Backgrounds

Between hanging out with family and friends, I've been coloring backgrounds here and there. Here is one of the last few shots of the movie. This background is 99% done, I just need to add one last thing in it but otherwise it looks good.

It's a Bit Nipply Out

School's out for a few weeks but the work doesn't stop. Besides coloring my backgrounds and possibly getting some animated keys done, I spent 10 hours with my music composer over the weekend recording a song from scratch that would fit. He's got a little studio set up in his house with guitars and keyboards and whatnot. The song is a little over 3 minutes in length and contains recorded guitars, bass, drums, and strings. I'm really happy with what we've done so far just recording rough stuff which doesn't sound rough at all.

Basically, I told him what I was looking for and what should happen where and then we'd play the animatic and he'd just start jamming on his guitar while watching the movie and then we'd chop it up into pieces we liked went on from there, layering each instrument on top of each other; it sounds pretty professional. We used Pro Tools to record and put the track together and I'm really excited about how the final mixed product will sound.

New Stuff On the Way

I've been working on backgrounds and just started to do some animation for Only In Dreams. I will be posting some finished work soon. Semester is wrapping up so I will finish coloring all of my backgrounds during the Christmas vacation and have lots to show.

Continued Work on Only In Dreams

I've been working on painting backgrounds and setting up organizing and composting layouts. The movie has 49 shots total so that's really not too bad. I'd like to start putting in some key animation for some shots so hopefully that will happen within the next couple weeks.

Here's Your Monthly CC Post

The shading outlines are all in for 99% of the shots in Act 3. The other 1% need special attention that will come later. So remaining work that needs to be done is as follows: color > backgrounds > movie overhaul.

I've been working on CC a few hours a week usually while I'm waiting to leave for class or something of that sort. Little by little, the minutes and hours add up to something substantial.

Only In Dreams

Only In Dreams is the title of my school film project which I have been working on for quite a while now. It is about two boys who interact with each other in the dream world and don't realize whatever happens in the dream world can have consequences in the real world. It's about 3 minutes in length and will be completed in the Spring of 2010. I'll be posting weekly updates for this film (on top of the usual) as a requirement for the class and also to document progress throughout the project.

Here's some bad concept art for you guys to take a look at:

Forget and Not Slow Down

I finished cleanup on all shots last night. Next up is color. I try to work on it a few hours during the week before bed, but little by little it's getting done.

It's Almost Easy

August has been a busy month for me. Some work. Some play. Some unfortunate friends and family events. Haven't worked on the project in a couple weeks due to the latter. School starts next week (omfg...) and it's starting to get hectic.

I realize I don't post often; you guys are often lucky to get one once a month at max. There's never anything substantial to write about. I mean, I could tell you about my day and use my twitter account so you can follow everything I do, but that's lame. At any rate, here's the deal: there are 11 shots that still need finished character animation. So Act 3 is 75% complete in terms of char anim which is really good. Trying to finish what I can when I can. Every little bit definitely helps.

Release date is still up in the air. It'll be done when it's done, but you guys will like it...I hope.

Timing Completed

Yep. You heard it right. Timing and pencil tests have been completed for the last 67 seconds of the film. Now on to fleshing out the characters and implementing backgrounds.

Happy Fun Stuff

Hey gang. Production is going smoothly. From the 91 panels from the storyboard/animatic comes 43 different shots in Act 3. Each shot is approx. 1-2 seconds on average. I've been slaving away on drawing pencil tests for every shot and get the timing completed so when it comes down to it, I can just get right into it and draw the characters without doing much thinking or planning since it's already been done.

Out of the 43 shots, half of them are timed out. There are a few out of that bunch that I want to tweak the timing on but for the most part it's looking really good. Sometimes I end up drawing too many frames and the action gets slowed down e.g. a run sequence. Other times there needs to be more anticipation of movement and a few frames of a hold on a pose. Usually if it looks and feels right, then it is right.

The State of Cosmic Chase

This past week was a bit busy with the holiday weekend and all, but I managed to scan and organize all of the storyboards for Act 3. Ninety-one panels and some hours later, I managed to put together an animatic and send it off to Ido for review. The timing has been roughed and according to the animatic, Act 3 is about 1:30m +/- a few seconds which is very close to my initial prediction. That's about 60-70 seconds of animation to create. I don't know how long that will take but I'm hoping to rough out all of the animation for the entire act before doing any ink.

Everything's looking really good. We've got some great stuff planned and if the animatic is any indication, Act 3 will be totally amazing. I'm very excited.

Act 3 Storyboard Complete

Thanks to the help of my beautiful and talented girlfriend, the remaining scenes have been storyboarded out. Soon, I will create an animatic and time out each shot and make any necessary tweaks with Ido.

Right now, I'm constantly studying for spring classes and don't have much time to sit down and animate. In 3 more weeks, classes will be over and I will have 2 whole entire months with a clear schedule. I'd like to pump out some animation and clean it up and see if I can find someone to do colors for me which would save a crapload of time. I've done everything 100% on my own thus far and I figure it's about time to ask for help so this project sees the light of day. Once fall classes start, CC might take a backseat so we'll see how it goes.

New Location

Not a big issue but I decided to move the blog off of my server back to blogspot because there are more features when hosting with blogspot vs. your own server. Make sure to update your RSS feeds!

I've talked with Ido this past week and he basically rewrote Act 3 and it's even better than before. Storyboarding and pre-production has been started on it and will continue before any animation is done.

