Update for Friday

In the absence of anything better to do over my lunch hour, I thought a quick update would keep me entertained. Yep, I'm back at work again. Which means I'm back to the crazy business of part-time filmmaking, a luxury only available to paupers, animators and films set completely at night.

I've completed 3 out of the 5 tests I've done on my characters for the new film. The test I completed at one o'clock this morning, rendering hair, was a spectacular failure. Although it seemed incredibly serious late last night, it had taken a couple of days of modelling and painting to set it up, it's actually not much of a problem. Hair is notoriously hard to do, as some of the very funny out-takes of the CG feature The Incredibles illustrates (not that I'm using CG), so I'll try the test again with a different lighting set-up. If that fails, well, I have other options which maybe aren't as attractive (adding about 2 weeks to the production schedule) but I know from past experience will work.

I've also started storyboarding! Fun! I like to storyboard as I'm finalising the script because it helps me understand exactly where my characters are in relationship to their environment and how they're interacting with it and other people. Scripts are often subjected to little re-writes as the art design and storyboards are done on films (more so on animated films) because as the 'world' starts to evolve around the characters it subtly changes them.

I've worked on quite a few music videos or short films as a camera operator or DOP where the storyboards are really professionally produced, they tend to look like this:



Seriously though, if you're got a limited budget it doesn't matter how it looks as long as you understand what you're looking at. You don't have to be able to draw to do your storyboards.

Because I sometimes turn mine into an animatic mine tend to look a little like this.

Awww... he's sleepy, Awww. It's a little more work but I find drawing relaxing so I don't mind.

Anyway, Thanks to the hundreds of people who've checked out the two films on here (or the one person whose checked it out hundreds of times). I'll put another short film up shortly, anyone have a preference... humorous or serious?