Foley

We had our foley session at Premium Sound in Montreal this week and I am very happy with the results. Foley artist Lise Wedlock and recordist Eric Med Lagacé did an amazing job.

Trailer

I made a trailer for the film. Enjoy!

Progress

I haven't blogged in quite a while but I am making steady progress with the film.

Another time-lapse

Tip: Rough animation in Photoshop is terrible. Stick to Flash, TV Paint or whatever else you use.

Robot arm

Apologies for boasting but let me introduce the amazing Cintiq stand that I got recently. It allows me to work a lot faster. This video is in real time, I did not speed it up, I swear!

New AE

This may be a bit too nerdy, but those familiar with After Effects will probably be delighted to hear about this new improvement in the latest version:

I invite anyone to tell me if they have EVER found any use for that feature.

Goodbye Sitji

Today was Sitji's last day working on the film. It's been a pleasure having him around and I am very pleased with the work he's done. I can't wait for the next opportunity to work with him.

Filling...

We’ve arrived at the stage that I call “filling”, which is essentially that - filling shapes. As you can imagine, it can be pretty gruelling.

Another clean up time lapse

New toy

Behold my latest acquisition, which promises to speed things up quite a bit.

Video reference

Acting out the character's actions can be very helpful, though it makes me look pretty silly.

Doing a bit of clean up

Painting

I can't explain what this is, but I've done a few and there are many more left to do.

Springtime!

Another time lapse

It's hard to believe, but we are almost finished with the rough animation for the whole film. It couldn't have been done without the legendary Sitji Chou.

My plan is to have a locked edit by mid June so Luigi can work from it. I can't wait to hear what we'll come up with.

Another day, another shot or two.

The production pie chart is looking good.

Praise the lord

My new favourite thing to listen to while I work: 8 bit radiohead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObjXhl6OaB8

Another time lapse

Another character

Research has been yielding some interesting results.

Time for bed

Sitji drawing madness

Our hero, the Seer.

I'm honoured to be have animation extraordinaire Sitji join the team today.

Timelapse of some rough animation that I did today.

Clouds is a film that I have been meaning to make for a long time. I had the idea for the story about 4 years ago and since then I have been trying to find the time to work on it. But, as it usually happens, other work kept getting in the way.

However, this year, in part thanks to a generous grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, I am fully devoted to getting it made. I expect it to be finished by the end of December.

I am lucky to have some very talented artists lending me a hand. Sitji Chou and Anna Bron will be helping with the animation and Luigi Allemano will be taking care of the sound and music.

Since this is a short film it is hard to say anything about the story without revealing too much. But suffice to say that it is about a person who looks at clouds and finds images in them.

I look forward to sharing more on the progress of the film soon.