layout posing starts

Well,

bit of a mad week, outside the weather is mighty, but we are going ninety, Sunday we tried cutting the animatic but kept hitting problems of a technical nature.
Anyway the guys in Hobsoft are cutting it now, and it should be here on Monday.

I felt a bit overwhelmed on Monday with all the new people and the pressure of still having so much to finish on the boards. But we got over the hump and all was good by the end of the week.
Nic Debray joined us for posing, he's getting into the style, as is Jean.

We are working reel by reel now, trying to get all the technical layout and the posing for the first reel done first and so on.
Barry is checking design stuff and designing any incidentals thats are not in the model pack.
Fabs is back from his time off in Cologne and taking care of the posing team . dividing the work and so on. Its good to have a few people who are well into the film to lead the new crew.

So the posing crew are - Nic Debray- Jean Morel- Jean Bap - Eve - Baz- Fabs- with Andrej and Tom Caulfield to join soon.

The Layout is coming together and they are hitting the style too, less retakes this week.
Raymond is motoring through the clean Bgs, and the studio seems really full as we also have some helper-interns - Lisa Marie, Rebecca and Ray. We also have two interns from France from the same college as Adrien and Lily, Sebestian and Laure, who are helping out too.


The colour models are looking well, and the boards are shaping up.

I thought I'd write a bit about the process of doing the boards - working over the now 12-18 month old first pass stuff with the final voices and doing the final timing. The pass we did last summer was like a rewrite pass where we ironed out a lot of things in teh script before the final draft with Fabrice last November, and cut and changed dialogue, but we had no final location designs and the models were in development as we went soits pretty scrappy...we are redrawing everything now for teh past 6 months or more, but as we've gotten busier and busier Remi has had no time to work on it, and its gotten down to me and Nora to finish the final pass. Mind you Nora and I are so busy looking after things its gotten slower and slower...anyway heres how I have been working...

I tend to have a "scary period" where I'm trying to pull it all together in thumbnails and scribbles, this is pretty scary and stressful when you are under pressure to check things and keep an eye on everything else.But also its the most creative part and you don;t want to lose too much just because you are under pressure like .. I try to use the weird time before waking up or going asleep to picture the scenes and play them out in my head, I always think theres more time than I really have and end up having too many ideas.
Its the same with my animation - I almost always intially do too many poses and end up having to pare it back.

Anyway once that bit is done I'm lucky that Stewie and Nora can read my absolutely scrawlly scribbles to see if they think its on the right track, and if it is, i usually head on in to tidying it up.
That second opinion is really important to me, I really don;t feel comfortabel going any further until I have gone thru' it with the lads to be sure its been double-checked.

then its "tidy up"
Which takes ages and usually has quite a few things crop up at that point.

We've been hitting quite few learning curves - for me its mainly been stage direction - having to flip a lot of shots I've been instinctivly putting in the wrong direction in the scribbly pass stage. Its usually okay with flipping it and stuff as we have a very flat style with very clear and simple rules about which directions the characters should be travelling in to various locations and so on.
The other main problem I encounter is bad cuts with "pop-ups" and so on.
This is something that just keeps slipping by me and I wonderw ill I ever get it into me to just avoid them - anyway they are usually quite easily fixed with abit of restaging help from Remi, but somehow its always a little painful... you just can't always show everything and still be clear. Usually once those type of things are ironed out, it all feels that much more solid and makes more sense , even when it seemed okay before! ...if you know what i mean... its just seems to click together better.

Anyway thats the process for the boards, we are going to quite a full finish, with fairly on model characters and clear Bgs and lots of poses. Its a good way to try and iron out problems early on.

Not that its that early on anymore!

At technical layout we've still encountered a few of these annoying "pop up" and "stage line" issues that keep creeping in, and Ross and I have been sitting with Remi and the layout guy at the beginning of each scene they take on- and trying to spot any issues before they get stuck in to all the technical work of preparing the scene.

Also Ross will spot any problems in the Scene illustrations that need to be checked and redone in continuity with the layouts and any props or locations that need a sketch for the layout man to follow. Lilly has been doing some great prop design lately.

A few of us bummed off early yesterday to Superman...The last Superman film I went to in the cinema in Kilkenny I was wearing my Superman outfit. It does'nt fit too well anymore so I left it behind this time.

What a great show. I really enjoyed it, a few things bugged me but overall I just loved it. I really love the whole mythos of Superman and this one is really lovingly done.
Put me in a good mood all night!

Anyway thats all for now folks...

T