"Late"

Got a Job!

2006-11-24T03:17:00.000-08:00

I know I said I was going to keep working on my film & be better about posting stuff up here, but shortly after that... I GOT A JOB!!!!!!!!!! Which in case you can't tell I'm SUPER excited about. I'm going to be working at Framestore CFC here in London through August as an ANIMATOR!!!! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's really by far the best thing I could think of to happen just out of school. I am going to keep working on my short film. I really like the idea & I like where i was getting with it. But it's going to be back burner for a while. I think I am going to go in & re-think a lot of it. Really try to make it what I originally wanted in all aspects. We'll see. Anyhow, probably won't update here for while.

There are a few shots from my short in my latest demo reel on my website www.fiercefire.com if you want to check them out. But it's mostly stuff that you've seen before.

Back to work....

2006-10-31T08:59:00.000-08:00

Wow, I can't believe a month has already passed.... Time goes by SO quickly.

Well, nothing totally new to show quite yet, but lots of things in the works. I spent some time re-working the dad's face so he can have a bit more facial expression, which is good. I'm still not totally happy with it, but it is at least good enough for me to keep moving forwards. I've been cleaning up bits & pieces of things to get them ready for a new demo reel that I'm going to send out in some form or another later this week.

I still feel like this is not the film that I had in mind originally, but I'm working pro-actively to change that. I'll post more here are it all comes together, which hopefully will be soon.

So, mostly this is just an update to say hello & that yes I am still working on this. I think I am going to try to get back to posting here once at the end of the week with progress, maybe that will help me keep a bit more focused.

Finished-ish.....

2006-09-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

Well, the last week has come & gone. I'm offically graduated & finished with school. My film, as you can see below, is no where near done.... oh well. Like I posted last week there was a lot of learning going on & sometimes that slows you down.

Anyways, I made a lot of major changes this past couple of weeks to the film, tightened the editing a bit, changed some of the camera angles and some of the acting choices. I still have so much that I want to do on it, but I feel like I am at least closer now than I was before. I think spending some time to re-work the facial controls on the dad will help a lot. Right now his facial controls are very limited, so there's no way to do subtle facial animation on him. I'm going to take about a week or so to work on a few other pieces for my reel, and then come back to this fresh. I'll keep posting stuff here as I get it done.

It's funny sometimes how stepping away from something can make you more interested in it. As I've been away from my short for a few days I've had tons of ideas about how I want to handle the lighting, modeling, additional shots, re-editing, etc...

So here's what I turned in as my final for AM:

Why I'm not finished...

2006-09-11T01:20:00.000-07:00

First sorry about not posting last week. These past 2 weeks have been busy & I just forgot.

Second here's the whole thing in a more refined state, although you'll probably notice some shots have not been touched in a long, long, LONG time. I will get to those this next week. I did however re-do the ending pretty much completely, swapping Bishop in for the little girl, because that model had a facial setup & the other didn't. There are still bits I want to change/add in the ending, but those will probably have to wait a tiny bit longer.

Now on to the main show... I woke up this morning to the following comment in my workspace from a fellow student:

" it became a very nice movie. flows well. why its not finished???"

I love AM.... it's one of the few schools where this is a totally acceptable thing to leave as a comment. It's not meant to be snipey or anything, it's just an honest question, and here was my reply:

"HA! Good question....

The short answer is "I learned something big & learning takes time & slows you down."

The long answer:
It's not finished for a number of reasons.... Mainly because about 2 weeks ago I started looking at the film as a whole & realized it wasn't up to the standard that I wanted. The acting wasn't strong enough, the emotions weren't reading, I didn't have enough breakdowns to adequately start moving to splined, etc... etc... Also, because there is so much physicality in this piece, so much running & jumping & such I had started to let that take over the performance.

I made a decision then that I could take one of 2 paths. I could push ahead with what I had, try to take everything to splined & get it all to some stage of "finished" regardless of how much the final film matched my original ideas and desires, and how much I felt like it didn't work OR I could step back & really re-do the parts that weren't working & make them work, even though this would cause me to have a more unfinished film at the end. I chose the second path.

I got a really interesting and enlightening comment from a recruiter this past Siggraph when she saw my reel (up in my Progress Reel section right now if you are interested). She said that it was all technically good. I obviously new about anticipation & follow-through & all that. BUT only one of the 4 shots (the first one) showed that I brought anything to the table idea-wise.

