Update

Please see an important update to Storytime with Nigel on my website:

http://www.priebelieving.com/2011/10/storytime-with-nigel-final-chapter.html

Inspiration for Film Premiere

I have just taken a look at my buddy Justin Rasch's blog Stop Motion Mission, which I visit often to see the progression of the short film he's been creating with his family for the past 3 years. I haven't met Justin in person yet, but he posts often here and we've chatted/emailed online quite a bit.

The most recent monster blog entry explains in great detail their big film premiere in the L.A. area where they live. I must say it excited me to no end, what an amazing and absolutely thrilling experience it must have been for them.

The plan for Storytime with Nigel has always been to rent a theater and host a big premiere just like theirs when it was completed. Seeing what Justin and his family were able to put together has given me an extra boost of aching to keep trying to move forward towards this goal. Their story is a unique blessing and inspiration to me, and to anyone chipping away at any personal pet project after-hours.

Take a moment to soak it all in here:

Stop Motion Mission: Film Premiere

Colored-In Monkey Drawing

Here's a sample colored drawing I got back from one of my ink-and-paint volunteers. Pretty exciting...

Final Color Models

Some more new progress on the film over this holiday break. A few in-betweens added to the toad sequence, and several scenes are scanned, organized and ready for farming out to color. Jay helped me lock down some better-looking color models for 3 of our main characters.

More Scanning.....

Well, today I actually made a good chunk of progress on the "flimm." I set up the dope sheet for the massive toad sequence & another monkey scene, and scanned most of the drawings. Also with the generous assistance of VanArts student Michael Sali, got several scenes re-scanned at greyscale. Next step for those scenes will be farming out for color, once I lock down a specific color palette.

Gettin' there...

Nigel's Return...

I've often said that pet projects are named as such because a pet knows when it needs to be fed, and then it's fine for awhile. Well, 'Nigel' has been dormant for quite awhile due to vacations & other activities...but it's finally been fed a few snacks again as of late.

A few days ago I overlooked the infamous Toad sequence and added in a couple in-betweens, and today I did the same with another Monkey scene. My plan, at this point, is to recruit some student assistance this Saturday and work a bit myself at re-scanning a bunch of scenes in greyscale and also scanning in the monster Toad scene.

Here's hopin' I can stick with it...

First Color Animation Test

Here is our first color animation test for "Nigel." There is one drawing that's missing color at this point, hence the white flash near the beginning. Overall thoughts are that the colors need some adjusting and we'd like to go for a different approach to the backgrounds, more muted and simple. It's nice to see a shot like this to get a sense of which direction to take everything else.



I wish to thank those who have been supporting this project thus far. With so many projects going on and interests drifting elsewhere, it's hard for me to stay excited about this film all the time. I'm rather torn and just need some encouragement to keep it simmering on the stove.

Back to Scanning

After much busy-ness and procrastinating I finally got around to getting the scanning experimentation going again, by doing it in greyscale and it so far looks much better than 'black & white.' It should have been done that way to begin with, but silly me neglected to relay this instruction to my helpers. VanArts student Steve Gehl has offered to try some color tests for me this weekend and then we'll try coloring and comping this entire scene.

Temporary Halt

So at this point I'm putting a temporary halt to scanning more scenes, as they may need to be re-scanned at greyscale rather than black & white. I'm also toying with the idea of possibly shading in each drawing with colored pencil, for a totally different look altogether. Since the story is being read from a childrens' book, it might be cool if the whole thing looked more hand-crafted. I'm going to do an experiment with both methods (digital ink-paint vs. colored pencil) and see which one looks best.

Not quite as sketchy as this...

...but something close to it.

Baby Elephant in Color!

Lots more scanning has proceeded over the past few weekends thanks to my student volunteers. Earlier today I experimented with coloring in one frame with the one finished background I have, just to get a sense of what the film will look like. It's a bit of a shock at this point, because I'm not used to seeing this character in anything other than a pencil test. But it's growing on me. What y'all think?


I'm realizing that it is still going to be a LOT of work to color in all of these frames, and I'll continue to need tons of support.

SCANNERS

But seriously, nobody's head is exploding...yet.

I finally have three scenes scanned in from over the weekend, thanks to VanArts students Todd Wheeler, Katrina Gregorius and Steven Gehl (gotta keep track of all these names for the credits). I still have yet to look them over, but at least I know the ball has started rolling.

Scanning to commence...

So AGAIN Nigel has been on the back burner, or off the stove altogether. BUT the latest update is I finally found the time to sit down with VanArts instructor Jerry Benninger for a quick ToonBoom Opus tutorial on building exposure sheets and scanning in drawings. My plan so far is to have all my drawings scanned in, colored in Photoshop with Alpha channels, and imported as an overlay layer in Opus for compositing with backgrounds.

A little animated inspiration...

