I've been working...

 a breakdown wip

a clean up drawing

breakdown drawing wip

dim sum and animation... are they not besties?

 

my favourite pencils and pencil sharpeners

Busy Recently

Adventures in San Francisco have been keeping me very busy recently. Also I've been catching up on Breaking Bad.

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!!

Craigslist Animation Job Ad

I just created a job posting on Craigslist for 2d hand drawn animators interested in helping out on Pickled. It's located in SF bay area > craigslist > san francisco > gigs > creative gigs and I'm curious how many eyes it's really going to reach. I will wait a bit and if there are no bites I may try posting in some animation groups on linked in. Does anyone have any suggestions for finding creatives to help on personal projects? The work is unpaid. It feels like whether the position is paid or not, finding hand drawn animators is tricky! At least the way this project is, an artist could take on work and not feel pressured by a heavy deadline. I do believe that there are some real benefits to collaborating with fellow artists on a project like this. Let me know if you or someone you know may be interested in helping with hand drawn inbetweens/cleanup/animation! Here is the craigslist ad.

EDIT: I don't feel great about seeking animators to help me out and not pay them. I paid my character designer and singer/songwriter for their contributions. At this point, (writing this on June 12, 2013) I cannot afford to pay any artists. A dream of mine is to have a small studio and be able to pay artists fairly and for the work environment there to be highly collaborative, trusting and creative. I would like to put together a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign at some point for this film and that could help cover the expenses that I've personally put into this film already and who knows, maybe even hire an assistant animator. That would have to be a highly successful campaign though! I don't think it's a great idea to work for free. I've heard that it's not a great idea to sink your own money into a project either, but if I wasn't paying for the expenses related to this film it wouldn't get made. It's a passion project so if anyone did help me out on it, they would have to be very passionate about the art of animation as well and be willing to possibly not get paid. This film serves as a vehicle for subtle human character design. I already did all the pre-production work, the characters are just waiting to be animated.

Email me if you have any questions: andreakhaid@gmail.com

Big Decision

I have made a big decision about Pickled. Last night I was working on some clean up drawings and I became compelled to really think about how much animation there is in this film and how long it's going to take to complete. The thought of working on this film for 5-10 years is not really something I want to face. I want to complete this film and move on. So I've decided to fully animate only a portion of the scenes. A good chunk of scenes will be created with well timed key poses and those drawings quickly faded into each other. In this end this means 13 fully animated scenes and 17 scenes with only key drawings. Plus the title and credits. The total number of fully animated frames will be 1688 and if that is animated on 2's then that is 844 drawings. The whole thing is still a hell of a lot of work. But this decision will help me get there and I can still fully animate the really juicy bits. I think it's a good idea... I hope it doesn't mean the thing look like a piece of shit though.

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.

This week I watched Indie Game: The Movie and Brave

On Monday I purchased and watched Indie Game: The Movie and last night I was lucky enough to see an advance screening of Brave! Both were awesome and inspirational. You can purchase Indie Game: The Movie here: http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/. The film follows several game makers while they are working on their independent projects. I love seeing their devotion, drive and perfectionism. Brave was not the action packed mysterious fairy tale I had imagined, but more of a situation comedy and heavy on character interactions. I guess I had imagined something heavier and darker. I really enjoyed the mom and dad characters as well as the clan leaders. Well... Merida and her brothers and the clan leader's sons were all awesome too. A lot of really entertaining characters. There was one shot in the film that is utterly breathtaking in terms of animation quality. The shot when young Merida sits on the grass and her dad has just gifted her a bow. Her reaction. I have to see that again.

WIP

Rainbow Birthday Party!

Thanks everyone for coming!! It was super fun and awesome :)

my friends are trying to kill me:

hand soap!

the delightful oinking pig light up keychain!

as it looked when I woke up:

 

 

The end of the rainbow