Caffè: A Production Blog

Hi Blog, This will be a brief, boring post. But with animation! Nothing new. I am *on track* except that I need to make time this week to reschedule time for animating scene 01 (which I have re-planned). I also need to work some long, establishing shots into my animatic. I chatted with some people about my background layouts, and think I will be going with more subdued, flatter colors with the same line quality and weight as the outlines and my characters. But I won't know for sure how all of that will look until I start actually playing with the background art next semester. I had coffee with my composer, and he says he is excited about the project! It's definitely nice to work toward a common goal because you want  to and not just because a job is a job... I hope I can keep my approach to animation that way even when I graduate and start working. That's the whole point isn't it? To do something because it excites you? I am recording my angry phone call this ...

Hello blog!! Tomorrow my proof of concept shot is due -- so this past week I had fun taking a break from animation by doing... everything else! (except sound) I'm pretty happy with how the animation is turning out, but I'm a little stumped on backgrounds. I think over winter break, when I'm away from my workstation in the lab, I'm going to really try to nail down the look of my film because so far something is not quite clicking. I painted backgrounds for a game two summers ago while I was working at Psyop, and while I was there I really got into the groove of spending 8 hours a day cranking out summer-camp-themed backgrounds. I had time to fine-tune all my colors and the mood felt consistent throughout. I think it was easy to hit my stride while I was there because literally all I was doing that summer was backgrounds. (Including a couple below).  I think because of the scratchy line-quality in my film, I need to add some slight outlines to my ba...

Hello blog, As of this week I've completed 15 shots (at least through rough animation). I also learned this week that cleanup is even more time-consuming than the rough animation itself, and while I want my linework to be crisp enough to be readable, I also don't want to lose the life of the original animation. My biggest reason for even bothering with clean-up is the maintenance of volumes though; I find that some of the shots I've already animated get a little wobbly with shapes. I'm devoting this week to reworking my first scene--so that means that I'm mostly taking a break from animation in order to focus on story. This is a good week for it because I was hired to help out for two half days at the Adobe Max conference and actually have a few other school assignments and commissions that all conveniently fell into one very busy week. So I'd rather take a break from animation and do some creative thinking (otherwise I think it'll just be a little too s...

Oops, this update is late but honestly I forgot because there's not a whole lot new to report -- This week I'm just working on a single (longer) shot, where the little girl tries to get the ball away from the little boy by kissing him. I'm almost done with rough animation. It's Tuesday! Somewhere down the line I subconsciously decided I like the look of crisper lines. Also, I don't want the colorists I've hired to suffer too much with guess work. So I'm anticipating a couple of long tedious days this week doing line cleanup. My goals this week are: finally starting hand off scenes to my colorists, which means first cleaning up some rough animation...I need to decide which shot will become my proof of concept (there are a few contenders), and hopefully I'll get that totally inked and figured out by the end of the week so that this weekend I can work on a background for it and really get into the nitty-gritty next week (next week is one of my busier,...

This week was my most generic week of production yet -- all I did was animate 2 shots (though one of the two shots will become my new proof of concept). I'm excited to play around with lighting and shading and see what is within the realm of possibility for this film. Animation is proving to be very time-consuming, but so far, I'm on-track with production and having help with the coloring phase I think will allow me more time for fun in post and compositing.  On the administrative side of production, I need to set aside some time this week to make a list of all of the backgrounds I will need to paint (I might have moved the camera around a liiiiitle too much). I think simple backgrounds might be better for the busier character acting shots. Otherwise, I would like to work in 3 more detailed establishing shots (of Giulia's apartment, the coffee shop as seen from her window, and the exterior of the coffee shop (where I think it would be nice to truck out from at the ...

Not much new to report! I'm mooostly on-track with animation. So far, I've had to push one less-important shot to another week, and I've been having a little trouble I like to call going "off-boards" when I finally get around to animating. Sometimes when two drawings do the trick for an animatic, you realize that those two drawings were accounting for 8 seconds of animation...and it's easy to want to make every second count! I'm starting to become a little worried that my schedule/point system were overambitious, because well, my semester hasn't really hit full-gear until about now. I hope I can stay on-track with the schedule alongside the papers and midterms I'm about to have coming up...as well as doing some job-searching...future-planning...and another job that I'll start later this month. I'm sure it'll be fine... I'm still working on casting actors -- got some important dialogue to one who is working for me remotely, a...