It was a comment that really made me sit back & think about my work so far, how much I was pushing myself & a lot of other things. I think I had gotten so caught up in the technical side of animation that I had forgot why I wanted to do animation in the first place, to create characters!! Not just to move things around prettily on the screen.... Even more importantly I realized my short film had been all about just moving things around prettily on the screen, and I had lost the character & the emotion which I really wanted to be at the core of this piece. SO..... that's the long answer.

There's also a lot of other things I could fall back on, like I rigged my own characters (bad decision), I choose a piece with just about all the complex full body shots I could think of (bad decision), I didn't & still don't have a full facial rig for the main character (see first bad decision) etc... etc... But mostly it's the learning thing.... :)

*end of answer*
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There's been a lot of discussion on the AM site about graduation, what you need to graduate & taking an optional additional term. Basically most of the school isn't finished with their shorts. I think we all underestimated the time that it would take us to finish these and we're paying the price now. So AM has graciously given us all the option, this one time only, to re-take the 6th term with a new mentor & finish our films. I thought about it long & hard, but I don't think I am going to take it. Now, that may change if I get an email from my mentor saying I should, but that's my thinking right now. I feel like I do have a lot still to do on my short, BUT I also feel like the place where I really need the majority of mentor feedback is at the acting choice stage, and I'm getting that now. I feel like I could take this forward on my own, with a few additional critiques from AM (once we graduate you can get a crit for a fee service) and get something that I'm pretty happy with. I also feel like I need to move forward & start looking for work. I've been in school, freelancing or moving cities/countries for a long time now. It would be great to settle down into a day to day animation job again.

First Third Refined

2006-08-29T14:10:00.000-07:00

So I got most of the first third refined this past week. Not as much as I would have liked, but my carpel tunnel was acting up. :/

From now on I'm going to just keep posting the whole film instead of bits & pieces. The parts with a red time-code are the most recent. There's a few shots in red this week where he's still on splined, but hopefully I'll have those worked out very soon.

The Whole Shee-bang!

2006-08-21T02:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, here it is.... The whole film is finally blocked. The whole thing is supposed to be on second blocking by now, but that second pass got a bit sporadic due to Siggraph & being sick, etc, etc...

I'm realively happy with how it's going. There's a few scenes that I'm not happy with at all & a few things I know I'm going to totally re-do after AM is finished, but I think the bones of it all is there. I think I could make the performances stronger in places, especially when he's in the cab, running in the middle and when he's outside of the little girl's (Rose, I finally named her) room. I am VERY unhappy with all of the expressions I can get with her face. Her facial rig is extrememly limited & honestly really bad at the moment. I am going to pull that out and totally re-rig her after the term is done & re-do her facial animation. I will probably do the same with the dad, but his facial problems, while still very much there, are a little less than hers. Anyways... enough complaining... My focus right now is to get everything I can done here in the next 3 weeks and just see how it goes.

I took almost all of this weekend off, went outside, hung out with friends and played some Zelda. I feel worlds better for it and totally ready to dive into this week and plow forwards. So... without further ado.....

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming....

2006-08-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

I've been a bad blogger, not posting for a few weeks, but I claim immunity for being away in Boston. And it was all worth it because.... Siggraph was awesome!!! Really, really amazing. Got to meet a ton of people in person that I've only ever seen online before, and got to take a much needed few days off at the cape afterwards. And most importantly I got inspired again to come back & work on my short & not hate it. I was getting a little burnt out before we went, not liking my story, not liking my acting choices, etc... but I'm feeling much better about things now. I still feel like I could push the whole thing a bunch farther, but I'm going to keep trying to work that in as I go.

I didn't totally stop working on my film while I was away, I have a laptop that goes with me, but the work was substantially less than it is when I am home. I did the second pass at blocking the first third while on the road, which really shows as I only got to touch a few of the shots. I got the first pass at the final third done before I left, I'm very unhappy with it. This upcoming week is all about re-doing that final third, with actual working models & all that happiness.

In the mean-time here's an update on what I got so far for your viewing pleasure :)

Second Third of Blocking

2006-07-25T00:33:00.000-07:00

Here's the second third of my short blocked!! I'm VERY exctied. There's a lot I still feel like I need to change & adjust & such, but it's nice to have a starting point finally. Should get the final third blocked out this next week and then it's off to Siggraph for a week to try to get a job! It's going to put me a bit behind schedule film-wise, but I think I need to do it, both to try to get a job and just to take a bit of a break. Siggraph will also be good b/c I always come back full of ideas for shorts and shots and various bits of animation I want to do. Most years I don't have anything to come back & direct all that energy at, so it'll be great to just dive right back in to making my short!!

