occasionally colleen makes a film

moving day

2010-06-17T07:54:00.002-03:00

you can find this production blog over this-a-way, now: http://littlefoible.wordpress.com/

the new film

2010-06-15T10:29:00.004-03:00

So, it's taken me far, far too long, but it is in fact happening. I'm one week into actual production of my new little film after months and months of redoing storyboards and agonizing over what the heck I'm doing with this project. I think I have to realize that each film is like a stepping stone, and none of them are going to be perfect. That said, I'm pretty excited about this piece and I'm hoping that it will turn out well.

I decided a while back that I will be doing this project on video rather than on film....this was a very hard decision to make as I have received a grant that gives me access to all the supplies and facilities I would need to make a 35mm film....now, it does also give me the same to make a video, but I do have more of those supplies already myself so I feel like maybe it's not the best use of the grant. Really it boils down to the film itself -- I looked at it every way I could, and in the end realized that I would have to sacrifice a lot of what I wanted the film to be if I made it on 35mm (since I would essentially have to do it all on one layer). Thus - video it is, this time around. My next project I'll tailor specifically to film, I think.

This new project is called 'Collectables' under the grant I applied for, but that is a working title that I'm not a big fan of. However, the character in it is named Celeste, and I have pages and pages of title ideas, so perhaps I'll come up with one soon.

Until then, I've got to head down to the studio, but I'll leave you with this sheet of colour tests. Still not sure which way I'm going on this one.

kate and bradbury: online at last

2009-11-19T11:47:00.004-04:00

Just wanted to announce that Kate and Bradbury is now available in full for viewing online, here!

I've secured some studio space to work on my new film, and hopefully that'll help things start chugging along. Not too much to announce other than that!

2009-10-28T18:45:00.001-03:00

Hey, Kate and Bradbury was honoured with the Best Animated Film award at the EcoFocus Film Festival in Athens, GA this week. This is the first time a film I have made has been honoured in that way, so thanks so much to the good people at EcoFocus.

just getting started

2009-10-27T11:23:00.012-03:00

I haven't had too much time to get started working on my new project yet, which is somewhat distressing. However, my dayjob time goes down significantly after October is through, so I'm hoping to make November doubly productive. I think I may have a tentative design for my main character in the film, and I'm getting some cards on which to redo the storyboards this afternoon.

Also, I am going to try and start collecting things that I find on the ground to use in the film as the items that the character finds on the ground. Oh yes, and the character has a name -- Celeste. That may change as well, but it doesn't really matter as it will never come up in the film.

things that are new

2009-10-09T18:31:00.005-03:00

So, here we are. It's been far too long, and for that I apologize. I feel like I'm never sure what to do with this blog, but I have a new project on the go and I think that's good cause to revitalize this old place and clear out some cobwebs.

Here's what's been going down in the past half year:

Kate and Bradbury:
All done, the sweat and blood part over with for the most part, and the applying to festivals when I have some spare time at work part is in full swing. It's been accepted to a few already, from screening on subways in the Toronto Urban Film Fest last month to the always wonderful Atlantic Film Festival here in Halifax, where I was also working at the box office. It played in Georgia down in the states last weekend at the Ecofocus Film Festival, and later this month it'll be playing in Toronto at the Planet in Focus Film Festival -- one of my favourite festivals to work with. The lovely folks at PIF have been so kind to me, and I'm really happy to be screening with them again this year. K+B will be up on vimeo so's you can see it in full if you haven't already. Until then, you can watch an edited (no credits), soundless version here.

The New Project:
Tentatively titled 'Collectables' (this will change, but hey, it's a working title), I recently was hounoured to receive the Helen Hill Animated Award from the Linda Joy Society to work on this film, and I'm really excited about it. My deadline is September 2010, and I am finishing up storyreel work this month. It will be animated with watercolours and crayons, and will be about a girl who starts collecting random objects on a whim. You'll most definitely be hearing more about it as the work gets done.

There you have it -- an update! I will attempt to not let this fall by the wayside for so long again.

the rest of the story

2009-03-25T14:29:00.006-03:00

I've been meaning to chronicle these ups and downs as they happened, but haven't had a chance thus far. So: I thought I was all good and such with my film once I had turned it in the first time, but it was not so! I managed to get my film back on the same day as the rough cut screening, and I ran in to chop it up a bit and make it more presentable, but the middle section of the film turned out to be totally blank! The beginning and end were there, but there was a chunk in the middle that was whited out (though not entirely; the black frames of the Oxberry were still there, just nothing in them).

I'm still not sure what I did that screwed it up, but it was a pretty sad time....until I was informed by the lovely people of AFCOOP that I could reshoot! This was wonderful news, as I had been trying to resign myself to the idea that after all that work I didn't have a film. Later that week I went in and reshot -- Martha sent the film out right away and it came back early the next week. Looking at that reshot film almost gave me a heart attack -- it would fade to black and my heart would start racing before remembering that there was an intentional fade-out that was supposed to be there. This second time round it all turned out fine, fortunately. Whatever it was that happened the first time didn't repeat itself.

I edited up my second take (or rather, spliced together the part that turned out the first time with the stuff I had to redo), and recorded some sounds at home. I ended up mixing the sounds with a combination of Audacity and Premiere (due to Audacity not being able to import video; I would create a certain sound by layering and cutting in Audacity and then drop that into Premiere and do a bit more playing around). The delay because of reshooting did mean that I had missed the audio deadline, but Natalie was kind enough to come in and dump my audio tracks to mag stock for me. After that the audio edits and sync went really well and I somehow had everything in on time!

So there you have the belated story of the rest of my technical problems. I am seriously so grateful to AFCOOP and all the people who helped me out because without their patience, understanding, deadline flexibility and last-minute assistance, I wouldn't have a film.

shooting

2009-02-25T14:27:00.002-04:00

So here's a shot of my little animation setup -- I have some more photos over at my flickr account of my sketchy line-test setup (my computer was too slow to be able to test anything over 80 frames at once, but it helped me get a sense of things at least) and of the process in general. Animation mainly happened in the week or two before my deadline (as these things will tend to do, as helped along by a trip to Alberta when I got nothing done and the holiday season in general), but for the most part it went well.

