Just about there

So we spent 40hours straight in finalising renders, compositing and mastering the film.

And teh end result...well, lets just say it could be better.

There is simple stupid mistakes like flowers missing from one scene, charlies eyebrows moving from caryns paint job and the colour continuity issue which I argued with damien for ages over...he now finally sees, when its too late ahah.

Anyway...alot has been learnt by me from this experience of this film.

I can see now that we had taken on a very ambitious project in one hand IM so very grateful as there is stuff I have learnt about maya such as shaders, lighting, camera, special fx and dynamics and then there is also the compositing aspect - that I have learnt and I believe my animating skills have come so far in just this last year too.

Titles and Credits

Friday, October 10, 2008

Titles - section where the caterpillar is going down the line...{Fade in}The Griffith Film School presentsA Team Composure film{Fade Out/in}Down the line...Credits -A film bySascha FournelCaryn GirardiDamien WongOriginal Concept by Damien WongCharacter Modelling, Rigging, Shaders & Lighting
Sascha Fournel
Creature Modelling, Rigging & nCloth simulationCaryn GirardiEnivornment Modelling Sascha FournelEnvironment LightingSascha FournelCaryn GirardiAsset ModellingDamien WongSpecial Effects & DynamicsSascha FournelEditing & CompostingSascha FournelDamien WongMusic and SoundAndrew McLellanAnimationSascha FournelCaryn GirardiDamien wongAsset TexturesDamien WongAsset ShadersCaryn GirardiWe would like to give big squishy hugs for thanks toAndrew Martin, Liam Hoskins & Chris Dai for Technical helpOur Mums, Families, Friends and GF/BF for their patience and encouragement.GFS logo etc

Monday, October 6, 2008 - The groups aim for the week

Today Damien and I discussed what we as a group really need to complete by the end of this week being Sunday 12th of October...

Find a fix for the hair - Sascha
Remember to set keys on the aim locator for the DOF camera (check that Caryn has this camera)
Do test renders on the DOF to see its not too blurry
Complete the sprites, flowers and black goo, cut clothesline for scene 9&10 - Sascha
Textures to complete - Damien
- Interior and Exterior Walls
- roof - windows - use shader form CGI assignment (Sascha has one)- balcony- potplant - Sascha- cockroache - Sascha- Fix Charlie texture
Buildings for final scene and textures - Damien
HDRI or environment sphere - Caryn is doing this we think?
Day Lighting to be finalised hopefully by Wednesday - Caryn
Finalise Scene 3 with lighting and textures and render out
Give Fog Scene rest of group - Sascha
We are hoping to meet Wednesday after life drawing to finalise:-
Scene 3 with fish, lights, textures and render layers
Damien to give Sascha Buildings for final scene
Sascha to give Caryn & Damien Cockroache, Fog and dynamic Clothesline
Caryn to give us - Lights for environments and show us how to do the ncloth with fish
Check that misenscene for all scenes is the same for everyone

WE can do it!

Saturday night with Andrew

Well this was the most interesting day of my year so far...a freaky caller at work, followed by a fire alarm at uni, followed by my scooter getting stolen...was nothing compared to seeing Andrew in action in front of the big mixing table thing.He is good...he is real good and patient with us raucous animators...I had just as much fun gathering all my junky bits and peices together for our night of recording as I did actually being able to make sounds with them. We had a rather very successful evening between the hours of 8pm and 4am the next morning...being able to record majority of the foley and also the music tracks.It was way cool to see how Andrew works...its definately an art form in itself...and was alot more full on than i ever imagined.

Friday, October 3, 2008 - eye CTRL issue

ok so i may have come across an issue with the eye CTRL...but all sorted...If you look in the attribute editor for translate and rotate you'll see they are highlighted in green.select all Translate X, Y, Z and Rotate X, Y, z and then right click once selected > break connections.Voila...you will find you can now key and CTRL the eyes as per normal...not sure why that happened...All im glad about is I was able to fix it...Damien next time you get that Head CTRL issue, see if its doin the same thing...and see if the above remedy works for it too...out for now...OH yeah...

Saturday, September 27, 2008 - Idea for climax scene

I was thinking while animating tonight that just as the rope gets cut we could have like a vingette of images to show what's happening rather than animate it out. For example we could have a cut to Charlie shocked and then a cut to her in a running pose, hand outstretched with same look on her face, then another cut of her hand trying to grab the rope and then fade to black. Then fade in to her sitting on balcony with rope in her hand upset.
This is a cheat yes but it will cut the time of the film down as well as render time being single frames etc.

I have pretty much finished Scene 9 - just need to do some final refining of the animation and turn the clothesline into a dynamic to simulate it falling when cut. Oh and decide on what would be the best resolution for the goo at the door.
I also did a test batch render today of 74 frames of teh camera truckin in to the balcony through the fog. I haven't composited it yet... but did 3 render layers - Occlusion, software and mental ray, so will hopefully get around to that tomorrow.
Also tomorrow I want to:-
Start animating Scene 8
find a resolution for the music sprites and soft clothesline
do flowers for scene 8
model flower pot and cockroache
Titles
Moon cutaway

Thursday, September 25, 2008 - We have foginess

Using 3D fluid containers I managed to get a hazy, cloudy, foggy sort of look. The cloud containers can be animated and colours can be changed.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - Some feedback and new thoughts...

