We haven't done anything in a while because we're lazy worthless bastards!

I'm currently obsessed with learning to play Celtic guitar, which is taking up all my available obsessiveness; i'm sort of like a bull with a red cape - I fixate on one thing and charge at it. And, I savagely gore people and then trample on them.

Design of the bird armature continues; at some point i'm just going to have to start fiddling around with it - its impossible to design it to perfection until you have the actual materials in hand. This first crow might be a write-off - i'm sure design flaws will become apparent when its done and in use. I really should be working on the large-head armatures, but we're still waiting for our 5"x3.5"x3" plastic skulls to arrive in the mail. Until then, this will keep me busy.

I've been doing research on the 3/4 life-size scale raven armature. Here's my rough plan for the armature. Rockon.

I photoshopped a sky behind our house set just for fun. As you can see, I was too lazy to cut the tree out completely - use your imagination.

I thought it'd be fun to see a storyboard next to the actual set portrayed. Whee, fun.

HERE'S SOME MORE

These are the first ten storyboards of another scene, in which we see Cornelisz working on the painting.

NEW BOARDS

I drew some new storyboards; we rewrote the 'Anna-Maria and Lord William meet in the field scene' so new boards were needed for our animated storyboard. These aren't all of them, but you get the idea.

THE HELL PAINTING

I thought i'd show a few of our sources for our Hell Painting. First and foremost is a couple of works by Bruegel the Elder; 'Triumph over (sic) Death', and 'Mad Meg (sic)'. There's a whole lot of neat stuff in there. We also plan to rip off Gustav Dore's illustrations of 'The Divine Comedy' pretty extensively. You can see from the storyboard drawing that we've already been mugging him.

WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO

Mike and I have begun work on the 'animated storyboard'; not quite an actually animated storyboard, but a pre-making of the film. We're putting scanned storyboards into an .avi (movie) file, and editing it as we would the finished product. We'll then add narration, voices, sound effects, and temporary borrowed music. The addition of audio, even though its of a low-grade and temporary nature, is enormously helpful in showing us what our film will look like. Its very difficult to imagine how the story will flow from storyboards only. We'll also be doing a little bit of 'ghetto animation'; cutting out storyboard elements in photoshop, and then moving them around in our pre-movie via Adobe After Effects. So far, i've only seen one of first scenes with the 'pre-make' treatment (storyboards and a few sound effects), and the difference is huge. I was struck by how much we need to add a few shots/elements to stretch the scene out. It went by rather fast.

Unfortunately there's not much to show visually from this process, obviously. But, we are working again on a regular basis - there was a bit of a hiatus there that was getting discouraging. Mike and I are also hammering out what needs to be in our Hell painting.

CRAIG BOYKO

I have this friend-guy who is of the name of Craig, Boyko, etc. His most notable characteristic, besides near-heroic inner strength displayed in the overcoming of a glandular weight problem, is his real-good writery-ness. In fact, other smartguys who are smart and good have said that he is a all-roun smartguy. So, I sent him our screenplay so he could have a look, at his own suggestion. This is a bit of what he sent us back:

One final thought: On reading the story, I had this
idea that the true horror of the final scene is not
imagistic so much as contextual: In other words, a
woman burning in a carriage is not as hellish as the
whole story behind the woman, her identity, and the
identity of the painter, etc. Thus in a way the Hell
Screen story IS a kind of hell screen itself, I guess.
I thought it would be interesting to play on this idea
at the conclusion of the story, or in this case
screenplay. From Johannes' perspective then, what HE
would find especially hellish would not be Anna-Maria
in the carriage, but
Cornelisz-watching-Anna-Maria-in-the-carriage. And
particularly the look on Cornelisz's face, changing
perhaps from horrified to enthralled as he sees what
he will paint. Perhaps Johannes' narration could
conclude on something like, "This, it seemed to me,
was the one key image missing from The Hell Painting:
The Painter's face, as his daughter burned." Just a
thought.


This is a good point, and contains one of the central little kernels of the story. We may even use his idea (but we won't give him any of the money and cocaine and women that we get when we finish the movie).

BLOGS CAUSE CANCER

It seems likely that we'll be back on track soon. Michael 'Rhino Balls' Addison and I will be giving the screenplay a final tweak on Wednesday, after which we (i.e. me) will draw up some quick storyboards. These will be practical storyboards for our own use; no more elaborate 1/2-hour-each-to-draw storyboards. Those were fun, but they served more as concept sketches for sets than storyboards.

I've been getting annoyed lately at the lack of progress - mostly at myself. It becomes difficult to initiate work when you're out of the habit, too busy at work, too poor, etc. And, my partners are pretty useless with their hands - all they can do is go 'clicky-clicky-clicky' (keyboard typing noise) and flap their jaws.

