Model update

Character T-Poses

Next step: Begin making the models!

Animatic!

Here is the animatic for my senior film!

Pitch poster and Character sheets

Here is the pitch poster!




And character sheets.

Blog Re-vamp: Digital Cel to SENIOR PROJECT

I am commandeering this blog. It used to be for Digital Cel but now it is for SENIOR PROJECT. Quick background;
I am a rising senior at the Savannah College of Art and Design, majoring in Animation. In this blog I will document my progress during the making of my senior film.

My senior film is called
!Aliens from Outer! !SPACE!
It is a cinematic re-telling of a story I wrote in third grade. You can read that story here, complete with original illustrations! Here's the synopsis:
"A young girl is walking down the street when she is abducted by aliens, 'a slug-looking one, and a bird-looking one, and a carrot-looking one.' She causes their ship to blast off into space and crash land on the aliens’ planet. The aliens are forced to find repair aliens to fix their ship and eventually take the girl back to her home."

And here's the script. The italics are directly from the third-grade story and represent the narration that will be playing over those shots.

SEQUENCE: Abduction
The location is the sidewalk and front yard outside of a suburban house.

1. Long shot
One day I was walking down the street, and looked up
The protagonist, a young girl, strolls down the sidewalk in front of her house. She looks up at the sky and sees something.

2. Long shot
I saw a U.F.O! It landed and… ALIENS!!!
A flying saucer lowers and lands. The door opens and three shadowy figures stand in the doorway. They teleport to stand as ominous silhouettes in front of the girl.

3. Medium shot, high angle
The girl, shadowed by the three aliens, looks up towards them.

4. Medium shot, Girl’s POV
There were three tall looking Aliens. A slug looking one and a bird looking one, and a carrot looking one.
The girl looks at each alien in turn. They are no longer silhouettes and are identified as Slug, Bird, and Carrot.
They all said “Hi” and carried me to their ship.
After landing on the Carrot, PAN OUT as he leans down to fill the frame and eyes the girl skeptically.

5. Long shot
The three aliens are silhouetted against the background. All three of them run up the ramp to the UFO. Carrot is holding Girl under his arm.

SEQUENCE: Inside the ship
The location is the interior of the spaceship. There are many buttons, dials and knobs on panels around the circular interior. There are brightly lit windows in every direction. The exterior is space, dark with childishly-drawn planets and stars flying by.

6. Medium shot
Carrot’s boots come into frame. Behind them, the door of the UFO slides shut and the light from outside is replaced by glowing lights from the walls. Carrot leans down and places Girl on the floor.

7. Long shot, Girl’s POV
Inside there where all sorts of controls. There was a red button at the drivers seat, on it, it said ‘Launch’!
The interior of the UFO is full of buttons, dials and knobs. The camera follows the girl’s eyes as they dart around the interior. The girl focuses in on a comically large red button labeled “Launch” at the end of the series of panels.

8. Medium shot, low angle
I pressed it, and we started to go up.
The girl presses the button.

9. Medium shot
Bird and Carrot are discussing something over a screen on one of the panels. The ship begins to rumble and Carrot looks up suspiciously.

10. Close-up
the captian said “what’s going on here??
The captain says “What’s going on here?” (lip-synced to narration). He does a take and looks, shocked, towards the camera. The camera moves around his head and pans out to reveal…

11. Medium shot
He looked out the window and, we were in SPACE!
The window shows Earth rapidly disappearing from view. The stars quickly change from normal points of light to childishly drawn stars in a myriad of colors. Carrot has his back to the camera. Girl looks up at him from where she stands at the Launch button and grins.

12. Long shot
It was so weird! I was with a bunch of aliens in space!
The ship flies through space.

SEQUENCE: On Hill Planet
The location is outside the spaceship on surface of the aliens’ planet, which is very bumpy.

13. Long shot
We acidently crash-landed on there planet.
The ship, with comic brevity, crashes onto the surface of a planet.
We got out and
The door of the UFO opens and the three aliens and the girl exit the ship. The aliens look woozy and disoriented, but the girl skips happily.

14. Medium shot
the captian said “we’ll have to get repair aleins.”
The captain looks at the crashed UFO, shakes his head, and says (lip-synced to the narration), “We’ll have to get repair aliens.”

15. Long shot
There planet was called Hill Planet. It was very bumpy! I went up and down, up and down.
The girl walks away from the UFO with the three aliens inspecting the wreckage in the background.

16. Long shot
The girl walks on the bumps and dips of Hill Planet.

17. Medium shot
But then I started to cry! My tear drops turned into ice cubes.
The girl walks on camera and stops. She begins to cry. Her tear drops turn into ice cubes for some reason. She runs towards the UFO.

