Term 1 - End

Make way for the longest post in blog history....

I haven't been updating this thing in the last couple of weeks because mad amounts of work had to be done. I think the last time I blogged was the weekend before the final week, and so much has happpened since...

The team was working overtime to try and meet the 2nd pitch deadline (23rd Nov), in which we had to present all our pre-production work as well as a finished animatic. Meeting this deadline required everyone to pull their wieght and get on with the jobs I had dished out....

I gave Alec the task of producing the animatic frames in flash earlier in the term simply because I had been experimenting myself and realised the potential the program had. After creating a few rough drafts we decided to go ahead with a fully coloured and partly animated version, and so he set off with my drawings to reference from.

Grigsby was given the job of gathering sound fx for the animatic. He spent alot of time searching the sound fx hard drive, the internet, as well as recording a few himself. This was mighty handy and enabled us to build up a library of sounds ready for the final editing.

Simon willingly agreed to put together our presentation slides, making sure everyones work was included as well as hitting all of the brief criteria. He had to pester people for all their work and organise all of our public folder material ready for the slides. It was not the most creative of tasks but a vital one. Everything had to be branded up, layed out, and condensed into something like 18 slides. He also nailed budgeting for us.

Phil was still bashing out his animatic which I have to say had fallen miles behind due to serious amounts of story changes. He definately wasn't going anywhere near P.O. It wasn't nice to see him have to start all over again so late in the day, and I felt like a right knob at times because the team seemed to be doing so well with P.O. It was no ones fault, but because the story wasnt decided no one could really help with the animatic until Brooks had made a decision. Unfortunately it was never really resolved and he only managed to get the prologue and beginning finalized - which was beautiful and left everyone wanting more. As far as I know he is going to produce the final animatic over christmas.

Spence had been working heavily on Whaked at the time and so sat out the animatic process, but he still popped in every now and then to check progress.

That left me to produce all of the other work needed by the deadline such as contracts, a script, pose sheets, ending thumbnails, and more importantly music. Whilst over seeing the animatic I realised it would be a hell of a lot easier if we had the final music composed now rather than in term 3, as it would allow us to time our jokes to the beat and gain a better understanding of Jeds rythm and cutting pace. I had two meetings with a good friend of mine named John Solly, who has produced beats and sound fx for me in the past. He was more than happy to get involved and so I explained what we needed....

Jeds headphone music - It must open to the beat of Billy Jean, with a funky retro feel. We wanted a similar sound to that of the Bee Gees and saturday night fever. He suggested drums and trumpets would capture that 70's movement. I reminded him that it needed to increase in tempo throughout, lasting approximately 2 minutes, and finsihing with a big climax. I also explained the characteristics of Jed, as well as the story to help him gain an understanding of the whole situation and the emotion the beat should provoke. I also said if any Bee Gee vocals could be sampled towards the end that would be great. He got to work straight away.

So with 7 people all working at once I thought we had it in the bag....

However, time was against us and essays loomed. We were constantly knocked back behind schedule because of lectures and other units getting in the way. Eventually I had to jump on board with Alec and help him draw the animatic frames as well as gather the remaining sound fx because Grigs had to help out with Splay.

The college peed us right off with its lack of Adobe Premier liscences, as we were only able to find 2 machines with it installed. We were lucky enough to nab them for a few days and came ever so close to finshing on the friday before the pitch. At 7.00pm we were kicked out with one scene missing from the animatic - the crucial plug scene. Unfortunately me and Als had to meet up the following day to work on it over the weekend, along with several magners and a pizza.

To cut a long story short, we just about made it - it was exported Sunday night ready for the morning. John had given us the 2nd draft of the music just in time and simon had finsihed the presentation. That left us half an hour on Monday morning to practice.

The pitch went really really well, with a great response to the animatic. We were so nervous about people not laughing, or not getting the joke but it was the total opposite. I am confident the story is ready now, and pre production is officialy over. As soon as all of our Kieron essays are finsihed we aim to begin production right away and hopefully meet up over xmas. The goal is to have both characters and the basic room modelled for when we come back, along with texture tests. The characters simply have to be rigged in the first 2-3 weeks or we will fail.

I'm so proud of my team this term, and although we didnt meet our deadlines we have achieved a working story with successful designs - which is the main thing. Below is the final animatic in all its glory.....

Poster Designs

Grigsby requested I produce a couple of rough sketches for him to edit in PS. We've had some brilliant ideas for posters.

Pose Sheets

Finally managed to get Jeds pose sheets done today. I did my presentation for Gareths unit this morning, which went really well and then spent the afternoon sketching away whilst listening to the other ones. For each pose I referred to stills of classic dance moves, making sure I captured the exact posture. With each drawing I became quicker and more loose with my lines, improving my ability to draw the character with ease. The rougher the lines, the more he appeared in mid dance. Looking at them all next to each other you get a sense of movement and life, something a concept has yet to provoke.

I will post up a dance moodboard at some point next week which will include all of my reference images.

Admin

I have created a personal contract for each team member which they all must sign. Below is my one...


I also wrote up our current script....



Just hitting the brief criteria.

ENDING POSE SORTED.

Whilst helping Alec with the animatic today I had a flashback from a film called "Risky Business". At one point during the film Tom Cruise slides into frame before bursting out into dance. After looking at it again on youtube it hit me that Jeds final dance pose could be just this. The floor would be shiny and clean by the end, meaning he could simply slide in and turn off his floor polisher with ultimate coolness. I can imagine this shot perfectly now, whereas before I was undecided on how he would come to a standstill. Ed will die in the bed from a side on angle leaving the frame perfectly set for Jed to slide in bedside.