Its also looking very likely that its going to be me doing all the animation; aquiring a partner who will want to work consistently with us for years just doesn't sound very likely.

Dave 'The Human Spagetti Squash' Sikma is going to be printing off some fancy pictures of our storyboards and set, which we will then include in a package, so's people gives us the money.

NEATO STUFF

I thought i'd connect some of the scenes mentioned in the screenplay with some storyboard panels (there are hundreds of these elaborate storyboards) so's you can see what we're envisioning.

SCENE 11: EXTERIOR PLACE OF THE BURNING, NIGHT

LORD WILLIAM
Cornelisz! Step forth! Tonight, to fulfill your wish, I will burn a carriage for you.

LORD WILLIAM
Look well, and do not flinch from what you see - look well, and perhaps you will glimpse hell itself.

In this scene, Lord William grants Cornelisz's innermost desire; a model for the image that has been obsessing him. Cornelisz is somewhat aware that the realiazation of his goal will mean severing his last tie with his humanity, i.e. his daughter. After that, a jive-talking slam-dunking monkey takes him on an eXtreme road trip, and teaches him the true meaning of Christmas.

WHAT WE'RE GOING TO DO WHEN IT'S DONE

Sometimes people ask me, what are you going to do with this thing when it's finished? Are you going to sell it, or what? Have you guys even like, thought about that at all?

First, we'll get super rich and famous because of our movie. Then, we'll go out and buy Armani suits, which we'll wear exclusively and all the time - we'll buy one, and then immediately soil it with spagetti stains, soya sauce stains, burn marks, and bodily fluids. We won't ever bother washing them - we'll throw it out and buy a new one, or crowds of girls will tear them off our bodies, whichever comes first or is more convenient under the circumstances. We'll drive Italian sports cars, travelling at all times at the highest speed we can manage. We'll always be driving with one hand, as there will be a martini in the other hand at all times. We will also laugh to ourselves constantly in a maniacal a sort of upper-crust sounding screech/giggle. We will crash our Italian sports cars into telephone poles constantly, after which we will go straight to the dealer, martini still in hand, and buy a new one. Which we then will drive off in at top speed.

That is the plan.

Comments

I've just noticed that I had the comments setting on 'will not appear without the approval of the moderator'. There were quite a few comments made that didn't therefore appear, but are there now. I removed all the ones that were gratuitously insulting, contained marriage proposals, etc.

MIKE IS IN VANCOUVER

The great Mike Addison, breaker of hearts and shaker of parts, is now officially a resident of Vancouver. Since he has been here, we ave drank some beer, and ave done some talking. Soon, there will be travaille. (That we will do).

MIKE IS COMING BACK

Mike of Addison is currently on his way back; see map of the battle plan above. Mike will get in a car, and drive for a really long time until he gets here. Then, we will go to my house and drink some beers.

THE BUS TRIP

Our favorite thing about our project, besides the crushing poverty, is taking the bus to the studio. I take three buses; one from Fraser and Broadway to Granville and Broadway. From there, I take an express bus to Richmond City Centre. I then wait for a very long time for the elusive and semi-mythical 402 to Steveston. The total travelling time is usually an hour and a half, and costs 3 dollars and twenty-five cents. On the way, we get to socialize with lowlifes, and the mentally ill. One such loony, on a recent return trip, followed myself, Dave, and Mike a ways along Broadway, calling us 'jackasses' and threatening to kill us. She did this because she was crazy, and she wouldn't be crazy if she didn't do crazy things, I guess, so she had to do it, which is only reasonable.

A Few Pictures

I haven't posted anything regarding substantial progress in a while, so I thought i'd upload a few pictures. The top image is a fanciful vision of our hell, though the specific landscape shown was made up on the spot and doesn't refer to any particular set design. The figure hanging from the branch is key - a bit of foreshadowing. The image of figures standing in glowing pits is ripped of directly from Dore's illustration of The Divine Comedy. The second-from-the-top image contains a tree that matches that seen in the aforementioned storyboard panel; tying our scenes together with matching images from the 'Hellscape' is a key facet of our approach. The other two are just the good ol' house, in storyboard and photoshopped.

DAVE

Dave tested out the technique of digitally compositing a large head onto a smaller armature, within a short animation test - a walking cycle. It seems to work quite well, which is a relief. We weren't able to proceed until we answered that question, so now we can get bakc on track. This here is Dave.

MIKE

Mike is in the process of moving to Vancouver. This'll be good, as he brings enthusiasm to the group. And he can do stuff, I guess. I didn't have a picture of mike, so I drew one. This is exactly what Mike looks like.

