Final post

Hi,

One last post so the blog can have some closure.
It will be so cool to see everyone's finished creations next week. It was great to watch everyone's films develop.

For me this process was so interesting - and I've learned a lot. I did have a really tough time at the very end with my project. There were unexpected difficult situations, and since I'm so invested in this, I was sometimes hurt by what was going on.

Still - from the beginning I felt really brave for approaching this kind of material.
Whatever the result - I know that I made this with the absolute best intentions in mind.

As a final note, it just so happens that last week I watched an interview with a great film director who expressed her opinion about the problematic"melodrama" in films.

Contrasting sentimental melodrama, which she described as "dishonestly manipulative", she said: "There is room for emotions (in a film), they just have to be based on truth".
I think that is a really wise observation. That's what I wanted to do with this doc.

So, thanks SO much for all the help and critiques!

See you all at the screening!

Update on project

Hello,

This blog has not been updated for a while - I've been using all this time to animate.
All the gouache parts are done. What needs to be completed now is 4 shots in photoshop, and also a list of fixes.

Here I've included the last of the gouache shots, and a part of the new digital work. This cuts off at the ink part which you've already seen.





Ok, there is still animation to be done.

Oh, I've picked a title, it's "Overnight Stay" (without the "An").
I'll put it there in German too ("Übernachtung"), since I think that makes sense.

Thanks for checking in.

2 clips

Hello,

Here are two clips of new painted sequences. I've completed more animation, but this is just to show you a new edit (in the first clip), and an example of how the sequences in the house look like (it goes back to characters in outline).

Oops - a few black frames in the violet clip, and I should cut on action more. to be fixed.

Photos at the end?

I have a small dilemma.

I've watched my animatic again and I'm not sure about the part with the photos.


Maybe you don't remember: in the digital part at the end, right before there is the view of outside the window, there are photos on the wall. Later, at the very end, she turns off the lights in the room and there's a shot of the photos, fadeout to black and then the real photos appear.

The problem is that this ending feels very inconsistent with the whole story.I think it feels very forced and even random.

It's like I'm adding too much stuff, and it's not something this project can support (you know?).

However, the good thing about the photos is that they do take you out of the animated and simplified and naive kind of depiction I made, and give a different sense of these times. And they are of my family, so it is appropriate.

I figure there are 2 ways to go:

1. Cut the photos out -
the ending will then be her turning off the lights, and then she would turn into a silhouette and it will remind you of the woman in the story ( it's the same composition in the frame).
I think this can really work, it's so much of a tight ending that it would almost be a shame to add another element.

2. Justify the photos being there by adding something at the beginning -
I can do that by adding a shot in the beginning where she would straighten the photos on the wall or walk past them. This will include the photos in the structure and it will make sense to return to them in the end. I think it's not as nice an ending as the silhouette, but it could be worth it still.

This thing can change a lot...I'm really confused.

(Please advise)

New sequences - changing styles with color

Here are some new sequences in color.

I've added a shot with new animation to make the transition into the street (right after she takes the package you see a sort of establishing shot of the street - that's new).

As it has been suggested in class, I'm going to change the last shot so that the face is more in close up and less in the center of the frame.

Thanks again!

The first water color shots

Hi, Here is a clip with my progress so far. These are the first shots that are going to appear in gouache and water color (many more to go!).

For the last transition I made new animation (with the suitcase and the hat). It was a cut before, but I never liked it that way, so now it's a kind of camera-move transition. I thought that maybe it would fit in better with everything else, since other scenes tend to end with that sort of transition too.

Since the actual coloring and animating took a very long time last week, I had no time left to edit this the way I want it to be exactly.

I think some of the moving holds are too long and feel kind of unnaturally slow. Also, there is the bg problem (in the suitcase part) that was mentioned in class : I totally agree. On the bright side, it's a really easy fix. Thanks for catching that!

Ink

Hello! Happy 2009 everyone!

Last semester I've been able to complete a rough draft of almost all my animation sequences. For this semester I need to render out all that animation with the gouache (and also the digital parts). I can already see that it is going to be a lot of hard work - sometimes even harder than animating. I'm going to try my absolute best to do this well.

Over the break and during this past week, I've been working on my two ink sequences.

The first one I will unfortunately need to rescan - because when you watch it in higher quality the paper leaves a sort of mark, and I think I won't be able to live with that...

I see a few mistakes here (a few frames that are in the wrong order) - I'll fix that after I rescan.

Here is the second one (in the final version I'll probably add more frames of the photos on the wall - just so you're aware of them, also, maybe slow down the camera move a little?):

By the way - the ink was really fun to draw with. I think it somehow works for animating because the shades of gray usually look pretty consistent. Matching the tones is much more difficult for me with the gouache and water colors, but the result is in color so I think it's worth the effort.

There are two things I would like to have help with - one is editing (I mean timing), so if you find that some parts are way too short/long please let me know. Also, if you have thoughts about how I should paint certain scenes, that would be nice too. Right now I'll go with what I think and hope that all the styles will click together at the end. After I'm done painting a scene there won't be time to repaint - I hope I get things right!!!

Thanks!