The other day I met another classical animator who recently jumped on board the BigFott project. He's a graduate of VFS with some fantastic animation...his effects work in particular is nothing short of spectacular. Check him out (I like to promote good art when I see it!)...

http://www.jontbrown.blogspot.com/

His style reminds me alot of New York animator Patrick Smith, with the sketchy line quality and visible construction lines. This was inspiring to me because it's the same kind of look I want to achieve for 'Nigel' where the drawings are clean but not TOO clean...rough around the edges. I can also tell that some International Rocketship folks like Marv Newland had some input into his graduate film, cuz it has some of those same qualities.

There's lots of animation events happening in Vancouver over the next few weeks with independent shorts hosted by the NFB, so I'm expecting this will give me lots of inspiration to re-visit production.

"Librarian" to screen at 2Dornot2D

I'm happy to say that The Librarian from the Black Lagoon, the film I got to animate on last year for BigFott Studios, has been selected for the 2Dornot2D Animation Festival. Looking forward to seeing it again there.

Still plugging away at the current BigFott project, and Nigel is waiting in the wings. Soon the scanning shall start...

Settling Dust...

So "Nigel" has been on a small hiatus, but the dust will be settling soon. Just recently we got a brand new computer which purrs like a kitten and is 10 times faster than our old 2002 model, which needed to be shot. Instead though, it has been donated to the cause of my brother-in-law and his wife who needed a word processor.

So the entire "Nigel" folder has been transferred onto our new machine, but I still have yet to open it up and make sure the Leica Reel file still works in Premiere locating files and whatnot.

I'm working now on a freelance animation project directed by my friend Galen Fott, on another childrens' book adaptation, about a backhoe loader. It's fun stuff and will be keeping me pretty busy through the Fall and into Christmastime. While that's going on, I plan on starting to recruit a team of animation students to scan in and possibly color in all my drawings thus far.

Victory!

Crisis Averted! Turns out our drive didn't crash...we just had a faulty cable. Thanks to my brother-in-law Mikey for helping us. Now I've backed up the entire "Nigel" folder to an extra hard drive as well. Soon we'll be getting a brand new computer and all will be right with the world again. Whee!

Crash!

AAARRRRRRGGGGHH!!!

Well, the latest update on 'Nigel' I can offer is that it appears that the Video drive in our computer might have crashed. That is the drive containing all pencil tests, sound files, etc for the film, including the work-in-progress Leica Reel.

BUT not to worry too much....I do have the majority of files backed up, and my latest leica reel with all the timing changes, etc exists as an Mpeg file at work, so I'll be backing that up today. Although it will still require a bit of work, I may be able to import the Mpeg into Premiere and then use it as a guide for lining everything back up again with the original files. Here's hoping, anyway.

I still have all the dope sheets and the drawings (one of the many advantages to making a 2D film!) which need to be scanned anyway. So rather than re-shoot all of my pencil tests, I might as well get them scanned instead so I can start assembling them in their semi-final state.

As the dust settles from recovering our computer and moving into the new campus at VanArts over the next few weeks, we'll see how many updates I can continue with here...keep checking back! I'll be working on some freelance projects in the meantime and my personal blog will still be alive & well.

August Update

Not too much new to report on the filmmaking front. Most of the scenes I still have in my possession are completed. A few scenes are still with Steve and being finished up. At the moment we are in the middle of planning for Ariel's first birthday and forthcoming family visits. Once we get past summer and are settled into the new VanArts building as well, I will get a crew started on scanning all my drawings.

I'll try to find time to perhaps dig up some old ghosts to post here in the meantime. I've added some more happy links, so that's something.

July Weekend Pencil Tests

Here's the latest scene I've finished in-betweening, with some help from Steve's students as well. It's a walk that moves with a panning background and comes to a stop. Underneath the camera I fudged the entrance of the monkey a bit by just moving a drawing off the pegs in stop-motion fashion, just to get a rough idea of how he will come into the frame. It's not perfect. The whole logistics behind the pan are somewhat guess-work. This is one shot I'm not entirely confident with in terms of the technical side of the layout. It will start in 11-field and zoom in slightly to 8-field when the monkey lashes out. The elephant is saying "What's wrong?" and the monkey says "I'll TELL you what's wrong!" A few more cushion frames needed for the elephant at the end...I stayed up til 1am with this scene already though. :P-ppfft!



And here is the final version of the elephant eating peanuts off the ground.

Finland Podcast

Recently an animator from Finland, Juha Niemi, interviewed me for his filmmaking podcast.

You can find the KinoSilmä podcast from iTunes store or from the
webpage:
http://koskisuomi.tunk.org/

Here is also a direct link for the file:
http://koskisuomi.pp.fi/kinosilma/KinoSilma20070726.mp3

Starts with an introduction in Finnish, then moves on to the interview.