Shooting. After the last minute scramble to get all of the animation done (including animating all of the sponsor/afcoop/omf logos which took longer than I expected but which I think were worth it in the end), I first went into the animation room on the evening of the 31st of January. I had gotten my mentor to give me a quick reminder session and go through all the steps of loading the camera and shooting fades and such the night before, so I was feeling pretty confident. I still had a bit to ink, so I shot one chunk that day and one the day after -- the process itself went fairly quickly and I got into the groove and just went for it.

On my way to my second day of shooting I came across some NSCAD students in the parking lot beside the animation room, shooting a film about -- bikes! I took some photos of them (like a stalker) and we chatted for a bit about bike films. I deem it to be a good omen!

Turning in my film was a wonderful feeling, after a week of craziness and scrambling. The OMF coordinator had forgotten that I was still shooting and sent the main batch of films in so I had to wait a few weeks before it would be sent for processing (with everyone else's credits), but to have it all shot and done with was incredible.

a month later

2009-01-13T12:00:00.004-04:00

Here's some visual evidence of one of the more succesful moments described in that last post (Thanks to Ralph who came out and documented it):

My film has come back from Toronto and I am highly apprehensive about seeing it. However, since I expect basically nothing to be on it, it'll be a treat if anything IS on it! I hope. Regardless, the hand-drawn portion seems to be going pretty well....I got zero work done over the break, but since I've gotten back things have gotten off to a good start. I may post some pictures of my little workspace later.

tales of woe

2008-12-10T19:11:00.002-04:00

I can't say that everything went wrong with the shoot today. At the least, the rain held off until nightfall, and I got at least half of the shots I had indended to get. Plus, at least maybe having horrible luck for this end credits shoot means that I'll have good luck for the shoot in January that constitutes the bulk of my film. But seriously, after today I almost feel like never shooting anything outside of the animation studio.

My turn towards misfortune started yesterday night. At 11pm, Dorian (who I had enlisted as my assitant for the shoot) had a long way to go on his big final essay that was due for a class the next day at 4pm. Since my shoot time overlapped with essential writing time, I suggested I try to find someone else so he didn't have to me with me on the shoot for that long. That proved entirely unfruitful, as not too many people are available on a weekday morning/afternoon with almost no notice. The problem is, it is physically impossible for me to shoot my stopmotion chunk with only one person.

Fast forwarding to the next morning, the first immediate challenge was the lack of snow. As mentioned in the entry below, I had decided the night before that I would use my own, darker-coloured bike rather than the light-coloured bike offered to me by Dawn since the snow looked like it was there to stay. However it rained all night and by the morning the grass was as green as ever. That wasn't a huge setback, it just meant that I would have a darker bike on a dark background, which probably wouldn't be too big a problem. I enlisted Dorian to help me bring everything over (fortuately my shoot site was only a few blocks from my house), and set to work getting ready to start filming. Dorian had to go work on his essay for a bit, so I figured I'd hope that one of the people I had emailed might show up. Unfortunately no one did, so I tried to see if I could set up the shot myself. The wind was ridiculously crazy, and not only kept tipping the bike over, but broke the kite dowel as it crashed into a tree (we were able to fix it with tape).

The worst result of the whole endeavour was a combination of the wind's strength, me forgetting that the tripod only needs the spacers on pavement, and my foolishly leaving the camera to go over to the bike to try and right it. Just like that, with a huge gust of wind, the tripod toppled over and the camera hit the mud. I ran back and picked it up -- it was a really soft surface so I figured it couldn't have been damaged, but when I looked through the viewfinder it was a bit askew. Figuring that something had just been a bit jostled, I tried to see if it was something I could fix, but I couldn't see what was causing it, so I figured I'd head down to AFCOOP and ask Al if he was around.

The problem then was that I had too much equipment to carry by myself, and no one else there to watch it for me. I paced around in desperation for half an hour, watched everyone at the CBC building file out for a fire alarm, then back in...Dorian still wasn't back and no one else had showed up. Finally I flagged down a really nice random person walking down the street and asked if I could use their cellphone. The guy's name was Lucas and he thankfully obliged, so I was able to get Dorian to rush over to watch the stuff while I went to AFCOOP.

I showed the camera to Chris at AFCOOP who informed me that not only was the viewfinder screwed up and would have to be fixed by Al at a later date (though Chris did try), but there was a chip in the prism at the front, which is not reparable and really bad news, since they'll have to try and find a replacement from a broken down bolex or else have me buy them a whole new camera if that doesn't work. Needless to say, it was an emotional time, and I really appreciated how nice Chris was about it even though I had really screwed up and was taking up a lot of his time (not to mention limiting camera options for all the other OMF participants and AFCOOP members, taking up tons of Al's time as well and generally making things difficult for everyone). Chris got me set up with a new camera and I headed out to shoot -- Ralph came by to do some photo-doc and Dorian helped me out with getting some of the main shots done, but eventually they both had to leave and I was back to square one. I huddled on the hill for an hour or so hoping someone else might show up (since I couldn't do anything at all because of course after the accident I wasn't about to leave the camera for one second), but eventually headed home to send out another round of emails. No one was able to make it, so I headed out again and got a static shot of the bike and some unsuccessful kite shot attempts in before heading back to unload my film and return my equipment.

So that was my first stopmotion shoot, and I have no idea how the footage will turn out. The exposure is really wonky because during the times I was actually able to shoot the sun kept moving in and out from behind various clouds, I'm afraid the kite shots won't turn out very well at all, and really the main thing is that I may have ruined one of AFCOOP's three Bolex cameras. Suffice it to say, it was pretty horrible. Let's hope the Oxberry shoot next month goes a LOT smoother.

happenings

2008-12-09T18:22:00.003-04:00

Some character sketches for Kate. I am moving slowly with animation, but I'm confident that I'll have everything drawn by the beginning of February (which is when they're sending the film to the lab to be processed, so I have to have it all shot by then). I haven't been very good at logging my progress here, so I'm doing a bit of catchup.