Showed animatic again tonight to Mark and Mum...they still are wandering about teh whole past and future thing as Peter, Andi and Anthony Lucas etc did/do/does...So Im wandering if perhaps the image on the black card could use a universal symbol representing the past some how...Or a thought I had just like 2 seconds ago...What if the animated picture on the first black postcard re-enacted like a bad memory of Charlies...i.e something dramatic...like september 11 or a parent dying or seeing someone have a stroke..something real dramatic that would stop her from wanting to go outside and living...hmmm.What I accomplished today...I thought i had a fix for the eyebrows...well I guess i still could...but for some reason or another the shader wouldn't stick to the mesh on teh new eyebrow area once moved for the first time...It might be some kind of hierarchy thing...maybe Darren or Liam might know.
I created the DOF camera and have had some interesting results see below...http://maya3dtutorial.com/blog/maya-tutorials/depth-of-field/ to find out more about how to get the most out of a DOF camera.

• Created a new lattice and motion paths for the door scene and started animating Charlie running into the door.
  My Aim for Tomorrow...
  To finish rough animation of the scene
  Come to some agreement/fix on eyebrows
  add jiggle to hair spikes?
  See if Damien can finish bathroom scene
  Set up scene folders for everyone
  http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-149.htm - test this for foggy background and paint effects

More researching stuff I did last night-

Fog/Cloud - WE have Charlies unit in a vast expanse of pretty much nothing for majority of the movie. We are sort of after a foggy look with shadows in them to suggest that they're could or couldn't be something else out there.So I did some testing with spotlights and adding fog density...some nice effects, BUT i can't get it to scale up enough to look really volumous...even adding 3 more lights doesn't seem to create anymore fog or layers of it. I also tried enclosing it in a sphere...but just looked the same. Will add examples later as they are on my mac...So I am considering perhaps having a look at the paint effects for clouds and seeing what that gives us and renders out and time etc. I know Damien was also thining of doin a matt painting for the background which would really look painterly and gorgeous...that in conjunction with the cloud effects could be an interesting look.Another idea that just crossed my mind litereally just then was transparent image planes with Damien cloud paintings on them...ta da! that could be it...ill do some more tests.Depth of Field and Z depthCame across a couple of tutorials which may add some more realistic film feels to our short film, rather than it being completly stuck in 3D land...going to set a DOP camera up and render out teh differences between frames to see fi it would be worth it. Damien had an ingenious idea that we would just import it if it work and parent it to other camera so as not to loose original camera moves..wOOT WOOT!Oh also came across this really good looking tutorial from highend 3Dhttp://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/rendering_lighting/general/Rendering-several-maya-scenes-and-cameras-261.html
It opens with this statement :-
You need your animation rendered by the morning. You have 3 scenes to render each scene is saved in a different maya file and one of the scenes you have two cameras, you need both of them rendered and you are a tired artist not a programmer.
IT could be very handy later on for us...
Getting a Workflow happening...
So I watched the animatic a few more times last night to see if there were any simple scenes that we could possibly just animate and get out of teh way now where we didn't have to worry about texture, much lighting etc etc...the most obvious ones that stand out straight away is the
Title/Credits
Bathroom Scene - no textures needed, very limited animation
Scene 1 - writing the first letter which leads into title scene.
There are obvioulsy alot of cut aways too to CU of charlie expression we could also do if we could lock off what we were after in each scene??
None of these really need textures...we could do a final render of these now and hence have less to worry about, render later. It also gives us a realistic project to work on to test compositing stuff etc i.e. animated letters, overall look of B&W part of film and other compositing stuff we wanted.
Are we still doin blue hearts???

MY aim for today is:
Test DOP camera and add to scene
Block out and add refined animation to my scene
Sort out music sprites - Damien mentioned youtube ipod+coldplay for inspiration
add growing flowers
model cockroache
Over and Out - Coffee grabbin times

Testing with Render layers to avoid changing shaders

So after lots of wind being expelled and brain cells burning out, I think we may have found a solution to our mental ray not liking our skin shader problem...but will it save time or add it t0 our already time short budget?

Bascially Chris Dai and Asian John Do overheard me in class today discussing my dilemma with Arash. I queried with Arash whether we could use Render Layers from some tutorials I cam across on the net, I just wasn't sure I had the right understanding or know how to do it. Arash believed it was not the way to go to resolve the problem as he thinks i should redo the shaders and lighting for Charlie. I really didn't want to as we are completly happy with how she looks...


So Chris and "John" said that yes I was right in thinking that i could use render layers, but I would need to make sure it was set up in the render globals...so I came home to test it out...

So I set up 4 layers - selected the objects that could only be rendered out on Maya software, then did the same thing for mental ray and selected everything for Occlusion layers...the trick is you have to setup overrides before you batch render. But it took about 5 minutes to render out 1 frame...but remember i was rendering out 4 different methods - software (charlie), Mental Ray (remaining Assets), Occlusion (everything) and the Masterlayer..which I probaby should have turned off, althougth it does have some nice reflections and major shadows from the harsh light, but also alot of artefacting...that may be more to do with the lights though...anyhoo after a bit of compositing in shake...and very basic mind u...i got this...

