Final In-betweened Silhouette Walk

Hooray! Now the silhouetted walk has been in-betweened so he moves much smoother now.

Weekend Update

Over the weekend I managed to finish in-betweening the silhouetted elephant walk and fix the "picking peanuts off the ground" scene so I'll be shooting them sometime this week.

It's all very exciting.

Reflections on Making a Film

I just piped in to a NEW POST at Mark Mayerson's blog which talks about other animators' thoughts about creating an independent short. Nice to see that I'm not alone in this.

I've often felt that this film is just taking too long, and worried about whether or not it will all be worth it in the end...looks like these are normal feelings to have about the process. I know it's basically my own fault for making it as long as it is, and not sticking to something simpler or shorter. In the amount of time it's taken me to get this far, I could have probably created 3 or 4 shorter films. But I don't think about that too much. I'm happy doing what I'm doing and totally committed to finishing it. The work itself dictates how long it will take. It calls to me when it needs feeding, and lets me know when it's time to take a break. Perhaps this is why they call them "pet projects." I'm starting to sound like Madeline L'Engle, which is not a bad thing.

I also enliken it to my wife Janet's thoughts about her cross-stitching. She has a big box full of patterns that she started years ago, even from high school (which was over a decade ago now). Every now and then she'll pull out whichever one suits her fancy and chip away at it some more. Some of them she may never finish, and that's OK too. It's better to have a big box full of unfinished projects than nothing to work on at all.

Elephant Silhouetted Walk

Here is a brand new pencil test hot off the presses, from the weekend's animation. This shot, including the hill and the elephant himself, will all be colored black in silhouette. It's a rather familiar, almost cliched, kind of shot seen in other films, but I like the way it looks. He's basically walking along eating his bag of peanuts until he stops suddenly in his tracks. These are mostly keys that will have to be in-betweened as the next stage of finishing it off. I'm thinking that the stretch on his take when he comes to a stop might be a bit too exaggerated? Or maybe not... Any thoughts anyone has on this, I appreciate it.

Color Tests and Production Photos

Here are some color tests I did awhile ago in order to see how these characters might look in the final version. I'll be attempting to approach the scanning/coloring process in a way that will maintain the rough quality of the drawings, which are essentially cleaned-up right on top of the blue-pencil roughs. The result, which I like, is that of the Xerox look common to films like Winnie the Pooh where you can see the odd construction lines dance around, just like real drawings.







Here's me animating Nigel back in 2003 in our first one-bedroom apartment before my wife Janet & I moved into our current place. He was set up on a TV table between our computer desk and dining room table...rather cramped corners in those days!



And here are some photos of one of my scenes drying out after somehow getting wet...I don't remember how it happened.

Baby Elephant Walks

This is one of the final shots in the film, of the baby elephant (who has never been given a name other than "Baby Elephant") looking around and walking down the road. This shot was in-betweened, I do believe, by College for Creative Studies student Jodie Hudson, who did a great job.

Baby Elephant Eats Peanuts - original version

Here's the original version of the scene, including the bits I cut out.