31 August 2010

Editing is going well!

First off all I must say sorry for the 2 day delay in posting my up date is been a funny old last 2 weeks, the first part of the first week was spent doing self portraits of different facial expressions for when I start uni on the 16th. The second part of the week was spent recoding pick up lines and importing all my sound FX CDs on to my hard drive.

The second week is where all the editing really started. The first step was to finales all editing on the animation its self, making share it all cut together ok and all the shots I needed were there. After that I then when on to add in the opening and closing titles to the animation, I did these on Flash and exported them and imported them in to the animation.

I then went over all the sound FX I imported to find music for the postman scene, loading up the van scene and the closing credits. As well as looking for music I also went over all the FX for sounds I could use in that animation it’s self. After going over all of them all I realised that in order for my animation to have a sounds that would really fit in with my style I would have to record 70% of the sounds myself.

After editing the 2 music tracks I found from my copyright free CDs. I then add in all the sounds that I found will fit in with the style of my animation. i then add a meeting meting with my dad were we chatted about what music he can play that I could use in the finally animation. After the meeting we had come up with 4 themes that can be played in all 4 parts on this story.

The first one was a slower and cleaner version of the DJ animations theme that you can here at the start of my show reel and end credits of Morphs cake hunt. This will play at the start on film we also recorded a theme for Viv & Mandy, the house and the old woman.

As well as editing and Part 1 I have also been recording voices fixing models and story boarding on a scene with Mandy and the Old Woman that will be in part2 of Viv & Mandy in the big clean up. As of to day I have got all the music edited into the final cut of Viv & Mandy, and my plans are to spend the week recoding more background and props sound and add then in. I also plan on starting on this new scene with Mandy and the old woman.

I only have 2 more weeks left to get as much animation as I can done before I head off to uni were I don’t know if I will be abele to keep working on Viv & Mandy in my free time or not. If not I will only have time to animate when I come back home in the holidays.

As the editing is going so well I will be doing a new post by the end of the week showing a new poster and a realise date on when Viv & Mandy and the big clean up will be out!

16 August 2010

Animating on Part 1 is now completed!!


It’s been a crazy last 2 weeks, I started it off by making the set for the van dashboard with the built in Sat nav. To make this set I  took the dash board out of the old car I used fort the full size van and melted it , cut it up, added parts and painted it to get final design. 
I spent the next 3 days animating and editing on that set and removing blue screens. I used the same over sized hand for Viv that I used for the shots when they are picking up the cleaning props.  To add in the sat navs screen I had to go on photo shop and repainted over the entire blue screen.  I did this so when I removed it would have a reel screen look to in and not as fill it had jus been painted over. 

The scenes with the sat nav were the last shots I had left to animation form the footage IV all reedy animated. So now I finally get to animated new scenes that IV been really looking forwould to animating. Before I can go ahead and animated new scenes in the messy house, I had to remake the puppet for the Old Woman. I did the beause the puppet I used before I did not had a good full wire frame in it and I wanted to give it the same one as Viv & Mandy have. 

Now that the new puppet was completed it was time for me to animate the big reveal shot were you first see the Old Woman in full. I animated all the shot facing the Old Woman firs and spent 3days on them. I have grate fun when I get to animated with Old Woman from using the voice track I have been able to get some really good acting in to this character that I think u all will really enjoy watching.  

When all the shot face the old woman was completed I then did a very big wide shot were you will see the hole set. to get the shot I had to put two sets togever the hall way set and the front door on the street set , this mad it the biggest set I have used and it took up most of the work shop  not letting me have much room to get in and animate. 

After the big wide shot was completed I then went on to do all the shots facing Viv & Mandy. This was the first big scene I got to animated with Viv & Mandy talking to each other for a long time, and had a really good time getting in some good acting in them, in a way I have not done before and I now think that this scene has some of the best acting and performances I have put in to them.   

I then had to separate  the hall way set from the street set so I could get the camera in so I can animate the Old Woman walking other to the siding doors. I then when on to animate the close up on Viv & Mandy saying the finale line of Part 1 of the story. 

All the animating for Part 1 is now completed and all that left for me to do now it editing , sounds ,fx, music and add a title sequence  and end credits, the relsice date for that will be told soon so all keep ya eyes out for that 1!!!!.
Thank you for reading my blog and I hope u will enjoy ‘Viv & Mandy in the Big Clean up’ when it’s out.  See ya in 2 weeks
Daniel James

1 August 2010

Still going strong


Sins my last post I have been very busy with animating on Viv & Mandy. I stated the last 2 weeks off with animating all the scenes with Viv & Mandy looking and walking up to the messy house and knocking on the door. I spent 2 days animating on them shots, after they were completed I stated setting up for the Boy & Girl talking to Viv & Mandy. Playing the boy is my little brother, and playing the girl is my step sister.


All the shots facing the Boy & Girl talking to Viv & Mandy were shot over 2 day with the boy talking 1 day and the girl talking the next day. So I could get the right depth and space I wanted to the shots I had to place the camera fare back in the street set looking out the door and have a very large set on its side so it took up almost all the studio. I did come across many problems have the set like this when animating these scenes, manly getting reaching over to the puppets so I can animate them with out knocking props and parts of the set.
After completing all the shots on the street with the Boy & Girl I spent the next day doing the shots of Viv & Mandy going into the house and the letters been posted and falling to the floor. After that I spent the next day repainting the hall way of the messy house set. I did this because I never did think that the first way the set was painted never did show the level of mess what I wanted to. I repainted the walls, the photo frames, all he wood work and the sliding doors.
After the set was completed to a standard I was happy with I then had to make the 8 piles of newspapers that will be scattered around the hallway. To make theses I had to a full newspaper cut it in to long strips fold them, stake them up on top of one and other and tie them up. In total it took me over 7 hours to make the piles of newspapers. As I was using normal newspapers the size and scale of the text was not right for the set. To get passed this I made a newspaper on photo shop and gulled it to the top paper of the pile.  
Now that set is completed I final got to spent he next two days animating the first scene with the old woman on the phone to Mandy. The shots I used for this scene were very tight close up shots of the mouth and the phone, as the shots were so close up the lip sync had to be spot on. As the old woman has no teeth I really had to use the shape of the mouth to show what she was saying, I I spent to days working on this scene and had to reshoot a line at one point I do feel that this is the best and most detailed lip sync I have done to date. 
After the to days of animating the Old Woman on the phone I then when on o animate the Old Woman walking up to the Door and picking up the post. As the puppet of the Old Woman did not have the final completed wire framing that hero puppet will have. To animate it leaning down and going back up took 3 take in the end to get it looking right.
Now I have edited in all the footage I shot this week the total animation now last 4 mins and 15 secs. With the animation running well I now have to tack a brake and make a new set for the car dashboard with a built in Sat nav. I’m still making this set and there will be images of this set in my next post. To day I spent 3 hours making 8 different cover for magazines. These are the front page that will go at the top of each of the 8 piles of newspapers.
Thanks for reading my latest blog post pleas come agene in 2 weeks for a new post on how the production is going on the new Viv & Mandy.