Ok so its a bit dirty looking in comparison to the photoshop manipulated one, but i also am not that proficient in Shake...yet. Although, in the above image i did manage to roto around the eyes to brighten them up a bit and blur on of the images to make softer shadows...obviously we can do alot more as well...Oh and actually, I didn't plug in the shiny reflection one btw...i just used the software render of Charlie, mental Ray of everything and the Occlusion render.


P.s. whats the go with the eyebrows? LOL thats the next thing i have to fix i guess.

Our Final Postcard image for Screening night

OK so i used the bluer image but also rendered out an occlusion layer. With Damien's help, we selected some highlights and adjusted them to simulate that of the sprites reflecting and the moon.

I went through and painted her lips a little more, added some glow on teh moon and teh fishy to give them some luminace which was lost in the layers.

I quite likey aloty and hope we can aim to do this for our final renders.

Test Renders for Screening

So been muckin with paint effects to get stars and some glow shaders for teh moon.
This is rendered in Softward Render as I still haven't managed to get the shaders to work with mental ray...I dont think it looks that bad.
This is meant to be the scene where charlie follows the Music sprites into teh unit...i thought they would be illuminessent and so decided to add a blow light to the scene (top image) to try and act as the glow reflect off her sking...the bottom obviously is alot warmer...although i think the top blue one works with the night feel...meh...see what everyone else tinks.
Prob could add a halo or something to the moon to soften its edge.
Left Walls with teh material assigned as this scene will be fairly bland until the sprites start palying music through the gramophone.
Also gave Charlie a little smile which she is tryign to hold back..s.hould it be more...or even less?
Oh yeah suggestion for fishy is that it has the a blue reflective dot in the middle of its eye, matching scales on back...been studying my siamese...and both ahve that little pearly dot in there eye..might give it more character too...???
Also bump map for hair perhaps???
More colour on lips, finger nails and redo eyebrows?

Saturday 20th

So we met today and aimed to get textures finished....After my major night aiming to finish Charlie with shaders and lights...I came in today and we found out it doesn't work well with Mental Ray...so we spent 5 hours trying to relink shaders etc in order to work, but just couldnt' get it. So moved on.
Did some textures on shelves and scrabble board...and then gave up with Maya crashed...so moved onto the clothesline.
Used Soft bodies and springs and added an air field and keyed it to simulate wind.
Haven't textured it here as it would be better to do in the scene and Im not sure if Damien wants this to also be occlusion, although i think it is.

Moving on now to pose Charlie for Screening Cards to give to Mari on Monday.

OVerall had a very productive weekend being here at uni the whole time. If all 3 of us did this we would have an awesome movie at the end, so will discuss this possiblity with groupies later.

Its Meeting Times...

So had our RUFF CUT review with Andi, Peter and Darren today....loads of stuff was mentioned...like keep an eye on cuts...use more classic cuts and more CU for reactions...Overall the story is loved although we are a bit ambitious due to the nature of the story with symboloby etc...so we need to slow it down and be a bit more obvious with links i.e caterpillar-butterfly- metamorphisis etc. We have blocked everything except for half the last scene.WE met after as a team and reedited the blocking and designated roles and prioritised what we need by next week.So Damien is doing the following:
Animations for Letters
Zdepth test
Textures - Bathroom - Rug
- Kitchen - Door Mat- Walls - Scrabble Board- Roof - books- Wardrobe - shelves- clock and alarm clock
Animating Title, INTRO/Scene9 and Scene3&4
Modelling of City for Scene 9
Caryn is:
Designated Animator for fish and caterpiller in all scenes (Bar Titles)
Lighting - Environment, Rooms (ceiling light), Charlie
Texturing shiny objects i.e a/c unit, kettle, toaster etc.
Animating Scenes 5,6&7
Sascha is
Modelling Cockroache
Special FX unit - softbody clothes
- clothesline
- music sprites
- flowers
- Moon
Lighting of night scene (scene 8)
Blends and set driven keys for eyelashes, fix smile blend, create extreme "im over it"blend
By Monday we are aiming to:
have the lighting of the environment completed
Night lighting of Scene 8
textures
blends for Charlie eyelashes
and if we have time, changes to animatics.

Foley Sound - big day October 4th - 8pm

fish - symbolic sound - bubbles?
rope
breathing
ambient noises - room and verandah - night and day
crashing of buildings
toaster
crunch toast
footsteps
bad letter/scissors
music sprites
butterfly flaps ?
caterpillar crawl ?
sketchy noises ?
clothesline wheel squeak
flapping clothes/letters
water - tap - bathroom
pegs
door slam
record player scratch sound
hmms and hoos
couch spring sound

Update from Sascha...