First Third Blocked

2006-07-17T03:11:00.000-07:00

WOOT!! It's SO great to be back to actual animation! I blocked in the first third of my film last week. I'll do the second third this week and the final third the following. I'm mostly happy with the blocking that I've done so far. There's a few things that I'm not thrilled with, but those are mostly body-mechanics issues and will resolve themselves as I move forward. I AM very excited that the rig works. The face is not 100% of where I want it to be yet, but it will be shortly & it works for now :) It's all hooked up, it's just a matter of finessing the blend-shapes now.

Anyhow, here's my first blocking. I'd love to hear all comments :)

Starting the final stretch!!

2006-07-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, we're in the final haul!!

Classes started last week. Unfortunately my internet was down for most of last week so I missed the first q&a of the term :( The good news is that I was finally able to run the changes that I wanted to do to the first 1/3 of my film (changing the Bus for the Taxi) by Brett and he approved them!! Which I am VERY happy about.

The Dad is now fully rigged now, facial and everything, and I'm starting on actual animation this week!! It's so nice to be doing actual animation instead of thinking about and planning the animation. I shot reference footage last week for the first 1/3 and I'll shoot more reference this week for the second third. I'll post all that along with my first blocking for the first 1/3 this week.

The difficultly with shooting reference for the running sequences is that I don't really have anywhere I can run easily and tape it, so I've been doing lots of running in place in my apartment....

Week off!!

2006-06-28T05:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, not really... It's the week between terms, but I'm working as normal. This week is all about rigging up the Dad & the little girl to have them ready to go for next week. I'm also using some of the time to finish up tweaking my demo reel. I'm hoping to have all those tweaks done & something to show here by the end of the week. We'll see how it goes. :)

Long Time No Post...

2006-06-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

Hey,

So sorry for the long time without posting.... Things have been busy & I just forgot... oops.

Anyways, I've been thinking a lot about things, what kind of film I really want to make, what sort of experience I want the audience to have, and all that stuff. Basically what I've come up with is that I don't really want to make the dad a jerk when he's rushing home. I really want to have the audience sympathize with him and emotionally travel with him along this journey. I want them to really anticipate and want him to reach his destination by the time that he reaches the house. So... to that end I've taken out the bit where he runs up to the stopped taxi & added back in the bit where he misses the bus. I don't think I have it timed out properly yet, but I've been showing the two versions to people and most everyone likes this one better.

I haven't run this change by my mentor yet. I have q&a tomorrow morning & we'll see what he says. I know he's really in favor of the guy being a jerk b/c it creates a stronger contrast to the ending, but I just feel that it could really turn the audience off, and in such a short piece I really need to draw them in right away.

So here's the newest layout

Additionally I've also got the characters modeled (finally!) The dad took forever, but the little girl only took a day. There's still a few tweaks I want to do to her, but overall I'm pretty happy with how she turned out.

And.... on a totally non-short-film-related topic. I've also been spending a lot of time getting my demo reel together. I am trying to work out now what I want to put in & what I want to leave out. I've put together everything in one big movie to get people's opinions. You can see that here: Demo Reel

Second Layout Pass

2006-06-09T02:09:00.000-07:00

So here's the second layout pass that I did for this week's q&a. I'm still not happy with the middle bit, but I rented Run Lola Run the other night & I'm going to use it as reference. It's a GREAT film. Awesome editing, awesome story, AWESOME music! Anyways, other than that I'm sure the rest of the thing will move around a lot as I move forward from layout to actual animation, but for right now I'm happy with how things are progressing.

Second Layout Pass

"Ladies & Gentleman, we have Sign-off"

2006-06-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

WOOT!!

Ok, so except for a few minor tweaks here & there Brett approved my layout pass last week. Ok, just the first 2/3's, but that's the bit that's been causing me to tear my hair out for the last few weeks, so it makes me REALLY happy that everything seems to be reading now & generally working together. I think there's still a bunch of tweaks that need to happen before it all comes together, BUT I finally feel like I have something solid I can work with and tweak. A good starting point :)

Anyways, here's the animatic/layout pass that got the approval. Layout_Pass1

And here's what I've been doing in the mean-time:

Ok, back to work. This week is all about finishing modeling, finishing the full layout pass and getting my demo reel ready for Siggraph, something I'm sorrowfully behind on.

