The Final Completed Trailer and Reflection

Here it is the final trailer for the short film.


Final teaser from Jack Stollery on Vimeo.

Looking back on the production, I really feel that it could have gone alot more smoother. If I had know more about the actual amount of time available then I could have actually completed the whole short perhaps.

Another thing that I could have done was choose a more optimised story such as lured. The lured idea had one character to animate and that would have cut the time animating down by ten fold. I love both ideas but in the Lured idea (which the story could have easily been adjusted) there is only one character and environment and no voice acting. It could have been much more easier to do that than Shorc Film.

However, I'm very happy for the outcome of this trailer. I have had fun animating all the characters especially the character "Scorch" he was the most fun to animate, possibly because he was the most appealing and the easiest to draw. He's very easy to exaggerate and very expressive (which was an intended feature). Im glad to make the choice of creating a 2D produced film as aposed to a 3D produced film. it would have taken at least 3 times long to even get a trailer to create, model, rig, animate and render all the scenes if it had been done in 3D.

But regardless of the medium used, what matters is the animation, the emotion the acting. I would have really loved to have made all the line work really nice smooth, clean and crisp but alas, time prevails.These ideas will never die, but as long as the appeal, attitude and comedy is conveyed in the character whatever its been shown on, then its job done. :)

JS

Honours Showcase and Buisness cards

So, were comming to a close with this year and in that time Ive been thinking about the future and the connections I make are very important for securing a job in the industry. So last feburary, I designed some business cards in preparation for the Animex trip last Feburary.


Business Card Design 

I typed into google image serach "Buisnes card Ideas" And Alot of awesome designs came up, Even ones that were made of aluminium.

One however got my attention, on one that was like this one, I loved the format So I decided to go along with that.

Designing the cards were hard because its something that people are going o remember you by. I started off by thinking what aesthetic elements appeal to me,I've always loved earthy colours so Ive gone with a yellowred pallet to the design. Then I thought to show that I'm very character driven with my animations and illustrations I decided to show alot of my character designs.

I thought that this was fine for my first business card design. Its got my contact details and everything else that is needed on a business card.  Heres the final result:

Showcase Material

For the show case we're only allowed so much space to put up our work and designs. So I'm Going to have to economize and be very frugal on what should be put up to give an overview. I felt that showing a few concept pieces and the construction sheets would be good enough.

I plan on printing more images at the copy shop but I've got to make sure that the resolution of the images are good and there is absolutely no pixelation.

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We can also put alot more images on the interface that we're using to showcase our images and videos. I'm sharing a single computer with another student so we will have to make arrangements to get the content on the computer and create a shared folder. The interface itself is very easy to use and pretty much explains itself to use.

I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone's projects at the showcase, I'm sure ill get a sense of how much effort and work we've put into all our projects. :)

Inspirations for Shorc film

I should have talked about this ages ago, but this video did catch my attention while looking for research on Shorc film.
WWE Wrestling Superstar Kane gets a low pay job in this little sketch. Which is pretty similar to the position of the orcs having to succumb to bosses that have to look up to talk to them.

Just goes to show that inspiration can come from anywhere! Haha

Any way on a serious note, the inspiration for the idea came about when I drew a sketch of a giant orc riding a tiny little tricycle.

I may have mentioned that already in a previous post, but this was the first vision that I had with the idea, It originally was going to be a short skit,

Similar in length to a robot chicken sketch. but this requires a strong discipline in story writing which I dont posess having learned from making this trailer.

This Sketch from robot chicken (again involving wrestlers) has these guys trying not to screw up. The plot of the sketch doesnt really go anywhere, but again the setting was a really good base for comedy. It wasnt when I watched this I immediately got inspired, I't was more a case of remembering back to seeing this sketch and drawing the orcs at the same time. This is usually how i get inspired most of the time.

But after all
Being ambitious is great but never do something like a 5 min long short and expect it to be coloured and polished within 2 whole semesters.

Previous Honours Idea

Before Shorc film, I was intending to do a completely different idea.

Set in a fantasy japanese forest. A kappa, a creature of Japanese folklore collects, preserves and eats fish. Everyday he would catch the same boring grey fish. One day he discovers an unsual bright colour in the splash pool. 

Why not this one?

I would have loved to have taken this idea futher, but what stopped me from pursuing one was the fact that the river character was totally impossible to empathize with. His motiv for moving forward in the story didnt feel right after a few talks with my peers and mentor. 

If he somehow learned from the experience he had and learned that he was greedy and that this clouded his vision, then maybe the story and character would work. As with shorc Film is that this is another project I will not let die. It needs some improvement but im willing to make this and shorc film become fully realised things.

I would have enjoyed selling the drama of the story within the animation, also I would have been very happy to animate pure emotion with no dialogue to tell the story.

Its a long shot, Ive already done alot of artwork for it but after some adjustments this thing could go into more development.  

Recording sessions

I should go over how we did the voice recordings, back in feburary I contacted a few friends who I thought would fit the characters of my story. So me and my sound producer Willy used the portable recording studio to record voices for the short, I did the voice for Cpt nathgug.

During the recording process the main focus was to fail fast, because we had to make many retakes to get the characters right, usually the actors would say the lines 3-4 times and I chose which ones were to be put into the final cut.

Overall the sessions were very straightforward, the only problems encountered were making sure the scripts were updated before the recording started.

But perhaps the biggest problem was finding a voice actor for scorch. It was discussed in my mentor meetings that a female character would make a good voice track for the character Scorch.

In the final cut, I finally made a choice, but scorch only says one line anyway!

Mrs Middleton character

We're approaching the final submission date and the final production is getting there. MY favorite scene to work on in the last week was Mrs Middleton.

Mrs middleton has a very outgoing and motherly personality and her sequences were a challenge for being a brand new character to animate, however, to keep her on model I created a character sheet to adhear to while animating.

and heres the final outcome, (note: I know that not much of the animation has clean and crisp line work, but im working to a deadline and im concentrating on the feeling and thinking of the character and for me, that comes through more in sketchy lines. Motion and emotoin are at high regards to me when animating.

At first the animation was not going well, I wanted a nice bobbing of the head, but this didnt feel right in the initial run. So remembering what Samy Fecih said in This interview with animator island said that you should shoot video reference if your struggling. So I did and this really helped with the momentum and movements of the character which I hadnt seen before, From this point on I decided that I should always strive to create video acting reference to make the performances more realistic. 

Heres the reference and finnished shot. 

Some late concept art.

Here are some late peices of concept art I forgot to put up, hope you like them.
The first one was a test into what cpt Nathgugs big character costume could looke like, trying out different proportions.

and the lower one is a character turn around on toned background because it looks more appealing than white.