As the quarter wraps up, I can’t help but look back and think of all the work my crew and I invested into this project. I am really happy with the way it’s turned out, particularly when I remember how we switched gears mid-Winter, moving from a sailboat-themed kids show to an adult-oriented animation. Despite the minor setback, our team bounced back and attacked FSU with full force, finishing the episode slightly ahead of schedule and to good peer reviews. I just couldn’t be more proud of everything we’ve accomplished.

Also, as this is my last quarter at Evergreen, I can’t help but recall all the people I’ve had the benefit of collaborating with. At the core of this group is certainly my COOLYMPIA / FSU crew — they know who they are — who, for the better part of two years, have worked tirelessly alongside Sean and I. Through the summer we produced a six month series of episodes without credit, everything paid out of pocket and with both our sweat and our time, which only strengthened our talents as media artists. This was perhaps the biggest surprise for me, as I never expected to find such a wonderful, dependable crew to play with at such length! I also had the opportunity to work with so many amazing people in M.A.S., whose technical and creative strengths I continue to be inspired by! I am so thrilled that at the end of my two years at Evergreen, I feel better about myself and my achievements and experiences than I ever have before. It tells me I’m going in the right direction and made the most of my time here. The whole thing has just been so rewarding, I can’t even articulate it. I am so grateful to all of you who I got to share the last two years with, and wish you all the very very very best in your future endeavors. It’s been fun.

Spent the last week doing the usual — touching up FSU stuff, animating other stuff on the side, gearing up for the Fine Cuts next week. Met with McKayla to assist her on her amazingly whimsical, cupcakey, garden fairy, glitter sprinkly performance piece. We’ll be rounding up the crew to do a run-thru soon, which I look forward to.

See! Quick or what?

Big news on the COOLYMPIA side of things, but have to sit on that update for now until I get the green light from Deb at TCTV. Off to Sasquatch for some much needed – and much deserved – relaxation!

Sc. 7 is probably the one I’m most proud of, due to the attention to detail when it came to the backgrounds, for sure. Also, I spent more time on the little things, like setting key frames for the motion of the smoke from Xarfraz’s spliff, so that it trails behind the direction of his hand movements. Finally, I utilized more running with Chase than any other character to date, as he runs in circles while freaking out. This was a particularly proud moment for me, as I have been pretty intimidated when it comes to animating a walk / run cycle. But in all, it turned out really well, and I am happy to have ended my portion of the animation on such a “high” note… hahahaha…!

For now, I’m just focusing on getting us through the revisions over the next week, which will give us an extra week before Fine Cuts are due to make any last minute changes. It’s a very good place to be, and I wouldn’t be feeling so good about our progress if it weren’t for the amazing collaboration and support of Sean and Sorrelle! A lot can happen in two weeks, so fingers crossed we stay on course and our luck continues. Here’s a still from Sc. 7 – I may end up blowing this up poster size for my living room:

What is this thing you Earthlings call... Visine?

Sally offered a lot of feedback, and urged us to take a little time away from it to have fun. She could see how much we’ve been putting into this, and probably got the sense that we’re on the verge of crashing (in the energy sense). It hasn’t been easy stepping away, but I decided to postpone animating Sc. 7, the final scene of the whole piece, until later in the week. In the meantime, I plan to cover all the notes we took with Sally’s (and the feedback we got from others this week) at tomorrow’s weekly meeting, which will no doubt yield some amusing update of some kind.

While working through Sc. 6d, I was surprised at how few tests resulted. Before, I was testing every complex nuance and gesture, and now I’m so proficient with the program that I seldom need to take second look. I do, of course, just to be sure I didn’t miss anything in the final test, but all the mini tests I did with previous scenes are a thing of the past. I approach this project now, in Week 5, with a far more solid grasp of the program and its tendencies than ever. I really do love this program.

Once Sc. 7 is done, I’ll post again with more progress. Until then…

We decided to relocate the scene from its original location, the classroom, to the editing lab. We chose to move it after discovering that Sorrelle’s movie, Mashes, wasn’t going to fit into the duration of Sc. 6a, where it was initially planned to show. We realized that by pushing Mashes to 6b instead, we could move to a different part of the school that would be brand new to the viewer! With this decision in place, we were also afforded another chance to feature Doug, who has been added into the mix, giving an overview of the lab during a workshop. Because Sean voices Doug, we were able to throw together a little background lecture track in no time! Ah, the convenience of the home studio. It’s bliss.

