A pencil test come a long way

*You may want to watch this full screen or on Vimeo HERE, (which is far better quality anyway), otherwise you will have Blogger's grey bar blocking the top of the scene! I love how she lets the pressure of the jar against her cheek further open her mouth as she cuddles the jar... I actually took video reference of myself acting out this scene. It's pretty amazing.

So I've got scene six to the point that no inbetween is held for more than 4 frames. (Some are 2 and some are 3). Not all the drawings are entirely complete. But I've come a long way and feel pretty good about the scene at this point. I'm tempted to stop creating inbetweens... Which would mean that it's going to look a little chunky... but I don't know. It's daunting to think that about 6 months of free time has gone into this and I'm not done with it yet. I've got the rest of the film to do!

In other Pickled news, I purchased a copy of Toonboom Animate while it was on sale a couple weeks ago. I caved into the intelligent and well meaning suggestions of my friends to do some more of my film digitally. I blasted through the tutorials on character building and animation that came with the software. I've actually used Toonboom at jobs in the past but it's been a long time since I used it consistently so I'm just a little rusty. I never built a character from scratch, though I think I can manage just fine.

At this point I guess I will probably start cleaning up scene 6 and building character models in Toonboom. I will still be animating a lot of the film with drawings, but maybe some or all of that animation will just be digital instead of paper. It's weird.

Two mini pencil tests

Here are two snippets of scene 6. I tweaked the ending and I'm filling out the section when Birdie sets down the jar. The jar set down clip is darker since I've drawn different parts on different layers. There were just too many lines per page to keep track!

There are now 33 inbetweens left to be done to complete this shot. I'm doing my damndest to get it done sooner than later! I actually bought a small protective portfolio case and have started carrying the whole scene with me wherever I go. I'm not ready to scan the whole thing yet and the thought of it something happening to it is (an unlikely) possibility. But I would not be pleased.

Another Test

Posting these really makes me feel better :)

frustrated and confused...

What the hell is going onnnnnn?!? I've been working on this scene forever and what the fuck. It's super hard to find the time to work on it so it's coming along so damn slowly. And I just shot a quick pencil test and it's hard to tell if it's crap or if it's ok. o_0 I'm just sayin'.

New Pencil Test - scenes 5 - 6

Well, my craigslist ad got flagged and taken down by someone grouchy, twice. Oh well. Let me know if you want to try inbetweening or clean up on my hand drawn short film. I'm pretty sure that we can learn from each other. I would love to hear about other people's animation and clean up methods. I recently posted that I've decided to fully animate and take to clean up only a handful of scenes. A day after that I had the brilliant idea to animate the rest of the scenes that I want to but keep them as pencil tests and release the whole film as a special edition pencil test version! I love pencils tests. Everyone does. Don't you?

Please enjoy this latest pencil test of scenes 5 and 6. This time there is zero warping of the image since these drawings were scanned and not quickly shot with a blurry and crooked webcam. There are no inbetweens so it's looking chunkier than the last pencil test... but it does have a line drawing version of the background!!

Updated Pencil Test

Aw shit, it's 5am. I stayed up way too late watching Breaking Bad. That show is amazing! Here is an updated pencil test. Next step, I'll clean up the keys, finish the breakdowns and then bust out the inbetweens. So glad to FINALLY have the keys how I want them. I was being perfectionist. Also, when you have shows on in the background you work much slower. I need to keep the netflix away.

Thinking about Birdie's Arc

I've been working a bit on Pickled recently but it's slow going. I've been working for a long time on a pencil test of two shots that hookup. It's coming along technically. My recent task is to really think about how Birdie feels and what she's projecting in the film and in this shot. I feel like I should do rough pencil tests of her throughout the film before focusing in on any given shots. Which seems overwhelming. Creating pencils tests for 3 minutes of screen time and then going back to those tests later, scene by scene will probably be a bit confusing. I think the benefits will outweigh the negatives though. Visually rough blocking out a clear character arc in detail before focusing in seems like a great idea.

WIP

The First Pencil Test!

Ok, so it's not much. I'm just learning how to draw my characters but I couldn't resist quickly shooting this turnaround!

I've been prepping to start some animation for about a week now. I've been brushing up on my physics, writing up my character's backstories/mannerisms/character arcs/motivations/analysis and searching for a variety of film inspiration and reference. I started looking at some present day actors in scenes or in interviews and then pouring through clips of actors who were doing a lot of work in the 1950's.


I'm certainly learning a lot!