Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Films Website is up!

I got the films website up and running. Most of it is still under construction, but feel free to check out whats up so far.
http://www.ericprovan.com/TheLonelyMrScrim/index.html

Monday, May 18, 2009

Animation complete!!

As of last night, animation is officially complete. Yay! =) I feel like I did a pretty good job animating this thing. I'm not an animator, but the best way to get better at something is to practice, and I had my fair share of practice with this short =) One scene has 5 characters doing different things! In the end, the animation isn't too amazing, no, but its very watchable and shouldn't distract the viewer from the story. Hopefully it enhances the story.
So, the next few weeks I will be tightening up the story/narration, and rendering, rendering, rendering. Rendering has piled up over the last week, mostly due to a choice to re-render 4 or 5 scenes. But the hassle should pay off with some much better looking scenes.
I thought this would be kinda funny. Here are some of the things that have changed over the course of the production.

I started the film thinking there would be 3 characters total, I ended up creating 12 distinct characters, granted, most of them show up in stills. One added character has fur and is fully animated!
The estimated run time was 4 to 6 minutes, It now looks to be over 9 minutes.
The original narration was being done by a narrator, but that changed about half way through when I realized Mr. Scrim should actually be doing the narration. In his words. This was a big change in the story, but helped tremendously.
Estimated 4 environments total. In the end, I created 8. The additions include and office building/room, a bathroom, and a dock.
Estimated illustrations that would be used in the film in picture form was 4, I ended having 9. These include family pictures, DVD/video game covers, Book covers, etc.
Many more things were added. Most due to having access to a renderfarm (renderrocket.com).

So there ya go. I should have a trailer up within 2 to 3 weeks. Stay tuned =)

-Eric

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Rough Draft of film - thoughts

So, The other day I edited together the first rough draft of the film. How exciting right? The first shocking thing was how long this film is. I was predicting on the high end when I said that it could run from 6 to 7 minutes. It turns out that this thing could possibly run longer then 8 minutes! As it stands right now, its over 7 minutes without an opening and credits. Now, this isn't exactly a good thing. But, im hopeful that the film will keep people interest thoughout.
The biggest thing I learned from the rough draft is that some of my scenes clash when transitioning from one to the other. Its most because of the camera movements being to drasic. So, im having to go back and re-render 2 or 3 scenes so that they transition better.
And the final thing I learned was that the story jumps to quick in a few spots. So, after doing some brainstorming with my wife, I, or should I say we came up with a few scenes that will help the flow greatly. Now, this adds 2 more scenes to animate (simple anyway) and render, but I feel that they are very much needed.
So, there ya have it. After seeing the film cut together, I can say that im extremely proud of how this thing is turning out. Hopefully the audience will enjoy it =)

Thanks,
Eric

Saturday, May 9, 2009

So close, yet so far away

Ive been spending most of the past few weeks tying up loose ends and re-rendering older scenes that had errors.
As it stands, I'm down to one final scene that has animation, which is almost done. Im currently working on my first rough cut of the film so I can start focusing on the voice over timing and sound effects work. That's going very well. Im really suprised how long the movie is turning out to be (6-7mins). Hopefully there's enough in there to keep people attention. If not, I wont hesitate to cut it down. Directors cut =)
I'm looking to have the trailer out by june 15, so stay tuned.

-Eric