Walking in Circles....

2006-05-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, so lots going on this week although not too much progress. :/ I lost 3 days last week due to hard-ware problems, and have been a little sick this week.

I have re-done my animatic several times now and am still not toally happy with the result. BUT, after my q&a this morning I feel like I am back on the right track again. I am going to go ahead & move forward into layout and hopefully adjust things as I go along.

I was going to post my animatic, but I'm having trouble uploading stuff to my website for some reason. So I'll just talk about it instead:

I totally bungled up the pacing by making the running section too long & the cab section too long with no build-up. So the things I'm going to change is.... before he hails the cab he's going to try to get into a stopped cab, but it turns out to be off-duty. Then he'll hail another cab, it that pulls away, he starts to relax, gets stuck in traffic, he panics and decides to run for it. Then he'll run out like he is now & almost get hit by oncoming traffic. I'm going to shorten the running section by about 1/2 and then do the ending pretty similar to what I have in the animatic already.

Hopefully that will help bring back the buildup before he hits the house and keep the story moving forward. Lots to do still!! I'm going to keep working & I'll post more info here soon.

edit: Got my FTP working, so here's a link to the animatic I was talking about in this post:
Animatic

Animatic

2006-05-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest animatic. I know I didn't post my first one, but this one's a bit clearer, so I'm going to just post it. I think there's still a bit of timing adjustments that will happen as I go forward, but that's always the case (I think). Anyways, as always I'm open to any c&c. :)

Animatic

New Character Designs

2006-05-09T09:17:00.000-07:00

WOOT!!

So it's really great having friends.... friends who are willing to help me out and have much better skills than I do.

I worked with 2 great guys to come up with different approaches to the characters. They each added their own flair and put in a lot of great work. I think the end product will have a fair bit of both of them in there, as well as my own ideas which is awesome.

And so I present the model sheets:

And the scuplts:

The model sheets were done by Rafi Nizam another AM (animationmentor) student in exchange for me modeling the props for his short.

The scuplts were done by Jazz Tigan, a former AM student, done in exchange for a future favor....

It's goooood to have friends!!

I think I'll start modeling them in the computer tomorrow. Today I've finished my first pass at an animatic!! I'll post that here in a bit. I think there's still parts that are missing/could be improved in it. BUT, at least it's under a minute, so I'm happy. :)

Feeling Better....

2006-05-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

So after a week of total indicision I think I've worked out a sequence of events for the first half. I'm doing test boards and a test animatic for it all now. That should be up soon.

Anyways, the new first half is going to go like this.... (p.s I've named him John for now so I can quit calling him that running guy)

Running closeups of John's feet & arms pumping
John runs past several buildings
Misses Bus
Moment of indicision/frustration
Decides to get a cab
Hails one down at the curb
Jumps into cab, it pulls away fast
Cab goes along for a second, then stops short in traffic
John checks traffic, checks watch, total gridlock, checks watch again, decides to run for it
John Bolts out of cab, almost gets hit bu oncoming traffic, runs on
Few seconds of running close-ups, mostly head shots to show time passing
Arrives home, que ending.

Re-thinking....

2006-05-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

So I'm rethinking my ideas. It's still the same basic story, but I'm just not happy at all with how the first half has been going. So I've put 2 new pitches out there that I'm going to detail in writing here:

Pitch 1:

