Soldiers

There's a couple scenes where soldiers stand around as extras. And there's an ear;y scene where there's an assload of them. An army - though we won't see but a part of the army. And they'll be almost all just stills (no animation) To get around the impossibility of making an army, i'm making a bunch of accessories, all built for the same armature. So I can mix and match interchangable bits to make 'new' costumes.

Boy, sure is alot of stuff in this movie, I was pretty cavalier when planning this thing. Beaucoup props. This was a fun one though. Only one day. Feels like i'm spoiling myself, getting to see something from start to finish in one day. Might do something tedious tommorrow, or spoil myself more with more quick stuff.

Need some extras; 16th century armour and weapons. Fun.

Now I gotta polish off the interior. Don't want to spend too long on it; i'm already over my time budget for the carriage.

I took one of these pictures and some frames of other characters from other scenes, and put them together in a shot it AE. Very useful to do. I noticed that, of all the surface area in the interior, there's actually only a couple little spots that get alot of screen time. I.E. I should spend my time on these spots. Rather than making a really nice floor, for example.

Some slightly-out of date pictures (a couple days old). The pictures seem to turn out better when they start as full-size jpegs. See the little footstep thing below the door? That's what I was making when I hacked my finger. It just had to have that little compound curve on it.

Gave my finger a bit of a slice on Sunday. Had to get stitches. It happened in some strange sequence of events - blade got stuck in a block of wood, snapped, block of wood slipped. Or something like that. But I can still work. Though my right hand isn't as mobile as before.

Inches away from being done the carriage. Should be able to make the cushions for the inside today. Might add some paint to the inside - a nice naval buff maybe.

Fooling around with what the lighting might be like for the climactic scene.

Getting close to done. Still some details left to do. Haven't attached the cab to the undercarriage yet. Gonna be careful about the wheel placement. Back wheels need to be a bit more forward, and the cab about 1/4" higher. Might add paint to the undercarriage. The brownness is a little suffocating.

Just so everybody knows, I have to moderate all comments on my blog. 19 out of 20 are porn-site spammers trying to increase their Google rating.

Allright. Now I finally have some time/inclination to write a little. Not much of a blogger. Would rather work.

Carriage is getting pretty close to done. The glossiness is creating alot of work. I'm not even sure if it's a good idea. The 'boot' (sticky-outy part at the front of the carriage) was glossy, but I was finding it to hard to get it smooth. Balsa don't varnish very well. So I gave it a final sand and gave it a coat of matte polyurethane. I'm digging the bright orange. It's the official orange of the film. Gonna make multiple appearances - the carriage, Lord William's flag, his footmen, and the dress he gives Anna Maria.

The wheels weren't easy. Took lot of head scratching before I figured out a way to do it. Couldn't cut them out of a large single piece of balsa, as balsa snaps easily along the grain. So I laminated two pieces together, with the grain perpendicular. Then I hacked them out with a blade. The result was crude, but I found that gluing a thin piece of basswood along the inside and outside fixed up the wonkiness.

Getting there. The undercarriage is pretty silly. I like it. Very swoopy.

I'm gonna change the colour scheme a little. Gonna replace the reddish-brown panel (see top photos) with a bright red orange. Also gonna keep wet sanding and painting the orange and black until they're nice and smooth.

Gonna have to build the damn wheels soon.

The assembly (bottom half of top photo) is the fore part of the undercarriage. It's not realistic and doesn't function, but it doesn't matter. Just has to give the impression of a bunch of metal junk down there.

I slapped some stain on the carriage in its 'wood planking' state. It was all wrong. Looked very rustic and earthy. The owner of this carriage is supposed to be aristocracy. I began laboriously filling and sanding, and priming, and filling more, and sanding, and priming. Trying to get an automotive-like finish. Not perfect, but enough to sell it.

How you like my ridiculous viking horn? Gonna put a pair of smaller ones on the front. Not very period, but screw it. Should look scary when it burns.

Trying to be methodical with this thing - taking shots, identifying what needs to be fixed/covered up/emphasized and working my way through the list. It's already turning into one of those things wherein I work on it for 8 hours, and nothing seems to change.

The interior has come out a bit Hobbity.

Plans have changed for the carriage; was originally going to be just one element that we'd see at the climax - now it's going to make multiple appearances throughout. It therefore needed to more of a 'set'; removable walls, of a certain size, functioning wheels and doors etc. Also needs to be quite durable to withstand all the handling. Rather than being something we take three pictures of only and put aside. Also helpful being wooden, so we can char it up for the last scene. Meaning partially burn it. There were two scenes that were going to take place on two unique sets - we've scrapped them and put them in the carriage.

Am I getting anywhere with these character studies? Not sure. They're fun though.

It takes a pretty strong conscious effort to draw differently than I usually do.

I'm okay with the subtle shoulders-up animation. Larger body movements remained a challenge.

There's some pretty super-random sound bytes in here.

