Project Hayle: The Bitter Middle

tread-with-background

It has taken until we are almost at the bitter end for there to be anything for us to post about regarding production. Within the final 2 weeks, we have finally got the ball rolling and we can post again. Thank you for being patient.

Firstly I’d like to touch on how inappropriate it is to name and shame your fellow team members publicly online: I’d like to clarify that the rant posted at the link found here contains heavily misleading information. Particularly regarding Jake, who is a member of our team and most importantly, acting director. Jake has been the main push in terms of production for our group in the past few weeks. He is probably the only member to of achieved what he said he would, in the time frame that he allocated himself. I’m dumbfounded by how hypocritical the post was.

Production

So we aren’t up to schedule, but as of today, majority of our group’s morale is up a few notches, after a shakey week or two. The production didn’t really begin until last week, which I believe means 2 weeks got lost somewhere. One possibly due to the storyboard project. Today was possibly the most productive day of all so far, with all 5 members in the studio, 4 of which until 9pm.

Essentially these are the production elements which need to be done, and their current stage to date:

Animation (almost complete)
Backgrounds (complete)
Sound Effects (still pending)
Colouring (has begun)

With only until Friday to finish the project, things are looking tight to say the least. It was inevitable that there would be last second decisions, as well as requested changes from those in charge. Those who were present discussed these changes. They include, but are not limited to:

Only animating at 12 frames per second
Animating only using Adobe Flash, rather than hand-drawing
Heavier use of silhouettes

I think all this is what really concerned our group, but I think after all the doubting , we were left pleasantly surprised with what some of us can achieve in a short time frame.

Jake’s backgrounds were practically finished before animation had even begun, so we quickly had an idea of what to work with. I had initially hoped to be involved with the background painting, but for consistency I was happy for Jake to take it. There was quite clearly plenty for all of us to get on with anyway, so there was no reason for any of us to complain they had nothing to do.

A Quick Scene Analysis

A scene with a character in would probably of been more interesting for you to read about, but I’m afraid you’re stuck with my scene.

Below you can see a frame from my sequence. The blue lining is my quick underlaying sketch, which I would do for every frame in the sequence in order to get the timing of the animation right.

Rough Up In Adobe Flash

After going over the blue line sketch with a finer black line, the frame is exported from Flash as a .jpeg image file. The exported image dimensions must be the same as the document size, also bear in mind that any hidden layers will show through in the exported image. Not only is that undesired, if the hidden layers breach your document border it will also distort your exported images dimensions.

Simple Colouring

Above you can see the frame after colouring. I used simple brush strokes and a few custom brushes for it. It was hard to decide how much detail to put in, since it would need to be repeated for every frame. This sequence has about 25 different frames. Remember, we are playing for time here. They need to be fairly quick to produce.

Jake's Background

Above you can see Jake’s foreground / background for this scene. Once the bulldozer frames are complete, they are imported here between the 2 layers in Photoshop. You may of noticed the actual bulldozer is absent. This will be added at a later stage.

Tread / Background Combo

This Coming Week

Before the end of this week we need to complete the animation, colour every single frame and compose all the scenes together in post production. The sound effects also need to be dealt with eventually. The timing we discovered today was off on a few scenes, but hopefully a few minor cuts here and there will sort that out. No need to extend the audio. It is going to be a tense week for some of us animators.

Project Hayle: The Beginning
Project Hayle: The End

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