Open with a close-up of a man's feet running
Cut to a closeup of the same man's arms pumping, you see he's dressed in a nice business suit. On one arm he has an expensive watch and he has a briefcase in the other.
Cut to a shot of the street , we see him running down the street. He takes a corner down a side street so fast that his legs almost swing out from under him. He has to grab a mailbox to steady himself and continues running on.
Cut to a busy street with fast traffic in both directions. We see our man emerge out of a side-street.
He hails a cab, jumps in and the cab roars off.
Cut to the inside of the cab, closeup on the man in the back. He's breathing hard from running.
He checks his watch, sits back a little and takes a few deep breaths. Straightens his tie and his hair, generally takes a second to regain his composure.
He checks his watch again, and starts to look out the window. Now that he has his breath back he begins to get nervous about being late again. He drums his fingers on the arm-rest, we see his leg start to go up and down in a nervous twitch.
Suddenly he perks up, pulls out his wallet and leans forward to bang on the glass. He calls to the cabbie, "Here, here, right here!"
He pushes money through the window and jumps out of the cab even before it's come to a full stop.
From outside the cab we see him half shut the door, then reach back in for his briefcase before continuing on.
He runs up to the building that he's stopped before and pushed inside.
Inside there's a woman standing next to a small table, dressed in a business suit, slightly relaxed. She is flipping through mail from the table.
He pushes his briefcase at her, which she takes, somewhat startled and he dashes up a set of stairs beside her.
At the top of the stairs, he pushes open a door on a little girl of about 3 years who is setting up her tea-set with all of her stuffed animals.
From the door-way he asks "Am I late?".
She looks up startled, shakes her head at him and holds out an imaginary cup of tea.

End.

Pitch 2:

Opens on a shot of a busy street, we see a man dressed in a business suit carrying a breifcase running for a bus. The bus pulls away just as he gets to the stop. He chases after it for a few feet, but is quickly left behind.
Man looks around dejected and annoyed, assessing his options. Checks when the next bus is coming, then checks his watch and decides to just run for it.
He jogs down to an intersection about 15 feet away. The Don't Walk sign is lit and there is heavy traffic in both directions. He pushes the walk button franticly, checking to see the state of the traffic.
When he sees a possible opening in the traffic he runs out.
Half-way across the street we hear a car horn approaching and the man quickly has to step back onto the median to keep from being run-over. He waits a beat for another gap in the traffic and then bolts across. Once on the far side of the street he keeps running.
We see him running down a street and then come to an abrupt halt. The whole street is blocked by construction, there is a sign in front of it that reads "Pedestrian detour" and has arrows pointing in all directions. He looks quickly around, checks his watch, picks the first street on his right and bolts down it.
Cut to an overhead shot, we can see the street that he's going down and it gets narrower and narrower till it is just a tight alley-way that he's having to inch along side-ways.
Cut to a side-shot we see 2 buildings separated by a narrow alley-way. The exit of the alley-way is covered by a wire fence. Out of the dark of the alley-way we see our main character inch up to the fence, stop, look both ways dejected and start to inch back the way he came.
Finally we see him running down a new street and stop in front of a building. He looks out of breath and somewhat disheveled.
He stops in front of a door, puts down his briefcase and tries to pull himself together. He straightens his tie, finger-combs his hair, etc.. Once he is composed he goes in to the building.
We see a low camera angle shot of his feet walking down a hall-way, passing several closed doors, and finally stopping in front of one.
Cut to an over the shoulder shot of the door, we see that there are children's drawings covering the door. He pushes it open to reveal a little girl of about 3 years sitting at a low table laid out with a tea set. Stuffed animals are seated in chairs all around her. There is one empty chair.
From the door-way he asks "Am I late?" She shakes her head and beams at him.

End.

So I like them both. I think I like the second one more, but I am afraid that it's going to get a bit overwhelming if I'm not careful. I'm waiting right now to hear back from Brett and see what he thinks about it all. In the mean-time I'm doing some really basic storyboards to see if I can work out the timing better.

First Sketches....

2006-04-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

So here's my first attempt at sketching characters... I'm not crazy about these, but they are a start. The only one that I really like is the Mom. I think she'll fit well as a business-woman who's just come home from a day at the office. On the dad sketches I'm leaning mostly towards the top-most one. I was trying to get a more structural look with the lower ones, but wound up just making him look a bit thug-ish instead.

The up-side is that I have some friends who are willing to trade other 3d services for doing some better character designs for me. Ah, it's good having friends :)

In the mean time these will do. The look I would really like to achieve is sort-of a vinyl toy look, with solid construction lines and clean graphical shapes, but still some smooth roundness to them. Maybe that will happen somewhere down the road :) We'll see!

Tomorrow I've got my video pitch due, which I've already uploaded onto the AM site and gotten some feedback on from my Mentor. I think things are going well overall. There's a few bumps but hopefully those will get ironed out in the q&a tomorrow.

This is Hard!

2006-04-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

So I am posting 2 things at once, b/c I wanted to separate the story changes from general ranting about the short film making process. And this isn't really a rant, more just an acknowledgement that this is REALLY hard!

