Colour studies

Trying out some different ideas for colouring my film and how to treat the space backdrop. Think the last one is close to the final look.

Astro Animatic

Dark Matter Animatic from Doug on Vimeo.

So this is the old version of my film. I've tweaked the story since then but I don't think I will post up the final version as I want some surprises in the final film.

Astro

 

Astro is one of many working titles for the short film I'm working on. It is a sci-fi comedy, the animatic is currently running at 2 minutes which should be do-able. I've spent months working on the story and reboarding it to improve it. I'm trying to tie down the animatic so I can start animating with set shot lengths. Once I'm animating I think it will start coming together quite quickly. I will be posting more progress on this in the coming weeks. Below is the sketcbook page for the image above. just to show how messy and crazy my page is when working these things out.

 

 







K-9Lives Episode2: I thought I would post some background info on the making of this film. It has been almost a year since the first episode and that in no way reflects how long each one takes to make. But I have been busy inbetween, working on another comic strip Bloodwhat which is up to 124 strips! And The Von Spleen Experiment which is a graphic novel in progress.

The K-9Lives comic strip has come to an end in its current format. Now I'm hoping to make the most successful stories from the comic into animated episodes for the website. When I have about 5/6 episodes I will edit them together to make a 12-15 minute short film which I intend to submit to festivals and hopefully develop some further interest.

I found the work of David O Reilly quite an inspiration for this method. His film "Please Say Something" was created in 30second episodes online and went on to win all sorts of awards when the final film was finished.

Episode 2 took me 2 weeks to produce, working full time (with some late nights). I always planned for these films to be quick and simple... because I wanted to see the finish line. Rather than spend 20 years working on an idea that may have been flawed from the start, working like this lets me see my finished work and learn from mistakes and develop and progress.

Storyboard Comparison (read bottom to top)

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I thought it might be of interest for some people to see the story sketches I did for the animation below. As you can see I work very roughly, on various scraps of paper. I find it is easier to get ideas on paper if you are not feeling too precious about the result, It doesn't matter how it looks to me... so long as I have the idea. Then if it needs re-working I do that when I approach the scene in animation.

I chose this shot as the first animation test because I was happy with the shot, I knew it would be in the film.... wheras some other things in the film are shifting and changing still. I have probably half the story worked out, with the rest roughly mapped but needing some things adding. At the moment the story reel is running about 6-8 minutes and we're about half way through I think. So probably it will end up being about 12-15 minutes. I have about 1 minute of finished animation, so we're on our way!

Animation Test second pass TVSE from Doug on Vimeo.

I have been working on this shot for a while, trying to get the visuals to my taste. It takes a long time cleaning each frame of all the dust and debris that the scanner picks up. I need to see if there is a quicker way but for now I think this is how the film will look.

Festival Update:

K-9Lives Episode1 has been selected for screening at Worthing End Of The Pier Festival.

The screening is on the 30th April.

I've decided to do all the shadows rendering in pencils, I really prefer the look and it means I can spend more time at the drawing board which I prefer to staring at the computer screen. The comments from Sketch Tavern by Spagetthi016 and Dozer (dont know their real names!) were very helpful and I've made a few improvements on these shots.

I went off the grimy look of the previous B+W stills so I did a cleaner crisper version here. I also added colour to the yellow wires... This could be a god way of doing B+W and still having some visuals pop in colour on certain items.
I've posted my concept stuff at Sketch Tavern and just got an in depth critique on some of these stills, I'll post up the altered version soon.

It's a bit early for poster design but I wanted to do a sorta concept sheet, with the main characters and the title. I can put this with the pitch materials but basically I'm making this without funding anyway.... so it's just for fun.

I actually started animating the first shot yesterday! It will give me a chance to try some things out and define the style, and I've picked a shot that I really like to start with and it's a lot of fun so far. I'm still storyboarding it but since I don't like getting bogged down in one area I'll move about onto different departments (storyboard, background, layout, animation, colouring etc) as and when I get the inspiration. That way I'll always be fresh.

Character sheets for my new project "The Von Spleen Experiment". I have had this project in slow development on story, character design, etc for about a year now and it's beginning to shape itself into a ready for production project. I am planning on getting some close friends to contribute some work in their particular fields of expertise, partly just to keep things interesting for me. I am planning a 6 month schedule for this which is 6x that of my previous film "K-9Lives Episode1". I think it will be important to aquire some outside assistance if only to keep my own inspiration levels up.

Unless I get some freelance work this is what I'll be working on for some time now so expect more of this to come over the following weeks.

Watch the trailer for my short film K-9Lives Episode 1 on the film's IMDB page.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1358980/

Be sure to give it a rating after you watch!

K-9Lives Episode1 is now fully completed, it took near enough a month to finish. I'm just sending it off to every animation and short film festival I can find at the moment. Hopefully it will find an audience somewhere and I will be able to make more episodes.

One comment I got from my brother after watching the film was that it reminded him of 70's children's cartoons.... I hadn't really thought about the audience when making it, I just knew I wanted to see it, but I suppose it would play well to children.... although in today's climate of censorship and protecting children from even mildly edgy content it might not find a home on the bbc! I take the comment as high praise indeed because that era of british children's television is widely regarded as a golden age because of the inventive and unrestrained creative mind's at work. Those 70's creators are a definite influence on my work partly due to their independant spirit many of them making films in their garden sheds! Just shows what can be achieved without the help of millions of pounds and big corporations. In fact that should be obvious really.... what IS amazing is that someone like Pixar can make such great films in SPITE of the millions of pounds and big corporations.

If you are interested in the film you can find the Press Kit on my website www.dougwilson.co.uk containing stills from the film, synopsis, director's bio, filmography etc.

I will keep the blog and website updated with any festival screenings and where you may be able to see the film in the future.