Birdie Rig Complete

Weee! I finished the Rig of Birdie in Toonboom Animate! This was the first rig I've ever build in Toonboom. I made some mistakes along the way and had to backtrack a couple of times but at least now I understand the whole process.

Next task; do some animation in Toonboom and get back to some hand drawn stuff as well. I'll have to experiment with hand drawn on paper vs. hand drawn in Toonboom. Oh the possibilities. Oh yeah and at some point I'll have to paint more backgrounds...

I'm building a rig in Toonboom Animate

After my little break away from working on Pickled, I have been unendingly busy. Last weekend in fact I flew to Las Vegas to witness two of my best friends get married. Meika and Spence from Toronto. Otherwise I've been pouring myself into the animation at my day job and socialising. I've been dying to get back to working on Pickled and I spent some time this weekend using Toonboom Animate to build a rig of Birdie. I've used Toonboom Harmony to animate at a couple jobs in the past and it is a powerful piece of animation software. In the last animation peer review I attended at work a friend mentioned that she had seen a Toonboom demo at CTN and was blown away by it. I said I would finish up my rig, (or puppet, whatever), and do some sort of Toonboom demo for the animators at work. I'm excited to get this thing done and show the animators at work what Toonboom can do!

Break Time

So after I finished up my pencil test for scene 6 I needed to take a small break from Pickled. 6 months of spare time went into that pencil test. I have neglected my health somewhat during that time by eating too much junk food and rarely exercising. So I've taken some time for myself to get healthy and have some life. However I can't stay away from my work for very long. I've been really pouring myself into my day job work recently. I have a bit of a window to learn some 3D at work so I'm trying to blast through my Flash/After Effects work so I can spend more time on Maya before my deadline approaches. I will be back to work on Pickled soon enough though. I already miss it!

In other news, I've been baking lots of gluten and dairy free cupcakes and bleaching my hair. Two of my hobbies. Right now it kind of looks like someone threw a bucket of bleach swirled with paint at the back of my head. It is a lot harder to bleach a full head of long hair by yourself than I thought!

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.

Scenes I'm going to Animate - The List!

The scenes I plan to animate:

scene 4 - 156 - frames - Birdie walks down the chapel aisle, past her mother to meet with her fiance Cash at the alter.

scene 5 - 64 frames - Birdie is feeling secure and she's enjoying married life. She is readying dinner for Cash in the kitchen. In this scene she stirs a pot of something on the stove and then grabs a jar of pickles and heads for the table. I've finished the keys and rough breakdowns for this shot. See the most recent version here.

scene 6 - 159 frames - This shot is a continuation of shot 5. Birdie carries the jar of pickles to the table and cuddles the jar against her cheek before setting it down on the table. She then turns around and walks back to the stove. She saunters when she walks and strikes a pose at the end of her walk. I've finished the keys, rough breakdowns and about half of the inbetweens for this shot. See the most recent version here.

scene 10 - 271 frames - In this scene Birdie offers Babette some pate (pah-tay) at the dinner party she and Cash are hosting. Babette responds with a salacious comment about Cash and Birdie is taken by surprise. Babette struts off to speak with Cash.

scene 30 - 164 frames - Cash looks into the jar and reacts.

scene 32 - 234 frames - Cash returns to the kitchen. Some secrety stuff happens.

Flipping!

CLICK HERE!

Here's a video of me flipping the first 5 drawings of scene 6! I love flipping. And drawing. And pegbars and pencil sharpeners and light tables!

On Friday night I saw Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind at the Ghibli retrospective happening in San Francisco at the Bridge theater. It was the first time I`ve seen it. The audience was lucky for the opportunity to see it on the big screen and as a new 35mm print of the film. I was a little sad when the film ended since it showed such a sad and petty side of humanity but I slept on it. Saturday morning I woke up and realised it was one of my favorite and most beautiful movies made. I would love to watch it again. If you haven`t seen it, do so! It's pretty epic.

Another Test

Posting these really makes me feel better :)

I dream of special edition DVDs...

When I finish this thing I'm totally going to make an epic special edition DVD. It will include HD footage of me cuddling pickle jars. And pencil tests. And so much more!

Oh and I'm totally going to have a baby shower for my film and I will wear something that is very entertaining.

Oh dreams.

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'.