Last week I went and took some location scouting photos on Citadel Hill in preparation for my stopmotion shots, trying to figure out where roughly I could get the best sky and hill without anything else in the background. Here's some random photos from that journey.

Of course, this being Nova Scotia, we got a dump of snow yesterday, so the location will look rather different for the film itself. I had been going to use the bike of Dawn (a fellow OMF'er), which she had generously offered to let me use, but as of today I will be going with my own bike, flat tires and all, since it's a darker colour and will stand out better against the snow.

Another thing that happened recently in regards to the film which is most wonderful news is that in my quest to find a kite to use in the film that was the "classic diamond" shape, I came across steadywinds.com, the site of Bill Wilson, a local kite afficianado. Not only did Bill help me find places to look for the kites, when they didn't have exactly what I needed, he custom-made an eddy kite (the name of the diamond kite pattern) for the film. It is completely wonderful and exactly what I needed!

My shoot is tomorrow and I picked up my equipment today -- lugging the old wooden camera stand down the street I started getting really excited -- this is it! I hopefully will post more in regards to how the shoot went later on this week.

new film / old film

2008-11-05T11:05:00.004-04:00

Belatedly I will mention that Warming was in Athens, GA last month at the Eco Focus Film Festival.

Kate and Bradbury is off to a good start, and when I have a chance I'll finally post some visuals here! I haven't started any production on the film yet, but we had the animation workshop over the weekend, and it was fantastic! Basically down the street from my house is the animation facility (shared with NSCAD, which is doubly awesome if I end up going to school there), and not only does it have an animation hole punch, but a line testing facility as well! It speaks to how little-versed most of the live action-oriented members of AFCOOP are in animation that no one there (or at NSCAD for that matter) knew that it was around when I was asking. Actually this whole experience has really made me realize the amount of technical knowledge that I learned at Emily Carr. There is the tendency to think of it as a less technical program since it focuses on the experimental and conceptual aspects of animation, but boy did we ever learn a lot compared to what your average live-action filmmaker knows about animation.

Fortunately AFCOOP and CFAT have their share of animators with a large knowledge-base, Heather Harkins being one of them. She showed us all the basic workings of the Oxberry stand, and we got to do a bit of cameraless animation as well (the same sort of markers-on-film thing that I had tried out while learning how to teach the Hands on Animation workshop this past summer). I have a feeling I will definitely be going to her for help in the future. Also I got in touch with my mentor, Jim McSwain. I'll be meeting with him on Thursday and hopefully having an animatic ready at that point, so I'll probably post about that once it happens!

one minute film

2008-10-23T11:43:00.005-03:00

It's official! Workshops have already started for the One

Minute Film Scholarship program, and our proposal was

accepted! That means that I'll be writing here from

time to time about the film's progress and fun stuff

like that.

The first workshop was all about story, and after a few examples

and talk about the mechanics of scriptwriting for film, we had a

roundtable panel going over everyone's project individually. I'm

the only one doing animation, but it looks like there's going to

be a lot of great films being made.

Because I don't think I've mentioned it here yet, here's the

basics on our project:

Kate and Bradbury: A hand-drawn animated short about the

relationship between a kite and a bicycle.

When Kate, a free-wheeling bicycle, fails to propel herself up a hill, she becomes

despondent. However, soon afterwards she comes across Bradbury the kite,

who is having trouble catching a breeze. When the two make a connection,

they learn that they just might be able to help each other out.

For our submission we sent in a brief summary of the plot and

then rough storyboards, which I may post here eventually.

My turn under the microscope at the roundtable was pretty

painless; the main suggestion that I reveived was that some

of the random "biking around" scenes could be shortened down

and get right to the point (the hill), which I definitely agree

with and will help with the time limit.

Tonight I go in for the first "Intro to 16mm" class, on which I

will report back later.

2008-09-22T14:37:00.008-03:00

I finally got around to fixing my website for the film....it had been misaligned for a long time because I am horrible at coding things, but I figured a different way around it and now it is all good (I hope).

It's pretty neat that warming is still making "the rounds" -- it's been almost a year since I actually submitted to any festivals without being solicited, but thanks to the exposure that it's gotten in festivals such as Short Shorts and Planet in Focus, I've been getting lots of festivals requesting screener copies. I haven't been sending to all of them (since I'm really not focusing on warming any more in terms of getting it "out there"), but there's definitely some interesting ones that I have sent copies to.

To correct myself from my last post, Next Floor is actually a Canadian film, and a very good one at that. Also at the AFF I ended up seeing two other feature-length animations, Waltz with Bashir (an astoundingly animated and hard-hitting film about the casual terror of war as told by a former soldier) and Sita Sings the Blues (a mish-mash of styles brought together to tell the story of Sita, accompanied by blues songs and a storyline about the filmmaker getting dumped-- which wasn't always successful -- but was a charming and funny film nontheless).

Also I was luckily able to see all the animated shorts program -- kudos to Mark Flindall for programming the excellent FrameXFrame programs. The new Docs section this year of FrameXFrame was especially enjoyable, and featured the world premiere of i am so proud of you, Don Hertzfeld's latest piece. There were definitely some people in the audience who were expecting it to be another Rejected (did they somehow miss everything will be OK?), and guffawed loudly at everything until it became evident that the tone of the piece was a lot more sad and serious than they had expected. The Canadian animation Passage (not to be confused with Passages, which was also a remarkable film) was a somber black and white rotoscoped piece about the filmmaker's trials at the hospital during the birth of her daughter. From the regular FrameXFrame screenings my top pick was Procrastination, a hilariously true and expertly told RCA grad film that I think most people can relate to (or I can, at least). Plus if you click on that link I think you can actually watch it!

