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.

I'm trying to define the visuals for the film, this is where I take some stills and try endless variations of colours, photoshop effects, chop and change different things. I'm quite likeing the black and white style.... I have always been drawn to B+W but haven't utilised it in any of my films yet. It seems like quite a big leap to take colour out of the picture. I do think it will fit the style of the story tho.

Early Animation Test for The Von Spleen Experiment from Doug on Vimeo.

For your viewing pleasure........ a veeery early test on The Von Spleen Experiment. I'm planning on using this very rough pencil style, the colours kinda rough too. I'm using a shadow layer which will take much longer to paint but I think it looks much nicer. I want to get things rolling with this project and don't want to hesitate too much.

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!

Festival Update:
K-9Lives Episode1 has been selected for screening at "Shorts on Walls" as part of the Flatpack festival in Birmingham Sat 14th March.

Check my website http://www.dougwilson.co.uk/ for further details, and I'll keep updating on the blog about any other screenings.

5. Refined. More reference for parts that I wasn't happy with, elongated for a longer vertical pan. Experimenting with colour in photoshop.

4. Colour. Inked up a version based on the previous sketch, and coloured digitally.

3. Rough sketch. Looked at photographic reference for various elements to get more depth to the piece. Developed the composition a bit further.

2. Developed thumbnail. I've been looking at forced and extreme perspectives and I tried to incorporate that into the composition. Thinking about a possible camera move around the scene too.

1. Initial thumbnail: I knew I wanted a street with a doctors surgery sign. Town in the distance. The road was going to be very hilly here.

I wanted to give an idea of the process for this piece. I'm working on backgrounds for my new film project, it starts out with rough little thumbnails that are really not very good..... then I think about the composition and elements that I want or don't want. Then I take a look at some reference photo's, etc. Gradually it develops into something quite interesting.

This is going to be a birthday card for my cousin, a massive star wars fan!

Someone at sketchtavern pointed out that I wasn't drawing any ladies! So I took steps to right that..... I've always struggled to draw girls and it's time to put the effort in so I can draw them without reference. These are almost exclusively from ref.... Unfortunately google referenced not live ref!

Just loosening up with some pose pages for the characters in my new project. Referenced some of the poses from elsewhere and just shoved my characters into the poses, finding that quite helpful.

Playing around with some animation background styles for an upcoming project.

Been joining in the draw every day in February challenge on www.sketchtavern.com

I'll post a few pieces that I like.

Festival Update:
K-9Lives Episode 1 has been selected for competition at Athens Animfest in Greece! The Fest is in March, I will post more info when they confirm the full line-up of films. Hopefully the first of many, fingers crossed.

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.

Quick break from the animation, I've found some old pen drawing's I did.... This one was a cariacature of some guy. Thought I'd slap some colours on and make a series of these.

On another note, I was thinking about something yesterday.... In animation we tend to get bogged down in doing exercises, I don't know if this applies to other artform's but when your learning you do the bouncing balls, flour sacks, walk cycles, dialogue shots etc to learn and improve. I think a lot of people in animation are forgetting to break out of this routine though. People spend years animating to dialogue from films and tv shows, but that doesn't show anything outside the skill of animation. I have done the very same thing but at the end of the day I feel the need to create something original that will stand on it's own.... It's a matter of working within your own limitations. You have to accept the level you are at and create something using the skills you already have. And ultimately by doing this (in my case a film) you will learn and improve in the process and when you are done you will have something that can both showcase your skills and hopefully entertain.

This is a pencil test for a run cycle in my new film K9-Lives. It's based on my webcomic of the same name. You-tube doesn't seem to run it very smoothly but you get the idea. I will post some other tests and frame-grabs as I go along. I have almost completed the animation of the short....I am editing together the animatic so I can decide on any changes before I start colouring. I am going for a very limited style of animation because I feel that I can create some nice films in a short amount of time and really develop my film-making skills. I have been working in animation for almost 2 years and I'm finding more and more that the endless refining and tweaking to get full animation is a rather dull business. I prefer dealing with the broader strokes of storytelling, cinematography and gag writing, letting the animation be rough and less developed. At the end of the day the only way to become a good film-maker and to learn the elements of good film is to MAKE films..... make mistakes and move on to make another film where you will make one or two less mistakes. So this is the first film since my graduation film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVW-zaY1Tbw&feature=channel and I plan to make many more.

K-9Lives - Animation production

I've been working for a few days on stage 2 of my independant animation career, making an animated short from my comic K-9Lives. I always planned to make this as an animation and saw the comic as a good way to storyboard it. There are a few ideas that I couldn't put into the comics as I set myself a strict structure of telling a story over one week (5 panels). Above is a background for one of the new elements in the story.... An exterior shot of the Animal Shelter. This gives you an idea of the style of the short.

This is a frame from the animation, as you can see I'm not using the same inking style as the comic... that's because I'm not inking it at all. I'm animating the whole thing in pencil on my lightbox.... and in scene's like this where there is action and fast pace I am using a very sketchy fast paced drawing style. I absolutely love seeing construction lines and the hand of the artist in animation so all those bits will be left in too. I came across a problem when I animated reservoir reindeers, when importing into toon boom (my animation software) I lost the aesthetic quality of the pencil line. Fortunately I've caught that problem and changed my process a bit. The plus side of this approach is that I can animate at a very fast pace. After about 5 days of production I have just over 1 minute done. The short is probably going to be about 2-3minutes in total length so I should be able to get it done and send it off to festivals in January.

I thought I'd share some of my influences and go through my most "Influential Moments" in film.

Fritz the Cat: This crow character is introduced to us in a seedy bar room. He's a pool shark (actually he's rubbish at pool) but the way you introduce a character is very important in films.... and this pays off big time later on.

About 20 minutes later Fritz is leading a revolt in the streets and gets the pair into a riot with the police. Shots are fired and our crow friend is hit in the chest. The gun shot is replaced with a shot of the break on a pool table. We see him bleeding and kneeling on the car, then cut back to the pool table and the pool balls bouncing represent the beating of his heart slowing down until the black 8ball which cracks and we zoom out from his black pupil.
This moment had a profound effect on me and I have been constantly thinking of ways to bring this approach to film-making into my own projects.

Reservoir Reindeers is my first step towards independant animated film-making, a christmas card for an alternative audience. I got the idea for the card when I was in the second year of university and actually animated it back then... I didn't finish it in time and I don't think anyone ever saw it. 3 years on and I've worked a couple of animation jobs in Scotland and France, looking back it was quite poorly executed but I still really found the idea of it funny. I decided to use the project as a testing ground for some films I've got in the works and it turned out to be a good idea because I've refined my process a bit, got an interesting christmas card that can act as a sort of calling card for future projects, and I'm now starting production on phase 2 of my independant animation career.

Check out my new website at www.dougwilson.co.uk