Well...its been a while since i posted...and that would be cause of the charlie rig...i have never ever rigged anythign in my life. In hindsight...with next too no experience in this department, it was a HEUGE job to take on with such little time for us to complete the film. To not hinder the production, i gave a basic basic rig to the group to start blockin the animation, quite a few weeks ago now, but there was an issue with teh referencing of the files, that meant animation wasn't getting copied across between rigs...so the blocking stopped until i finished the rig. Even though I know its taken me a while, i have learnt so much and actually rather enjoyed this process. Considering my limited experience I am extremly happy with the outcome. There are still things that could be tweaked like more blends and refinement of some existing ones, figuring out how to get teh orthographic camera to follow just the face of teh character so as not to hinder animation. But all in all she does the job. I shall post a test animation of the controls later.On the back of finishing the rig I have now been blocking of the entire film over the last week. The first couple of scenes i completed by last week end were handed over to Damien to start animating so we have something to show on Thursday for the RUFF CUT meeting...but IM not sso sure we will have 50% completed.Things in the process of getting done:-Texturing of assets - CarynCharlie texture - DamienTest render of environment - Damien?blocking and animating - saschaThings to do still:-animatelight environmentanimateWe have some scratch sound from our musician Andrew Mclellan. A suggestiong from him though is that he is finding that the music needs more room to breathe. WE were tryign to keep the story as short as possible due to time constraints for animating, but with this feedback along with anthony Lucas, Kevin Geiger and randoms, I have lengthened most of the scenes out. This will hopefully also help with the biggest issue at this stage, that people are being able to follow or understand the story...

Charlie model update Video

Other Modelling done by me

I decided to start modelling the studio environment and kitchen bench just going off of a mixture of some of the images of building etc that Damien posted and also some I found.  This also helped me to adjust the scale of Charlie accordingly and also gave us an idea of how big the kitchen, bed and couch should be.

I made an executive decision to skew some of the elements such as doors and windows to go with the "Surreal" world Charlie is living in.

Please note:  that this colour isn't the final colour for the walls...it was only placed on model to assist in viewing.

Charlie Occlusion and Update on modelling

After chatting to Andrew he has suggested we make a few minor changes in the mesh:-

• bevel hard edges
• flatten out nose to cheek a bit more
• lose some fatness in cheeks to make look a bit older

Modelling Charlie

The modelling process started with Caryn modelling Charlie.   Being then I had decided I would like to try rigging. So we decided that perhaps I should take over the modelling so I could make sure i had enough edge loops etc in place for the rig as I was NOT going to use the set up machine program that does the rigging for you.  Previous tests of charlie using the set up machine showed that there were some bugs that were impossible to fix without a depth of understanding of the rigging process anyways, and we did not want a lot of our animating time going to fixing the rig if we could help it.  Some comparisons and some tech info in images found below. 

Technical Aspects of Down the Line

Length: 3-4mins

Genre: Surreal Drama
Medium: 3D animated short film with mixed media compositing

Concepts we hope to achieve:-

• 3D backgrounds and assests which look like line art
• Stop Motion - origami folding letters (by Erin)
• writing overlays of letters onto screen as she writes

Programs we are using:

• Maya - all 3D modelling and animation
• After Effects for special effects such as the writing overlays and colour seepage aswell as compositing
• Photoshop for texturing, concept art
• Flash - Animatic
• Protools for sound editing

In the beginning...the seed for the story

We decided that none of our story ideas would be realistic to realise in the short time frame we had. Then one night, Damien came across the above image of Erwin Madrids which inspired him to write the original script which as a group we devloped further.

Storyboards and Musak!

Monday and Tuesday night i roughed out some storyboards. Very rough but then as a group we padded out the first 2 scenes on Wednesday.

From doing this though it became evident to me that some of the strong points in the story are being lost in this basic storyboard that we have. Things like:-

1. when colour is introduced to suggest her becoming more comfortable with her self.
2. Studio apartment layout
3. Tech issues with environment being 3D but looking hand drawn and parts of it becoming 3D when she realises herself.

This made me aware that we will need to spend a few weeks doing research and development for certain technical things that we want to do, but i haven't put this in our production plan at this point, so i will have to revisit that.

Other things that became obvious to me was whether or not the pot plant creature part works. And even the fish...the fish doesn't do much and all its actions are reserved, but then you have this part with the pot plant that is very characterised...im wandering if perhaps we should pull the acting back a bit for this...but maybe it will make more sense in the animatic.

Speaking of animatics...Damien started one for us on Thursday in flash and it is looking really good so far. We are hoping to get this finished by Friday the 2nd of May in order to hand it over to Andrew our music composer so he can start laying a scratch soundtrack down.

Down to the Musak...

We met up with Andrew a 2nd year music composer who seems rather keen to assist us with the music for our film, which is going to be VERY important being A. we have no dialogue and B. The script is driven musically as a suggestion to whats happening.

It was really exciting and intersting to watch and listen to Andrew as he went through our storyboards with his ideas and suggestions as far as stepping away a bit from the noise and more to the melodic. He has some really great examples of his work which he thinks will work well with our script. And some of his ideas for suggestions for character and story have really helped us alot. I very much look forward to working with him on this for both the collaborative experience as people ideas and for his experience. Sitting with Andrew, also really solidified this project for me, its a real thing...not just an assessment peice for our final project...its just real...its weird.

Thursday - Met with poor bruised up Andi. She is really liking where we are at with the story, suggested if we have a few surreal moments in the story, perhaps we need to push it further like i.e. instead of toast popping from toaster have flowers or something...


So where we are at:-

Damien and Caryn are modelling Charlie.
Damien has also started the animatic.
I have started furniture design and will be doing colour scripts in order to get more of the story across.

