Por} {tals.... and more!

So I rendered that today. Obviously in HD. That is what will be seen when the portal door opens. It's a long clip, so it won't seem repetitive, and will cut down on render time later, since it is already compressed into a single video. It didn't take too long to make, and I am very happy with it.

So, as we speak I am FINALLY rendering the shot I've been working on almost non-stop for the past couple of days. It's the longest shot in my film. The shot where the Father gets pulled through the portal. Here's a still from it.

The black edge is because you are seeing it through the

young Tiger's eye/perspective.

Anyway, that looks really cool, and turned out great. I'd say its some of my personal best animation so far. At about 10 seconds long, its the longest shot in my film, and it also has some of the most movement/ action, as well as its pretty much a 6 character interaction scene, with tons of lighting and perspective. So difficulty of drawing, as well as time spent rendering is probably the longest/hardest stuff I have to do in the whole film. I love how this turned out, so by proxy, every scene after this should be pretty darn easy to do. That's what I say right now anyway. (Well, I know one shot that's gonna be a huge pain). 

Pretty much, tomorrow I will jump into animating the world through the portal. I have a pretty good idea of how I want the sky and earth to work, and it should all be pretty easy to do the backgrounds and sort it all out. Lots'a greens n purples, weee! Still, I'm a little pressed for time I think, so I'm not going to do anything leisurely till after picture-lock on the 31st of March, at least I'll try my hardest.

There's going to be a lot of cool stuff coming up soon, and I'm gonna post screen caps of all of it! 

GET EXCITED. I KNOW I AM!

Ooooh, my render's done! See y'all later!

:D

PRODUCTION TEST SHOT

If the whole film looks like this or better I will be a very, very, happy person.

A very serious post.

Let's start this post off right.





Good. Now that all that nonsense is out of the way, let me present you with something.

An.... ANIMATIC.

"The Tiger" (New Animatic) from Ezra Edmond on Vimeo.

I've been meeting with Mistah Tom Sito a lot this week and we've been going over my shots and refining them, making them more dynamic. I think most of it is at a place that I like now. There's a lot of shots that are just pan's or stills, no animation involved, which is good, and then a lot of shots that have lots of animation. SO this will be a task, but I'm ever so excited.

I started using MAYA to help me layout my shots and it is really making them much more dynamic. Essentially, I place 3 cylinders where the characters would be if the shot was in actual 3d space, then i move the 3d camera around until I find a good composition, then I draw that in my boards. It really really has made them SO much more dynamic, as I don't tend to think in 3d space. I will do this for everything in the future with out a doubt.

Also I just realized that my story is very very very influenced by 'The Phantom Tollbooth', and 'A Wrinkle in Time', which were two of my favorite books growing up. The Lab, swallowing of the fortress (like moving the atoms) and father rescue are all resonant of 'A Wrinkle in Time' and the portal (tollbooth), mountainous adventure for a rescue (the rescue of Rhyme and Reason), and being chased down a mountain by a group of monsters after completing said rescue is all very much straight out of 'The Phantom Tollbooth". One of my favorite things is to figure out what has inspired a piece that I am doing, so it's very interesting to me to be so sub-consciously influenced by these two books for the film. "Phantom Tollbooth usually influences most epic fantasies I do, but "Wrinkle" doesn't show up as much. I suppose that was a little tangent, but I just find that all super interesting. At least I know where all my wordplay comes from now. If you read the book I wrote that this film is based on "Ezra the Tiger", you'll see 'Phantom-esque' wordplay at its most extreme,

Anyway..... Hardest part about this week - finishing animatic. Best part about this week, finishing animatic. I guess that's really it for now. Now just on to finishing animation and getting those 2 lines recorded for the Father.

You're TEARING me APART, Lisa!

This week makes me feel like:

This.


and


Like this.


But mostly.


Like this.