It definitely feels weird to be using this as an actul blog versus a "remind myself where my film has screened so I can look it up later" notepad to myself, which is kind of what it has been for the past year. So yeah, these winds of change that are blowing? They are totally called "next film". Today I dropped off my submission to the One Minute Film Scholarship at AFCOOP. More on that later.

2008-09-09T12:54:00.003-03:00

hello india!

warming will be playing on Saturday, Sept 14 at the Voices from the Waters film fest in Bangalore, India.

In other filmish news, I'm currently working for the Atlantic Film Festival here in Halifax, which means that I've been able to see some pretty amazing films, such as Passage (a docu-drama about the search for the Franklin expedition), Idiots and Angels (an indepandantly animated feature-length film, probably my favourite of Bill Plympton's films to date), and Next Floor (a bizarre and visually astounding film from, I believe, France).

Also, warming will be playing on Air Canada flights on the Movieola On Air TV Channel, if you happen to be flying around any time in the next few months.

short shorts

2008-06-12T11:05:00.003-03:00

Just wanted to note that as of today, warming is in the middle of its run in Tokyo at Short Shorts.
You can go here to see the full list of films in the Stop! Global Warming competition, and also to see a 1 minute web-preview of warming (about halfway down the page).

Warming and The Unforeseen

2008-05-27T13:27:00.003-03:00

Warming will be screening twice daily from May 30-June 3rd (excluding Monday) at Metro Cinema in Edmonton along with the feature-length film 'The Unforeseen', which I haven't had a chance to check out but which looks awesome. Here's some more info on the screening and the feature film.

2008-04-16T13:37:00.007-03:00

Warming will be in Spain at the beginning of June at the Catalonia Environmental International Film Festival, which takes place in Barcelona.

2008-04-10T15:29:00.003-03:00

Warming has been invited to be a part of the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver in late May/early June. Additionally, it will be screening some time in the near future at the Ontario Science Centre as part of some Earth Week presentations.

Both of these screenings are thanks to Planet in Focus, which really is quite an incredible organization.

2008-03-15T10:23:00.005-03:00

More news: 'Warming' will screen April 18-20 in the Lake Forest Film Fest, just outside of Chicago in Lake Forest, IL.

As well, it was accepted to the Short Shorts film festival in Tokyo, Japan, in the 'stop global warming' competition and the DerHumALC Human Rights film festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I haven't updated the actual website in a long time, since somehow I accidentally sabotaged Netscape Composer, which I had been using for easy editing. Hopefully I'll be able to fix that problem soon.

viewfinders

2008-03-05T16:22:00.003-04:00

at the end of April, warming will be in Halifax again for the Viewfinders International Film Festival for Youth. It'll be showing on April 22nd as part of the 'Quest for Adventure' screening, alongside such amazing (incredibly amazing) films as 'Zhiharka', a Russian animated short adapted from a folktale.

2008-02-27T12:05:00.001-04:00

Just got news that Warming won 'Honourable Mention for Most Inspirational Short Film (for ages 13 and up)' at the 2008 Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth.

2008-02-04T19:41:00.000-04:00

Warming will be screening on Feb 9 in the Siskiyou Film Fest in Grants Pass, OR, as part of their "Teen Festival" program.

2008, off to a start

2008-01-10T12:17:00.000-04:00

Warming will be playing in Vancouver at the end of February, at the Reel to Real International Film Festival for Youth.
I don't remember ever actually applying for the festival, but somehow I am in it, so hooray!

Also, Warming will be in Toronto once again, this time at the end of April during the Green Living Show, as a special screening put together through the Planet in Focus festival.

2007-12-06T10:16:00.000-04:00

Not too much new around here -- unfortuantely the Beirut International Documentary Festival has been postponed due to the "current stressed environment" in Lebanon right now, but hopefully it'll go up sometime next year.

On the home front, the first half of Novemember was littered with rejection letters, but the second half blossomed with invitations from other festivals. It seems some representatives from different festivals who saw 'Warming' in Planet in Focus and the NYC Shorts Festival now want to invite it to their own festivals, which is exciting.

Hopefully I'll have some more news regarding 2008 festivals in the next month or two, but for now....happy holidays!

eye weekly article

2007-10-29T17:52:00.000-03:00

Warming has wrapped up its screenings in New York and Toronto as of this weekend, and got a nice little mention in an article over at Toronto's Eye Weekly.

"The free Children's Programme (Oct. 27, 11am, Innis College, 2 Sussex) features Colleen MacIsaac's animated short Warming, a poetically spare meditation on our overheating sphere. The images are arresting – a school of submerged pop bottles hovering like jellyfish; a polar bear slipping forlornly into the water – and the tone is gently melancholy rather than strident."

Nothing else new to report around here!

Halifax to Ottawa

2007-09-26T14:27:00.000-03:00

This was a busy weekend for warming, with three festivals screening it, none of which I was able to attend, unfortuantely. I was in town for the Atlantic Film Fest, but left for the Ottawa International Animation Festival (which warming got rejected from) on the morning that my film screened in Halifax. It was kind of sad, but I got to enjoy a week of some great films beforehand as well as in Ottawa.

Some of the highlights for me in Halifax were the two frame x frame animation screenings (many of which were repeated at the Ottawa festival, so it was a treat to see some of them twice or more), finally getting to see Paprika which I had missed by a few days in Vancouver, and seeing the Canadian and Atlantic shorts (I also saw an International Shorts screening but it wasn't as strong, I felt).

In Ottawa my favourites were Madame Tutli-Putli, Zhadarkha (I know I'm spelling that wrong, but it was an AMAZING children's cut-out animation), Sainte-Barne, (again, I can't remember the exact title but it was an NFB co-production done in stopmotion), and too many others to list. My big dissapointment was not getting to see Persepolis which I had really been looking forward to, but the weekend made up for it with great short films, fun times with friends, and crazy side trips to a ghost walk (CREEPY) and the national gallery.