French furniture and abodes

This site has alot of great french peices of furniture that look really cultured/refined but still girly.

new Script...Yay...and references

Today Damien and I went through his most recent script to include a few ideas that he liked from my script. We then went through it 2 or 3 times more to make sure when reading, it had a pretty good flow for the beats etc throughout. WE added a few more symbology things like the Lotus flower and Dragonfly, and a new concept that on each reply letter, there would be a little logo, wax seal or drawing to resonate with the letter it was replying too. Damien wanted the second letter to reference the coccoon stage of the butterfly metamorphosis, but I felt this would be difficult ot imply, and it also wouldn't fall in line with the "lyrical" visual asthetic of the film, so i then suggested we should keep up with the sort of asian symbolic theme we are using, and between us came up with the lotus flower....and it went on from there.

Here is a link to youtube vid on how to make origami lotus flower!


Tonight I also attempted to draw up a production schedule on a time line for us. Wow this was so not what i wanted to do. Was already to go and finish my digital paintings of charlie, but thought we better get something like this done up, as I could feel time just slipping away from us. After I got a rough schedule drawn up, I then began a production plan or scene breakdown, just to have an idea of how many we would have, and also get an idea of who wants to do what. Thought this might help with writing our Personal Learning plans for Andi, whatever the hell they are meant to consist of.

Other thoughts I had today were:

Lets have just 1 blog for our film that we all post too, this way we can set up to send alerts whenver something is added, and also we can direct people to one page, rather than 3 like sound designers or musicians who are helping us in near future.

References for scissors - i thought of how Miyazaki's Spirited Away animated bits of paper that cut up Haku when he is in his dragon state and thought we could look at this for reference for our flying scissor scene...even just to see how character animated can look. I couldn't find any images of the scene, only this one after he got chopped up, but i have it on DVD and will bring it in.




Other reference for colour scripts, environments etc - art of robots and cars books - i shall bring them in for us to gander through.

Video reference for our Film

Asked a scriptwriter friend of mine to read over the treatment/scripts Damien and I had over the weekend, and he was saying he could see the aHa video clip in his mind.

Had no idea what he wsa on about, but checked it out on youtube...pretty cool for its time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iww6GoXtEng

My thoughts thus far...and the research it spurred

I think if we are going to attempt to delve into a surreal world for this film, we need to embrace universal symbols so that our audience doesn't go..."what the F*$K!!!". I know that we are trying to stay clear from cleches, (is that how you spell it?) and to a point I completely agree, but after writing the treatment we don't want to go shootin ourselves in the foot...and completly losing our audience.

So I began thinking about the main crux of this story and I feel it is basically, a girl feels abandoned from her one true love, therefore hides away from the world feeling worthless...but eventually finds her self again through finding a new love. So she has completed a cycle in a way, and has had to change her way of thinking and therefore goes through a kind of rediscovery, major change in life i.e a metamorphosis. The universal symbol for this used throughout art and across many cultures is the butterfly...So for starters here is some info I have found from various sources on butterfly. Please note the bold type...

Scientific research has shown that the butterfly is the only living being capable of changing entirely its genetic structure during the process of transformation: the caterpillar's DNA is totally different from the butterfly's. Thus, it is the symbol of total transformation. Butterfly represents a need for change and greater freedom, and at the same time it represents courage: one requires courage to carry out the changes necessary in the process of growth. Its Medicine is related to the air and the mental powers. It teaches us to find clarity in the mental processes, to organize projects or to figure out the next step in our internal growth. If Butterfly is your Power Animal or if you feel in any way attracted to it, this means you are ready to undergo some kind of transformation. Examine which stage calls your attention the most: the egg is the beginning, the birth of some project or idea. The larva is de decision to manifest something in the physical world. The cocoon has to do with "going inside", either through insight or the development of the project or idea. The breaking of the cocoon deals with sharing the splendor of your creation with the whole world. Once you understand the stage you are on, you can discover which is the next step.

This is found at http://www.crystalinks.com/totemanimals.html

There is also a greek/roman myth of Psyche and Eros which the more I think about it, the more I feel our story could be considered a modern adaptation of it also! Basically Psyche endeavours to Psyche's symbol is the butterfly - a glowing reminder of her miraculous transformation from mortal to immortal...from lonely princess to fullblown savior, aswell.
You can find a retelling of this myth by Dr. C. George Boeree here and some interesting side notes on butterflies.

So in concluding on the Butterfly theory...I am suggesting we have the important moment where she decides to reply to the other person a butterfly as it will suggest that she is starting to consider a change in her current lonely life. So I have amended my treatment with this information in mind.

More on symbology - Flowers

Here is where i got idea of the forget me not as flowers...thought the plant should have some relevance or symbolic meaning also...we could probably even use a rose etc...but thought you might want something not cleche. But have a look and see what you think

Modern uses and general characteristics of Forget Me Not found here.

The use of colour in our film & more on music

I watched a Danish film tonight called Dark Horse by Dagur Kári. It is shot in black and White except for one maybe 7 second part where the protaganist looks at his girlfriend in new light right near the end. It suggested he is finally ready for her in his life etc etc....and it just made such an impact.

So I got to thinking, if we slowly introduced colour scene by scene to suggest she is reconnecting with her self and ready for life and reality, would it be just as impactful or should we leave it in B&W also except for the heart beats and the last scene where the boy and girl worlds are united???