HARD

We've reached a bit of a lull. We were quite gung-ho about finishing the set, but it's currently gathering dust now that it's complete.

The sticking point preventing me from working a comparable number of hours per week to the previous period is the issue of the faces, and face replacement. We intend to test a difficult technique; digital face replacement. The idea would be to build a large (life size) animatable head, and to then digitally transpose it over the smaller head of the set-sized armature. This poses innumberable difficulties, and it can't be said with any certainty that it'll work without thorough testing. Dave is optimistic, but I supect that even if all problems are surmounted, it'll be an extremely awkward and tedious process that might inhibit out freedom to animate. We'll see. Our level of digital proficiency is also low (relative to an an industry professional) so we may just not have what it takes to pull it off. We may have to do it the good-old analog way.

I put a picture of a rock up there because it's hard, and what we're doing is hard. Real hard.

The Next Set

The next to build will be a modification of the existing set; it will represent the same locale in the present day, but now abandoned and decrepit. This task is a long way off, however; we've got a pile of other things to do before I can go back into the shop. It's a little disappointing - building sets is my favorite part. Other than the fame, adulation, and thinking up new ways to spend all the money we've earned from our project.

At any given time in the studio, the odds are excellent that i'll be chewing a big wad of gum. When Dave takes 'making of' snapshots, I usually then have the appearance of big, bloated squirrel-like cheeks, which I actually don't possess. The above image is an excellent example of the phenomenom.

THE ANIMATION

The above storyboard image is of Cornelisz having a good time in the climactic scene.

Anyways, we've still got a lot to do before we do some serious shooting - one ongoing concern is our lack of a really good animator. It's almost certain that one of us will be doing it, i.e. me. I feel that I can do something vastly better than the work on the previous two films (which stink, for the record), but it's still worrisome.

The problem with stop-motion animation, and indeed with any animation, is that one must aquire enough skill with the basic craft before one can truly make the characters 'act'. On the previous project it was simply a matter of acheiving a level of quality somewhere above 'barely acceptable' before we moved onto the next shot. Our main focus has always been on the visuals; myself with sets and Dave with lighting, etc. This time, we want to do some high-quality work. Our best option seems to be extensive cheating, i.e. taking extensive reference footage with Mike's camera, and really analyzing it frame by frame. Having to invent physical 'acting' out of thin air is really beyond our current abilities. I've already spent quite a bit of time watching Kurosawa's Seven Samurai* frame by frame to better understand human movement.

We've thought about enlisting outside aid to up the quality level with the animation, but that presents several problems. It is going to take us quite a while to finish this thing, so we need somebody who intends to be around for a comparable length of time. The other main concern is that our current group has been working together for a while, so we're pretty comfortable critizing each other's work. It might be awkward if the work they do is sub-par. As well, we can't offer them anything immediate in return except long hours on the bus and tedious hours in the studio.

So, it'll probably be me.


*Seven Samurai is the awesomest movie ever. If the reader has a favorite movie which he/she prefers, I assure you that you are wrong; this movie is better.

IT'S DONE

The set is done. We are so utterly sick of working on the thing that bringing ourselves to fix any minor problems with it is a hurculean task. It came together pretty well, though; all the little glitches and color mismatches have worked themselves out.

Myself and some-times collegue Andy Warren went down on Tuesday and took the tables/counters apart, and cleaned up the mess. Now we're ready for bluescreen action.

Here's a rough breakdown of man hours invested into the thing:

Total days spent in the studio (averaged at 7 hours each): 45

Days with two people: 6

Days with three people: 10

Trips transporting materials (at 3 hours apeice): 4

Hours gathering materials (moss, bark, etc.): 12


Grand total: 520 hours.

This doesn't begin to give one a sense of the human cost; about ninety hours plus on the bus, the cold Chef Boyardee mini ravioli eaten right out of the can, the waiting in the rain, the dirty looks from yuppies as we liberate the moss from their local park.

It was fun, generally speaking.

THE MAIN PROBLEM

The main problem, or key concern I have with the project is this: when one gets closely involved in a project, and spends an inordinate amount of time reworking something (the screenplay in this case), one tends to lose the ability to be objective.

We find, again and again, that something that seemed like a good idea turns out to be a wretched idea with the benefit of hinndsight or the passage of time. We had all agreed, to give an example, that we were going to change a specific aspect of the story; namely, that Cornelisz is no longer commissioned by his master, Lord William of Orange, to paint the Hell Painting - he begins it of his own volition. We now agree that this is quite a bad idea.

