breaking the rules! shh

Ran upstairs from formal dinner to finish uploading this. More text later.

running running running

running to meeting. have some animaticization. more later tonight. ahhhhh

The Shadow Knows

Some pics from the shadow sequence in act two. Still working on combining these two different looks. The colorful bits will probably fade/flash in a out out frame while the shadows (see first pic) remain constant in moving across the screen. Maybe the colorful creatures are in her head, representative of what she feels she's getting from society, and the shadows are reality passing over her.

Boom! Inky.

This one was tough to rough! Wanted to keep it very loose feeling, which is actually a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. But that's one angry face! This scene was brought to you by the insane desire for burritos. Really. Animating while super hungry is definitely helpful when you need the character to be especially full of rage. Rage for burritos.

a domani

Presenting in class tomorrow! I'll be showing the first half of "Ink" with posed-out scenes being the least common denomonator. I'm still working on getting the shadow sequence to look sufficiently artsy while also conveying the passage of time and what's actually going on in the world. TBD...
Little bits here and there are animated, but hopefully things make a lot more sense now that they're all strung together.
Nothing to upload right now, as I'll be working tonight on pulling everything together into one file to render out and show tomorrow. Want to get as many consecutive bits as I can into the clip to show tomorrow.

On the plus side, it's getting easier to navigate Flash and generally wield the Wacom pen without everything looking completely wibbly when I'm working in a program that doesn't have a smoothing function. Yay! Considering all of the new boards are being done layer over layer in Photoshop. Small victories, one at a time. :)

Part 1 of animatic

EDIT: if the video embedded above doesn't work, I also put it on Vimeo. Yay Vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/30342424


Here's the first part of the animatic. I'm doing it in installments because at this point it's still in flux and I don't want to sit down and board the whole thing, then make an animatic of the whole thing, and put off animating while doing so. Time-wise, it just isn't smart. That being said, here's the first 'act', if we're going by the model so oft-used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries of the five-act play. Actually, it's a Roman model, but it was soon forgotten about and then regained popularity in the Renaissance (as would be fitting). Freytag put it best in his oh-so-German dissection of the dramatic arc: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement.

So, here's the 'exposition' bit, which will be followed by the rising action sequence of shadows cast over Penny as she struggles to understand what it is that keeps her from relating to the world she inhabits.

Climax: Penny's tantrum, Cruella deVil-style with ink blots flying everywhere.

Falling Action: the public spotlight on Penny's art and abilities visible takes a toll. She and the general populous need to figure out what to do. **THIS IS WHERE I'M STILL TWEAKING. Many thanks to Matt for helping me bounce ideas back and forth.

Denouement: Penny (through one course of action or another) is no more, but we see her lasting imprint on the world in the lingering bones of the city and how the people recognize that.



( The previous explanation was written very excitedly and with much credit due to Sharon Carnicke's THTR 302 class, Spring 2010!:D )

Animatic 10/3

So, there were some uploading issues. The internet at my house is very slow, especially with videos. I'll let Blogger sit with it over dinner and chapter meeting and see if it's finished by then.

Until then, I think we can all sympathize with Penny in this little .gif from sequence 10...

Actually, just kidding about that, too. Even that won't upload. :\

If this isn't up by the time I get back, I'll head over to the lab and upload it there.

EDIT: 9:50pm
Here's the .gif to tide you over. Definitely sums up what I;m sure a lot of us feel like right now...

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

Oh no, Mr. Bill!

Oops. Tonight's post is a little late. Had an interview on campus and a special event dinner tonight. Biking around in high heels... not so fun.

Anyway, I finally have the solid list of scenes/shots/whathaveyou chalked up! Huzzah! The ending will be decided tomorrow in class. Put on your thinking caps...

((SPOILERS!! But who's keeping track...))
I thought I'd figured out a way NOT to kill Penny, but it turned out to be very... unfulfilling. It just kind of ended with a pretty bow tacked on in the middle. Well, that's not what art's all about! So. Penny will diminish in one way or another. Will leave her eventual death somewhat ambiguous, but you'll see the trajectory all laid out there. This is one thing that I've decided I must stand up for. This is the real root of the whole project: what it is to create and what it means. Where art comes from. The price of something beautiful. The price of expression. At what expense one opens up to the rest of the world for all to see. It's everything.

