45. Bones

I finally got around shooting the skeleton shots (some of them anyway.) Now you may wonder how do i rotoscop a skeleton??

Well it's not easy... So I built a "Skeleton Costume" and I start from there and draw all the missing bits (bones really) the old way :)

The roto is SO painful, but drawing the spine and all the other thing is pretty fun. I'm saying that probably because I'm still doing the first shot.

Here is the test animation I made, to make sure that the suit worked... It's not part of the film. I'm including the live footage, because let's face it, it's pretty stupide.

Walking skeleton

Here in HD on vimeo 

42. Same old, Same old

Damn, I've been dead busy with playing fancy dressing and drinking (for the live action of the film, obviously - well mainly) that I forgot to post last week! Anyway there is much more black on the character now, and shading takes twice longer... If you want to start a 2d film, hand drawn, here's an advice, make everything white! Damn that black T-Shirt is killing me.

So you can forgive me, here's a little GIF, the walking drunk (it's not the shot that caused me lots of pain):

Walking

34. Kickstarter Update

backers Well the Kickstarter had an amazing start! We reached the initial goal in only 24 hours!

The initial goal was to cover the cost of finishing the film animation and the off costs, like festival inscription.

The new goal now includes the compositing of the film (putting all the animation layers together) and the sound recording!

I hope we can make it! So keep sharing the love!

Also I feel like the T-shirts don't get as much attention as they deserve, It's probably because I didn't talk about them in the video, so here we go:

T_Shirts

I'm planing to print the T-shirt with the AMAZING Dude Factory, this means that the printing quality will be beautiful.

They print on American apparel cuts, Male and Female!  You can also choose a variety of colors. Check it out, HERE, And it's only £25!

male

 

female

33. KickStarter is READY - Trailer

Ahoy! "Animating Deadman's Reach" KickStarter is ready to go live!

I will be launching it THIS THURSDAY, valentine's day.

And it will include Awesome Rewards!

Rewards

Don't miss it, Thuersday, for 30 days only! I will be trying to raise 7000£.

The preparation was bloody intense, but at least you''ll be able to enjoy making fun of me in the KickStarter video!

24. Shading animation

First of all, sorry for not posting yesterday. I'm sure the 2 visitors that were eager to discover more about the making of DeadMan's Reach were very disappointed, Mum... Conor... sorry.

Anyway.

I didn't post because I was going to post a video that I filmed with a GoPro stuck to my head. I thought it would be fun to see how I shade animation...

Turns out it took me more than 16 hours to shade the 33 frames of the particular shot I'm working on, and because of that:

1) I couldn't draw with a GoPro on my head for 16 hours, I had to stopped after 8 hours... Neck fixing is not included in the film budget.

2) Even speed up 3000 time, the video was extremely boring.

So, I decided to post a GIF instead. It's crazy how gifs are more popular than video, maybe its the equivalent of Disc/ CD but in the 2010: GIF / Vimeo

Anyway, here is what took me 16 hours to draw, color and shade...

And I'm still working on it... I'm now thinking "Summer 2016" is a good release date.

You can comment here.

20. LineTest

Last week I started animation, I did 200 drawings in two days, tough. I'm probably going to finish the sequence I'm working on and then change a little bit the technique I'm using.

I will try to find a way to make animation a bite more... expressive, by animating straight with a pen.

It's going to be harder, but will save tones of paper and hopefully will make the drawings look much more  "alive".

In the mean time let me introduce you to my LineTest, it's a setup that allows you to take pictures of drawings with a consistent lighting and framing.

You can check your animation much more quickly then when scanning drawing. When I say my line test I mean the one my friend Lucas lent me, thanks mate.

I'm using a D80 to take the pictures and icarus camera control to control the camera from the computer (Tethered)

Here it is in action: [vimeo 50990280 w=500 h=281]

12. First Animation

This is the week 12 starting, already, Damn, that's stress full. And look at all this sun outside, it doesn't make any sense!

Last week, I managed to finish the animation I wanted. I can tell you it's gonna be tough.

This week I'm back on backgrounds for a few days and then will animate again.

Next week post will be a video showing the process of how I animated this first shot.

Including an amazing video of me stumbling in my living room!

But for now Enjoy the film first animation: 

[vimeo 46141401 w=500 h=281]

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