimeo.

Well now should be a good time to give an update on my current progress. It's been a few months since my last post and several things have changed with my film.

The first major change is that I will no longer be using the music I mentioned in previous posts because it just wasn't working out. Which means I need to get in contact with the band again to let them know I won't be using their music. So I am now in the process of looking for a composer / sound designer because I do not want to tackle the sound for my film by myself. I am planning to contact a composer over Christmas break to see if they are still interested in helping me with my film. But if you are a composer/ or if anyone knows someone who is a composer/sound designer - please get in touch with me.

Story wise my film hasn't changed too much. I mean a lot has changed from the first animatic I made and there is so much I could talk about in relation to this, but to sum it all up basically my original idea - the one I thought up before Fall semester started - was great. But every change or adjustment I have made to it since then has backfired to a certain extent. My intention and the emotions I try to convey become muddled and confused when the blanks of my original 6 panel storyboard are filled in. One of my instructors who saw the original 6 panel storyboard saw something in it that they thought was amazing, but I obviously cannot see it. With my latest animatic (see above) I had everything working to a point, yet somewhere near the end of the story it began to fall apart. The same instructor saw this newest version and pointed out some religious aspects that I did not want my film to have. So I need to rethink the ending.

Other then that things are great.

I have settled on how I would like my film to look stylistically, I have completed a large portion of my backgrounds, and I have begun animating. Here are links to some prototype images of how my film will look when it is finished:

Bedroom
City
Train

I have decided that the fill colour for the characters will be a darker gray because I do not want the characters to stand out too much from their environment. The characters will still interact with the light and shadows in the environment. The environments themselves were modeled in 3D Studio Max and then painted over in photoshop to give them a softer, more painterly effect. But I have left a lot of the texturing alone.

The animation I have has been half rotoscoped from reference footage so that I can speed up the process of animating somewhat. It has also helped me stage certain actions and movements in a clearer fashion. The timing in my animatic for certain scenes is still off but I find it easier to time things once I start animating the scene and actually see how long certain movements take.

Anyways...

In my next post I will be explaining how my characters will be coloured and integrated into the environment because I have a few people who are interested in helping me with that aspect of my film. I am still looking for more helpers to assist me with colouring in characters so my next post will talk more in depth about what that job would entail. I'll also talk more about my film in general just to explain a few more things.