I think perhaps, the only way to really see what would work best is an animatic...let me know what you think though?

I also loved the typography and design of the DVD cover and titles for this film too...work really really well for an animation of our thematic content.

Thinking more on music

Dirty three - Cinder album - I think we should aim for these sort of sounds/music for our film

Synopsis and Treatment

SYNOPSIS

A GIRL has been living in limbo for a few years, since the love of her life left to go discover what his purpose in life is without her. She is waiting for some sort of communication from him, but as each day goes by nothing arrives. She gets more lost within herself, shying away from the rest of the world, hiding within her studio apartment; the only thread of connection to the outside world is a clothesline.

My TREATMENT...well more like a script towards the end...

Every thing is in B&W. There is a GIRL sitting in her underwear and ugg boots on the balcony of her studio, writing what looks like a love letter.

The scene is empty and grey apart from an empty pot, the painting left by her ex love, her pet goldfish in a bowl, the notepad and pen she writes with the balcony rail and a clothes line that goes off into the distance. N.B. This is symbolising that she feels she has nothing in her life…apart from the one thing she loves and trusts = her fish, the painting which is the only connection she has to the ex love and just a suggestion of where she lives.

She is endeavouring to make contact with her lost love. This has become a daily ritual cause she feels lost without him, wake up - look at his photo her heart beats hard with pulses of blue symbolising her sadness. N.B this is the only time that colour appears throughout the entire film until the end. She then goes to sit on the balcony and writes a letter, poem or a demand asking for him to return to her - the letter then folds itself into a paper aeroplane and then she lets it go out into the abyss around her; As gravity doesn’t exist in her world, the letters float off in all directions. She then walks a few steps away from the balcony rail and crawls up on the floor. She completes this ritual a few times for the audience.

On the third day she is out on the balcony struggling to write a letter, and as she looks up from the pad to search for the right words, she notices a letter pinned to the clothesline.

It’s a poem in unfamiliar handwriting…

I am still; so quietly still

A small hum resonates in the shadow’s long dark shadows that corrupt me as I lay waiting, watching the curtain drift toward me breathing lightly a gentle caress, then nothing. I awaken and my flesh is a hologram
I push it away and am floating.

I am still; so quietly still

This affects the Girl, but her emotion turns to humiliation as she scrunches the letter up and throws it over her shoulder over the balcony. A pause and the same scrunched up letter comes from in front of her and bounces off her head. She opens it up revealing a new message has been scrawled along the bottom of the page…Please stay in touch with me. Her heart starts beating again but this time its purple as she examines the letter. She hesitates but eventually writes a reply “Who ever you are, leave me alone. ” She then scrunches it back up and throws it over the edge. This time though the letter folds into a butterfly and flutters over to the clothes line and settles. The girl watches, slightly amazed, the letterfly as it slowly journeys on the clothes line into the horizon. As she turns around and walks away from the balcony, we notice a table slowly fades into the scene. N.B. this is both a prepositioning of a change that’s to come and a symbol of the girl beginning to reconnect with her life/reality.

Girl gets up, stops to looks at the photo, blue heart beats, as she makes her way out to the balcony to continue her daily ritual, she starts writing her letter. The squeaking of the clothesline as it delivers a letter, distracts her from her own writings. She just watches it for a moment until it stops right at the end. She slowly walks over and unpegs it cautiously “Thank you for responding…I assure you I am not playing games with you. Simple truth is we all need friends. So I ask…will you be mine? Looking forward to your reply!” She does with “Im sorry, but I need to know…who are you?” and then pegs it back onto the clothes line and watches it begin its journey down the line. She turns to go back inside but stops to acknowledge her goldfish as it swims closely by sort of knocking her off balance. She falls into the table, and looks at it as if seeing an old friend. She dusts off the chair and takes a seat beginning to doodle lovely things in her notepad i.e bed or wardrobe and we see them appear in her studio aparment, her heart beats with purple. She then catches a glimpse of the ex love painting; the beats stop for a moment and then restart, they are a faint blue. She gets up and walks away from the balcony to crawl up to go to sleep in the bed. The audience notices that her letter has been blown off the line.

Girl gets up, stretches and then remembers…she wanders if there is a letter waiting. She moves quicker out to the balcony, straight past the ex love painting. Its windy she pulls her cardigan tighter and squints to see if a letter is coming…there is nothing. She looks disappointed for a moment, but then recomposes herself as if she expected it. The new furniture begins to fade as she walks back to the bed.

Vignette of images – Girl writing letters, overlapped with sessions at the photo frame of the painting, overlapped with written poems/letters, overlapped with girl crawling up to sleep and then getting up robotic like.

Girl gets up, ponders over painting, blue heart beats, walks out to balcony, all the furniture is gone again. She begins writing. The clothesline squeaks, she ignores it at first and puts her head down to concentrate on writing. The squeaking gets louder as if its struggling. She looks up there is a packet. She walks over, unpegs it and examines. “Plant me” She looks around and see’s empty pot, opens the packet and pours the seeds into her hand. The pot eyes off the seeds and eats them up. A pause…a plant begins to grow. There is a message on the leaves “you will always stay just one heart beat away.” The plants grows up towards her face and carress’ it. The girls heart begins to beat a magenta pink colour. She turns to look for her notepad and we see the balcony table reappear as she reaches for the pad and scribbles something down and pegs it too the clothesline. The plant is drawing what looks like a door way and then its realised. The girl joins in drawing a window, and some more plants on the balcony, behind her we see the cityscape vaguely appear behind her – to suggest she is willing to get back into reality.

