VoiceBoothWorkOnApeEscape

Went In to use the voice booth at uni today. Helped out Sophia, doing the mixing (see figure 1-4), of the voices for Ape Escape, while she went through the lines for Marina. Sophia wanted to try out Marina's voice for herself because previous people such as actor she used previously didn't work out well and sounded more like Mr. Bean! seen as she knew the way she wanted Marina to sound, it made it easier for her to find the right voice for Marina, to use in the booth. I also had a go at doing some voices myself for the orangutan - AMI, it was thoroughly funny to get into the character and I quite enjoyed being on the other side for a change (see figure5-6). I also went into an edit suite afterward to quickly add the new voices to Sophia's animatic for the next screening so I didn't forget to add them later (see figure 7).

Working on this film sooo far.......

During the time working on this film. I have found it very annoying at times, as it feels like I need to be in so many places at once. It is making me feel like I'm playing a co-director role at the same time, as being a director because Connor is not the best at naming things or getting people to turn up to meetings. I am having to keep on reminding people. Connor is brilliant with doing the email side. Hopefully, he understands what he has actually to do after Christmas. I also wished I had more time to focus on the sound side of things. I had very little time to spare, on it because at the start I didn’t feel like I could not be there, in the studio all the time, as I was being asked so many questions at the start. After Christmas I will be making the sound, one of my main focuses, as the group now knows what they are doing and I have faith in them to achieve it, without me being around all the time, and I can get into the dubbing theatre loads instead and achieve some really lovely Foley for my end of year showreel.

Graffiti seen while out walking around.
Me by the end of the project!.......

Push to the Milestone

We all have been taking a very last push to get to this cut of Milestone. We split it up between the four of us; I was creating rough sketches of the scenes, then working out rough layouts (see figures 20/21) for Cery’s who went on working on the layout/Backgrounds in colour. Ourania was then taking her expression poses and placing them on top of the background and adding in the water, on top. There was only one problem; I had to keep on reminding people where our camera was (see figure 22) when we were creating the different scene for the animatic, it took a while for people to realize, we go there in the end.

Connor was taking what we had completed and was creating a new animatic, for this milestone today. I managed to complete the slice, and have it wholly coloured for today; it was arduous work to get done in such little time. It’s not as brilliant as I would have hoped for, but I was running out of time and spent most time on the first part, if I had longer the walk would have looked way smoother, unfortunately, I didn’t, so it meant it looks slightly doggy in the middle part of the coloured slice. I hope I get more people on the project that can animate adequately otherwise I am gunner be soo stuck. When we showed the animatic, most people were laughing, so I am hoping it was for a good reason, at the jokes and not because we are doing bad.

SoundLists & ColouredSlice

Dani, unfortunately, has decided she is not up for co-directing anymore, as she wants to focus on what needs for her showreel, so she is working more on her other 3D projects and taking a step back, and just working on backgrounds if needed. I understand why she’s coming from, but it is still a bit last minute to do that to us. I’m just gunner carry on and try my best, it is all I can do. We were still struggling with storyboarding and since Ourania had finalized our character designs, and she had the best grasp of how they moved extra, I roped her in to help out with the storyboards, so our designs would be more transparent in the animatic.

As we were struggling a bit Connor set up a meeting with Derek and Andy, to help us out and they told us to look at more gags which weren’t useful, as I had already looked at so many, and it was hard to find new gags, the meeting was sort of helpful, but not really just felt like they hated on anything we did. But I decided to go and work on the Script to adapt it to the changes we came up with after the meeting, I also booked out the dubbing theater, create sounds for our animatic (see figures 15/16) this would be the fourth time I have had to create a sound list for the animation. I have also made a start on the test shots, and so has Connor, however, he’s not used TVPaint for a while, so I’ve had to teach him TVPaint as we go.

Despite this the coloured slice is coming on along nicely, I had a checklist (see figure 17) for our test shots to make sure we were on track and had 30 seconds and a slice like we needed. We also made a checklist (see figure 18) for the different changes, that would take place in the scene, with Ourania’s help to work out, different pacing. Another thing I had to do was to create a small PowerPoint for getting crew and Musician, for the film, I could have made a better PowerPoint (see figure 19) if we had more concept art by then, however, we didn’t have much as we have been focusing on the story and the test animations the most.

Thumbnailing

We all put so much effort into, getting to today’s milestone. I was the one who edited the sounds on the animatic. However it was so frustrating that we had four styles going on in the animatic, it made it very hard to follow, luckily the sound I placed around it helped to bring it to life a lot more. On the contrast when we finally had another meeting with Kathy, because she missed the last she let us know that the pacing was not quite right, so we were able to adapt it a bit before the viewing. We finally reached our first milestone. However, we got mixed reviews from the animatic. Some of the lectures though we should have more story, and others realized where we were getting stuck between ideas. Lectures did not like it at first, then they went back on themselves to say it was not that bad, so it mixed up my emotions, flipping stupid, either like it or hate it, not both. Dani could tell that I was struggling, so offered to be co-director, which I was thrilled with and made me feel so much more at ease having someone else by my side to help. Between Dani and me we are looking at how to fix this story, to a more less gag based film and a but still a slightly gag-filled story at the same time, we are finding it quite hard. We can do this guy! I decided just to create some thumbnail templates for us to use when creating thumbnails, so I started to create some rough thumbnails just to get us started (see figure 12).

Storyboard panels

Today we brought together the storyboard panels (see figure 9), and had a meeting to see what everyone had achieved; we did not have fantastic panels as any of us are storyboard artists. However, the story was readable through the images. Connor then started to create a rough animatic, with our storyboards. Unfortunately, when put together they were not all the same size, as we did not use the same size paper as each other when drawing the panels, so the animatic looked a bit weird. We are still slightly behind in character design, Ourania has not quite got to a finalized point yet with the designs. Booked out the dubbing theater, for doing sound will be interesting to see how it goes, with the new sound desk. In the meeting we had, we also worked out the best way to change the flashbacks of the Kraken seen at the start of a shadow looming over the boat. Want to make a start on the test shots, but I am still waiting on finalized characters from Ourania.

ThumbNails/Storyboards

After a few thumbnails... Dani and I have been working hard, on getting the script completed. We have been working out an ending for the film, we are on the second draft of the script and have started work on doing very rough storyboards using what we have of the script, we are looking for a storyboard artist to help. The script is coming along well, but the ending needs to be better. Crews are getting along nicely. I have started to create a voice Actors script (see figure7), for use when in the dubbing theatre.

New DAWS SetUp

Sound Inductions on the new Digital Audio Work Space (D.A.W.S) Set up at University, decided to show us a new feature called Elvis or DJ something or other. 

Can't wait to get my hands on the new setup and use it! 

YES IM Pro Tools 12 Certified User! whooop

Yesss! WHooooo Just got my Certificate

I'm now a Certified Pro Tools 12 User!

Halfway through the Pro Tools Course

This week has been very productive i have learned a lot from doing this course, it has been sooo interesting aaah!, but not many people have bothered to do this course from the animation side it seems to just be me and the Film Course, taking this course on Pro Tools. :/

Just means i get a head start! Yay!

AVID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most People have gone back home now!!! :(

 But who cares, I just Enrolled on a Avid Course at Uni to get my Pro Tools (Version 12) Certificate! Whoooo hooo this will be really interesting and fun! Hope i do well, Love me Some Foley!

My Dream is to Hopefully one day work in one of these huge studios!
This Dream is starting to become true!