BLOWN AWAY ROUGH edit 04 from Seamus Spilsbury on Vimeo.

Rough edit.. no sound as yet, but here is all the animation :)

POP and the animation is Done :)

ANIMATION IS FINISHED :)))))))))))))

the pop was the last shot to be done. really happy how it turned out. now its full steam ahead with the flashback.

i have sculpted all 6 heads and now painting them and making armatures.

the goal by the end of this week is to have everything built and ready to shoot. its going to be a stretch but, sleep is over rated anyway.

Burst!frames

making the Burst.. three frames should be quick enough. ill be shooting it tonight so it should be fun.

Casualties

tonight i set up the shot.. figured out my scene and poses for the boy.. and BAM! the arm is gone..

the armature broke in the elbow.. thank god already thought about this happening and i can replace the arm with ease.. so the night has been wasted for animation but im just happy that it is not the end of the world as i know it.

the arm is now fixed and im going to bed.

Sweet dreams Kids

End Scene edit

here i the end scene, most shots are complete. i did the smile last night but just not sure about it.. i wanted it to be subtile but i think it might be a little too subtile, so much so that the audience might miss it.

please watch and any feed back would be great :)

oh and the final sot was just a test, thats whys its jerky.

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

Holidays..

too date i have animated 16 shots, with about 7 to animate. all the long shots are complete, so the remaining shots are mostly of the boy pulling faces.

im happy with the progress, the plan is to have all the shots that involve the clown done by the end of the week.

hear is the one of the shots i did last night. i like the clowns reaction, i think it could have been better but, we are here now.

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

boy Run.

this is the other half of the post below.

it was a mission to get this done in one night, but 10 hours of animating later here is the dreaded run cycle.

really happy with how it turned out. you will notice that the bush disappears in the foreground that is because it was moving around too much so i made the decision to take it out and comp it in later.

shanks :)

1/2 way

1/2 way, next half tonight i will animate the boy running into shot and stopping to notice the clown.

it wont be i long shot i think im going to intersect in with a close up of the clown and also a blured shot of the plants with the dog running past.

cheers

plugging away.

45 seconds of animation complete :) one or two shots i might reshoot but for the purpose of sanity i will keep moving forward.

just about to start animating a Long shot of the clown.

this shot will take me 2 nights to finish.. because i have to do a run cycle for the boy.. ive been putting it off for a while but it is time to bite the bullet.

fingers crossed kids

Production report 1

I started production at the start of June. The first task was to build the Set.

SET

it was all trial and error to get it right as I have never done anything quite as big. Some of the problems I had were with the placement and size of the trees to give a false depth to the scene. I decided to break the set into for six areas. In each area the trees where at deferent scales. Area 1 is where the clown is standing so all props and trees are relative to him. Area 2- 1/2 scale Area 3 - 1/3 Area 4 - 1/4 Areas 5 and 6 are background hills so the colour of the grass is lighter the closer you get to the horizon. The set is built with two directions of perspective. One pushes back toward the sky and the other tapers off in area 3. I did this because I wanted to have a shot that went down the path. Characters the clown’s armature is pretty standard; the only things I had to decide were what I wanted to be animated. I chose to sculpt the clowns pants, hands and head in sculpy because I didn’t need to move, his mid section is plasticine and can be animated, the problems I ran into where the sculpt it self, trying to give weight to is baggy pants and shirt. The Boy was more complex as he needed to be fully animatable and also to be able to be connected to a rig so he can run. His armature is fully repairable it any of the wire snaps. One problem I had was finding the right thickness of wire to use. The boy is so top heavy because of how large his head is. Now im a animating I have made a good choice with the wire, but I haven’t done the run scene yet so only time will tell.

Another choice had to make was what the boys head will be made out of. Plasticine or sculpy?

Plasticine I would have full control of the characters face and be able to sculpt extreme facial expressions. The down side to that is that when animating I would have to re sculpt his head every time it was pushed in the wrong way and the boy might have an inconsistent look.