All of a sudden there is bangin at the front door, letters start to spew in through the mailbox, she picks one up. Its from her ex – the plant is trying to pull her back to the balcony, but the girl rips the letter open…

…speaking of friends; i should mention what you already
know…

The girl drops the letter to the floor. The door keeps banging and the letters are still flowing - some of them re-enact memories of that relationship. The girl grabs the lounge chair and puts it in front of the door to stop the letters…the banging doesn’t stop, but gets harder. She bolts up the door…the banging gets even harder the plant is still trying to get her to come out to the balcony, the girl follows the plant. Some letters slip through…then the door bursts down. Letters are getting blown everywhere, then scissors fly in chopping them up. They try to chop the plant but the girl distracts them, she is too late for the clothesline though, a pair of scissors cuts the line. The girl dives to grab the line before its gone forever…she just gets her finger tips on it. Mayhem is still going on in her studio, but the plant has stopped any of it from coming in close proximity to the girl as she pulls on the line. Everything begins to shake. BANG! There is a collision, colour bursts everywhere… Everything is suspended and silent…we see two sets of hands on the line. We then notice the other building and its male owner. The plant grows over onto the other building and begins blooming with forget-me-nots the flower of true love.

A letter falls it’s the letter the girl scribbled before mayhem hit…they both reach up to grab it. As the boys hand touches the girls, colour spreads into her world. She pulls away coyly, and he grabs the letter..it reads.

Whoever you are, my love, I can feel myself slowly being sewn to your side…

Easter Break & Wk 4: Update

Whoa Nelly...have we gotten the creative bug or what! I think it is fair to say we were all frustrated and anxious of the fact that we had not started this film...aghh...maybe cause...WE HAD NO CONCEPT!!! Anything we had was sort of shot down by the powers to be...a few more meetings and still no resolution...But then...

Easter Break get together:-

This meeting seen us get together and fully nut out 2 stories...

1. Grand Canon Pa


2. Love Letters

By the end of this meeting we had pretty vague ideas about Love Letters. Caryn's concern was that it would be too lovey dovey and people would shy away from it.

Grand Canon Par seemed to have more obvious story line, character animation that could be evenly split up between the group and an evident production process, which Caryn was attracted to. Damien and I though felt it was just another narrative with a twist, too many cleche's were coming forward and it didn't have that shamanistic element to it that we were both trying to achieve. We both knew we would rather work on Love Letters....but didn't know how or why.

So we decided to all go way to write a treatment on each concept. A few days later, Caryn emailed us with the concept that instead of the girl resolving a relationship with another person, what if it was her rediscovering herself and she was looking in a mirror...this would be a valid reason as to why she was in a surreal environment.

An other, non story related issue arose:- Who's in the group? This was becoming a stress pot for some of us in the group - who we would be willing to work with and who we couldnt/wouldn't work with.

Week 4:-

On the Monday back...a few more ideas were thrown around. Damien had found an image of this girl on a balcony and felt this could be a good starting point for our love letter story. By the time we were attending Animation Business and Policy on Wednesday, it seemed fairly obvious that the story that was stuck in all our minds now was the Love letters one...but by now Damien has renamed it Down the line.

Side note - Im still amazed at how many creative ideas i was able to pull out during such an analytical subject...

I suggested:-

• use colour to differentiate the characters mood throughout the story...i.e. start in complete black and white...with each step she takes in rediscovering herself, a little more colour is introduced to the scene.

• in the first scenes dont have many objects in the scene - just her, a loved object ie plant, the significant object, the balcony rail and clothes line. This is to suggest she feels she has almost nothing in her life or that she believes at this point she is completly alone.

• As the movie progresses, have things slowly reintroduced to teh scene...i.e. cityscape to realise she isn't alone, unit objects - bed. Damien suggested, we could reintroduce the paper/letter subltly with this where she is concious of the rediscovery so she draws what she wants on the paper - love this idea.

• when character is near object of that significant other, the only thing colourful in that scene was her red beating heart...later Caryn suggested, why don't we make it blue to really drive home that sense of depression...and it too could morph colour by the end to Red to suggest she has found passion in life again - great idea aswell.

• Clothes line goes to infinity and then in the end she grabs it and reels it in until 2 building collide - damiens idea...a bit corny, but has great imagery associated with it so would probably really work.

In this session of meeting it was also ascertained who was in the group:-

Groupies are Caryn "cool nut" Girardi, Damien "Harvey" Wong and myself.

We also started designing our main character and nutting out what kind of environment would she be in.

Environment:- We like the idea of a European, bohemian studio apartment. The studio idea, also strengthens the impression that she is trapped or imprisoned somewhere, loneliness. She would be in a well built up sort of city area, cause she's a 20 something and again, the city is a stereotype for lonliness etc.

Character:- Female as they tend to be more in touch with emotion. And can come up with a more stylised apartment for a girlrather than a guy.