When we're dealing with something visual, like a film set, or animation, it's quite easy to tell what is good or bad. With a screenplay that you've been rewriting ad naseum, it seems quite hard.

Our solution is to do what is commonly done with projects such as these; storyboard extensively, and 'premake' the film in crudely animated storyboards, with temporary ad hoc dialogue and borrowed music. Which means more work.

The Set is Done (Almost)

I estimate that there is about three full days left in the studio before the set will be completely finished - it feels like one day, but we're almost always wrong about how long it will take. We're up to about 45 full days spent in the studio so far, though some of those days saw two or even three people working at once. I estimate total man hours spent to date at around 450, or half the grand total of hours spent on our previous film, 'The Masque of the Red Death'. When I extrapolate the total number of hours required to build all the sets in this project, the result is nauseating. I think I estimated about 2 1/2 years (at the current rate of progress) required for set building alone. This is likely optimistic, based on past estimates of time required. We don't really like the idea of this project taking 4-5 years total; the only solution is money, which can buy us more time to work. So, I think we'll be looking at funding options a little more closely.

The New Tree

After viewing the tree in a photoshop composite, we realized that it was far too small and wimpy. In retrospect, this seems obvious, but we had convinced ourselves otherwise. So, we ripped out the old tree, and but in a new, beefy tree, We are all agreed that it is a huge improvement.

The Tree

We installed what we thought was more or less the final tree, in its final form. See attached images:

Mike adjusting the location of the tree support, Mike and I trying on various branches, and finally, a quick photoshop composite of the set, complete with tree.

The Bench

The bench is starting to look a little well-used - i've got quite a large collection of containers filled with all sorts of concoctions.

THE CARRIAGE

The climax of the story involves a carriage; my Pop just finished building it and has put in the mail. We're all quite eager to see what it looks like. It was modeled on Catherine the Great's coronation carriage (currently in the Hermitage), which is an impossibly ornate little contraption. I'm not sure what we're getting, but I know it will be good.

Attatched image: The storyboarded shot in which we first see the carriage, suspended from a frame and all ready for burning.

THE DAMN ROOF

The roof has been giving me quite a bit of grief; besides it's previously mysterious blue-turning tendancy, it has been refusing to look interesting. I thought it looked alright, but after staring at it for a while, I began to sense that it could be better. So, to determine how it could be better, I did the logical thing; find reference material. I found the material I needed close to the studio - i'm not ten minutes away on foot from a historic shipyard, complete with very old (and weathered) wooden structures; there, I observed that weathered, gray wood is actually quite full of variation - very dark slate grays to very light warm grays. It's apparent that the roof as of right now is quite flat looking - not much texture. Next Tuesday i'll go back to the studio and remedy the problem.

I'm also thinking that the tones in the front facade of the house (visible in the attached smaller image) are far too warm - they need to be more neutral. Neutral grays are more evil-looking than warm grays, which goes without saying. Dave seems to be all about the warm brown/grays; i've known him for a long time and I respect his opinion, but he's full of shit. I'd say that neutral grays are at least 30-40% more evil than warm ones, which has to be a conservative estimate.

Excessive time has been spent colouring the set to date. I don't regret it, but I could have been more effecient with the process. The cause of the problem was the usual one; i'd jam my nose into one corner of the set and colour it until it looked good, and then I would move on to another section, without looking at the whole objectively. The result was inevitabely a grab-bag of random barfy tones without logic or coherence (these adjectives are used in the relative sense). Anyways, i've now got the colour scheme pretty well hammered out, and will post some pictures of the resulting paint job in the near future.

Light Temperature Issues

We're approaching the point where we're going to have to deal with our lighting. There is a skylight directly above the set, which is trouble; the light can change when we're animating, which clearly precludes the possibly of animating with it as is. So, we have to cover it up somehow. Likely we'll have to access the roof to do it. Our set is rather huge, so we'll need quite a bit of gear to light it up adequately; likely we'll be using multiple banks of flourescents, along with a few spots, and a home-made softbox or two. We have a 1000 Watt spotlight complete with barn doors and scrimms, but we've found out that what we thought was a daylight-balanced bulb is showing up very orange compared to our flourescents. We need to have the ability to make our light look like daylight, and that can't happen if we shoot with lights with varying color temperature. Anyways, this is Dave's department so i'll let him worry about it.

In other news, Dave has been working for a while now on creating a field of grass to put in front of our set in Maya; see the test frame included within this post. He's going to make it move gently with the wind, which should add a nice layer of detail. I thought i'd also include a few storyboards from this scene, so you all can see the rough end goal.

