Animation Update #8(9): No Man's Land

We had our third team meeting this last weekend, things are still happening.  I skipped last week’s update because there wasn’t really anything cool to talk about, but again, work isn’t always that glamourous.  

This is the team, meeting at my apartment.  Exciting, right?

In addition to the storyboards, we are pushing this month to work on getting No Man’s Land relatively designed.  For that purpose, I spent this morning laying out som quick pre-vis 3D renders in Vue.  I LOVE Vue, you can get a full version for free, and all it does is watermark, which doesn’t matter at all for the stuff I use it for.

With a little setup, I can push out dozens of these renders a day, and they take the place of thumbnails for idea generation.

Animation Update #7: What does this stuff look like anyway?

Another productive week, this time focusing on what we want the technology to look like.  We know that the film will be vaguely “World War I” levels of technology, but with magic, so really, the sky is the limit.  By saying WWI, we’re trying to give it a design language that will be familiar to viewers, but when you get down to details, that could be anything from horse-drawn wagons to tanks, or blimps to airplanes.

There’s an airship of some sort in the movie, and Robin and I spent some time this week trying to nail down exactly what that means.  Initially, we were thinking some sort of dirigible, but now we are leaning to a more fantastic, huge bi-plane - less realistic to the era, but more fun to put into a cartoon with flying assassins and giant golems.

With the airship designed, the other technological elements become easier, as they will be variations or reactions to things that have already been decided on.

Animation Update #6: More of the same

Man, I was hoping when I started these that I would have something amazing to say every week that would blow people away with my perspective and growth on the subject….

Not happening this week.

Work has continued.  Sinan has been kicking ass with storyboarding out a rough pass, and the rest of us have been working on designs for environments, vehicles and characters….but nothing earth shattering this week.  People are engaged and we are moving forward, so this is a case of no news is good news :)

Animation Update #5: We move into the second month.

Things are going really well!  We had our second monthly team meeting yesterday, and laid out the next month’s objectives.  Our goal is to get rough storyboards in place by March, and to start narrowing down character and vehicle designs.  We’re going to be looking at 6 or so animations that we find inspirational, and making our characters in those styles.  Hopefully that will give some baselines we can use to pick final canon of proportions and rendering styles.

Animation Update #4: Been gone all week, and here's the team.

I didn’t get much done myself this week, although the rest of the team has been busy making designs for characters and vehicles, and creating storyboards.  I’ve been in Austin, TX at Schoolism Live, listening to David Levy and Nathan Fowkes talk about designing worlds…and you can be damn sure I was taking notes for this project.

Figured I’d take this time to introduce the team as it stands right now. 

Seth Rutledge (me!):  Writer/Director

I will be doing designs and BG Layout as well, but my primary duty is to keep everything on track.

Robin Carpenter: Art Director/Production Designer

For the success of the project, I really wanted to have someone like Robin to make sure I didn’t get tunnel vision.  Robin recently finished art directing the video game “Citizens of Earth”, and he is a fantastic artist as well as one of my closest friends….he’s also not afraid to argue with me when he disagrees, which is critical to this sort of project.

Sinan Demirer:  Head of Story

Sinan is the guy in charge of the storyboards.  Even though I wrote the project, the timing and details all come from the boards.

Svend Gregori:  Lead Animator

Svend’s time hasn’t come yet, but we worked together at Atomic Cartoons, and I’m excited to get his help when we have some finished designs and boards.

Pakorn Patarawutiporn:  Design

Pakorn has been working on characters and vehicles so far.

Devin Rosychuk: Design

Devin has been exploring characters and environments.

Mariya Olshevska:  Design

Mariya is a master of patterns, textures and graceful shapes.  I have a feeling much of the airship interior will be her.

Other people have agreed to help as we move forward, and I will certainly show you their stuff as we get there!

Thanks again for following along on our journey :)

Animation Update #3: Keeping on keeping on.

For people who aren’t used to big projects, here’s a weird fact - the hard part isn’t the massive deadlines, it’s the other times, when you just have to keep going without getting the buzz of a deliverable.

We’re doing great on the project timeline - we have our story, we’ve started storyboarding, there’s been a lot of visual development going on….but nothing *fantastic* or “finished” that you can point to and be excited about.

I met with our lead animator yesterday, and we've got our next full team meeting on the 8th.  These projects aren't won or lost in a day, or a week, or a month.

Thanks for following along and being a part of this with us :)