All the pieces are coming together.  Yesterday, Jim finished off the Giacomo animation!  I thought it’d be another day, as I had notes for his last two shots, and it was getting pretty late.  But, it turned out that we were all up late, because by 11:30 he had delivered them both with the notes incorporated, and they rocked.

But the man who really surprised me was Travis Fell, who stayed up until 2am getting all the backgrounds done for the Dungeon scene.  He’d be the first to admit that he’s not really the artistic type, but he’s a good friend and wanted to help out.  I gave him the .blend file for the environment, and a low-res version of the scene, and he looked at the angles on the performers, and created backgrounds in the dungeon to match each angle.  This will save me lots of time.

As for me, I finished off the flying carpet chase just moments ago.  I can’t believe how quickly that sequence went!  There’s still some other carpet shots, but the chase was the main thing I was worried about.  In fact, compared to everything I’ve already done, I think that what’s left is fairly easy.  Famous last words, I know….

Finished off the Mushroom Painting sequences on Sunday night. Started working on the Dungeon Painting last night, trying to finalize the look of the environment. It’s based off a painting by Danny Schmidt, and was modeled by Philip Yon, who also modeled Wendell. I messed around with the textures and lighting a bit, then rendered this test. I then took it into After Effects and played around with a bunch of different techniques, and came up with this:

It’s been a long, grueling weekend, but at long last all 47 Wendell shots are animated! Some of them still need to be composited, but the animation is complete — and believe me, that’s the hard part. Most of the composites are simple overlays — he’s not really behind anything. There are a few shots where he’s behind Pupsock, but we had a portable green screen on set for those, so there’s no rotoscope involved. There’s one kinda tricky shot that will need some roto, but not for too many frames.

Unfortunately, I can’t get started compositing today, because of my new workflow. Previously, I would animate, render (in Blender), composite, render (in After Effects) and then call a shot finished. However, I had 13 or 14 shots to do in three days, and I knew that wasn’t gonna cut it — the render times would kill me. Luckily, I had come across a similar problem doing the recomps, and thus had figured out how to write a batch script to render multiple files. So, the workflow for the weekend has been animate, animate, animate until utter exhaustion, then batch render the day’s work overnight. Then keep animating. So, now that I’m done, I’ve just kicked off the batch. There’s about 9 files to render (5 new shots, two shots I re-lit, and one shot that I’m rendering in multiple layers, so I can play with the focus in After Effects), so I don’t think it’ll be done until late tonight.

And I’ll be sleeping tonight. I’ve missed it.

Been doing Lip Sync most of the night. Most all that’s left with Wendell is Lip Sync Stuff. I spent about 3 hours to get 3 seconds worth of dialog properly synced. (Or, should that be syunc?)

The scene I’m working on, in addition to containing the hardest shot in the movie (which I completed about 3 weeks ago) , has 5 seconds of dialog spewing from Wendell, while we cut to three different angles. So, I’m animating it mostly in one stretch, to help the actions match while it cuts. However, the first shot is an Over The Shoulder of Wendell. So, essentially, I’ve been working for 4 hours to see about 1/4 of the back of an animated character who’s jaw waggles in perfect sync with the dialog. Yipee!

It’s looking darn good, though, if you ask me.

Actually, it’s been an interesting shot to work on, because the main part of Wendell that you see is his creepy little floating hand. So, I got to practice a little bit of acting with that, and I also got to practice making it move with weight, and secondary motion on the fingers, and all that good animation stuff.

Well, the test render seems to be done, so I should stick it on the movie and see if it works. If so, then I get to do the final render and shot 28 will be ready for compositing!

Welcome to this Behind-the-Scenes look at the post-production of “Pupsock & Wendell in THE GALLERY OF DOOM!” I’ve set up this blog to keep people posted on the progress of the film, and to help raise awareness of it. I’ll post on my progress and my process, and invite some of the other people making the movie it to talk about their work.

First, the basics:

• The script was written in May of 2006.
• Principle photography took place in Orlando, FL in January 2007.
• The film was shot over the course of 8 days, on a Panasonic AG-HVX200, in 720p.
• I wrote and directed the film. Thomas Mumme produced it, Jeremy Schneider DP’d it, Ryan C. Wolfgang was the Production Designer, and Chris Santora was the 1st AD and Practical Effects Supervisor.
• The film stars Pupsock Jackson, who was built and puppeteered by Jamie Donmoyer, and voiced by Kevin McGuire. The humans are played by Joey Monasterios and Jeff Gougen.
• We’re currently deep in post-production, currently working on the two animated characters.
• Wendell is a 3D animated character, and is being brought to life via the OpenSource 3D animation package Blender. He was designed by myself, modeled and rigged by Philip Yon, and is being animated by me.
• Giacomo is a 2D animated character, being animated in Flash by Jim Compher and Sharon Jimenez.
• I’ve currently got 17 shots of Wendell completed, out of about 47.
• I did the initial design work for Giacomo, and it was further refined by Sharon. Jim took Sharon’s detailed drawings, and has begun making a simpler version inside Flash.
• The Giacomo team has 0 of 27 shots complete.
• The film is being cut by Adam Miller using Final Cut Pro. I’m doing the compositing in After Effects, on a PC.

I plan on expanding on most of those bullets in future posts, so check back often.