It's funny b/c I'm finding it hard in totally different ways than I expected. I expected that the coming up with the ideas would be the hard part, but in fact it's the trimming down of ideas that's the hardest. I know I need to keep things simple and flexible at this point, it's really early on, and I've just barely gotten approval to do the story at all, much less to go forward & nail down everything else, but..... Everytime I sit down to brainstorm ideas I have so much that comes out that I feel like if I don't start nailing things down everything will get totally out of control, too long, too complicated, etc....

Anyways, right now I'm just trying to keep things simple and remember how very short 60 seconds really is. And I know that things are just going to get more complicated (and longer) when I hit full production. There's always going to be another idea that pops into my head, another little pause or something that I want to add, and I want to leave myself a bit of wiggle room in my planning so I can add those things in later without messing the whole thing up, production-wise and story-wise.

Ugh, yeah keeping things simple is the hardest thing for me right now, and realizing that simple is sometimes better, or at least just as good as complicated can be. Anyways... I'll quit whining, just had to share :)

I fell in.....

2006-04-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

It's been pointed out to me that I fell in the "way too complicated" hole with my last post.

While I like the ideas that I posted before I think they may be too long and too involved for what I can produce in 6 months (getting down to 5 now....) So I think I might just cut down the first half to the following:

10-15 seconds of man franticly running. He comes to a busy road and tries to hail a cab, several pass him, he becomes more and more adjitated wiht each passing cab, checking his watch, looking around. Finally he checks his watch one more time, sighs and starts running again. It cuts to an areial view of him running through the streets and finally he arrives, runs up a set of steps and pushes through the door.

From that point on it runs as before, he goes upstairs, see's his daughter, has tea, etc.... I think if I do this shorter begining I'll add back in the mother character when he enters the house.

It's all in the details....

2006-04-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

So today has been all about nailing down the details of the rushing sequence for the first half. I feel like I've got a good handle mentally on the ending, but the whole first half has just been designated as "guy running around late for an appointment". Which needs to be clarified....

So, I've come up with a few different antics he could do. Right now I'm thinking about them in a mix & match fashion, I'll probably only get one or two of them in with the time limits that I have, but I want to go ahead and flush them out a bit anyways, just to explore the possibilities. It's still early after all....

Subway

He runs down the stairs into the subway station, dropping a coin into the turn-style as he sails through, pushing past other people to get to the platform. Just as he starts through the turn-styles a train pulls up and he rushes for it, but he gets there just as the doors close in his face. He bangs on the door and yells, but the train just pulls away anyways. He looks at his watch, then at the electronic sign that tells when the next train will be, it changes from "next train 2 minutes" to "next train 5 minutes" to "trains delayed until further notice". Each time it changes he checks his watch, then when it finally changes to trains delayed, you see everyone on the platform slump in annoyance, and he pushes back through the crowd and vaults the tun-styles to get out. Runs out of the subway station.

Bus

He looks around franticly, see's a bus and runs for it, gets on just at the last second. Split screen view, left hand side of the screen is an overview of the street, we see the bus pull away from the curb & take a corner only to stop dead in traffic. On the right side of the screen we see a close-up of him, checking his watch, looking out the window to see how far they have gone. On the left (overview) we see the bus pull forward just a bit and then pull over to let people off and on. Then it pulls out, goes forward just a bit, pulls over again to let people on & off. Each time before it pulls over we see (on the right side) someone push the call button & we see him get more and more annoyed. Finally he jumps off the bus and just runs for it.

Taxi

He's running down the sidewalk, and turns onto a main street. Tries to flag down a taxi, but several pass him, already occupied. Finally he gets one. Similar split screen shot as in the Bus section, this time, on the left we see an overview of the taxi moving along slowly, and on the right we see him getting more and more agitated, we see his leg jumping up & down, he's drumming his fingers on the arm-rest, he just can't sit still. Finally he leans up & bangs on the glass between him & the cabbie, and points for the cabbie to turn off the main street, you see him gesturing around till they get to a dead in, he's been directing the cabbie where to turn, he leaps out of the cab, throwing money behind him at the guy and starts running through an alley that the street dead-ended on. We still are looking at things through the split-screen, so we see on the right close-ups of his feet running, his arms pumping, etc... and on the left we see a small dot that is him winding through the streets and finally heading up the stairs of a building. Picture a brow-stone walk-up here, like in Boston.