So the news for warming right now is that it got into the Beirut DocuDays Documentary festival in Lebanon, where it will screen in the beginning of November. So far I've gotten about half my submissions accepted to festivals and half rejected, which seems like a pretty fair balance to me.

website online!

2007-09-06T18:31:00.000-03:00

The website for warming is finally up!
You can go see it at http://colleen.radarfriends.net/warming, and it has all the info on the film up, including upcoming screenings at film festivals! Yes, it's actually gotten into a few, and a couple of them have already gone by. In the next few months, warming will be screening from Serbia to Edmonton, stopping in Toronto (twice!), Savannah, Halifax, and Colorado in between.

In other news, warming is now distributed by Ouat Media Distribution, a fine company based out of Toronto. I'll be putting most other updates about the film up at the website, but if there's any exciting news I'll post it here as well.

done!

2007-05-08T02:07:00.000-03:00

Well, I basically finished my film a week or so ago, had the first screening on Friday at preview night, and then graduated and had the second screening the night after! It's been really interesting seeing people's reactions to the piece.....it definitely is still a more controvertial topic than I had thought. It feels really good to be done though -- it still hasn't quite sunk in I think.

In any case, here's the poster, the films will be screening at Emily Carr every day at noon in the south building lecture hall until Victoria day, and we also have the external show (see below) coming up this weekend!

Here's the external show info, in this lovely poster designed by Daisy and Marie-Lou. If you're in Vancouver you should come out and see, if there's any tickets left!

So I guess this is it! I'll still be posting things here, but I'm not sure what exactly. Perhaps film updates in terms of festivals (if it gets in to any) and screenings? Sketches from the upcoming summer? Some crazy comic project? I'll figure something out.

Thanks, guys!

2007-04-16T22:35:00.000-03:00

So, it certainly has been a while! Things have been pretty crazy, but we're down to two weeks left (3 days until grad panels), and I think I'm going to make it. Here's some things from my desk(top) as of late:

Screenshots from the completed coral sequence, before and after!

The polar bear, looking upwards. After I animated her doing that, I realized that I had essentially animated the Nelvana logo. hahaha.

The cityscape scene! Suffice it to say that I apparently don't know what actual cities look like. Actually, the "tall building" reference photo that I had gleaned from the internet was this great shot of sunrise over Tehran, though I didn't really end up drawing from it too much.

And that's about it from me....I guess I also have the background image for my poster up at my livejournal if you haven't seen that yet.

The end is nigh! Best of luck to everyone.

sandbags

2007-03-13T04:36:00.000-03:00

I've been working on a lot of things recetly, but as there was a lot of walkcycles and less postable things, this is the first that I've decided to throw up here. This is the background for the sandbag scene, without the sky and foreground and people walking.

coralicious

2007-02-11T21:33:00.000-04:00

So, I've been working on my coral sequence this week, and I need some help. Here's all the unmoving parts of the foreground for the coral sequence (I have various fish and moving sea-grasses and such as well).....it's a panning sequence, so you never see this whole thing at once -- it starts with a pan down through the water to the lefthand, colourful side, and then moves over to the bleached stuff on the right.

My question is, should I make the white-ish thing there (just off the right side of the big middle "divider" rock and the finger coral) into something colourful so that the colour/bleached change isn't quite so sudden or complete? I think I'm doing a bad job describing this, but hopefully you get the picture.

If so: what's your opinion?

these boots were made for

2007-02-04T21:33:00.001-04:00

One of my favourites of the walkcycles that I did for the crowd sequence. Not particularly great animation, but I like her character, even though all these walks are pretty much as bland as you can get. But anyway.
Click the (unfortunately compressed JPG image) to view.

progress

2007-01-28T15:34:00.000-04:00

I've been kind of stalled on my film again recently as a result of Too Much Other Stuff. I've done all the 9 walkcycles for the crowd scene, but that's about it. But one thing I did do is a piece drawn from the waterbottle scene for the show 'shift', which is on at the Concourse Gallery right now and deals with environmental issues.

Since my camera was nearbye I decided to take pictures of each stage of this (pretty simple) piece, just for fun. So I figured I'd post them just for the heck of it.

01 - weaterbottles drawn and outlined in brown pencil, labels painted.

02 - inside of waterbottles painted

03- basic "water" background filled in.

04- water painted over bottles

05- all water gone over, darkened. At this point I was rather upset with the piece because it really wasn't looking as good as I wanted it too (I'm really still quite a dunce with watercolours since though I'm using them for my film it's in a quite slap-and-dash manner)

06- the next morning I went in and darkened the outlines around all the bottles, and I was a bit happier with it, which was good as I had to get it in to the show that afternoon for placing.

07 - and here it is on the wall! I titled it "Water(bottles)" just because I am a jerk and like brackets in titles, as ridiculous (pretentious?) as they may be.

2007!

2007-01-15T02:38:00.000-04:00

It's a new term and I'm back into the swing of things, pretty much. First up: crowd scenes. Here's some stills from walk cycles I've been doing of background characters. They're all in brown/earth tones -- the kid in front of them will be blue and green so he pops more....and also for the (somewhat too) obvious symbolism.

I hope to be updating this thing more often, weekly at least. Productivity! Hopefully it'll all happen.

grad panels next week

2006-12-06T20:50:00.000-04:00

I think I'll be ready for grad panels, but one can never be sure. We have to have 1 minute of animation, 3 rendered scenes, and an updated production schedule. Wheee!

Here's a little look at what my watercolour work process is like...generally I just spread things out on tables. I was unsure with some of my backgrounds as to if I should keep them as boils as it was a bit too hectic-looking for me, but I think I will just bump them down to 7.5 frames a second (I've been doing the rest at 15 fps on 2's, so essentially 30, or 29.97 fps.)...so far tests at that speed have looked pretty decent, so that's my plan for now.

