Times....

I started capturing reference material for the animation and realized that it's going to take some intensity to get this movie to look like I want it to look... mainly however, it will take TIME. Yup, no matter how much I simplify the images, the story or the style, I will need a lot of hours to get it to the right point of expressiveness... And that is fine with me, but I admit it's kind of scary because I like to finish what I start and this will mean a commitment of over six months... perhaps up to a year or more... It all depends on whether I continue to work full time or not, but even if I can get by without working, this won't be a quick affair... no sir... And as I was reworking the storyboard I had my doubts on the order of the scenes, particularly on whether the opening scene works with the rest or not... so there is still stuff to redo for now. It looks to me like the movie will be more of a visual poem than a traditional narrative, so it's very important for me to ensure that all the parts are as cohesive as possible with each other, otherwise there is a big risk of it turning into a senseless muddle. It might already be confusing enough even if I manage to get it as clear as I envision it...

The job with the videogame continues to get interesting, I'm done with the storyboard and will get started on animating 2d bitmaps inside the game engine. It looks like soon we will also enter "crunch time" so I might also get to work on 3D stuff sooner than expected. Weeee!

It's nice to have some positive things going on at this time, cause my personal life on the other hand is kind of falling apart... Now since I'm pretty busy with work and thinking of the movie, it makes the other stuff bearable and I am sure that once all the personal stuff is lived out, I'll be putting all my waking hours into the movie and my job, so it's all good and I'm running with it.

The Dreamer

So I just finished writing the first draft of my next animation, along with the first draft of the whole storyboard. Again, this would not have happened without the inspiration and unintended poking of other animators who are putting their work and methods and inspirational links online. Than you Internet and all of those on it, making good use of it, sharing knowledge and strength!


The actual script is only 3 pages long, but the storyboard came out to be 23 pages... This is definately gonna be something else for me, as most of the stuff I've done is real short and simple (3 line "scripts", 2 pages of storyboards, one simple character and set) and mainly I was just trying out stuff and fooling around. This time I really have a focus on the content, so I'm not worrying about the tools so far. What IS real clear to me now is that for my aim it will have to be mainly a visual story, so I have no dialogues and I don't think I will use more than a word or two here and there. I've got about 8 to 10 different scenes and sets, one protagonist, about 5 incidental characters and 4 of these scenes have from a dozen to a few hundred extras in it... hmmmmmmm.... One big decision that I already see coming up is in regards to facial animation. As I see it in my head, it will have to be very precise, but maybe there's a way to stylize and keep it real simple. I dunno yet... I've done puppet stuff in the past, so I know that lots can be said with just body moves... but yeah... I gotta think about this.

Anyways, I'm real happy that I finally sat down to write and draw this all out. For the last two weeks I was intensely rolling ideas around in my head, but just couldn't pin them down and suddenly I sat down to type and in a few hours the whole thing just took shape. And interestingly, none of the specific details of the stuff I'd been writing down since January are actually in the draft, but I can see that the main points are still there. I did keep the name from one of these older drafts. So actually it's not that I just sat down and the ideas came out of nowhere, I'd been chewing on them for months, it's just the actual shape and sequence of it that came out in a sudden and clear flow.

For next week I'll be collecting reference images and sounds, and breaking down each scene into characters and props and sets properly. I am sure new ideas and some changes will come out of that. I still don't know how long it will actually turn out to be, I'm guessing 12 to 20 minutes, we will see. I want to set up an animatic to figure out the durations and the sounds too (I haven't done sound stuff in years!), as they will play an important part, but that might have to wait until the week after this one....

BEcauzzz, I just got a one month gig working on a video game! Yup, that's right, I'm real excited about it 'cause not only will I get a little bit of cash for some needed upgrades to my computer, BUT it turns out that the work is actually fun and it's at a small company, so I get to be involved in many aspects of the game, not just the graphics. At the moment my job is to lay out a storyboard and after that I'll be making little 2D animations of the characters inside the game editor! wheeee!

Soooooo.... Once I realized I had the job, I sat down and made a real clear schedule to make the most of the coming times. I think this is a real good opportunity to focus my energies. I'm programming just a few but dedicated hours to the animation pre-production every day, so I'll slowly get into the habit of working on it and into the mood of the story, and when the job is over, everything will be set so I can jump right into actual production.

So the upcoming posts will be mainly about the work on the animation pre-production, plus maybe some more game design insights that might come up from the job.

Again thanks to all of you who have inspired, pushed and guided me forward!

3D Animation, movies and games

So as I posted earlier, on of the reasons I got interested in game creation and game engines was because of the film-making possibilities of the tools. Yesterday, as I was following Mdot's video on Z-brush-c4d workflow, I realized that game engine or not, I still have a film to make, that whatever digital tools I use, they will suffice, IF I have a story to tell... And this is where the big difference between games and movies comes in, a game doesn't have to tell a story to be good, as long as the gameplay is fun or interesting. A movie might be interestingly made, but without something to say it's just nice motion graphics... and that is fine too, but it's somehow subutilizing a very powerful medium.

Sooo after fooling around with Z-brush/c4d/3dmax last night, I set my new plan to FINISH the script, jobless or not and regarless of my additional game-makin'-research-and-other-things, the priority now is to finish the story.

Here are two interesting videos, one of them posted by Mdot on his blog, absolutely ass-kicking for those of us who haven't gotten serious about our movie-making and the second one, a very interesting use of "procedural city building". I can see that turning into a plugin of sorts for 3D programs... I have heard that there are some game companies using this technique to quickly generate content. More about that later.

Here is Ralph Bakshi on making animated films:



Here is Shamus Young's Pixel City:

The Big One

So in previous posts I talked about getting your game out and the advantages of browser based or mobile applications. Well, Bigpoint has just opened their DevLounge Beta, opening the doors for game developers worlwide to market their games to an international crowd of millions of users. It was just a matter of time. Register now at: BIGPOINT

For a very cute Flash game check out Akinori Oishi's Opniyama. He is better known for his character designs at Pictoplasma and is simply a wonderful allaround artist.