So, here I am, all set up in my home-away-from-cubicle captain's chair, screens and tablets all around, papers propped against the wall, and my fratty neighbors (for the time being) quiet. Animatic will be presented tomorrow in class.


Wasting no time: the new intro drops us quickly into the world, shows us the art-people, and presents us with Penny and her... "problem." Don't worry, these are just the thumbnail versions. It is actually a lot clearer than this...

Get on 'board

Been putting together, pulling apart, and putting back together my animatic. Finally hit on a scene to speed up and simplify the whole "time goes by" part that shows how the populous' hands wear away as they age. There will be some awesome shadows involved that will be a lot of non-animation animation. Woohoo for creating tension by NOT showing something! They were on to something with that whole "Jaws" deal. And to think, all because of a crappy animatronic shark that didn't work, it became one of the scariest monsters to grace the screen. Not that mine will be scary, it actually won't be at all...

Imagine Penny sitting against the wall with the cast shadows moving over her. I'm really excited to see how the lines would bend around her (implied 3D) 2D shape. Should be interesting.



No pictures of stuff in-progress right now (it's all on the computer in my cubicle... whoops) but next week I have my in-class presentation so that will bring a truckload of new stuff to play around with and I'll get it up on vimeo.

ready or not, here i come

I'm starting to animate! A few scenes are solid and ready to be Flash-ified while I'm still working on a couple others as boards still. The ragtag systems is working OK: animate in my cubicle every afternoon and on weekends, revise boards while I'm home at night. With a tablet setup in both locations, I can easily shift to animating at both when the time comes. Here's a little .gif teaser from the scene I'm working on right now. Penny is leaning into a wall and sighs... hope that's what it looks like. Pretty wonky angle, had to
use Kristina as reference from below.

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

INK: THE REBOOT!

Hello all! Big news. Over the last few months I've teased apart the long and confusing threads of my old thesis story and come up with a much simpler, sleeker, and overall better version. The character designs have changed a bit but are still true to their art-person nature with chalk/crayon/charcoal/ink hands. A few new things have crept into my inspiration folder, including Evan Dahm's "Rice Boy"


the popular kids' book "Harold and the Purple Crayon", and the overall texture of Norman Mclaren's "Blinkity Blank".



The rough redone animatic will be up this weekend before I dive head-first into animating. No more 3D environments either! Going very minimalist with the whole thing. The world will be created by those who live in it and so will fade/erase over time. I wonder how Penny will solve the problem...

downtown mockups

boards boards boards! from Boston

Hello from definitely NOT Los Angeles! My brain has definitely decompressed in the last few days. The other day it was snowing so I ducked in a bookstore/cafe, grabbed some soup, and got some storyboards down on paper. Huzzah! Here's some photographic proof (taken with my phone, hence the fantastic resolution).

And it's on 7x10 paper, too! O snap!! Well, it would have been kind of difficult to walk around with my 12x18 big stack-o'-newsprint. It's almost as if I'm... adapting. Scary.

Spring Break has covered a year's worth of weather: solid overcast, snow, super sunny, and now rain. But you know what? I have a raincoat. So there. The show must go on! And it's my birthday, darn it!
Here marks the turning point in the preproduction of my thesis. From now on, things will be AWESOME. Do it to it!

Visual Development

O HOLY COW I went a little nuts looking for pics to accurately try to sum up everything that's buzzing around in my head. To be truthful, though, the visual style for "The Fountain" is probably the most solid thing about the film; I've known exactly how I want it to look since day one.

Rather than spam up the post with a bunch of differently sized images right now, I will resize them, maybe even make an influence board/chart (ooh! fancy) and repost it later. Until then, please watch this for a good idea of the role that color will play (or what I want it to play).