I just finished making all my waterbottles bob. They may be bobbing too fast. Darn it all!

waterfalls

2006-11-27T20:10:00.000-04:00

I've discovered that I have no idea how to animate water properly! I still managed to finish animating and painting the waterfall scene yesterday, though. Here's a still...I have a boil for the background byt I may end up changing that if it looks too busy.

tests and more leica

2006-11-19T23:07:00.000-04:00

Things have been going pretty smoothly -- I'm actually getting some work done!
If you'd like to see the fifty billionth version of my leica reel, you can click here ... again, it's about 80MB.

I've also been doing some animation! Wow!
Here's just some bottled water boils (this is so edgy and topical if you're in Vancouver right now!) that will eventually be moving around in after effects in some water. There will be 18 in total -- 9 different boils with two label/colour variations each (not shown here). I'm doing the start of this scene to the end of the waterfall-turning-to-dribbles scene for my motion graphics final project, which is a nice way to get two water bottles with one turbid rainstorm. (ha ha, that so didn't work).

ps. I can't remember how to embed video with html...can anyone help me? I tried a web tutorial thing that didn't really help.

leica leica

2006-11-05T14:04:00.000-04:00

Okay, I think this is one of (if not the) finalish drafts of my leica. It's 63 megs, but if you're able to check it out and give me feedback, that'd be really appreciated. I'm pretty happy with it, I think.

After talking to Marilyn earlier this week, I decided to do the ol' "scan at hd, render at sd" trick, and have the hd fieldguide sitting on my desk to prove it.

Now: to work!

trying to find the grindstone

2006-10-29T15:14:00.000-04:00

Work on my film has been exceedingly slow these past few weeks. I've come to the realization that I always like having a lot of little things to do; small projects and artworks and such. I think, though, that to get this film done by April I'm realllly going to have to cut back on them. Fortunately I don't have too many more non-grad-film related school projects to do, so I can focus in that regard at least.

The things I'm working on this weekend include:

starting rough animation
finishing my leica reel changes
(here's three panels that I scanned together that I thought looked kind of cool when all put together for some reason:)
deciding once and for all whether I am doing this in HD or SD! I keep flip-flopping....I'd do it in HD, but I don't want to get to April and have to turn in my film late because I am rendering....plus since I have so much after effects compositing to do I'm afraid it'll slow that stage down. But at the same time it'd be nice to work in HD.....hm, I don't know.
starting to get a list of needed sounds down as I will be recording my first foley session on wednesday or thursday (or both). The sounds in my reel still are really not how I would want them, but I think I'd prefer to just start getting things how I want them than fiddle around with scratch sound forever.

Here's an image of what is technically not the first animation that I will do on this film (as I did a watercolour-boil test a few weeks ago), but it is probably the first bit of animation that has the possibility of ending up in the acual film in some way. It's one leg of a polar bear, ha ha!
My desk, while I was working:
Note the Richard Williams book for reference (that doesn't have quadriped walk cycles in it for some reason it seems!) , the loose bear skeleton for anatomy, the tea for drinking, the apple for eating, and the pencil....for drawing.

Hopefully I'll have the final draft of my leica up sometime this week!

in between

2006-10-05T01:35:00.000-03:00

I've taken a few days off of thinking about my leica after my weekend adventure. Today I drew and painted some stuff from reference to get back into it. Icebergs and bears, respectively. I really need to learn how to draw all sorts of (non)random things! Shoot. And: hooray!

leica reel take 2

2006-10-02T16:01:00.000-03:00

If you're curious about my leica reel (draft the second; the first draft is incomprehensible and I will not be showing it around), it's here. It's rather large (83M I think?), so you might have to right-click and save, or else just....wait a while. It's 3:46, which makes me happy as it's right about where I wanted it to be (the first darft was 4:00, which made me a bit nervous).

I had my grad panel this morning and it went well I felt -- the faculty members had lots of good suggestions and didn't seem to get lost, even though one of them had not seen any of my lead-up work to it and didn't know what to expect. I feel like I'm getting closer here... maybe with another draft or two I'll be at the point where I can just start animating / recording sound / etc -- though I don't intend to redraw the whole leica again....my wrists and back area already paying the price of doing that once!

One of the biggest suggestions made (I felt) was to have no music to the film, which is something that I hadn't considered before, though I did intend for the music to be a lot lighter than it is here (and less Philip-Glassy) and to be more of an ambient kind of thing rather than as "40's Melodrama"* as the scratch music is.

In any case, if you do take a gander at the reel, I'd really appreciate some feedback -- there are a few things that I'll definitely be changing (mainly with some of the images as it gets to the climax, though there's a few other places too), but it'd be good to hear what other people think as well. I'm a bit nervous showing this kind of stuff to people partly due to uncertainty about my animation skills and also because I think this project is going to mean a lot to me (not that it doesn't already), but at the same time I want it to be the best film that I can make at this point, and I don't think it's quite there yet. Critiques? Very welcome.
Thanks!

*that's from Marilyn. And it's so true!

new things!

2006-10-01T20:11:00.000-03:00

Soo....the summer is over, and fall is upon us once again. Since I don't have time for the drawing-a-day whilst in school, this is going to become my production blog for my grad film until May, where presumably I'll just post drawings again. I'll still post non-grad-film related drawings in my sketchjournal.

For my first grad-related post, I'll get you up to speed -- at this point, I am on the cusp of my fall grad panel where I have to present mainly my leica reel, among a few other things. This weekend I completely re-drew my leica, after realizing that the version I had previously done was not at all comprehensible to new viewers. The images worked as storyboards with explinations beside them, but they really didn't speak for themselves, and a lot of the morph/pan transitions didn't come across at all. So...here's how it went:

To start off: materials! Watercolours kindly donated by Winston (thanks!), a brush, index cards from staples, a brown col-erase pencil, and a pencil sharpener.

Here's the first five panels, in process:

A few hours later, things are much the same. You can see that I have the older, smaller images for reference in front of me.

The next day, I finished! Here's the final stack, 75 paintings in total. Whew!

Here's a few of the finished panels....

