Updated animatic...




work from today...I managed to get these scenes below cleaned up and coloured. There is only one very small scene left of this bit, which I have animated..however the scene file has disappeared..so I'll re-do that one later. Other then this, the only parts left to animate are the part where the two men paint the cross on the tree, the celt - which Alberto is working on, and then smaller background parts such as the men throwing logs on the cart and the tree growing as the camera follows it. After that I think the rest will be down to the background designs, pans etc. So although I haven't completed all of the animation as I was hoping, I think with all the software problems we have had, we are still very nearly on target, which is pretty good going. I also wasn't aiming to have the soldier scenes coloured, just animated, so as i did this all at the same time i think it worked out faster and we have more coloured animation.

You can't really see the animation here as the character hasn't been coloured yet, however I just wanted to add the background in to see what it looked like!





Rough soldier animation...

...and the software still doesn't work...so here's a B..just thinking about titles designs for the piece...

This is the work I've been doing this week. It's all been a little slow this one for one reason or another...mainly due to software failures or meetings... however I'm on my way to getting the animation finished..The stag scene is shown below and I have played around with the timing a little and added some more inbetweens to make it a little smoother. I have quite a long soldier scene to get done and two smaller ones, but after that I think thats most of the animation done...though I'm sure I'll find lots I want to tweak and change given the time.






...and here's what happens when the software goes down and doesn't get sorted out..lots of playing around and doodling with brushes on photoshop...

The animatic so far...





I managed to get the clean up of the old lady done today as shown below. There are a few bits that I want to cut it with, firstly when she touches the heart, she then looks around to see her daughter, and later when she sits on the tree she turns her head and this will be cut again to her daughter. I think this may mean her head movements need to be slowed down a little to make the timing a bit better, but for now its not much of a problem and is something that can easily be changed...



I'm hoping to get the missing shots that this scene cuts with completed tomorrow afternoon after the production meeting. This will then mean that the final scenes (ignoring the panning shots) are done and I can go back to the beginning to start on the smaller scenes.

Below is the work I have been doing recently. I have started to animate the final scenes with the mum and daughter and the old lady. Below is a rough of the old lady scene. This will be cut in with the scene of her daughter and boyfriend together in the distance.



I also managed to get this scene cleaned up. So we have an almost completed shot. It still needs shadows etc... and Harriet is still making tweeks to the background designs, but it's more of an idea of how it will look in the end.





I then went back to working on the scene with the mum and daughter and finished the clean up on this scene today...which for some reason seemed to take forever. Maybe because the scenes are getting longer towards the end, or because I know they are more important scenes I may be spending longer on them trying to get them to look right. Either way, it's done now...



And now I've started to clean up the scene with the old lady, which is again another long scene. I'm hoping to get this one completely finished by the end of the week, including the sections that it cuts to, which should be much shorter. If I get these done this week, I'll have finished the ending scenes of the animation, and the plan is to then go back to the beginning where we are missing about 20 scenes and start there. I'll be glad to get all the key scenes completed, though the beginning really needs to be done as soon as possible so that it actually makes sense!



This week I also received the first minute and half first draft of the music, so tomorrow I will update the animatic again with some music, and hopeful it will be looking a bit more complete!

This weekend Harriet has been flying through the backgrounds so I wanted to try and put a few together to see how they are working. I think the one below is working quite well. Unfortunately toon boom is having a few problems getting things in layers and like to just crash when I try and do things with it, so the layers I will try and do another time. I think the only problem with this one at the moment is that it looks a little steep. Obviously it is on the top of a great big hill, so would be steep, however as the scene is on the top we kind of need it to look nice and flat as otherwise it looks like all the picnic stuff is just going to roll down and the characters sort of look like they are going to fall over.




I think this background is working nicely as well. With both the above and below clips however there is a slight problem with the colouring. the skin colour of the characters needs to be cleaned up or added in both, and there is a some more obvious clean up to do here and there. I'm hoping with some skilful compositing, adding shadows etc the piece will really come together.

As yesterday I started the scene with the pregnant lady sitting on the tree, and decided it needed just a little movement for it to make sense and run smoothly with the shot before it, I thought I would just finish off the colour on this one. As the colouring on the project is a little behind and takes a long time, I thought I better start getting used to doing some colouring now as I can imagine this is probably how I am going to spend most of Easter. I think it looks OK, however the difference between the shadow and light on the hair is a bit too dramatic. I think this is because on photoshop where the characters have been designed, the colours can be blended and mixed, where as on here they can't and so are being simplified. I think I need to lighten the colour just slightly to make it look better and more like the original design.




This next clip is a clean-up of a shot I was working on yesterday. It is slot into the shot below just as a different viewpoint.



I then started to organise and look through some things, as well as organising and sorting some scenes to send to the second years for colouring, when I realised one of the scenes I had given Leki to colour hadn't got the actual bomber in the background where it should be. So I had to do a bit of editing and working out an easy way of getting the symbol from the black and white scene into the coloured scene..which proved a lot more difficult then it sounds..or it just refused to work. However we got there eventually...




I then continued to outline the scene I was working on previously. I was really hoping to get a lot further in this scene today, however there were some technical difficulties. As long as I finish this one early next week along with the final shots with the old lady, I should still be pretty much on track with the animation in terms of the targets I have set myself.



So putting it all together, along with the colouring Leki has done so, and a couple of bits of work from the second years, this is the animatic so far...

I didn't get as much done today as I was hoping, however it's a good start to the shot and I am happy with the animation. It will improve in clean up as always due to it looking more detailed and generally cleaner in the line and movement. The first clip is showing scenes 73 and 75 and the one below will be slotted in the middle where there is a pause. This should work quite well and I find it easier working in this one as the 2 scenes have the same background so it is faster to blend them into one and simply edit them afterwards when putting the shots into premiere. I would really like to get these finished by tomorrow as I would then have the scene with the old lady to concentrate on the week after which again is a really important scene.

This is the work I did today... managed to get the scene with the couple completed as shown below. I am quite happy with it, unfortunately the heart and names the soldier actually scratches into the tree didn't save due to toon boom just not feeling like it! however the important stuff saved fine, so not too much of a problem. it's probably easier to add this part in with the background to make it look more realistic anyway. the two clips below on differ in me changing the timing a little after watching it through, just to slow things down a bit towards the end as they seemed a little rushed.







I then went back to the previous scene as I realised I hadn't added the necklace on the character in this scene which is a pretty vital part of the story. I also went back to a scene I was working on a while ago with the pilot in the tree and added in his parachute to the branches. It's hard to see, however will be a lot clearer when it is coloured as it will show up from the background.






This is the final scene of the shot I was working on today. I initially just did it as a still, however after adding it to the animatic I realised she needed to be continuing the movement from the scene before for it to work well and so added in a few frames before this one below.




The animatic updated...




I am hoping to get the next shot completed by the end of this week of the wife in the scene above with her little girl. This will mean that the following week I can work on the very last scene of the animation, and then go back to the beginning and start working on the scenes that haven't been completed yet, most of which are from the first half of the animation.