Mark Osborne's "More"
http://vimeo.com/988244

Also, check out these buzzwords:
futurism
german expressionism
art deco
Tim Burton (also for color, and angles! Oh my, the wonky angles.)
Gotham City (any designs, but with the white/grey coloring. this also counts for Tim Burton, too...)
"The Fall" movie (also also color and angles. and absolutely AMAZING shot composition)
Hugh Ferriss (amazing renderings of architecture and visions of metropolis in the early 20th century)
Gehry. 'Nuf said. Just look at his buildings. Do you see any right angles?
Fritz Lang (METROPOLIS!!!)
Shaun Tan
forced perspective and anything off-angled or warped
restricted color
paper cutouts / texture


Oh... ok, here are a few pics for now, because I'm nice and these are my absolute favorite. More to follow.





Some more colorful ones:

Arthur color sheet

Had to wait to get my turnaround sheet back today to double check the sideview, otherwise would have put this up earlier. Haven't quite decided on colors yet. In case you couldn't tell, his theme is all green.

Teaser for tomorrow...

Here are Penny and Arthur pulled from their character design sheets.

... I have no idea what Penny is wearing. It just... happened. And she's smiling! Rare thing.

Full character designs with turnarounds will be up after class tomorrow. Until then, here's a teaser.

TREATMENT

TREATMENT: The Fountain

The world is populated by people that would otherwise be ordinary except for the fact that their fingers are made of crayons, chalk, pencils, and other drawing implements. The children have the longest fingers, as they have not had much time to use them yet. Our story centers on a young girl, Penny. We meet her at school, surrounded by children running, laughing, playing, and drawing all over everything. She sits, dejected, as her fingers appear to be fountain pen nibs. It becomes apparent that Penny cannot draw, as she has no ink. The other children laugh at her.

This continues on through high school. She tries to draw using paint from a boy with brush-fingers, Arthur, but it only dries up. One day, Penny returns home to mope in her room. She sits on the bed hugging her knees to her chest. She squeezes her arms trying to get a hold of herself and scratches them in the process. Inky blood seeps from the fingermarks on her arms. Shocked, Penny is frozen for a minute, then begins to write on the wall. It works.

A number of years have passed. We see her walking around downtown and everything in grey, muted, and expressionless. By the time Penny is an adult, her classmates’ fingers have all worn down to artless nubs. They are now drudging businessmen drones, lacking any semblance of individuality. Penny tries to be a part of the workforce, but all of the employers judge her for her pen-fingers. They have not worn down at all. In fact, they are sharper than ever. She wears long sleeves, too, that occasionally seep ink from inside. Workless, she returns home. This time, though, her house is full of etchings, cartoons, and wall upon wall of words: essays, poetry, and everything in between.

One day she finds Arthur milling around downtown mindlessly. She tries to snap him out of it, but it is difficult. It isn’t until she leads him to her house that he sees her art and becomes like his old self. His fingers, though, are still woefully bare. He convinces Penny to share her art with the world. She is uneasy, but agrees.

They gather some pieces of art and take it downtown to show it to people on the street. As soon as a piece of art is thrust into someone’s face, they seem to awaken as if from a trance and once again become animated, smiling and sharing it as they turn to others.

Penny’s art is a hit. We see it quickly gain popularity. People start coming to her house to admire the walls. When it gets too full, art shows start springing up around town. Everyone flocks to her exhibitions and upon leaving they each seem livelier and less of a drone. Arthur is overjoyed and Penny could even be described as confident and optimistic.

After a few weeks, however, things grow out of hand. People become obsessed with Penny’s ability to create art while the rest of the adult world can no longer do so. What starts as a few people requesting commissioned artwork quickly escalates to demanding more and bigger things. They hunt her down, begging her to create. Art consumes her life: she sits at home all day and night, bleeding out her work.

Penny becomes overwhelmed by the demands put on her. She turns inward and lets fame carry her away. Arthur recognizes that Penny cannot take the pressures of the world and tries to reason with her to stop, but it is too late. She has grown weak and eventually ‘runs out of ink’ and dies. The world realizes the sacrifices Penny had made for them and mourns the loss of a great artist. They return to work, though not quite as dull and emotionless as before: Penny’s art stays displayed, reminding them that they still have the potential to be individuals.

First art for "The Fountain"!!

If not apparent by now, I think I'm going with "The Fountain" as my thesis animation. Woohoo! Scroll down a few posts for the premise.

Doodled these in class today. I'll clean them up this weekend, but I wanted to get them up before my scanner got buried in the storm of clothing, notebooks, high-heels, and lacrosse gear that inevitably tears through my room every Friday afternoon to Sunday night.

