Caffè: A Production Blog

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...

Just kidding, that's not the real file name. I at least date my iterations. Hello! Much progress has been made since last Monday. A week ago, I couldn't draw a circle in TVPaint without aggressive artifacting, and my quitting time was defined by when my hand cramps just couldn't take it no more. Since then, my most recent  endeavor has been to fix my introductory and final scenes, reboard some key moments and really dive into some screen continuity issues. (There's still a little switcheroo with Giulia and Marcello's initial and final screen positioning, and I'll be putting that concern forward with my in-class review tomorrow). My biggest weakness as a story artist is definitely in the angles that I choose (I think most board artists who are just starting out tend to gravitate towards close-ups and mid-shots and I am definitely guilty of this). So in my new pass, I tried to get a little wider so that I can show off my backgrounds and characters' acti...

This past week, I was able to successfully stick to my schedule: week one is checked off (for the most part.) I know I want a scratchy look to be an intentional visual aspect of my film, but for some inexplicable technical issue (involving some disconnect somewhere between the use of the school HP, TVPaint, and the school's loaner Cintiq 13HD), the scratchiness of my shots so far will probably need some cleanup after all. I've been bouncing between forums and SCA creative tech (massive shoutout for the patience and hours of troubleshooting so far), but for some reason, I just can't figure out how to get the Cintiq pen to register as quickly as I tend to make lines in TVPaint. (I don't know if it's a latency issue, or a driver issue, or a compatibility issue with the program, because I can draw normally in Photoshop with the same hardware setup, have tried swapping Cintiqs, and had a brief stint of normalcy after we updated TVPaint and the driver for the cintiq, on...

This week, I created a shot list for Caffè, a value denomination system, a production schedule and a budget. Things are finally taking shape, and all that's really left is the will-power and hard work it'll take to stick to my schedule! Things fell a little off the wagon this weekend because some friends from my time studying abroad in Italy came to visit for Labor Day weekend: it was a nice symbolic (and financial) farewell to summer fun....time to really switch into grind-mode and get to animating! Tomorrow I'll head right into the lab to start making progress on some shorts: I've got my rough background layouts and a hefty set of character turnarounds and designs to guide me. OTHER UPDATES: I pitched at the DADA thesis pitch presentation set up by MFA third-year Ann Lee, which was an awesome opportunity (THANK YOU ANN!!). I walked in expecting a few rows of people and was greeted by a nearly-packed theater. After pitching my film I received tons of emails fro...