18. Medium shot
The captain does a face-palm and turns around from inspecting the UFO. He raises his arms to ask “What do you want?”

19. Medium shot, high angle (Carrot’s POV)
They asked was wrong I said “I WANT TO GO HOME!”
The girl yells I WANT TO GO HOME, lip-synced to narration.


20. Medium shot, Girl’s POV
Well, you can’t go now you see we have to get repair aleins.
The captain folds his arms with solidarity and shakes his head. “Well, you can’t go now; you see, we have to get repair aliens.” (Lip-synced to narration)

21. Close-up, Carrot’s POV
Well get them! I said.
“Well get them!” retorts the girl.

22. Medium shot
Ok, I will! He said.
“Ok, I will!” the captain says, his solidarity breaking. He clenches his fists in frustration and storms off frame.

23. Close-up
Then he ran to a reipar place.
The girl grins in triumph.

24. Medium shot
Then he ran back with two reiper aliens. I was so glad! I was going home!
The captain walks on screen and stops in the middle of the frame to gesture to the two repair aliens that continue towards the UFO. He raises his eyebrows as if to say, “See? I got them.” The girl claps and hugs the carrot’s leg.

SEQUENCE: Return to Earth
The interior of the spaceship again, followed by the roof of the suburban house.

25. Medium shot
I got on the ship and pressed the button.
The captain presses some buttons next to the launch button while the girl watches.

26. Medium shot, reverse of last shot
He is about to press the button when he notices the girl and gestures for her to do it.

27. Close-up
The girl presses the button happily.

28. Long shot
We went strait to earth.
The ship flies through space.

29. Medium shot, pan out to Long shot
I ran home. I almost fell off the roof, because they landed there.
The girl exits the open door of the UFO and skips forward, but stops suddenly and is about to fall forward, her arms waving in circles to keep her balance. She is on the edge of the roof.

30. Medium shot
I said how am I supposed to get down from here?
Girl turns around and asks the aliens in the doorway of the UFO, “How am I supposed to get down from here?”

31. Medium shot
The three aliens are at the door of the UFO. Carrot points to the right off-frame.

32. Long shot
The girl looks towards where Carrot pointed, grins, and starts to walk in that direction. In the background, the UFO begins to take off.
Luckiley my dad left a ladder.

33. Medium shot
I got down and wacthed them leave. I had a great time. I was sad that it ended and this is the end of this story, Boo Hoo!
The girl steps off the bottom of the ladder and looks up at the UFO as it flies higher into the sky. She waves, and it disappears.

Final Post for Digital Cel

Well, it's the last day of Digital Cel! That was an interesting ride, I loved seeing everyone's blogs progress and the final films I've seen so far are fantastic.

I'm overall fairly pleased with my final film. If I was to change it, I maybe would have tried to do a film with straight animation rather than the cut-out style, but doing that would require simpler character designs and probably a whole lot more time! (Or I would have to be Chris St. Clair, that guy is insane! :P) Anyway, I think the goals I set for myself were pretty realistic and the outcome was pretty much as I expected.

And now I know how to use Flash, woo hoo!

FINISHED FILM

Here it is!

Last preview before the final movie!

Some scenes done!

So far it's going about as quickly as I expected. As I get more comfortable with what I'm doing, I hope it will get even faster. Of course, most of the upcoming scenes are more complicated than these, but we'll see.

Anyone know if the completed film is due Monday or Wednesday?


I was going to upload multiple scenes but you can only put one in a post so whatever.

Last screenshot update probably

Hey some stuff.

I AM SO ALMOST DONE WITH THE PUPPETS AAAH.
Only 5 leftttt. Well, 6, counting one last hamster puppet.

EDIT: 3 LEFT

EDIT: ~*~*~*~DONE WITH PUPPETS!~*~*~*~

Almost done with backgrounds

Wooo, update.

Only one background left!

Yellow wall
Jewelry box 1 (Reaching for ring)
Sink basin
Profile sink, with and without X-ray vision
Inside hamster cage
Outside hamster cage
Edge of sink counter
Sink drain opening
X-ray vision sink pipes
Jewelry box 2 (Hamster height)

Cool. Then when I'm done with that there's only doing the girl puppets for the opening scene aaand the hamster and cockroach puppets for the last scene.

The actual animation of this thing shouldn't be too hard. I'm going to animate the string around the hamster in flash rather than try and make some weird string puppet because that would be really hard. And animating a line is not that hard.

So I definitely anticipate being finished with the puppets by the end of this week, which leaves the next week open for animation. There may yet be an all-nighter in there somewhere but I'm pretty comfortable with the remaining time.

So yeah. Gonna finish that last background in class today.