It's Arthur!! Older and younger versions. And a few doodles of Young Penny, which I've decided I need to re-do... umm, please ignore the dinosaur-bird in the top corner. There's also a weird zoomed-out view of a camera move I want to do through Penny's hallway (without the drawings on the walls yet), kind of like a reverse trombone-shot with a little bit of a warp thrown in. It works in my head, ok...

PREMISE # 4: something completely different

I call it "Mimesis"

Nothing really solid to write here other than it would be dreamscapey (but not cliché!), more like a lucid dream/stream of consciousness swim through a 3D space (in Maya) with bits of 2D animation (traditional, paint on glass, live action, flash) projected onto planes and other 3D shapes. As we move through the environment, it is a journey through the mind of, well, me. I'm sure there would be some profound realization at the end, or maybe it would just be resignation. Either way, it's saying something.

EDIT: I think I'd like to work in some form of poetics, too. Play off of the intersection of science and poetry, the intellectual vs. emotional/active, how one directs the other and heavy reliance upon one throws everything horribly off-kilter. Think "Science and Poetry" by I.A. Richards. Also think 'music of the spheres,' the beauty of logic, etc. Maybe some more abstract visual poetry thrown in here and there for our little hero to run up against.

PREMISE # 3: the can of worms

Under the Dodo Tree

Steve lives with his wife Carole and two children Mary and Marty in the suburb of a small, idyllic town. Everything is perfect or nearly so. The only difference between our reality and theirs is that the only animal ever domesticated was the dodo. They have never known it to be another way. Steve is the not-so-proud owner of Darwin, a hapless dodo beloved by Mary, Marty, and Carole. Steve, however, despises the dodo and all of his kind. One day, Carole makes Steve take Darwin for a walk. On the way, however, one of Steve’s neighbors warns him of a troupe of dodos that have gone feral in the town’s park. Steve pays to attention and continues on his way.

In town, Steve tries on countless occasions to rid himself of Darwin to no avail. They go to the park and Steve finally manages to shoo Darwin away from him. Content, he falls asleep while reading the newspaper on a park bench. When he wakes up in the dark, he looks for Darwin so that his family won’t hate him. Instead, he is attacked by the feral dodos. Darwin saves Steve and so gains his love. The next day, Steve happily takes Darwin out for a walk, but discovers that the town is dark and abandoned, the ghost-town atmosphere punctuated only by the scuttle of dodo feet in the shadowy recesses. They quickly return home after realizing that all of the town’s dodo population has gone feral and discover that Steve’s family, along with the rest of the town, has been kidnapped! Darwin and Steve formulate a plan to infiltrate the feral dodo nest and free the townspeople. They sneak their way in past the giant clydesdodo guards and Darwin battles the head dodo. He emerges victorious after appearing to fly down from a ledge and land on him, much to the astonishment of the other dodos. Darwin becomes the alpha dodo and leads the others out into the park, allowing the townspeople to escape as well.

Soon, it becomes apparent that even though the feral dodos return to their owners, they never quite return to normal. They remain bedraggled and with red beady eyes, occasionally lapsing into barbarism only to look up at their masters with pleading eyes upon punishment. The townspeople decide that they will let the dodos die out, as their domestic lineage is irrecoverable. Darwin lives out his days as the last dodo beloved by all and after a tearful death, is stuffed and placed in a museum so that his heroism remains immortal.

PREMISE # 2: expansion of a short

This is actually a treatment from last semester for a short I made in Maya with some Flash elements. I'd really like to expand on it because the original though was much more involved and involved chase sequences around the city of Florence, knocking over the statue of David, a bus launching off the top of the Duomo, and many other things. Rather than rewrite the whole thing right now, I'll just post the short treatment and figure out reblocking the new scenes later... ehh...

Here's a link to the short (if you haven't seen it on my facebook): http://vimeo.com/19243308

ANIMATION TREATMENT: "The Bus"

The camera pans down to reveal girl walking with a backpack (probably on S. Egidio). She is looking down as she walks toward us. The buildings are tall and somewhat off-kilter and papery looking. A faint noise is heard in the distance. As it grows louder, she looks up and into the camera. A beat later, a demonically red bus zooms past and the girl starts in a big way. After the bus has exited, she is left in a pretzel-like pose, on one foot, arms wrapped around her head and clearly shaken.