Well, the week began with a wondrous start. I recorded Mr. Rocky Collins and Mr. Wilder Shaw (Shan't link to them again. I've linked to them enough in past posts). The recording went swimmingly. I've got Wilder in two roles and it's impossible to tell - and on top of that, Rocky gave his own wild performance that I can't WAIT to animate to, because it's just so damn quirky.

"What?" You, the loyal and consistent reader of this blog says, "I thought you were handsome and ready to go in every way!"

And the answer is. I WAS. (Well, I'm still handsome). But, after all the recording I hurried up to my cubicle to begin work. And I did this. It took a few hours but I love it.

Ps. The sync is a lil' off, but that has since been fixed.

"Is it gone? For good?" Roughs from Ezra Edmond on Vimeo.

So. I love that. And I wanted to do more and more. BUT MY CINTIQ CABLE BROKE. UGH. AND IT HAS BEEN UDDER HELL TRYING TO GET A NEW "S-video to USB" or a "Mini din 8 to USB". Like. Bloody. Impossible.

SO. I ordered an S-Video cable off amazon and adapter. Should have arrived already, but Amazon lost it. So, they are sending it again. Hopefully it gets here. Then I ordered an 8 pin Din and USB adapter off some other site. But that still hasn't arrived. I went to 3 electronic stores, including FRYS (Which has never been helpful in my experience), and this is just plain frustrating now. I have more to rant about, but hopefully in the next 2 days I will have my Cintiq working again, and nothing to complain about - at least for a while.

So in the meantime, I've been working out shots, and editing all of my audio. That is going well. Just wish I could have been animating all this week instead of watching time drip through my hands like those artificial hands dripped through Edward Scissorhands blades.

I'll post the sound cut / with some animation n such for y'all soon.


I feel like I'm the little kid here and this counter is the thesis which I am attempting to work on. It is difficult to reach when these guys keep getting in my way.

A car that drives and a snake that ... runs?

So, surprise! There is another shot of the car driving! I love moving camera shots so essentially this shot is the same 3D Maya car model, rendered with a 'Toon Shader', and the entire world around it was constructed after in After Effects. I used all of the same assets that I had made in Photoshop for the previous shot, with the inclusion of the yellow road lines now.

It was extremely difficult to transition from an above 2D, to a 3D driving shot, especially making the rain and snow particles transition in a pseudo 3D environment. It would likely have been easier to do the whole shot in Maya, but the car model is broken, so it can't actually move. Every shot of it moving, is actually a camera moving around a still model, making it 'look' like it is actually going somewhere. I am very happy how it turned out -even though it is still in progress - I need to do a few touch ups here and there, when I've got time (small things to be dealt with after the bulk of the rest of the film is animated n finished). However, I think I'm finally done with this bloody 3D car model. It's really been a pain in the bum, and now I can start moving on to 2D character animation and effects.

Panning Over the Car from Ezra Edmond on Vimeo.

(P.s. In the final film, after the camera zooms into the car, it will fade into the next scene, right now, the continued animation after the camera passes through the car window is just material waiting to be cut).

SO. A RUNNING SNAKE.

Here's a gif. As with the other, right click --> save as and then drag it into your browser or ... gif player (do those exist) to play it properly. I guess this is technically the first piece of finished character animation. It's a snake, as part of the group of ghostly animals that chase Tiger and Panther towards the climax of the film. In the next coming days, you will see the other spectral animals, as well as final rendered shots of them.



(P.s. The red lines around the snake are just construction lines that will not be present in the final shots. Ignore them.)

As far as I'm concerned that's enough to update you all with now, but I am trying to work a few more CG influenced shots into the ending to really kick the climax up to the next level. There will DEFINITELY be one or two epic camera moves that just need to be figured out plausibly. Can't live just on Pan's and Zoom's alone, right?

THE FIRST SHOT HAS ARRIVED

And well suited, it's the opening shot.

Opening Shot - The Tiger from Ezra Edmond on Vimeo.

WOW. FINISHED ANIMATION. EFFECTS. ETC. OH BOY.



It' Maya and After Effects.... with a hint of Photoshop.

I guess anyone can cook.