I also enjoyed animating 6a because of the dynamics involved. The scene was written to have Xarfraz nearby eavesdropping, which — because of the new location — allowed me to layer him behind Adam and Amber, thanks to a conveniently placed reel shelf. It was an enjoyable challenge to animate him back there, as I got to play with his eyes in a variety of poses.

I’ve begun to feel the crunch of the quarter, as we hit the midpoint. Rough cuts are due at the end of the week, which we will be ready for, though lip sync still needs to be done on half the scenes. By Fri., we will have all the scenes constructed except for the last one, Sc. 7, which includes the final credits and intro. As we progress, we have begun compiling a list of additions we’d ideally get around to if we have the time. It’s really just icing. They will make it into the demo — if not by Week 10 then certainly by the time it hits the mailbox.

With the final stages nearly underway, I’ve already started reflecting on this process, and where it’s lead this collaborative. Sean and I were talking, and at one point he suggested that 3-5 min. episodes might be the ideal format for our future projects. I realized he wouldn’t have been able to reach that decision if he hadn’t worked both sides. With COOLYMPIA, we took a stab at cranking out an average of thirty segments a month, most of which were under a minute. With FSU, we’re trying our hand at an 11+ min. story based endeavor. Sean and I have never collaborated on something this cohesive and lengthy in our lives, so it has been an incredibly challenging – and rewarding – experience just for attempting it. I guess what I’m dancing around is simply that this FSU thing, whether or not it ends up being the thing that opens the door for us at Adult Swim, is strengthening our talents and expanding our experience all the same. We’re coming to understand our ideal format and technique, which can only be learned through trial and error. I am by no means suggesting this project is an error – far from it. But even in the midst of it, I can recognize its essential nature when it comes to my growth as an artist. I don’t need hindsight – I think I’m already immensely proud to be a part of it.

This week had me detouring here and there a bit. To prepare for our visit with Jan Krawitz, we spent two days exporting Scenes 1a thru 4b, which ate up a lot of time due to Anime Studio crashing on both the Mac and the Vaio, repeatedly. After some trial runs and some further investigation, we discovered that Sc. 1a consistently crashed at the same frame. Sean is going to take a second look at it and see what’s wrong with the file. All the other scenes exported fine in time for the mtg. with Jan, though, and we benefited from her observations and suggestions. A particularly intriguing and unusual suggestion she offered was to shuffle the order of 1a and 1b around. To explain…

1a kicks off with Dottie’s movie about her cat, Roosevelt. 1b kicks off with Xarfraz and Dr. Flick discussing Xarfraz’s latest project. Jan explained that starting immediately with Dottie’s movie was a bit disorienting, and that we might consider opening with the 1b exchange instead. Because the story is so tightly woven, no other scenes can be shuffled around without screwing up the subplots, but we can get away with it in 1a and 1b as long as they both occur at the start of the episode. Between 1a and 1b, we essentially have three sections: Dottie’s WIP and movie, Jacob’s WIP, and Xarfraz’s WIP. Those can potentially play out in any order, as long as they play out at the top. We’ve already begun shuffling them around to see what will work best.

The other derailment was that of the screening trailer. Because of our issues with exporting earlier in the week, we scrambled to put together a few snippets to submit to Ryan and Tommy today. Thankfully, we made the deadline. The issue with exporting these snippets was that with Anime Studio, a scene has to be exported from Frame 1 if you want to keep audio with it. You may have noticed that my tests on my blog are sans sound — this is because I export clips from the middle of my scenes rather than at Frame 1! So, in order to keep sound with the clips for the trailer (and not have to endure the pain of syncing up the sound in Final Cut with a batch of image sequences), we had to export each scene from the start — Frame 1 — which elongated the whole process. I’m pretty happy with the snippets we selected, though — they’ll do nicely.

Next up is Sc. 6a, for me. The goal is to keep the 1 week ahead motif going, so I won’t take a break. I plan to continue steadily onward until sleep or creative stagnation catch me.

Below are some additional tests from 4b. They are as follows:

This is a test of Flick’s arms gesturing to the class to be stillschweigen (silent):

This is a test of Flick’s head as he screams at Marla to roll the film:

This is a test of Marla crossing to and from the projector, offscreen:

And lastly, this is Marla and Flick’s heads and bodies as they exchange one-liners:

More tests and updates to come. Ta!

I started out the week working thru 4a, and was able to implement the feedback I got from all you guys. I have to take a moment to thank you for the critique — it’s your suggestions that help to strengthen this project. You guys give it some much needed perspective. THANK YOU. Today, I worked thru 2c. I had originally planned to postpone this scene until next week, but Sean miraculously completed 2b ahead of schedule. This meant I had a place to pick up to 2c! I simply worked off the file he created for 2b, which cut my work time in half. I also had the benefit of working with lip synced characters, thanks to Sean yet again. It took about 8 hours to plot out all the camera movements, action, and expression, with plenty of tests as a byproduct.