Title frame: “The Bus”

Next, cut to the girl, this time walking away from us. She approaches a corner. As she is about to turn, a bus zooms around it, sending her against the wall, eyes wide. She clings there for a moment before sliding down a bit.

Next cut: The girl walks toward us again, apprehensive and looking quickly from side to side every so often. She comes up on another corner and stops short of it by a few feet. She flattens herself against the wall and sidles up to the corner of the building, easing her way over to try and see around it. Just as she does, the bus again zooms past but this time from behind her. After it passes, she is revealed standing stiff as a board. After a beat, she begins to tip backwards and then falls over flat (think like a tree).

Next: close ups of a door slamming, lock being slid, window being closed and curtains drawn. Cut to the girl, wracked with tremors, sitting down at a table in a small apartment. There is a pizza box on the table. She puts her hands on the table and it, too, shakes.

Zoom in to frame just the girl and half of the table with the pizza box. She takes a deep breath and stops shaking. She smiles and reaches to open the pizza box. Just as soon as she swings the lid up, a bus scales up out of the box (this all happens very fast) and smacks her in the face, pushing both bus and girl out of frame.

PREMISE # 1: emotasticness

The Fountain

The world is populated by people that would otherwise be ordinary except for the fact that their fingers are made of crayons, chalk, pencils, and other drawing implements. The children have the longest fingers, as they have not had much time to use them yet. Our story centers on a young girl, Penny. We meet her at school, surrounded by children running, laughing, playing, and drawing all over everything. She sits, dejected, as her fingers appear to be fountain pen nibs. Penny cannot draw, as she has no ink. The other children laugh at her. This continues on through high school. She tries to draw using paint from a boy with paint-fingers, Arthur, but it only dries up. One day, Penny returns home to mope in her room, as usual. She strokes her fingers up and down her arms. Scowling, she digs her fingers into her arm and inky ‘blood’ wells up. Shocked, Penny is frozen for a minute, then begins to write on the wall. It works. By the time Penny is an adult, her classmates’ fingers have all worn down to artless nubs. They are now drudging businessmen drones, lacking any semblance of individuality. Penny tries to be a part of the workforce, but all of the employers judge her for her pen-fingers. They have not worn down at all. In fact, they are sharper than ever. She wears long sleeves, too, that occasionally seep ink from inside. Workless, she returns home. This time, though, her house is full of etchings, cartoons, and wall upon wall of words: essays, poetry, and everything in between. One day she finds Arthur milling around downtown mindlessly. She tries to snap him out of it, but it is difficult. It isn’t until she leads him to her house that he sees her art and becomes like his old self. His fingers, though, are still woefully bare. He convinces Penny to share her art with the world. She is uneasy, but agrees.

Penny’s art is a hit. Everyone flocks to her exhibitions and upon leaving they each seem livelier and less of a drone. After a few weeks, however, things grow out of hand. People are obsessed with Penny’s ability to create art while the rest of the adult world can no longer do so. They hunt her down, begging her to create more. Her art consumes her life: she sits at home all day and night, bleeding out her work.

Four possible endings:

Ending 1: Penny becomes engrossed with her fame and lets it carry her away. She eventually bleeds dry and the world goes back to the same way it was before (sad but realistic ending)

Ending 2: Penny becomes obsessed with her fame, goes insane, and after nearly bleeding herself dry decides to use the blood of other people, becoming a frenzied murderer in the name of art. (let’s not do this one…)

Ending 3: Arthur realizes the plight of his friend Penny and eventually talks her out of torturing herself for art. The rest of the world, still obsessed with her art, hunts down both Penny and Arthur, killing them both. (let’s not do this one either…)

Ending 4: Arthur talks Penny out of harming herself in the name of art. This act convinces the rest of the world that one person alone cannot give individual meaning and identity to everyone. The people work together to reclaim their own senses of self. (happy ending!)

As usual...

Hello! I'm Alessandra Waste.

This blog will catalogue the progress of my thesis animation at the University of Southern California.

More info to follow...