So I was supposed to do about 200 shots this month... then early in the month I got sick from working too hard so I eased the quota back so I would have to do about 140 shots this month... but lo and behold I've been hustlin the past 10 days and I'm going to get to 200 after all ^ ^ Then on one of my two days off a month I'm going to go see "How to train your dragon" at the local theater... Usually I avoid 3d animated features in the theaters cause like they are all the same and Pixar is cool but those like "nice" films don't excite me... but I read an article somewhere? Variety maybe? I da know... Wherein it done sayeth that the directors didn't do the usual committee thang and like took charge and tried to do somethin unique so that got me interested...So I'll go check it out on Thursday most likely...
Once I finish this sequence off in the next 2 days I'll be a little past the %50 mark of the film which I think is the MOST DIFFICULT half to do... I'm on like shot #735 but there's been a ton of like a,b,c,d additions so I think I've probably done around 900 shots so far... haven't gone back to count... I think "We are the Strange" had like 650 shots or something ^_^ NOW its not about # of shots obviously BUT when your doing everything solo you sometimes try to use the fewest number of shots and the simplest shots possible... I did that MOST of the time on WATS because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to finish so it was like... yeh throw this shot together move to the next! BECAUSE as a filmmaker your focused on telling your story, creating your mood etc... NOW a straight animator can tweak off one shot for weeks...which makes for awesome shots BUT it doesn't get films made in less than 20 years when your working alone....
So its a constant struggle.... make the MOST AWESOME shots you can while moving ahead at a good clip... Things have been going pretty good with that so far and I can say with %100 confidence that the "worst" shot of HSM looks better than anything else I have done up until now ^_^ Its no secret to do this... films... like music have a rhythm of they own... build and release...suspense to action to a calm place to suspense to action etc.... Now usually its the action shots/scenes which will take the longest to do... whilst dialogue is probably the quickest for me at least because I'm not doing the standard "its 3d and SO ANIMATED cuz all my characters have histrionic personality disorder YAY! ITS ANIMATED" wild gesticulations just because... So the natural pacing of a films action/non-action will give you the peaks and valleys in complexity that will allow you to do good work at a good pace... NOW if you tried to animate 120 minutes of nonstop action alone today without mocap or some crazy procedural shet I'll be looking forward to seeing it in 2030! So you have to be realistic about what you can do alone WITHOUT MAKING A BOREFEST Cause like in todays weRK the first shot was 53 frames long of this archer d00d running down a hill jumping over some stuff and into the air and firing an arrow... and that took 2.5 hours... a significant chunk of an 8-10 hour workday... then there was some dialogue stuff...I did 6 of those in 2 hours... then more action...3 more of those took 3.5 hours and I called it a day... so yeh 2 more days to pwn this 200 shot sequence dis month then its too day vacation (actually its backup time and time to import all the shots into After Effects, build out the projects prepped for comp AND render proxy mov's for offline edit)
Once I finish this sequence off in the next 2 days I'll be a little past the %50 mark of the film which I think is the MOST DIFFICULT half to do... I'm on like shot #735 but there's been a ton of like a,b,c,d additions so I think I've probably done around 900 shots so far... haven't gone back to count... I think "We are the Strange" had like 650 shots or something ^_^ NOW its not about # of shots obviously BUT when your doing everything solo you sometimes try to use the fewest number of shots and the simplest shots possible... I did that MOST of the time on WATS because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to finish so it was like... yeh throw this shot together move to the next! BECAUSE as a filmmaker your focused on telling your story, creating your mood etc... NOW a straight animator can tweak off one shot for weeks...which makes for awesome shots BUT it doesn't get films made in less than 20 years when your working alone....
So its a constant struggle.... make the MOST AWESOME shots you can while moving ahead at a good clip... Things have been going pretty good with that so far and I can say with %100 confidence that the "worst" shot of HSM looks better than anything else I have done up until now ^_^ Its no secret to do this... films... like music have a rhythm of they own... build and release...suspense to action to a calm place to suspense to action etc.... Now usually its the action shots/scenes which will take the longest to do... whilst dialogue is probably the quickest for me at least because I'm not doing the standard "its 3d and SO ANIMATED cuz all my characters have histrionic personality disorder YAY! ITS ANIMATED" wild gesticulations just because... So the natural pacing of a films action/non-action will give you the peaks and valleys in complexity that will allow you to do good work at a good pace... NOW if you tried to animate 120 minutes of nonstop action alone today without mocap or some crazy procedural shet I'll be looking forward to seeing it in 2030! So you have to be realistic about what you can do alone WITHOUT MAKING A BOREFEST Cause like in todays weRK the first shot was 53 frames long of this archer d00d running down a hill jumping over some stuff and into the air and firing an arrow... and that took 2.5 hours... a significant chunk of an 8-10 hour workday... then there was some dialogue stuff...I did 6 of those in 2 hours... then more action...3 more of those took 3.5 hours and I called it a day... so yeh 2 more days to pwn this 200 shot sequence dis month then its too day vacation (actually its backup time and time to import all the shots into After Effects, build out the projects prepped for comp AND render proxy mov's for offline edit)
Nice to see you got to keep your health and make it to 200 shots! Very nice indeed!
ReplyDeleteI never have liked dreamworks films much but it would be nice to hear what you thought of the movie after you watch it! :)
I personally can enjoy a "Nice film" if it has a good story...now if it's (I bet they really made this too) the Barney movie or something....hahaha heck no!
do you keep a certian time limit for tweaking shots so you're not there forever?
ReplyDeletelike if you don;t like it do you keep going until it's awesome or do you say
"i have an hour to make this work and do what it needs too without sacrificing awesome GO!"
cause that would seem like a reasonable thing lol
Ahaha-> U go to the theatre on Pixar animanimanima ^ ^
ReplyDeleteSpielberg and Viacom tricked u... I cant believe^ ^
Pixar "nice" good word I like. Maximum they can make NICE its NICE, their sleeky-models ^ ^.
Nice dreams with green supergrass, onyx water, real flow splashes, FumeFX cutie dragon's fire^ ^ I think Viacom's DREAM Works's dreams skg must to learn volumeBreaker I da know to break the walls^ ^ for real nice, Im tired of nice dreams, I want NIGHTMARES^ ^ they looks like REAL LIFE
In Heaven everything is NICE! ^ ^
Hero, I hope a 'BOy on the Moon'll give u to train the reptile in 3D stereo glasses, tell us then how u like to fly on dragon among InTru 3D clouds:)....really
hmm..what I've seen last it was Resident Evil: Degeneration in 3D yesterday or in yesterday-3Do_O , its 2008' tech of Stonehendge^ ^, but really I like that lighting, its so real, and most of REALLY was real, but its always hard to make human, half of them looks like real, and half looks like that zombie, difficult to tell one from another,corp.Umberlla well done!^ ^ I want to say Sony Pictures Entertainment(Japan) really entertained me first 20 min..but I slept after 20 min, maybe cuz they didnt gave me game pad^_^ , looks like a game, but cant play, when u see a 3Dmovie-game but cant play, its sad, I didnt find another way like to fall asleep^ ^