I'm almost done developing a system for producing the characters, that involves as little work as possible. Copying and pasting from an ever-growing library is the idea.

Tried out some hand-painted backgrounds; they overall look was a bit cold and computer-ish looking. I'm not sure if it's an improvement or not.

Also tried a more cartoony figure.

Emoting like Stallone. This stuff works good. One 10 minute drawing, cleaned and vectored in Illustrator, then mashed up the wazoo with AE.

This ain't a 'general arsthetic' test. I ain't in love with the aesthetic here. I like it well enough in it's own right, but it doesn't feel appropriate yet.

This here's a test of the AE puppet tool. Not too shabby; beaucoup animation, 1 indefinatly animatable and editable drawing. Groovy.

I went into the studio with the intention of drawing something different. Instead, I drew more of the same. Gotta try harder.

I rocked the Hell Painting for a good solid day today, then knocked off some character samples for the proposed cartoon. They ain't anybody in particular - just getting in there and mucking around. It's become pretty obvious that characters come first - background style is completely subordinate.

We've been doing post work on Hell Painting. More shots too. Been too lazy to post anything.

We've also hatched a side-project; super whacko samurai cartoon. whacko 'cause it's got some strange unique elements. Well, unique-esque at least. Did an atmosphere/concept comp today; here it is. It's a little dark and heavy-duty.

The drawing shot, with some Photoshop shenanigans going on. I like it, but it would make a continuity nightmare. I'll work on that stuff more when we don't have any more studio time left. It also works better with less whacky camera movement. So's you can see what Corn-dog is up to.

Scene 11 in progress. The black frames between shots denote missing shots. This one has been pretty fun so far. Quite a bit different from the last scene. And it's going faster. Doing the simulated drawing is a pretty good time. The arm motion is a mix of animation and stills.

Johannes in action. Animating this scene is getting a bit tedious. I'm almost at that dangerous 'I know how the thing looks now so the magic is gone' stage. Which makes it harder to work.

I think Johannes looks pretty good from profile. I'm going to try to show him from this angle as much as possible.

The idea with this little sequence is that you hear the tied-up guy making i'm-tied-up sounds, but you can't tell what it is. Suspense or something.

Not thrilled with the way Johannes turned out (the new guy in the pictures). Attempt #3 on the face got a pass. Impatience and trying to hurry things up wrecked the first two.

He looks like a pouting pig-monkey.

But I like his hat. And his cross-chest-buckle cape thingy. I made it so the over-the-shoulder shots (see bottom picture) would look good.

Some shots from scene 4 with the missing background put in. I like them allright. They seem less dark with the background in there for some reason.

Otherwise, i've been shooting the backgrounds for the next scene, making props (Cornelisz has some items in this scene) and working on Johannes. Could have been done already, but I blew it with his mask. Was in too much of a hurry - now I have to do it over. Really hoping I can be filming him by Thursday. May not happen though.

Scene 11 background plates, all in the bag. Shot all the ones I need, and all the ones I could think of. A bit brighter than the last scene. More fill overall.

I'm getting much better and faster at this; for the background plates in the last scene, there was days of festering and light-nudging and mind-changing. I lit this one up in 10 minutes. Though I did do some tests at an earlier date.

Also, when processing all the photos, I put the results into an After Effects composition with a character to see how they fit. The tendency is to make them look like nice pictures on their own; that's not the point. They have to be pretty muted so that they don't compete overmuch with the characters visually. So I ended up muting the whites and softening the blacks.

Some background tests for the next scene, Scene 11. The original plan was complicated and atmosphereic. I'm thinking a clear light source will be easier.

Gave Corn some top-down lighting and chucked in some old photos. Curious about how he's going to look out of doors. Should be allright.

Barely different from the last one. Added the missing Cornelisz parts of this scene.

Polishing off Johannes while I get geared up to for the next scene. Should be able to animate his parts real quick. Most of the time, he just stands there with his back to the camera.

This scene is turning into a real monster. I originally thought it would be minute or so. Now it's apparent it's going to clock in at 2 1/2, minimum. These shots are almost all real hard; the one wherein the bird lunges took 5 hours of practice animation and prep work. But i'm knocking them down one after the other, in one take.

The one where he stands up and turns around with the bird real slow was a lesson; wasted alot of takes before I bore down and really figured out.

The animation ain't fabulous, but i'm okay with it. Looks like puppet animation.

I scrapped the shot (see previous video clip) where he swishes the bird around. Too odd, and the bird looked almost cute. Can't have that.

Bird is ready to go. Did a few animation tests. It's a real bitch. Not the armature, or the fact that it's covered with feathers (though those things don't help). It's hard to make it move in a bird-like fashion. The bottom picture is the bird with HDR, or how it's roughly going to look (will be more painterly effects) in the painting.

CHICKEN OF THE DAMNED

Screen test for the bird. I was worried that it was too big, and that it's head was too big porportionally. Looks alright though. I'm gonna finish it off now. Try to ignore the yellow foam.