EDIT: Finished the final scene hamster puppets! Took forever, too. There is only one more hamster puppet. Then I have to make the roach puppets (3), and then the girl puppets (there's about 8, I think.) It took 2 hours to make 6 hamster puppets. The roach is going to be easy. The girl... I'm not really sure. I'll say 10 hours of puppet-making left just to be safe.

Pic

Now I'm just uploading stuff to upload stuff.

Trying to work at least an hour every day on this now. 2:30 hours today.

backgrounds and stuff

Hey. Haven't been updating this very much because I haven't been getting any feedback from it. Here's some backgrounds and stills.









work work work time

Storyboard

Here's the storyboard for my thing. Still don't know what the title of it is! Anyone have any ideas? A pun or something? I don't know.



I'm going to have 11 different backgrounds. One of those is just one color, so that doesn't really count. I've already done the opening shot one, which was hardest.

I have --

Yellow wall
Jewelry box 1 (Reaching for ring)
Sink basin
Profile sink, with and without X-ray vision
Inside hamster cage
Outside hamster cage
Edge of sink counter
Sink drain opening
X-ray vision sink pipes
Jewelry box 2 (Hamster height)

I'm going to have to figure out how to do fades in Flash. I hope it's not very difficult.

Here's a rough go at the opening shot.

Little Girl Ref Sheet

Here is the design for the little girl character.

More hamster testing

More cut-out style animation testing.

I am pretty far behind in this class; A lot of outside stuff has interfered with me completing the tutorials and storyboards for my final project. However, I hope to complete as much as physically possible. I'm just not sure if I'll be able to make my final project look anything like I hoped it would.

Here's my lip-sync anyway.



Audio from "Groundhog's Day".

Hamster Vid, Ref Sheet

Reeeally messy, but I learned a lot making this little thing. This is pretty much how my film will look (sans the bad animation, hopefully.)

Here's the character design for Hamster, before he gets the paper cut-out makeover.


Working on the other designs now.

Script -- Feedback please?

Background music fade-in
Exposition – Fade-in of a bathroom with fade-in/out overlaid title, a little girl is standing in front of the sink on a stool and applying lipstick, badly. She is wearing big pearls and a hat that doesn’t fit; obviously she is playing dress-up in her mother’s clothing.

Med. Shot, from perspective of mirror – The girl smiles into the mirror; her face is a mess of bad make-up. She reaches down for the jewelry box and picks up a ring, but drops it.

The ring clinks in the metal drain.

Profile, med long shot. The inside of the pipe is visible in a silhouetted sink like a diagram. The girl tries to stick her finger down the drain but can’t reach the ring.

Med. Shot, from perspective of mirror- The girl is frustrated and thinks about what to do. She smiles and gets an idea, then turns to leave the bathroom.

A hamster in a cage that is on a girlish dresser. He is carefully selecting a nut from his food pile. Offscreen footsteps rise in volume and the hamster looks up nervously.

C/U – Some Barbie and Ken dolls on stands. One of them has a little pith helmet on and the girl’s hand comes from off-screen and grabs it.

The girl’s hands open the hamster cage. She scoops out the bewildered hamster and puts the pith helmet on his head, then dashes off screen.

Med-long shot, the sink “diagram” again. A cockroach cautiously approaches the ring in the drain and pokes at it with its antennae. As footsteps get louder it dashes down the drain. The girl runs on screen with the hamster in hand.

Low shot from the hamster’s perspective –The hamster gets placed on the rim of the sink. The girl points at the sink and the hamster looks where she’s pointing. He shakes his head nervously but the girls hands quickly ties a piece of string around the hamster’s middle.

Med shot of hamster. He hops down into the basin of the sink and peers into the hole. He looks up pitifully at the girl and reacts to her off screen reaction by slowly shaking his head and gulping. He hops down into the drain.

“Diagram” shot again, but closer to the drain. The hamster lands on the bend in the drain and sees the ring. The cockroach from before peeks up over the second bend and pokes at the ring. The hamster hops over and snatches it, then tugs on the line. As he gets dragged slowly upward, the cockroach watches sadly and waves his antennae.

The hamster gets awkwardly dragged out of the drain, almost dropping the ring but managing to hold on to it.

The girl pulls the hamster to eye level and grins, putting out her hand to receive the ring. The hamster drops it into her hand and the girl lowers the hamster to the sink.

The hamster gets set down beside the jewelry box and looks up at the girl.

The girl puts on the ring and looks at it admiringly.

The hamster is still looking up at the girl. The cockroach edges up beside him. The hamster notices him and tilts his head. The cockroach points at the jewelry lying in the box above the hamster with an antenna. The hamster grabs a different ring from the box and gives it to the cockroach, who bounces happily and skitters away as the hamster waves good-bye.

Cut to credits.