I chose to make the head from sculpy and have a plasticine jaw, and then match paint so it’s hard to see the transition. Matching the paint was a painstaking process but in the end it is a really close match.


Lighting

Lights have been an issue from the get go. Due to the size of my set I needed a light a light larger then a single desk lamp. I was unable to borrow lights from Holmesglen so I was left to my own devices. First option was to build my own lights, with halogen globes. This ended up not being an option because I couldn’t build a housing that wasn’t dangerous, and going to melt after being on for long periods of time.
Next option was lights from a shop. I found a set of soft boxes for under $400.00 I couldn’t really afford it but I scratched up some money to buy them, thought if they worked to would be a great thing to have.
There was only one issue, the globes were flouresant lights, the guy I bought them off said they wouldn’t flicker.
So I got them and low and behold flicker central! I managed to get my money back thank god..
Back to square one...

I had done some animation test with the lights coming from the roof of my room. Ha! Real silly but I works, and as I was running out of time to animate so I just had to go with it..

so my final lighting set up is one key light and two background lights to light the sky.

down side is im still having problems with flicker!!! but cant do anything about it now, the flicker problems are more to do with the flow of power to my apartment rather then the light globe.

to fix this problem there is a Plugin for after effects called GBDeflicker that edits the lumanace of each frame, its not ideal but im happy with where im at at the moment.

Animation

i started animating 2 weeks ago. and i currently have 5 shorts animated. im shooting on 12 frames a second, so i can animate around 7 to 10 seconds a night if i push it.

im happy with how the animation is coming along, my only problem now is time, and the fact i can only animate at night, i am slowly but surely becoming a Vampire.


In weeks to come
more animation and hope to have majority of shots done in the next 2 weeks.

i have to build characters for my flash back witch will take some time but because the flash back is only still shots it shouldnt take much time.

Composting out wires and eliminating flicker.

Editing and sound.

I have someone looking after the sound and im meeting with them next week so that should be on track.

Fingers crossed for it all, it’s a lot of work but if I live to see the end it will all be worth it

Smiley faces all round.

Seamus out

Animating

about to commence animation on my second shot. its a 5-6 shot so I'm buckling myself in for a long night. he is some frames form the shot i have already animated and the one im about to animate. booom!

if all goes smoothly then i will reach my target of having 3 shots finished by the end of week 7.

ANimation

Alrighty.. ANimaton will begin tonight at sundown, hoping to get two shots down. only easy ones but ones nonetheless.

balloon time

Balloon is done :)

and i think my lighting is sorted.. thinking of using the light in my roof.. a bit dodgy but it seems to work and it gives nice shadows on the clown. i ran a test and seems to be no flicker.. so heres hoping!

im going to get my hands on a blue gel and see what it looks like with a cooler light.

Characters Finished!

one step closer to shooting :)

just have to get my lighting figured out.

rock and roll

Face Painting

clowns face paint, not sold on it but it is 3 in the morning, i think ill look with fresh eyes later..

Shirt, Pants, arms, and legs :)

boys body sculpt.. its coming together, im thinking its going to take a lifetime to animate this. but i hope its worth it :)

BAM!

Heads

Painting Characters heads.

I got my hands on a 28mm lens :) it gives me a much wider shot, its much more like the opening shot i had in mind. the two shots above i was ust playing with the tree in the fore ground, and seeing if i want to have the clown wiht his hat on.. or on the ground.

Lighting test

i bought some lights. 2 soft boxes with flicker free fluorescent globes (5200k), and they is Flicker!!!!!!!!!!!!! it still may not be the globes, it could be power fluctuation. ill do another test tonight when there is less people using the grid.

fingers crossed.

Boy armature

i have built the armature with k&s joints. i hope that this will maniputlate easier and i will have less resculpting to do when animating.

the pelvis joint has a connection for the rig i will use for my run cycle.

Set

perspective shot down the path

Characters

animatic with basic sound.

this is the most recent shot of the set, the color of the background hills are still too bright and i need to find lighting.

rupert run test on 2s

happy with how it has come out, but not sure on the pace. think it might have to be faster.