First Draft Soundtrack

Nathan has done his first draft of the soundtrack for my animation, it still needs work but it gives me something to think about.

Collaboration Updates

Nathan has begun work on the soundtrack for my animation but with the animation in it's early stages and without me being there to run him through the animation he has had some difficulty in doing this though I'm sure he'll come up with something pretty sweet.

I have also been in contact with Matt Serpel about doing some sound design, though I'm not sure whether to combine his work with the work from Nathan or to have him as my sole sound designer or as a backup. Matt has also offered to help with sound effects which makes using him as my sole sound designer a good idea. I'll wait to see what Nathan has comes up with before I make any final decisions. I will have to sit down with Matt and look over the animation with him and work out the sound design, something I should have done with Nathan because that would be of great benefit to both of us.

It seems I will have to have the animation sorted out pretty soon, sound design is supposed to be finished in week 10 and my sound designers need to have a near completed animation to work with.

I've yet to start on Nathan's backgrounds but I have been playing colour ideas and we had a meeting about what each shot looks like, any small details of the room and anything else that was not made clear in the running comp.

Finally I have some test animation for reference of shadow rabbits and the monster for Nathan's project. I kind of like the wallpaper, I might use it for the Nathan's backgrounds.

Here it is the latest edition of the Running Comp, I meant to add it in week 5 but I was working on a whole bunch of new stuff at the time and decided to hold off on updating it till I'd finished what I was working on.

Geisha Posters

Here are posters I designed to help decorate the geisha house.

This has served as inspiration for my animation, so I thought I might as well post it here.

Progress Report 1

I figure now might be a good time to write up a progress report as it also coincides with an assessment due today.

So far so good, I believe I am well on my way to achieving my week 7 milestones though I admit that I have forgotten what they all were (I should have gotten a copy). So this is a breakdown of what has been done so far.

1. The first scene animation has been been blocked out and I'm testing out the first 2 shots in After Effect in full colour final artwork (unless I tweak it some more).
2. I have finished the artwork panning background for the second scene and animated it in After Effects.
3. I have begun pencil tests for the second scene and now have the horse galloping across the scene, now I will be able to have the ninja interacting with the messenger and his horse.
4. I have nearly finished blocking out the animation for the third scene in the geisha house, there are only 2 or 3 more shots to do.

As far as sound design goes my main concern has been about the music, with absolutely no musical talent of my own I need outside support. I have turned to Nathan for his help, he and his friend will be working on the music but I may seek others to add to it. I want something similar to Looney Tunes but seeing as how I can't get an orchestra nor a composer I  may have to lower my standards a bit. I am less concerned with sound effects at the moment.
So far this arrangement with Nathan has been mostly without complications, the only issue has been with the communication via email but we have agreed to send each other a text when we send an email and when we have received an email to send an email back in reply to confirm we received it

With Nathan going out of his way to work on my music I will be creating the backgrounds for his animation as well as doing some pencil tests for reference.
I have also discussed with Lahiru about doing some concepts and possibly final designs for his backgrounds.

Potential Issues
Besides my concerns over music my biggest issues have been technology and location, the computers are starting have difficulty keeping up with me. I have found that the Macs are more capable but seeing as how I don't own one and few of my classes are in a Mac lab I may have to start fighting for a spot in the edit suite.
One of my biggest challenges has been location and transport, I live in Belgrave a considerable distance from the campus and rely on public transport, I waste 3 hours each day in travel. The big problem being after a full day on a Monday and Tuesday between getting home and getting enough sleep to get through the next day I get little to no work done in the evenings. This will no doubt lead to me working form home more frequently. Another problem though completely out of my power is all the other assignments not related this project. In order to make this production of the highest standard I can make, many of my other assignments may not be of the highest standard or maybe just half-arsed but I figure any potential employer will be more interested in my abilities as an animator than the HD on got on an essay.

Cave Interior

Thought I'd show off the cave interior background. A lot of the image won't even appear in the animation but I wanted to see everything. I'm working on some pretty neat panning shots for this background in After Effects, hopefully I'll get them finished today and up on this blog but unless I'm on a Mac it's going to be a slow process. None of the PCs I've been working on can handle the strain, it's going to become a problem later on down the track.

Anyway here's the cave. Knowing me I'll probably add more to this, I think it needs some skulls.