I was suggesting we try and push her stylistically as Craig is in my head saying " Realism can't be done..." And we all know what he means. So I found this post card and thought we could use this as inspiration...

You can see a whole bunch more of these girls at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5082288

Group mission statement - something like Pixar.

Group Aim - to complete a final film that is very original, stands out from the rest but ultimately really means something to us all and hopefully to our audience.

Conclusion: So from here we are writing another treatment...well as far as I know, Im the only one writing a treatment, Damien is designing characters, and Caryn is researching.

3d short animated inspirations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMAUuyx6TNo - nice character design

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JahYDFR1Df0 - nice environments and character design – different rendered

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAdCa4CIgx0&feature=related - nice character design, nice use of camera, nicely rendered..

New beginning...

So...3months of story ideas...I'm wandering what for...cause now we are back at the beginning.

This is a new one though as Andi has suggested young Damien and i work together as she feels we come from a similar place with story ideas...And she really liked Damiens Love letter ideas.

To be honest, in the beginning I was like...i do not want to animate any more flying paper...how is that supposed to look good on a reel? But firstly...how the hell do you do that in 3D??? But the idea stuck with me...i hated it so much I began to love it...yes it will be a challenge, but after a little bit of research i began to see some huge potential in this idea. And Im sure as technical challenges go, that Darren would be able to suggest how we can do this...

So Damien and I have decided to start over with an idea...i had some...

40days without chocolate
fluro green toe nail polish

or what about damiens original idea...

bascially its letters from one man to another during the war...but we don't realise its another man until right at the end...up until this point the audience would believe it was a beautiful women and a handsome soldier man. The last scene is one of them gravely ill in bed...the other man walks in and sits down and holds his hand...fadeout. so it would be controversial a bit...a gay animation *raises eyebrows* but also thought provoking and romantic. I ran it past mum...she was really in to but her face did change when she realised it was two men. She says she wasn't uncomfortable with it...but didn't like the idea that she got it wrong...that it was a man and women...ahahh..like she felt she had been cheated...but she wanted to know why it had to be 2 men. I said because if it was a man and women we have all seen that before and it would be really memorable...and also after watching a few historic movies over this weekend, it was amazing to me, just how many were gay back then but they had to keep it so secret...

So thats the short of it...but I was thinking the paper letters could still turn into things...like when he describes something of the war, the letter turns into a paper aeroplane and then a real bi plane and we see a little bit of a in air dog fight...or the letter turns into a peace crane for the end of war etc...But I guess it doesn't have to be 2 old guys who went to WW2, it could even be more modern approach like 2 soldiers fighting in Iraq or even an iraq kid and an american kid writing to eachother and we see them hug at the end or something....showing that they dont care for the reasons the war is on...they just want it to stop and get on with life and make it better...i dont know...

get some musical inspiration here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en03MHejlxs for paper aeroplanes and love letters.

3rd and Final year Animation Project

Prior Learning –

Advanced skill sets: -

· Maya - modelling, unwrapping, texturing, painting weights and animating

· Photoshop - used extensively for texturing for Maya projects, digital painting and photo manipulation techniques.

· Traditional Media – Painting and Drawing

· Hardworking

· People person who prefers to work in a team, but can work competently alone as well

· Good motivator

· Researcher

Average Skill sets: -

· Maya – Rigging, SFX, lighting

· Adobe After Affects

· Flash

Areas I’d like to explore: -

• Directing
• Pre-production
• Compositing of live action footage and 3D/SFX
• Compositing of 2D and 3D animation
• Sound

Areas of interest – As far as animation goes I am in love with 3D, the realism it can achieve but yet still be so imaginative i.e lighting in Ratatouille (2007)

Future direction – Right from the beginning I knew I wanted to be an animator working in the film industry. To be applicable I will need proven storytelling skills, acting skills, strong understanding of traditional animation principles, an art background that shows a thorough understanding of physical motion, weight, balance, texture and form. I believe right now in theory I am doing/or am fully aware of this, but I haven’t produced enough work to show I understand these requirements. But it is what I am hoping with my final film project.

I hope that I will be able to still work on my own short films while working at a studio, so I have some creative outlet of my own being.

In 1 years time I would recently have completed a quality short animated film with an awesome team…so my phone is ringing busy with potential employers wanting to arrange interview dates.

In 5 years time I will be working for Pixar.

Synopsis and treatment

ARIKA jeopardises her species anonymity in order to save them from extinction.

ARIKA resides in the local river that runs through the local town Dungle Bay. Being the curious young toddler she is, she enjoys going on adventures and learning as much as she can about everything around her. One day ARIKA ventures too far and into immediate danger. Her father becomes enraged to find she had ventured to places he had told her were off limits and sends her to her room. But ARIKA realises this danger is a threat to her species, and decides to break the number one rule and befriend an OLDMAN who will help her save the river!

Practical info on the film

· Drama with some light comic elements

• 3D modelled and animated but would like to incorporate some 2D elements i.e “Le building” (2005) so maybe even just experiment with toon rendering.
• Script Approximately goes for 5mins in length – but currently working on another draft to refine this.

Below is ARIKA the main character of my concept. I am thinking of changing her colours, to not be so close to that of water...