#project thoughts

New semester, new student film to work on!

As I said in my last update, I decided to drop my uncompleted film "Lost and Found" last semester due to the amount of baggage it carried during production. I knew that I wanted to do something a bit more light-hearted and fun for the next one, even if it meant working on something as cringe as an animated music video of my two precious ocs.... a but indulgent, yes, last year was very difficult for me so dont judge.... Unfortunately, because i am using a song from a popular band, i won't be able to enter it into any film festivals. The most i can do is hope my film gets selected for my college's screening and maybe win a single award if the judges like it enough.

Anyways enough blabbering, here is what i have so far!

Lemmie first introduce you to my characters I'm going to be animating! The man in the green sweater is Omar, the other ghostly figure with the beret is Benjamin. Back in 2021 when i was attending CSSSA, I attempted to animate a short film of these two which was gnna be named Acquainting Painting. Looking back after years have passed.... it was very silly of me to think I could finish a 1 minute film in just a week, but I managed to have the storyboard done at the very least. I haven't uploaded the film on youtube yet so maybe sometime in the future I'll be able to link it here, but I aint gnna lie, I am a lil too lazy to find the video. I think the file itself is gone forever from my hard drive failing, but I definitely have the file exported as a mp3.

Here is what Benjamin looks like in human form with his proper colors. This was concept art for his redesign, thus the outdated outfit.

Here is what he's supposed to look like in the final product after adding in the effects, but tbh, I'm still not fully on board with these colors. It's got a nice pallet, but i want him to pop out more in a lighter blue since the setting is going to take place in an art gallery at night. By the time i roll out another update, I'll update his FINAL final look.

And now, for the animation segment!

In total, i wanna say i put in about over 40 hours of work into this since 3 weeks ago. I definitely should've put more work into this segment during that time, I was sorta dilly dallying for a bit. There's a few more boards beyond this, but i wanna wait to show it off after the majority of this segment is animated. It was super hard to animate Benjamin glitching since the only things i have ever animated up until this point has been character acting. I had to watch a lot of aimkid beforehand to study the way she makes her character move. I definitely need to watch more 2d animated movies that aren't disney related and get caught up with the times... but i can't help it, i love animating the Richard Williams way 😵‍💫

Would anyone else be interested in that? 

Heehee, funny update on my final film during last semester, I had a major life event that happened about a week or 2 after the last post. TLDR: I had someone who used to live with me move out, and alotta my stuff ended up being scattered around. By the time things started to settle down, I had one week of the semester left to work on my project. I managed to animate and polish half of it before I turned it in! You can see it here!

I think I did p alright for a first film, but it carried so much turmoil once winter break arrived.

After the new year passed, I spent a few months healing and doing stuff creatively and non creatively. Spending an entire week doing nothing but eating, using the restroom, animating, and sleeping is not for the weak yall, so of course it took awhile to get out of that creative rut after going through what felt like animation boot camp.

At some point, my professors and I got in contact to encourage me to continue working on the film. I agreed, but I ended up changing my mind once classes started back up again. I wanted to work on a small animated music video of my characters from my first failed attempt at a short film, "Acquainting Painting," which is going to be a bit uppity and face paced compared to my last film. I was just about to return to tumblr and continue my "project thoughts" on the new film concept but I ended up having a medical scare that lasted 2 whole weeks, thus a good chunk of time meant for production work gone.

here's some progress on my new film!

Starting today, I'm going to be journaling my thoughts on every personal project I'm actively working on. Not only does this help me keep on track on long-term projects that last more than a month, but I tend to regret not keeping up with a life journal when I was younger. I'll probably make multiple series for future entries on different topics, but for now, my current goal for the next few months is to make a film that can help me break into the industry... or maybe transfer to an art college before getting a job. Whichever comes first.

I would also like to add that this doesn't include projects that break NDA contracts for future jobs I may have in the industry.

Although this has been such a last minute change, I am actually quite happy with the new direction that this project is moving in. I still plan to keep a lot of influence from my original concept, the fact that the animation will be taking place on the body will remain the same and I intend to keep the score the same too. I just want to develop a different set of visual pieces to accompany my idea and be within an art style that I feel more happy producing.