Below are some of the tests I did on 4a and 2c.

This is the ever subtle Amber, crossing to Jacob (2c).

This is Jacob speculating about Amber (4a).

This is Adam sassing off to Chase and Jacob (4a).

This is Chase gesturing to Jacob (4a).

And finally, Mr. Flick settles in for a long lecture (4a).

As this week draws to a close, I am feeling very satisfied with my progress on FSU. I’m one scene ahead, and my workflow has evolved as I grow accustomed to the commands. I’m straying from my earlier technique of approaching each scene in stages, or layers. I’m not working rigidly, I’m playing loose. I’m feeling confident about picking up 4b in the coming days. But for now, I’ve got one busy Easter weekend to focus on. So, if you’ll excuse me…

Though the calendar had me working on 2c this week, I’ve swapped it out for 4a because I want it to pick up directly from 2b. That’s Sean’s territory. He will be getting to it in the coming days. In the meantime, I will be tackling a potentially challenging scene. 4a is quite a big scene in terms of scale, much like 1a was. It picks up where Jacob, Chase and Adam speculate about Amber’s erratic behavior. Mr. Flick lectures in the b/g, and the whole class is present.

2a was a challenge, too, in its own way. With a lot of characters, a lot of concentration is required. And when lots of characters have lots of little bones in each of them, and they all operate on different layers, and the layers like to spontaneously jump and switch with no warning or subsequent explanation, the whole thing can seem daunting. But you train yourself to scan for inconsistencies. You spot glitches, jumps, shapes shifting. You take to it like a tweezer with a knee full of splinters. It’s really satisfying.

Below are but a few of the tens of tests I did for Sc. 2a. They are sans sound.

This one is of Doug being tossed, with a focus on Zee and Doug:

This one is of Doug being tossed as well, but at a slower speed:

This one is of Zee ranting about Adam. I was playing:

1. Stage Characters.

2. Stage Camera Shots.

3. Manipulate Character Bodies (Bones).

4. Manipulate Facial Features (Vectors).

It was a little tricky at first just reacquainting myself with the commands, but I’ve now got a pretty good system going. Throughout each stage, I am constantly testing small sections of movement to nail pacing, as I am one of those people who tend to rush things. The blinks were particularly problematic at first, but Sean helped me extend them so they didn’t come off as glitches. I have to say that Flick was especially fun to animate!

Here is a test I did of Chase’s body. He’s expressing disgust:

Here is another test I did. This one is of Jacob’s eyes and head, as he panics in class:

I just finished my portion of Sc. 1a, and will be passing it on to Sean for lip sync. The original plan was to make Sean responsible for all the lip sync, as we wanted there to be a consistency from scene to scene (since we’re manipulating the shapes, not using replacement animation), but he seems to think I can handle it, so I may just share those duties with him. We’ll see.

Three days ahead of schedule! That’s a nice feeling.

I’m assisting Sorrelle with the Mashes shoot tomorrow, and we plan to capture in the evening, so I am taking a day away from animating. On Fri. I plan to pick up with Sc. 2a, stage the characters and do some camera work, and maybe take in a movie to treat myself for a week well spent. That Haunting in Connecticut looks like a winner.

Over the last two days, Sean and I have been working on the first scene, Sc. 1a. The first stage was going thru and resizing limbs on the principals as needed (and in some instances, redoing the bones), then putting the characters into place. We imported the Roosevelt movie and scaled it down to lay on top of the screen in the screening room, then found that because of the widescreen approach to the school building, we’d need to rearrange some chairs in the seating room in order to have the characters in the shot. Now, they sort of flank the screen, which looks pretty neat.

Next, I went in and plotted out camera keyframes, with minimal character movement. I played the first version for Sean, and then we tackled revising the movements together, and reached a version we were both happy with. At this point, we essentially have a preliminary staging of the scene that looks a lot like an animatic, except that we didn’t use storyboards, but the actual characters and scene elements. We’re using the old, cleavage free Zee for now, until we trace her for the final version.

Tomorrow at our group meeting, we’ll be tackling the character movements, including facial expression (but excluding lip sync, as this is Sean’s department). In the meantime, I’ve decided not to post it yet, as I am betting we’ll end up posting the updated version with action on our group blog tomorrow, post meeting (and playing hard to get is FUN). Until then, yet another couple of extra stills:

Extra Girl Seated #1

Extra Guy Seated#1

Extra Girl Seated #2