The Tree

Here's Mike simulating tree instalation. It is apparent that our tree is not tall enough, too skinny, doesn't have enough branches, and is too light in colour. I'll be working on remedying these issues when I go back to the studio tommorrow. Mike won't be around; he's gone to Edmonton to do some videotaping for an industrial-trailer firm.

If you examine the little storyboard image in the previous post, it becomes evident that the tree in the storyboard looks quite a bit different than what we've come up with so far for the actual tree. If we were to duplicate the height of the storyboard tree, the actual tree would be about 24 feet high (including the set height), i.e. it would touch the ceiling. Screw the storyboard.

The Shrubbery Is Done

Mike and Dave finished putting moss and other assorted shrubbables on the set, behind the little ante-house being the last spot that needed it. Moss-application technology advanced light years over the course of mossing this sucker; we started out with a pair of hot glue guns, which we discovered was very slow and expensive in gluesticks, as well as expensive in the human factor; it's easy to drip hot glue on your skin. Then, we applied Poly-Filla (a slow-setting plaster) on the hill, and simply slapped the moss on top. And then, the final breakthough; we applied thinned-down drywall mud (with a very long working time) onto the hill with a brush, as opposed to a putty knife. The speed at which we were able to moss was astronomical; it was like comparing the X-1 fighter to a Sopwith Camel. The next time we have to moss something, we will moss that thing like a motherfucker.

So, now all I have to do to the shrubbery is finish staining/painting it. We'll pop off a couple of test shots to make sure the color works, and away we go.

Hot Moss Action

Today should be the last day of hot moss-on-set action. We've been plastering/hot gluing moss to the base of the hill on our 'Cornelisz's Studio, Exterior' set for a while now, to the tune of 6 bags worth; far more than we ever thought we'd need. We've been 'liberating' the moss from a certain park not too far away from us and are glad that the chore is over. We've been feeling a little guilty about doing it, though it is only moss. We don't want to wreck anyone's nice view of the pretty green moss.

Dave and Mike are working in the studio solo today - they will have to make some hard decisions today, without any guidance. I am sure everything will come out alright.

The Near-Future Agenda


We've got quite a to-do list to get through before we can shoot something that has a chance of being finished footage.

We have to:

Finish the set: put the last little bit of moss on the sucker, finish painting/staining the foliage, finish the finishing on the right facade of the house, install/work on a big tree that'll go on top of the hill, etc.

Shoot test frames of the set: on our previous project, 'The Masque of the Red Death', we blew it with set coloration - everything was far too monochromatic, and looked flat in the final project. We should have tested it, but we were in too much of a hurry. Now, we know better; we take shots of the set and see how it translates to a computer screen.

Finish the bluescreen, i.e. buy more canvas and paint it up.

Finish our first puppet; we've aquired one 10" armature, and it's costume is almost finished, courtesy of Mandy Wold; this puppet will be 'Johannes', the narrator in his youth, and apprentice to Cornelisz, the wayward painter. Then, we have to fashion the hands, head, and feet. We also have a large stumbling block to overcome; the resolution of our face-replacement issues. We've got some digital-big-head-transposed-on-a-small-puppet ideas, but we've got a lot of work to do before we can confirm it's workability.

BlueScreen

We will be using a 'blue' 'screen' which is a large blue thing that can be digitally removed using computers and lasers and robots. It's the same technique they use when the weatherman is standing in front of the big map. Our bluescreen is just a big piece of canvas, painted blue. We did a little 'pixelation' test (pixelation being the stop-motion animation of people). Mike was trying to make it looks as if he was talking, posing frame by frame.

Film Set: Cornelisz's Studio, In the Past

This here is the set we've been building; it is the painter's (Cornelisz's) studio, perched upon a hill, looking ominous. Alot of the action in the story takes place within the studio, which will be another set altogether - this set will be seen relatively briefly, mostly in 'establishing shot' type material. I say 'in the past' in the heading because the narrator, now aged, relates events that have already transpired. At the time of this writing we've almost covered the whole hill with foliage, making the above image out of date. Newer pictures will follow soon. The scale is 1:7-point-something, or a 6' high figure in real life would be 10" high in our set. This means that the set is quite large, and heavy. And expensive.

The house is made of:

Hill: 2x4 four frame covered with steel mesh, plaster, and now a whole whack of moss.

House: an MDF frame detailed with kiln-dried fir and plaster. The roof is made of little fir shingles, all glued individually to an MDF frame.

The above picture contains no proper lighting; it's it looks under the room lights, with a little Photoshopping and a sky thrown in. This excites us, as the sets for our first two movies looked like ass until we lighted the crap out of them. So far, we've spent about thirty full days building the thing, and anticipate about five more to finish it off.