Next Animation

So with the completion of "Must Have Done Something Right" comes the question, what's next? I have a number of projects raring to go so let me list them here. It'll be interesting to see what does get made.

Directionless - Pilot/Series

Okay, this has been in the works for a very long time. Over a year now. A month ago I wrote a working outline for the series and since then have been piecing it together when I could. Now with Must've Done Something Right Done I can move onto other projects and I will give Directionless more attention. The first episode still isn't written. It's about halfway done, with the rest summarized out. I will still edit it down tremendously. I will most likely release the "intro" to the series a month or so ahead of the episode itself. I said my goal for the first episodes release is May in a post on Directionless and that remains the same. I'm planning to do 5 episodes. I haven't decided on a style of animation, but it will be something simpler than what I have been doing so I can make more of it. It will be more focused on witty writing and characters rather than perfect animation. I will probably write an in-depth look at what I hope directionless to be as well as production updates on it.

Night Light - Sister Sisters

So I mentioned this in a previous post. I am still really interested in making this movie. It follows a shy girl as she ventures into the underground new york city club life and becomes a slut. I've wanted to take some characters from un-used videos and stick them into the movie. I would love to be able to do a style simliar to this video by David Ochs.

I

I also would like to mix in 3D animation alongside the 2D. This would be a very big project and take me many months to complete. I've started the storyboard for it and hopefully will finish it sometime this week.

Burds (tentative title)

This is a short movie I storyboarded today. It's about two birds who bolt infront of cars to try to impress a lady bird. Short. Fun. And Stupid.

Kitty (tentative title)

This would just be another short. I had storyboarded a scene where a cat was watching a nature documentary on tv and pretended it was a lion and slashed a couch. The owner put the cat outside and I never progressed further in the plot than that. I think it might be something fun to elaborate on.

Tim Minchin

As of right now, this video is canceled. There is a small chance I may animate an individual sequence from it for fun though (20 seconds or so).

That all I can think of for now. Of course more ideas will come to me. It's possible I'll get some inspiration for an idea tomorrow, ya never really know with this kind of thing. I also have a large collection of storyboards and ideas I never used. I might just open up a file and want to work on it. But as of right now, Directionless is priority, followed by Night Life and then whatever else I decide to do.

Must Have Finished Something Right?

Must Have Done Something Right is done! Unlike my last animation(Directionless - Entry Level Job) there is quite a story behind the making of this one.

I'll start by saying where the orignal idea for the animation came from. I was waking around New York City in May 2011 and the song came on my ipod. I knew I wanted to make a video for it the instant I heard it but had no real concept as to what would happen in it. This happens pretty often with songs.

I decided to lift the main guy character from a TV Show pilot I had made( Scott, who appears in this video). I designed the girl from scratch, though she is loosely based on the girl that appears in the songs actual music video.

So I then made this brief animation to feel out the characters,

So then I started producing the movie in May 2011. At the rate I was going the release date was set for June 20th, or something to that extent. Sadly, I was going to become busy with other things and would not be able to made that date, and would have to put down the animation for awhile so I quickly produced Mellow Brick Road to release an animation near the date I wanted to really Must've Done Something Right.

I didn't pick up Must've Done Something Right again until October or so. I did some blog posts on it but if you read them careful you'll notice I never really made a dent in the overal movies progress(it remained at 1/4 done).

I did a little bit of animation but was still too busy with other things to take it on entirely. I finished the Directionless movie and decided to finish Must've Done Something Right as well. So I set a due date, January 30th, for myself and went to work. And look at the date, finished it right on time!

Since there was such a long gap in production (from May - October - January) there were some aspects of the movie I did not like. Some animation was removed/replaced. And I became more selective about the paper texture. Here is a shot of something that didn't make it to the final cut,

The movie also worked as an spiritual sequel to a movie that I never finished and as a re-imagining to a movie I never made.

Back in 2008 I wanted to make a video about a guy trying to talk to a girl but things kept getting in the way called "Talk to Her". It also involved a sequence where they were happy being together. I never got a working storyboard for it (meaning I had trouble writing the movie). Because this was a movie with a deadline I took my attention away from the idea and I made Nuts instead. I do see "Must Have Done Something Right" as a revisit to this concept. A mildy interest tidbit, I used the girls design from "Talk to Her" in Directionless - Anime Intro. She's the girl in the blue dress.

