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!

Spent most of the evening working on finalizing the Dungeon Painting environment. Did the final model and lighting tweaks, though some individual shots will undoubtedly require their own tweaks. Did some test renders, and got it to look pretty sweet. So, tomorrow I can start working on the first half of the flying carpet sequence (the second half is already done).

Spent the rest of the evening writing a dissertation on one of the Giacomo shots. The shot involves a handheld camera tilt from floor to ceiling, with Giacomo (a 2D animated character) dragging a live actor and attacking Wendell (a 3D animated character), while straight at (and ultimately into) the camera. As if this did not provide enough trouble, since we’re not a studio, it’s difficult to communicate with my animator. It would be a lot easier working out these timing issues if we were in the same building, preferably working on computers right next to each other. Then, he could see how it’s being composited, we could do test drawings and test composites real quick and get instant results. As it is, there’s usually a 24 hour turnaround from him getting me some animation, us being able to talk about it, and him being able to make the changes I ask for. Each step, though, makes it better and better. This shot should be finished by tomorrow!

It’s been a busy week, back on track with getting the movie done. Since the last weekly update, I’ve managed to get at least one shot done per night. On Friday, I had 33 shots done. Friday itself consisted of: day job until 5, poker tournament at day job until 7 (I came in 8th, unlike the last tournament where I came in 1st), finish off shot #34, then go see Jaws at a midnight screening in Melbourne.

As a side note, I must take my fedora off for Mr. Steven Spielberg. I’ve seen Jaws a dozen times, probably, but always on a small screen. I’d always heard the story about how seeing Ben Gardner’s head come out of the boat was a huge scare, but on the small screen, it never startled me. On the big screen, knowing full well it was coming, it gave me the biggest scare I’ve ever gotten from a movie. 32 years after it’s debut, and it can still fill a fairly large theatre, and it had the audience by the short hairs for the entire second half. It’s interesting, too: my study of animation has really helped me out in terms of how I see scenes unfolding, and use of screen space. It was like watching Jaws with new eyes — some of Spielberg’s compositions were astounding. He deserves all the praise he gets.

Anyway, two more shots done today, and one almost done. That leaves 8 to finish before Tuesday to make my goal of finishing Wendell by Labor Day.

Lastly, Jim finished animating the hardest Giacomo shot in the film. Still needs to be composited, but I’m holding off on that until after Wendell is done. Also, congrats to Jim for being accepted in the AnimationMentor.com program. It’s expensive, but it looks amazing. Jim’s work is already good, so I can’t wait to see how awesome he’ll be after going through that training.

This has been a busy week — at home, anyway.  My daughter, Anastasia, turned 2 on Tuesday the 21st.  Coincidentally, my editor’s son, Christian Miller, was born on Tuesday.  So now they have the same birthday, though Anastasia has laid claim to it for far longer.  So, I spent a lot of time with her, and not so much on the movie.  Because of this, I’m moving my personal Wendell deadline to Labor Day.  I’ll have a 3-day weekend from the day job then, and no toddler parties planned, so I should have plenty of time to crack down.

What I did have time for, however, was this:

I created a 3D environment in After Effects, based on a painting that local artist Danny Schmidt did special for the movie.   I cut out pieces of his beautiful painting, recreated it in After Effects, and composited Pupsock & Wendell into it.  This was my first finalized shot working with green screen and virtual sets, so I was very excited about it and took the time to get things right.  I like this picture, but it doesn’t really compare to how awesome it is seeing the shot in motion.

Jim finished off another Giacomo shot, which will find its way into a new trailer I hope to have ready in September.  Then, I put him to work on the hardest Giacomo shot in the film, which I hope he will blog about soon.  Hint, hint.

Finally, I’ve gotten roughly half of the recomps done.  I hope to be finished with that annoyance by Wednesday.

As mentioned, all of my effort for the previous week has been put towards getting a better composite on Wendell and the new shoot. I’ve been calling it a reshoot, but it isn’t replacing anything we already shot, just adding on.

Luckily, there’s good news on both fronts. The shoot got rolling a little later than expected, but we pulled it off without any real problems. Jamie Donmoyer was able to take a break from working on Disney’s “Johnny and the Sprites” to come back home and help us out. Her performance as Pupsock was amazing, as always. Producer Tom Mumme DP’d the shoot, and we pretty much just looked at each other with big grins after each take. Also, my sign came out pretty good. Which is nice.

The crew was rounded out by AD Chris Santora, who was called into service as a Dolly Grip, and Kevin McGuire, who came on-board at the last minute and really saved our butts. He helped out Tom a great deal, and played Wendell so Jamie would have something to work off of and I could focus on directing her.

I played around with several different effects in After Effects to get Wendell to look more organic and not just pasted onto the scene. There were two shots I worked on, to get a look I liked and see if I could reproduce it. Tom and Chris both gave their stamp of approval, so I’ll be able to move on — hopefully getting most of the shots re-comped this weekend.