Half True

I hope you guys enjoyed the April Fools pic. It was indeed a joke, but the part about my job is real.

Dark Days

Hey guys. I'm posting a follow up to last week's post and letting everyone know what's going on. Well, for starters, I got laid off yesterday so I am no longer bound by the 9-5. It's been brewing for 3 months and the bottom of the company fell out temporarily and I happened to fall through. I'm not angry or anything since it is most likely a blessing in disguise. I can go to school full-time in the fall while collecting unemployment, and best of all, I'll have plenty of time to work on CC! And you know what plenty of time = ? Release!

Yes, that's right my friends, now that I am a bum at home with nothing better to do than play video games and drink beer (oh and do occasional homework, pff), I can devote much more time to working on CC. So really, it's not a bad gig, right? I mean, after taking a 30% paycut earlier this year, I'll probably be making close to that money on the unemployment bandwagon. I'm fine, really.

Also, in celebration of completing Act 2, here is a little screenshot of what's to come.



Enjoy!

Relive the Magic

Yup. It was 3 years ago today that I released the trailer and it is still being enjoyed by many. I wish the movie was out by now but it would not have been as good as it will be when it's been completed.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/303079

Act 2 is going as planned. I had aimed to finish it by the end of this month, and will actually meet that goal. It's very exciting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and see all the hard work come to fruition. I've been working on the final seconds for Act 2 for quite some time and it's pretty intense as to what came out of it all. Additional pre-production for Act 3 will start soon and work on the final 60 seconds will commence.

Expect a new screenshot sometime next week.

More Character Designs

Here are a couple more images from a character I designed. We were supposed to make a character and draw it in different styles. Here is a comic book rendition and a style of one of my favorite artist's, Sean "Cheeks" Galloway.






Hope you guys like 'em!

As for Sonic, I've been working on it a little bit every few days. Act 2 should be finalized by the end of the month. I'm excited!

On My Mind

Do you guys think NuShift.net needs a redesign? Cuz I do. I don't really have any idea what I want to do for it and as much as website design gives me indigestion, I still feel good when it's all said and done.

I rented Killzone 2 and it's amazing. I'm not really into console FPS but this one has changed my tune. Definitely check it out if you get a chance.

I worked on CC last night, just coloring up some frames really quick. Spring break is coming up this week, but I still have to go to work, so it's not much of a break for me. I'm sure I'll be loaded up with plenty of HW to carry me through.

Act 2 is still chugging along. Ideally, the best route is to do the drawing and animation at home, and then in my freetime at work, cleanup and color. The past few weeks at work there hasn't been anything going on, so I just worked on HW and CC for 8 hours a day. Nice, right? This week, not so much. Got some updates and new projects to do so my freetime has come to a temporary end. Hopefully it'll come back soon.

There's some stuff I want to get done in a relatively short amount of time but I usually only have the motivation at work during the day. When I arrive at home, I don't feel like doing anything other than chilling out. This blog post? Yeah, I'd never do this at home, that's for sure. Anyway, CC is looking really good. Everytime I work on it, it seems the new animation looks better and better. I wish Newgrounds enabled either other file formats or even more than 15mb swf files. It would be so awesome if I had the power of After Effects in the CC workflow. Flash is so limiting and I realize this everytime I work on the project. With AE, I could truly achieve the finesse and quality that I strive for. For example, to make glowing explosions look white hot, it takes a few mouseclicks and a couple glow setting adjustments to achieve that look in AE. In Flash, it requires converting every white ember to a movieclip and messing with the individual glow settings to get it right because even if there are multiple embers in one movieclip, the glow effect does not do a good job at maintaining the effect between each individual ember.

I've been reluctant to actually learn ToonBoom. As Adam Phillips has mentioned, it's supposedly really intuitive and a good piece of software. Maybe for a future project I'll take the time to learn it. It's got some nice features like a moveable camera, color palette customization (with names, OMG!), and rotable viewport. I think Flash for animation is becoming outdated. They keep adding features to the development side of things and while CS4 did add some stuff for the animator and designer, it's still nowhere as robust as it needs to be. IK bones? Seriously? I don't see myself ever doing puppet animation again. I could have used that feature like what, 8 years ago?

As far as I'm concerned, Flash can be used in a workflow but shouldn't be the ONLY program. It should be used in conjunction with some sort of post-production application to get the film-like quality if you so choose.

Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica

Hey guys. Act 2 is being pushed hard as I want that out of the way before I continue work on Act 3. I've been working on it here and there, quite a few hours logged over the weekend already. All of the animation is done for the last part of Act 2. All that's left is color, cleanup, and backgrounds which makes me happy. The project is still on track for a Christmas 2009 release as everything is looking good.

Here's some stuff I've been working on at school. The assignment was to draw a hero and a villain. More stuff to come soon.



Enjoy!

Total Time for February: 9 hours

Posters and Pies

School is full swing, I try to do my homework during downtime that pops up often and when homework is complete and downtime still remains, I end up working on CC.

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend and I made chicken pot pies for dinner. I cut out Sonic on one of them.



On another note, last semester we had a business project to do which involved an animated trailer and promotional ads for the movie and production company. We chose to use CC because...well, the trailer was done. My girlfriend ended up drawing a promotional poster for Cosmic Chase in her own style and I think it turned out really good.



Total Hours for January: 9h 30m