So the sound has been compiled as best as we could manage in the time available, and the film's ready to go! Thanks to the hard work of the whole team, we managed to finish on Thursday, a day ahead of schedule and it's
After Effects work has finished, and the sound effects track is timed out and ready to go. Literally the only thing left is finding some royalty-free music that we can use and apply to the chase scene, which Lewis is working on hunting down at the moment.
Lewis is going to finish his final shot today, after which he'll be focused on putting together our final sound mix. Xinyi and Yandi are prepping shots for After Effects, and Tim is compositing everything into After Effects as it gets prepped. All in all, we look to be finished before the end of next week. A reasonable target it probably Wednesday or Thursday to have our final render done, possibly an extra day should any re-edits of the sound be necessary late on. We've put together a test render using the shots we have compiled so far, and it's looking really good. We're super excited to be this close to releasing it, and hope that you'll like it as much as we do!
We're at a point now where 16 (nearly 17) shots are completed, and we'll be putting together a full render of the film as soon as the animation's done so that, even if we run out of time, we still have something to hand in should the deadline hit before we're ready. Now, I don't really want to preview any more of the completed animation, so here's the backgrounds we've got: I think one of the things I like the most about the backgrounds is that we get a sense of place in the colour schemes - white and blue for the supermarket, green for the flat, and yellow and brown for the outside world. It gives us a nice shortcut in keeping it clear that the location is changing in a way that we might not have been able to do had we not thought of it.
Here's a preview of a shot completed today. Flash's GIF exporting leaves a lot to be desired, so the background cos messed up, but the animation still reads clear. So yeh, get hype!
We're flying through the production here - nearly all the shots that we have backgrounds for have been completed by this point, and some shots have had the animation done prior to the creation of the background, so we're at a point where 8/20 shots have been animated. Considering we seriously thought we were gonna be pressed for time, this is absolutely awesome! The backgrounds Xinyi created look absolutely amazing, and at the pace we're going now, enough shots will be done before the end of next week that we'll be able to start putting the animation through After Effects, to add textures and shadows to the characters to make them feel more at home on these stages. So by the end of today, we're looking to have completed another shot or two, putting us officially at the halfway mark in terms of animation, which considering other groups are still looking at next week as the start of their animating seems like quite an achievement, really.
I think the only trouble we're having is with the attendance of and communication with one of our team members, but even that should be cancelled out by the pace of progress. Ok, so first, the big news, we've changed up the opening of the film. On the advice of one of our more competent lecturers this morning, we've decided to alter how our film starts, placing the Runner in the supermarket, rather than starting him out on the sofa. This does render the animation I'd done before irrelevant, but I'm ok sacrificing it for a better film in the end. On top of this, we also have some completed backgrounds from Xinyi, who is doing absolutely stellar work with it. Her art fits within the film's style while still looking gorgeous, and I feel I can't hype up her work enough. Below is the first of the backgrounds she's produced so far, and several more should be following by the end of the day On top of this, I've finished the running symbol we need for the fridge's run cycle, so now that can be plonked into the shots that we need it for, along with the Runner loop. Should speed things up. Lewis is also working on his first shot, the one where the glass explodes from the energy drink. That should will likely be finished before or on Thursday.
Progress is definitely being made. Lewis and Yandi have been working throughout this week to prepare the symbols we'll be using to animate with, and they're pretty much finished by this point. A foot or two is the last step for the fridge symbols, and some finishing touches on the runner's 3/4 view is all that's left on him. As such, we've been able to put together a run cycle that we'll be using throughout the film, whenever characters are running and no other animation is needed - and if you've watched the animatic, you'll know they're needed a lot. So yeh, here's the runner's run cycle, symboled by Lewis, animated by Tim: At the same time, Xinyi has some rough backgrounds that are complete enough for us to work with, so starting Monday, we will be able to start animating properly using these as guides, and then will be able to swap in the finished backgrounds as Xinyi finishes them. At this time, she's focusing on the exterior backgrounds, as the architecture is complicated and takes more time to do than the interior shots. So yeh, expect some animation previews using these backgrounds over the next week or so!
Xinyi Guo, our amazing background artist, has begun working on the backgrounds for the short, and is already putting together some incredible stuff. This incredible painted look was way beyond anything Lewis or me originally had in mind, and I'm sure is going to take the film to the next level. I'm just hoping me, Lewis and Yandi can do Xinyi's background justice with the rest of the film!
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