This week I am posting a much earlier shot from my film ‘The Lift’. In this shot the main character is leaving for work, or what ever she does. As you saw from one of the other later shots I posted she doesn’t make it to where she was going.
Something I haven’t really talked about yet, and I am always asked, is when will it be finished. I am looking to complete this film in early 2010, actually the end of January. I am attempting to submit this film to Annecy which is apparently celebrating its 50th anniversary. If you are interested I took some pictures when I was there in 2003 (Annecy Animation Festival Pictures).
Enjoy!
I am posting this new video on my blog a little late this time, a week late actually. I forgot to do this last week, though I did get it up on Youtube and Vimeo. This week I won’t be doing a video as its a holiday in the US.
Shot 51, what you see below is the shot immediately after last weeks, the girl gets pulled down the sewer drain and transported to another world.
Other than that I think I am pretty set on the new title of the film “The Lift”, as my sister Emma says “Once and Never Again” sounded lame. I think i agree.
I have recently setup 2 channels, one on Vimeo and another on Youtube which I will update every Tuesday with new shots from my film.
YouTube Kohrtoons Studio Channel
Vimeo Kohrtoons Studio Channel
This week I created an almost 7 minute tutorial showing my process of developing a shot from the animatic to the final video. I demonstrated how I use Flash to create the animation and color the frames, Blender to generate the 3D scenes and After Effects for composting.
On another note the film is currently called “Once and Never Again” though I am considering changing it to “The Lift”. The premise of the film is an elevator experience gone wrong, a cautionary tale about holding the elevator door for people (though you wouldn’t know it from this shot :P)
I recently downloaded the latest drawing app available for the iPhone. I have not been a huge fan of the others as they never felt quite right. Autodesk seems to have offered up something truly good, Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile.
The main difference I felt between Autodesk’s offering and Brushes was that Sketchbook lacked the ‘vector-esc’ functionality which brushes relies on and instead implemented a system where the data is all bitmap. Brushes uses XML data to draw, though it works well it doesn’t feel all that natural or responsive. Also Sketchbook carried over its rather intuitive tool set from its desktop offering Sketchbook Pro. Over all Sketch book is a really solid offering and definitely worth the $2.99 cost.
Check out the painting I did in Sketchbook Mobile (click to view the full res).
Ever heard of the 11 Second Club? If you are an animator you should have. Its a website where an audio clip is posted on the first of the month, usually something from an old movie. Then those who choose to participate have about 30 days to complete their interpretation of the animation.
I decided to submit this past month. Below is my submission for August. If you can’t tell the clip was hand drawn, in flash.
I originally saw this on digg then on web monkey and thought that it was an interesting warning/humor/comment on freelance and things to watch out for. That said I thought it would be fun to add my top ten. I stole some of the better ones from that site ;) That said here are my top 10 freelancing red flags:
10. He asks if you can make a sketch or mock something up because he has a few other artists who he is also looking at.
9. He bemoans the last person he worked with on this was a disaster and is looking for someone who can deal with his type of management.
8. There isn’t much money for his job (actually only enough for a McD’s sandwich) but asks if you think that he could pay you in stock?
7. He asks if the deposit (which is supposed to be non-refundable) refundable?
6. He can’t manage to pay the deposit on time.
5. He mentions in passing that he sometimes I forgets to take his medication.
4. He talks a little too much about his kids and want to know about your dating life.
3. He saw “some movie” and wants the animation too look like it, but is floored when you give them a lowball price and wants you to “come down a bit”.
2. He calls himself CEO of his own production company which only has 1 employee.
1. He talks about all the “people” he knows in animation (or art) and name drops then gives you a look of pity when you don’t share in the fact that you don’t know these people.
A word about this; a coworker of mine suggested that I do a series of tutorials on Flash drawing and animation. Examples will be taken from my film for more indy related stuff and some examples from work files and processes used in game development. I have always believed that its good karma to share all that you know. That said I will attempt to share all that I know. Enough said, now for the first lesson.
LESSON 01
Efficiency in Flash is important. Whether you are working on your own or on a production team, you need to get your work done as fast as possible. In this lesson I will explore JSFL plugins for Flash.
JSFL (Javascript Flash) is a script language that lets you perform certain tasks with in Flash. The best analogy I can come up with is that its a harder to work with version of Actions in Photoshop. That said its not as easy to use. I personally have no idea how to make any of these, though that doesn’t mean you can’t use them. First you will need to get your self a copy of Adobe Extension Manager. You will Extension Manager to install all the following extensions.
My Coworker Allison sent me this awesome link show examples of animation that has New York in it. I think I can add to this a bit, though this is a pretty exhaustive list.
Oh boy second post in two days, well I should be working right now on a video for myNOGGIN, but I just had to post this page that I animated. Basically we have these pages on Nick Jr.’s website called landing pages and these are usually used as introductory sections for show titles. Our newest property is this really wonderfully animated show called Ni Hao Kai-lan. I have not been this excited to have worked on a page since doing Wonder Pets!. Its a really wonderful show and if you are into animation I suggest having a look at the show on Nick Jr. With out further adieu here is the page.
Happy New Year, for that matter Happy Chinese New Year! It has been so long since my last post. Well I did post, about my store, but then I took that down as it fell through. I learned a lot from the experience a lot which I will apply to something similar in a few years. So for now I am keeping all of it to myself including the idea ;)
In the meantime I have been working on my film “Automatic Doors”. Its never really a good idea to have your whole work in progress online, so instead I will post out of order 1 minute chunks of rough animation online. Currently I have a little over 50 seconds done right now.