I had started a music video for the song " Island " by the Starting Line. It was about a couple drifting apart. The guy wanted to go sailing and go on adventures while the girl wanted to have a steady job. Partially inspired by the film Revolutionary Road, it was a very interesting concept to me. I finished the storyboard but I found myself bored with the video itself. I see "Must Have Done Something Right" as a movie in the same vein as this one. A prequel to this couple in island, showing how they started out, or a sequel showing them staying together.

I decided not to re-use their character designs, but I did decide to keep the color scheme the same. Their darker tones represented the darker/sadder story. While in Must Have Done Something Right their bright colors represent the happy emotions!

Pillow Cat

Happy New Year

So I completed the Directionless animation mentioned in the last post and have resumed production on "Must Have Done Something Right". I'm about halfway done with the animation and am speeding through it trying to get a January release!

There isn't much of a story behind the latest Directionless animation. I was at an internship and storyboarded a movie about a guy at an internship turning into a dog. It's very loosely based on the internship itself.

or awhile I've wanted to start using classical music in my animations and this storyboard presented a perfect opportunity. It was not drawn with any music in mind but initially I selected the Chopin piece " Grande Polonaise Bril" to be the background music. But shortly before I started finalizing the animatic I changed it to Chopins "Waltz in D flat major" because it seemed more comical and also matched the length of the cartoon.

La La La

Last update was a little less than a month ago. Whoooooooops. Where have the updates gone? Well, I've been busy and only update this blog when I remember I have it.

:)

So onto the animations. Must Have Done Something Right is trucking along. I keep adding details meaning it will just be longer before it's released. I'm about 1/4 fully animated an colored (not secondary shading though). Once I get past the next section production will speed up since there isn't as much lip sync( I might not do any as to speed up the release process).

Some other news, I have started production on another Directionless animation. It's not the pilot though, that is still on hold. This animation is more "part two" of the Jobs animation. The jobs movie was envisioned in two parts, the job search and having a crappy job. The having a crappy job part was supposed to be the credits but at the last minute I decided not to(too much work for a credits sequence, would have rather made a full animation with the concept). Well, now I am making that animation. It does not have any of the Directionless cast in it (other than Jeff).

And the song Toes by Lights really strikes my fancy. I do not like the official video to the song and feel it could be so much better so I am in the idea phase of putting that together. Honestly at the moment I have no idea. My free association for the video as of right now is neon lights, pixels, love, stalking, scores, banging. Hopefully by the next update I'll have made progress with it.

And sadly, the Tim Minchin video is on hold, for now.

I would upload screen shots of stuff but I'm currently Animation Collective and don't have anything of the project files on this computer.

Must Have Done Something Right Update 2

My goal with the video is just to make people smile. I haven't shaded the girl in yet.

As of right now the first 40 seconds are fully animated. I still have to color the girl and do secondary shading. And also put in the backgrounds. Though, for backgrounds I plan on using After Effects to create some great motion graphics.

I included the first 20 seconds of the video in my animation reel from June.

"Sing to me"

"OOOOHHH"

"Hey baby, I can show you a reeeeeal good time if ya let me!"

I animate the mouths separately.

The video goes into a wild direction(which right now is only storyboarded, so not worth uploading).

Approximately the video is 10% done. The frame by frame animation takes the longest to do. Then color/touching up. Then shading.

Adding backgrounds and adding the motion graphics will be the final segment of production and I do not know how long it will take. I don't image it taking more than week since most of the effects involve hearts/flowers floating around.

Must Have Done Something Right

So I am still chipping away at the Tim Minchin video but a few youtube comments made me revisit an animation I put on hiatus in June. I decided to begin to work on it again. Since it is currently well ahead of the Tim Minchin video it will most likely be released before it. It also has less characters and is shorter.

Must Have Done Something Right is a music video (the song is by Relient K). It's about the "male" character expressing his feelings of love/happiness because of his new relationship. I said in a previous post it's about 1/4 done but I decided to redo some sections(mostly because the shots were uninteresting) so the completedness remains the same. With my newfound motion graphics skills I plan on making the backgrounds much more interesting and adding some effects that none of my animations before it have included. I'll post some stills(maybe) in the future when I get to those shots.