Aug 11-13

2006-08-13T15:27:00.000-03:00

August 11 and 13 are from the Folk Fest and an old doodle that I coloured up, accidently shut off power on my computer before saving, and then scanned and coloured agian. Wheee! I think I liked the first version better (in that one it was night-time and the sky was dark blue.

In any case, I am heading out on holidays tomorrow morning, so there'll be a lot of nothing for a week, and then a lot of everything. in theory.

long weekend pictures

2006-08-10T04:24:00.000-03:00

I don't even know if we have an excuse for the long weekend (a la "BC Day") here in Alberta. Is it Heritage Weekend, or am I just thinking of the Heritage Days? In any case....

august 5:
doodles from Chapters, where I was sitting for 4 hours manning a zine table. And then, one from the lake, where I went after work.

august 6:
the next day. A face!

august 7:
this one was a doodle inspired by a crochet hat jordyn made. It's called "The Mariner Stole My Salty Heart". Ha ha ha!

august 9:
August 8 was comics again, so here's the 9th: staff meeting doodles amalgamated.

august

2006-08-05T02:11:00.000-03:00

the first few days of August I was drawing comics that I'm not posting yet, but here's what I did on the 4th day!

end of july

2006-07-31T23:14:00.000-03:00

and it's upon us already! august!

I sort of totally didn't draw much for a week. Weird. In any case, here I am back now with the last few days of July.....

july 28:
part of a garbage bin at rehearshal, and then a blind countour lang while....sitting somewhere?

july 30:
In a realllllly delicious Pad Thai restaurant with my parents and Dorian; this was what Dorian's beer looked like before he spilled it all over the table.

july 31:
A doodle while watching movies with an awesome cote and a cute puppy. It's a girl in profile! Holding a bowl-ish thing! Wowie!

july 14 - 20

2006-07-22T00:12:00.000-03:00

A new batch of mostly scribbles!

july 14:
A monoprint that I made as a demo for a class I was teaching at my work. Fiddled around with in Photoshop. I've never done much printmaking, so this was fun and I may do more of this kind of thing!

july 15 and 16:
the local river city shakespeare company put on delightful performances of hamlet and taming of the shrew this year. I always adore their costumes (designed by narda mccarroll for as long as I've been seeing them), so I'll usually bring along the ol' sketchbook to doodle some while they perform. I meant to fancy these up a bit, but ....oh, well.

july 17:
obviously from the same inspiration as the previous day, I doodled these while at an art workshop run by my good friend jordyn. I was really tired for some reason that day.

july 18:
yeah, so this week turned into "week of vests and hats". A doodle while I was learning about my chinese zodiac signs (ox/snake/rooster, though the last two don't seem to fit).

july 19-20:
I did eleven of these portraits altogether, for the programme for the production of 'the green room' which will be premiereing at the athabasca fringe festival tomorrow at 9pm, and then at the edmonton fringe later on. http://gnomadicartists.com

july 11 and 12 were a drawing filled time.

2006-07-13T00:56:00.000-03:00

lots of weird little work doodles here! Be prepared for some Disregarded Anatomical Correctness.

july 11:
First off, a lot of these are a result of my having seen 'Mirrormask' finally. A great film with a greatly underdeveloped story, it got me on a mask and coloured skin kick, mostly influenced by the character 'Valentine'.

I don't know what this one is, but it was the first.

On staff meeting notes. A hipster greaser and a lady pirate (yes, I saw the film).

I think this one's my favourite of the bunch? from the same staff meeting, I like the two people flanking the middle one.

july 12:

masks and markers:

trying to do...children's illustration? I don't know. Something. I don't like how it turned out, but it was a try.

A character design? Gone wrong? We had these tall strips of paper at work that I borrowed one or two of. Again, I apologize for the anatomy. Yeeks.

Another trio, and again I dislike the middle and like the sides.

july thus far

2006-07-09T14:52:00.000-03:00

july 1:
we went on a road trip/camping trip over the long weekend. Here's some sleepers. Canada Day Nap.

july 2:
we went to the royal tyrrell museum during the trip and I did a bunch of quick dino-sketches there.

july 3,4,5:
I didn't do much else during this time, but I did work on one of my webcomics, May. Here's a panel.

june 6:
a rough draft of some costume design ideas for a play that I'm in that will be in the Vancouver Fringe this year.

june 28 +29

2006-06-30T03:57:00.000-03:00

june 28 + 29:
a lady and some weird floating clothes, what can I say? It felt nice to be doing some good ol' ink washes with the lady there, I haven't actually done that in a while. I referenced the dress from a Victorian-era dress of a woman who lived in Essex, but I really screwed up the bottom (so I cut most of it off, ha ha!).

I need a new brush, and also to learn how to carry my brush around with me without damaging it.

june 25 + 26

2006-06-26T23:37:00.001-03:00

june 25:
friends in the sun!

june 26:
A portrait of a girl in a play that I am doing poster design/other assorted drawing-like things for. This was a first test for some portraits they wanted, but I think we're going to go a lot more cartoony in the end.

june 22-24

2006-06-25T13:50:00.000-03:00

june 22:
staff meetings are fun.

june 23:
free lifedrawing is the best kind of lifedrawing. totally.

june 24:
vroom? vroom.

june 17-20

2006-06-21T21:21:00.000-03:00

yellow paper time!

june 17:
last-minute, things on dorian's desk hastily drawn late at night:

june 18:
father's day picnic: people sit.

june 19:
the only time I watch a hockey game this year (well, part of one. with my grandparents), and they lose. this was a fan in the corner of the living room. get it? hockey fan? eh? eh?

june 20:
A weird unfinished thing.

june 8-12

2006-06-13T03:13:00.000-03:00

not much in this batch. I continuted on my profile-drawing bit, but they all turned out rather boring.

random faces:

weird looking drawing of dorian:
my mom and verb watching raisin' cain perform:

raisin' cain and context:

june 05-07

2006-06-07T23:53:00.000-03:00

Hooray! Totally back on track. "On the wagon" as it were.