Headbanging Tests

I didn't fancy another day battling the collar and so moved on to something a little bit easier. I decided to run some funky headphone tests. I modelled a very basic headphone (half a sphere) and began squashing and stretching it, as if it was pulsating to the music. I then ran a few animation tests, and it actually didnt look half bad. I think we're definately going to be using the S&S deformer to its full potential with this one.

Collar issues

3rd day of modelling, and all the old demons came flooding back. The last 2 days have seen me model alot of Jed with (touch wood) not too many problems, but not today. I focused on his boiler suit collar but it caused all sorts of issues. I tried so many methods of modelling it attached to the body mesh, mainly by extruision, yet nothing worked when smoothed. A collar doubles in on itself about 4 times when extruded, which causes all sorts of nasty overlapping and surfaces to appear. In the end I managed to get somewhere by extruding edges rather than faces, but even then alot of tweaking and rearranging of vertex had to be done. I left with it in the stage you can see below, but I am definately going to adapt it to a higher more Elvis like design!

More Modelling Man

Another day, and another session of modelling. I continued to work on my file from yesterday, mainly adding to what I had already achieved. I ran into some trouble when trying to extrude the two legs from the base of the body, however with some much appreciated help from Ferhan I solved the issue. He advised I model just one side of the character and then mirror it at a later stage, which I had learnt before but for some reason thought I could do it the Edgley way - I was wrong. If you focus on just one half it makes life ten times easier as you can just extrude away having the peace of mind that maya will fill in the gaps.

I also made progress on the hands, adding extra digits and shaping the thumb and palm more. Work still needs to be done on the knuckles and overall shape however.

The feet were the simplest and fastest thing to model, yet I feel they look the best! I kncoked em out in a minute, which leads me to believe maybe they need more work? A heel, shoe rim, worn detail? Or maybe I'm not taking Jareds well remembered advice from Bare Bear...

"So what if it took you five minutes? A race car driver doesn't pass the finish line and decide to do another lap! You won, stop worrying about how fast you did it!"

I then added more detail to the fro, legs and bum - however as Alec keeps reitterating - the bum needs more more roundness, a fuller chunkier arse. I agree. Enough for one day though.

Production?!

Today I took a break from story and concentrated on modelling Jed. According to our schedule we should have both characters modelled and ready to rig by the end of term. Unfortunately due to story development, essays, presentations and other P.O work I do not think this will be the case. Instead I will be happy if we get both characters roughly modelled for christmas, so we can apply some texture tests over the break and have them ready to animate within the first few weeks of term 2. We noticed the mistake previous years made was not allowing enough time to animate, so we are planning ahead.





Imported the front, back and side drawings into maya as image planes and began working on the basic shapes. Alec and I hummed and arred on the decision to model in metres, however we decided to go with it as it is industry standard after all. So far I have only managed to get the body, arm and section of the hand mapped out, but a good start!

Dance Reference

'Nailing' Thumbnailing

I cant wait to nail the final story. Things are bad at the moment. After continuing with the flash timing test this week it became clear the story wasnt working. It lacked pace, rythm and appeal, and so unfortunately we had to cease production and go back to the thumbnailing stage.

Alec, Grigsby and myself have spent a tremendous amount of time the last few days downstairs in the old BA area reworking the story. On the whole it was ok, but the beginning didnt allow the audience to breathe and absorb the calmness of the room. It started with fast cutting and too much action - this was not good. To resolve this, we added a couple more establishing shots, and extended the duration of exisiting frames. The beginning now has a much more subtle, calm before the storm feel - perfect.

The Jed reveal shot was lovely, it really was. A nice big pan up the character, from polisher to face. HOWEVER - it had zero personality! There was no build up, anitcipation, excitment, funky freshness. It was a camera on a pivot, revealing him immediately - Nah mate. We reworked that whole section and have settled upon something alot more creative. I must hand it to Grigs because the new version was his idea, and he had been saying we needed it from the beginning. Jed is now introduced using a clever arrangment of cuts, to show hands clicking, feet tapping, polisher revving, headphones beating, bum shaking - all of which will be timed to a beat. Alec suggested I take a look at the Madagascar 2 trailer, in which they reveal the characters in this very same way....





The two following gags - the mirror and bed scoot were actually working quite well, so we left well alone tweaking only timing.

After the aerial shot however, things went pear shaped - bigtime. We had no idea where to go next - how does Jed get to his final pose? How do we build pace? do we slap in a moonwalk? do we slap in a monatge? does he scream more? or does he die more? whats Jed doing? Arghhhh! The questions were endless, and could only be answered through hard work and choreographing. We stayed to late thrsday and friday, working into the night, trying our hardest to solve the issue. We knew how the story ended, with the machine coming back to life, Jed leaving, and Ed reviving, yet we still hadnt even thumbnailed it.

To coclude, we still havent progressed much further than the aerial shot. We left on friday having thumbed out a really nice scream section - Ed inhales, screams, the camera zooms out to reveal Jed doing soemthing stupid, zooms back, repeat twice. After the 3rd scream we attempted a fast montage but it just didnt feel the right time for it. We alos thumbed out some of the ending, after Ed dies which wasnt difficult thankfully!

Considering Pixar took 3 of the 5 years it took to make UP just getting story right, I think we're right to be spending this long.