Ending

Back to full screen. He bursts through the door and runs up a set of stairs 2 at a time, dropping his briefcase and hat by the door as he enters. (I'm going to eliminate the mother character here to save time.) He pushes through another door at the top of the stairs and we see a little girl (around 3 or 4) sitting at a low table arranged with a tea-set. Around her a about 6 low chairs with stuffed animals in each and a single empty chair. She looks up when he comes in.

"Am I late?" He asks, breathing hard, almost doubled over from the effort. She shakes her head silently and holds out a cup of imaginary tea to him. He comes over and slumps down in the empty chair and takes it from her with a smile.

The End.

*******************************************************

So, right now I'm leaning towards just doing the taxi scenario and the ending. I was going to try to do the subway and the bus and then have him do the running at the end, but it's been pointed out to me that doing those would require many more characters than I should probably be dealing with and the cab can be just as effective.

Anyways, I'd love to hear any comments, suggestions, etc.... Thanks!!

WOOT!

2006-04-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

Woot!! So Brett aproved me doing "Late". I'm very excited and going to start doing storyboards & reving up for the offical pitch in two weeks. I've already started doing doing some character sketches that I'll post here in a bit.

I'm SO excited!!! I can't wait to get started & plan everything out. More soon :)

"Late"

2006-04-09T07:46:00.000-07:00

So.... I THINK i have an idea... at least I posted 4 ideas on the AM site and everyone pretty much unanimously picked this one, and it's the one that excites me the most, so I think for now at least I'm going to go with it. I have my pitch on Thursday and Brett may completely shoot it down, but eh, we'll see. Ya gotta put something out there sometime right?

"Late"

Opens with a guy rushing home from work, obviously in a frantic state, most of the film is spent seeing him rushing, building up to the question in his audience's mind about what is he late for. Finally he bursts through the door of his house where his wife is waiting for him just inside the door, he shoves his briefcase and coat at her, and runs up the stairs 2 at a time. Opens a door at the top of the steps, and bursts in panting on the room in which a little girl sits at a little table surrounded by her stuffed animals, completely laid out for tea, with one seat empty. "Am I late?" he pants at the door. "No, your right on time" she says smiling at him and as he sits she hands him an empty cup of imaginary tea.

There's a few reasons this idea appeals to me.
a) I think I can tell it in 30-60 seconds and tell it well.
b) I like all the different types of animation that I would get to do in it. A lot of physical running around stuff as well as the more character based acting stuff at the end.
c) I like the story, I like the twist at the end, a little surprise for the audience.

Anyways, I have a few other ideas, but I think this is the only one i'm going to post right now as it's the one that I'm leaning towards the most.

I'd love to hear what people think. :)

-- AKS

Got a few ideas...

2006-04-03T00:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the ball is rolling! I spent the last week brainstorming about short film ideas and came up with a few that I could be happy doing. Nothing that I am just totally head-over-heels in love with yet, but, we'll see what develops. I'll run them all by my mentor this week and see what he thinks.

Oh! I got my new mentor for term 5 at AM!! and it's......

Brett Coderre!

Am bio: "Brett has been working with Pixar Animation Studios since A Bugs Life. He is currently working on Pixars 2006 movie CARS. Brett won The Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Character Animation with his fantastic work on Finding Nemo, for the Dory Whale speaking scenes. "

I've never spoken with him before, but he sounds awesome! I'm very excited about everything except the 4:30am q&a times.... but it's life.

Anyways, my family are still in town this week (also awesome) so I won't be doing much more till Sat when they head home.

Later!

Hello....

2006-03-26T09:13:00.000-08:00

Hey,

So first a bit of an introduction. I'm an American Ex-pat living in London as a full-time student for www.AnimationMentor.com. I'm about to start in on my last 2 terms in which I will create a short film, and as you can probably guess I've decided to start a blog about making my short film. I've never done this before so bear with me as I go along.

I plan to update about once a week, but we'll see how it goes...

I've done a few short films in the past, but they have all turned out pretty atrocious. However given how much my animation skills have advanced in the last year with AM (Animation Mentor). I am sure that they will lead me down the right path and at least help me to turn out something I'm not terribly embarrassed of.

We've got next week off (ok it's a review week, but it's basically a freebie b/c nothing's due), and then things will start in earnest. So check back then if you feel like it!!

-- AKS