june 6:
I went to a 25th wedding anniversary that was a surprise to me...as I had thought it was for different people than it was actually for. Good thing I hadn't given them the card yet! It was at a fancy restaurant and I drew this on the back of the menu. It is my lovely almost-sister-in-law.

june 5:
just some weird doodle with watercolour.

june 7:
scissors.

yay yay yay!

june 01-04

2006-06-05T01:06:00.000-03:00

And I am caught up! These are not quite right, ie, I did a few on the 2nd and none on the 1st in actuality, but I am covered for each day so far and will attempt to be more in-line for the rest of the summer! The problem is that I am kind of living in two places at once, and one of them only has dialup. But enough with the excuses!

june 01:
a weird lady in a....ballet leotard of some sort? This was drawn by firelight!

june 02:
another of the same. she reminds me of miranda july, though that was unintentional.

june 03:
more with the ladies!
june 04:
I made dorian model for me while we were waiting for a play to start and his theatre buddies were laughing at him for being doomed to the fate of those who date art school kids. I was having problems with the face and decided to ink it, then lost interest as it was making it look worse. Then the play started, so I just added in more details in photoshop.

the rest of May!

2006-06-04T22:41:00.000-03:00

I did get a bit behind here, but here's the rest of May! My goal for June is to start dating the drawings again and posting more often. But here goes! I didn't get quite to the end, I apologize.

May 22:
An old guy from a National Geographic magazine.

May 24:
What can be more exciting than hands? Not much.

May 25:
A weird little drawing of a girl.

May 26:
Based on a girl I was volunteering with.

May 28:
His name is Adam and I had to invent his mouth because he moved
.

catching up! (may 05-20)

2006-05-23T03:12:00.000-03:00

Alright....I'll still be a few days behind, and I have two days' drawings at work that I'll need to go get and scan, but here we are!

May 5:
Drawings at the NAAM. the night before we moved out of the Dolphin, a few of us went to the naam, and I first drew some random girls at the table across from us, and then Heather.

may 6:
I had two plates of breakfast at the omlettery the next morning! second breakfast is awesome, I have discovered. It means you only need to eat olives for dinner. The feet are jordyn's.

May 7: We got on the train the next day. This is me drawing Heather drawing me as we moved through the valleys of the lowe mainland.

May 8: Lots for this day, since we were on a train for all of it. Mountains and people and travelling companions!

May 9:
And the next morning I started work! There is a roll of tape in my office, that is for sure!

may 10: There was a volunteer in at work who was sitting behind me....he kept speaking softly and I thought it was what he was typing since he was doing data entry, but eventually I realized he was praying and kept repeating "AHmen AHmen AHmen" over and over.

may 11: a boring drawing of an old lady at the coffee shop where I was having lunch.
may 12:
lamp-post!

may 15: a lady sitting in the legislative grounds.

may 16: oven mitt!

may 17:
drawing this picture made me late for my own play, unwittingly.

may 18:
a girl on the bus and weird attempts.

may 19: a crappy doodle, but I actually have a kind of neat sketch from the 19th that I'm going to put some goache to and see what happens!

may 20:
part of a mask that I bought once in barcelona for a lovely young gentleman

more coming....soon!

delays, delays

2006-05-10T12:53:00.000-03:00

just wanted to mention that I have no moniter at the moment, so until the one I ordered gets in, I won't be able to post my drawings (as my parents' computer has no image editing programs). however, when I do get one I'll have a super-update with everything that I've missed since last thursday!

2006-05-05T00:14:00.000-03:00

May 4! Cleaning and packing big time, part one! Zellers brand window cleaner is called "truly".
The end!

2006-05-03T23:47:00.000-03:00

Today was a day on the beach, so today's drawing is a bunch of quick sketches of the people in attendance at said beach party. The drawings are kind of weird because my hand was not working that well? It was cold, since it went in the ocean a bunch? SO it was kind of numb and weird. In any case, the ocean was awesome and now there's a bunch of sand in my sketchbook. Ah, well, it was totally worth it!

may 01-02

2006-05-02T18:33:00.000-03:00

And:
the drawing-a-day starts! they may not all be posted here every day, but I will post a drawing from each day here from now until late August, if that makes any sense!

Heather's doing it too, over at heathertoes.livejournal.com, in a bit of a different way!

The May 01 drawing here is weird, my dresser with some kid on it. I drew it while lying in bed. I tried to colour it but failed, so it's rawwwww. Ballpoint pen.

The second drawing is of Jordyn and her cat, who were both sleeping on a cot in our kitchen this morning extremely cutely. it was pretty awesome.

soon summer

2006-04-23T16:56:00.001-03:00

Things have been quiet here since I don't know why I have this blog. However, soon all that will change. My pal Heather and I have decided to jointly start drawing-a-day sketchbooks as of May first, lasting all summer, and I'm going to use this as a place to upload those drawings (though I don't know if it will be update-a-day, since my access to computers will be shaky after this week, at least until a couple of weeks into May). So my lack of content will be made up for with...a lot of content!

This particular picture was done for a friend's baby using watercolour and ink.

some paintings

2006-03-13T01:02:00.000-04:00

Here are a few little paintings that I made to sell at a coffeeshop. They are all ink and watercolour on vellum bristol board! hooray!

nicknack

2006-01-17T00:20:00.000-04:00

hey! here's an early sketch of an old character that I resurrected and changed to use for my commercial animation class this term!

a comic

2005-12-10T01:39:00.000-04:00

here is a little doodle-comic
that I made
for my experiemental animation
process website!

so, uh....

2005-12-06T00:50:00.000-04:00

I made this blog because I was going to put my experimental animation stuff on it for my class, but then I made a different site for that instead.

So I basically do not know what I am going to do with this...maybe I will turn it into (yet another sketchjournal? Or maybe just let it lie idle? Any suggestions?

In any case, I am going to put up a picture or two so it is not totally boring here or anything.

thank-you!