Getting close to the end of the FX now.  I’ve only got two really difficult shots left, and those are both partially done.  Figured out how to do the fog pretty well, and spent most of the week working on the shot where Giacomo first changes from fog into his big, creepy cartoon self.  It came out pretty well.

Right now, I’m in the middle rotoscoping the Princess running down the hall wearing a large, swishy skirt in a shot that constantly changes perspective.  It’s a nightmare.   Maybe halfway done with it.  I should be able to finish that, and make good progress on the other tricky shot tonight.

However, we’re doing ADR in a couple of hours, so that may slow me down a bit.  Though, it’ll be awesome to finally watch the movie without annoying dialog problems.  Like trying to hear the Princess while we’re blasting her with a fan and three leaf blowers.

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….

Been a good week.  Met with the editor on Tuesday, and realized that I had about 58 effects shots done!  Some of those need to be redone when its time to get to the Giacomo Fog shots, but that’s just a couple.  Once we got those laid in, we went about tightening up the Dungeon Painting scene and cut out around 20 seconds.  That was the one part of the movie that was really bugging me, as it had been really slow.  It sings now, baby.

Finally started making progress on the Dungeon Painting section of the flying carpet sequence.  I was really please with how the takeoff looked, especially considering that we weren’t sure how to shoot it.  Before the shoot, I had intricately planned out how to do all the flying carpet shots, but on the day it turned out that my plans weren’t going to work, so I had to improvise on the set, while under a time crunch.  We really had no idea how to do the takeoff, and I just wasn’t sure about how well what we did was going to work.  But now that I’ve composited it, I’m really happy with it.  I’ve since finished off a couple more shots in that sequence, and it’s looking really nice.

Other than that, I’ve been busy in my producer role.  The cut is finally ready for the audio departments (3 weeks before we screen), so I had to prep DVDs to get out to the mixer and composer.  My friend Travis Fell agreed to help me out by creating the backgrounds for most of the dungeon scene, so that all I’ll have to do is approve and composite them.  It took a little bit of time to get him the files he needed to do this, but hopefully it will save me a day or two of work.

Really getting into the crunch now.  Jim should be done with Giacomo by Monday.  Hopefully I can get the dungeon/carpet stuff done this week.

I met with Heather Henson last week, to bring her the puppets from Dudley and the Toy Keeper’s Chest. She’s going to include them in a show she’s doing at the Gallery at Avalon Island in downtown Orlando. The show is going to feature puppets, props, and artwork from several of the films featured in Heather’s show Handmade Puppet Dreams, of which Dudley has the honor of being part. For the locals, the installation will open on October 18th and run through November 9th. Come check it out!

The other thing we talked about was Pupsock & Wendell in The Gallery of Doom. She wants us to premiere at the Orlando Puppet Festival on October 27th, which she organizes along with Pupsock’s builder and performer, Jamie Donmoyer. I, of course, agreed. And now am working feverishly to make sure we make that deadline. As is Jim. And soon, as will be sound guy David Wallace and composer Philip Yon.

So, enough blogging. Time to make those carpets fly!

See you at the Mad Cow Theatre on October 27th @ 4pm!

So, while I’ve been finishing off Wendell animation and trying to figure out this Dungeon Painting environment, Jim’s been off working on the Giacomo animation, slowly but surely. He had over half a dozen shots of Giaco inside live-action sets, with wild, handheld camera moves and interaction with real objects. All while trying to figure out what Giacomo looks like and moves like, and getting up to speed with Toon Boom. So, understandably, it has been taking him a real long time to get out each shot. Which was starting to worry me, because we have a deadline coming up (more on that in the next post).

Then, lo and behold, he gets past all the live action stuff (which I am now behind on compositing, due to trying to get the flying carpet stuff done), and starts getting into the virtual set shots. Which means that Giacomo can pretty much stay planted, and there are no handheld shots that need to be motion tracked or anything. Which means he can just focus on animating. And BOOM, he knocks out 13 shots in 3 days — and all good stuff! That put him at 19/27 shots.

It’s back to the day job now, so productivity on the movie goes down. However, he’s aiming for 2 shots a night, which should have him finishing up by Friday. I’ll let you know how that goes.

He just turned in another shot, making his total 20/27. However, it is a shot of Giacomo running, which will probably be used multiple times in the flying carpet sequence. I’ll have to double check to be sure, but I think he may only have 4 shots left to do!

Way to go, Jim!