The first shot Background.

If you think this is legit you should see it with effects.


Yeah. I said that. :o

Background to the Backgrounds

Essetially I built a rough of each background in MAYA for everything in the film that takes place before they go through the portal. Then in photoshop I paint it as if it was a normal background. Then I add the lighting. It's adding a very cool sense of depth I feel. I really like how these are coming. There are a lot more coming soon!

A Panther Who is Good At Expressing Himself

I have one for the Tiger too, but it's drawn on paper, so I have to scan it when I get home to my scanner. Then I'll color it in the Lab tomorrow. Other than that, Tomorrow is a day for backgrounds, lighting sheets, doing more CG layouts (Explanation for that coming soon), and making a few important calls.

Also - I would like to meet with Tom Sito and fix some of my layouts for the exorcism action scenes.

Some turnarounds among other things

I realize the Panther's hands are a little weird. But here are some turnarounds, a size comparison for our 3 'main character's' and a lil bit of prop design.

Tomorrow what I would like to accomplish besides completing a plethora of backgrounds, would be 'expression sheets' for Panther and Tiger, and lighting/color charts of using one pose from the model sheet of each and lighting it as I feel they would be lit in each different location and setting, so we can get a good idea of the color feels. There is 'outside', 'exorcism room', 'lab', and 'other universe/dimension. So expect 4 lighting styles for each character. Just idea's though, in final composite it's bound to change a little.

Like they did for Princess and the Frog, I am going to flat shade all characters with the same colors, and then hue/saturation/light/shading/glow adjust them in After Effects for each different locale. Should make transitions easier too.

Then I need to re-cut my animatic, making the few changes that I have made and incorporating MARK DONICA's brilliant dialogue as the father. Then it's really just backgrounds and animation from here on out. At least.... I hope.

PRODUCTION TEST SHOT

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

Family Portraits

So over the past few days I have been knocking out backgrounds like crazy. I've figured out a new method that I will explain more in the next post which will be much much larger and feature a lot of cool new work and process's.

In the meantime, the Tiger's fathers desk requires some family photos and such. I did four of them, to put on his desk, to establish a past and a world a bit. They will hardly be seen, but I'm still proud of them. Here they are.




Now stop reading this and get your bum to the theater to see Tangled, which is fantastic and opened yesterday. If you've seen it already - go see it again. How's that sound?

As to the animatic - I've cut the scene where the Panther inhales the castle - so now they just find the Dad tied up, sitting on the cliff, and I've changed the ending because in pre-screenings, people didn't understand the importance of the ring. You'll see all those changes reflected soon. Also, some staging and other random stuff has changed too. All will be made clear soon!

Huge post about backgrounds, shots, and world design to follow soon. This is all super exciting- look forward to it! :D

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.