I wish I didn’t have to start on a downer but my long weekend was horrible. Friday and Sturday I had work so after, I only had a little time to work on redoing my animatic. I cleaned up most of the thumbnails, so you can tell what’s happening, in preparation the Wednesday’s interim.
I got really stressed over the weekend because the supreme court decided to legally define me as a woman, just another disgusting act in their longstanding assault against transgender people. I spent all of Sunday trying to paint one of my backgrounds, but hated how it came out so I will have to start over anyway. And my phone decided to die and I lost two months of photos, chats and lecture notes. I also spent the weekend ignoring a trext from one of the RCA students I’m helping because I hadn’t finished something they’d asked for, which was just a nasty move on my part, but everytime I looked at my phone I would burst into tears. (I have messaged her back now and we are trying to sort something out). All of that on top of the general stress of having to keep myself alive was just a bit of a nightmarish cocktail of anxiety. But I think if I can just make it to Wednesday and get my project greenlit, I think I’ll feel a lot better.
On Tuesday, I did a different background, as my proof of concept needed two and I needed to stop looking at the first one. I was much happier with how this one came out, and while I’m still not entirely satisfied with my skill level at BG painting, I can definitely feel myself improving. My biggest issue is figuring out how to fill out the small details. The little objects and placements that give a background personality, without distracting from the main focus.
I begin with the sketch from my storyboard thumbnails. Over that I add a rough perspective grid and do the proper sketch. I’d like to be able to be looser with my perspective however. I initially intended to push the shapes much further, in the style of Invader Zim, but once I see the perspective grid, it’s hard for me to let go and break the rules. After that I do a value study so I can figure out where I want my focal points, and how to balance the image. Then its straight into painting. This is where my process gets fuzzy as I am kinda just flying by the seat of my pants trying to make it look good while I obsessively pore over other artist’s work.
I’m going to cheat the reflection by copying and flipping the other BG painting, as it is from the opposite angle.
I think I have yet to find my own way of doing backgrounds, I am very much still in the learning phase where I am trying to piece together techniques from people like Nicolas Saltos (who recently deleted all his work off instagram T^T), and Devin Elle Kurtz (who does amazing process breakdowns on instagram).
Looking back on that first BG, it’s actually not as bad as I felt about it initially. I will be adding some texture back to the flats and re-doing all the background props, but the base is solid. Which is good because I still meed to inbetween my entire proof of concept and hopefully cleanup at least a few frames.
Alfie from a week later is writing, and I have no idea when the following happened as I cannot remember, but it had to have happened on Tuesday since for the interim, my proof of concept looked like this:
I managed to keyframe all my characters and inbetween and cleanup Petra. For cleanup I created a custom Harmony brush from scratch following this tutorial, as I couldn’t find any that mimicked the style I wanted.
I got some great feedback from the interim. First I need to further refine the animatic and add sound to make it as clear as possible. The trapeze sequence needs to be timed accurately to get an understanding of the pacing and intensity of that scene. It was also suggested that I play with the camera movement or a focus pull right at the end as Callie falls to draw attention to Petra moving the safety net. During this scene I also need to make it the uncanny emptiness of the tent clear through the reverb in the sound. Finally, Su-Lynn suggested I somehow indicate Podge’s presence before we see them, in the scene where they concoct the plan. I’m not too sure I want to do this but I will play around with the idea when I edit the animatic.
Most of the confusion was around the lack of clarity in the animatic, which I totally agree with. I think I found myself scrambling to get a bit of everything done in the two days I had off work, so everything came out a bit half-assed. I hope with a strict production schedule I can manage to whole-ass the rest of the production and produce something portfolio worthy.
On Thursday I gave myself a break day from the overwhelming weekend, so after our class in the morning I came home and went to sleep. Friday I had to use to sort out some urgent course rep business and we also had class and a lecture, so I didn’t get to make any more progress on the film for now.