Progress!

Finally, an update!

Sorry about the late update on the project, everyone. 

I’m still revising the storyboards per Karen Lloyd’s suggestions.  I was sketching out the revisions on paper like before, but I’ve picked up the entire project and I’m dumping it in a storyboarding program I found.  I needed the storyboard program for the project I’m working with Stan Webb with.  That project is called Buffalo Force and you can check my personal blog for updates on that.  http://chaostoon.posterous.com.  Oh, and the official website for that is: http://www.buffaloforce.com  (Yes, it’s a totally Flash site, but it reminds me of the websites from the 90’s with the little cinema scenes playing as you watch.  Check it out!)  The program I found is working SO well, I decided to bring all my storyboarding projects into it.

I was going to download ToonBoom Storyboard, however the trial was too much for my laptop to handle, so I googled and found a program called Springboard.  It’s basic, clunky and limited… but it’s a godsend.  It’s super light, so my little crappy laptop can run it beautifully.  It supports pressure sensitivity, so it works with my Wacom Bamboo beautifully.  I can draw the boards in layers.  Add to that, you can sort your boards by Acts, Chapters and Scenes and it can even export your board in an animatic, complete with camera moves.  It’s MORE than what I need, it’s speeding up my progress (except the one time where a file got corrupted and I lost a TON of drawings I LOVED!!!  AAAAH!) and improving the look of the film.

So, I’m totally redoing the open sequence introducing Raincoat.  Another thing I did was finally take a look at Jamari’s actual school.  I loved the fact that I didn’t have to be the creepy dude walking around and staring at an elementary school.  I just opened Google Maps!  It gave me a good look at the front and a great wide shot of the back.   

The playground is HUGE and it slopes downhill.  I don’t like the layout of the area so, good thing this is animated…  I’m going to be very liberal with the placement of everything.  I will have the playground slope down like that though and have the kickball roll down the hill and rest next to the raincoat.  It will also allow the camera to get a nice shot of Raincoat rising over all the kids as he starts the rain.

Here’s some of the new boards.  I’m thinking it’s looking a LOT better than before.

I’ll keep you all informed.

Jamari Animated UPDATE!

YES!  An update to the Jamari Animated short film!  Did you guys miss me?  Well, life has insisted that I put my film down for a few months and take care of a few projects, logo design for a few businesses and create a video tribute to my grandfather for his church.  You can catch a play for play of what’s made me busy at my personal blog, Chaostoon.Posterous.com.

Actually, I should take a second and let you know… I’m planning on moving this production blog over to Posterous.  It’s easier to use, I can update through email (so, from my cell phone if need be, so that means more often), I can make the blog private for donors only (cool idea I got other Flash projects that were successful in fundraising) and all kinds of other cool stuff.  I’ll let you know when that happens…  probably when I start fundraising more actively.  OH!  And for right now, I’m not actively fundraising for the film so…  hold on for when I throw the big pre-production campaign, which should be very, very soon.

BUT…  Currently I am revising the storyboards for the film as per Karen Lloyd’s suggestions.  I’ve decided to change the story to give Raincoat a little backstory, connect the characters a little better and add more character development… and I’m putting the “deleted scene” back in because I think I can make it work better through Karen’s ideas and help.  I’m also going back through the boards and backing that camera up.

See?  I can back the camera up!

I’ve been roughing everything out.  Loose and rough and fast.  The boards aren’t going to TOO polished in the end… they’re just for me and my friends that will help animate…  but they are going to be clear enough for all of us to be on the same page and work AND for Karen to be able to critique.  Even pulled the lined paper back out.

The Raincoat character is now going to be a random kid who gets fused with an evil coat with the word “Wrath” stitched in it, suggesting that the coat is the physical form of the sin.  You know, from the 7 Deadly Sins.  It will attach to the kid kinda like the Venom symbiote attached to Peter Parker in Spider-Man, to give you an idea of how that will happen.

That way, when Jamari defeats Raincoat, he’s not defeating him personally or specifically.  He’s defeating the sin that held his friend captive.

So, totally redid the intro to the film.  Now, the kid finds the coat and plays with it, only for it to tighten around him, control his mind and give him the weather controlling powers.  I think it works a lot better and it fits in the theme of the film better.

I’ve also been working roughly with the posing of the characters for the boards.  Karen said that the boards needed start poses so the animators knew how to act the characters through the scene.  Well, I’m roughing that out before I compose the shots…  especially for the scenes with a lot of action or scenes that need effects.

I’m not sure I’m gonna hit the 8/17 deadline I gave myself…  but I’m working!  I’ll post again when I’ve got something more finished!  Cheers everyone!

BIG JAMARI UPDATE!

FINALLY!  The completely overdue blog post!  Sorry, life has been keeping me BUSY!  So, you get a SUPER LONG post!!

First up, my review of the fantastic call with Karen Lloyd about the storyboards.  The call was done with Skype.  Karen and I talked while she wrote notes on the boards live and I watched and took notes.  I’m sorry to say, the call was really one-sided because I was a literal SPONGE soaking in all the technical and story knowledge and furiously scratching down notes and thumbnails.  Karen apologized after because she thought she was talking so much…  No, no, I was positively dazzled… All I could do was mutter “okay” a couple of times, haha!  Sorry Karen, I’ll try to open my mouth next time.

Like I’ve said before, I have no formal storyboard training, so Karen spent a lot of time on technical do’s and don’ts.  We talked about how my boards are more like comics and less like storyboards.  Lots of it involved creating “start poses”, meaning creating a beginning pose for your characters in a scene and then creating a second pose.  This is so the animators know how the characters act through a scene.  Also, I need to back the camera up a LOT more and constantly re-establish where the characters are.  I also need to USE camera angles to tell the story.  I also need to allow camera space for all the action in a scene.

We only had an hour for the call, but we did talk a little about story.  She didn’t get the Raincoat character.  She said she was more accepting of Jamari and suddenly having superpowers than Raincoat just standing there in the beginning and all of a sudden turns into a villain.  The audience is going to get confused. 

SERIOUS PROBLEM. 

So, I’m going to add a quick backstory to Raincoat.  I’m thinking that he is now going to be one of the kids in the playground and he finds a mysterious raincoat.  He tries it on for fun and it is too big for him.  It would then tighten around him to the point where he can’t take it off and gives him a negative attitude.  Cue the bullies and the recess rainout.  Then, in the conclusion, I can have Raincoat abandon the coat and the bad attitude it gave him and go back to playing.  I’m also going to establish that Jamari and Raincoat know each other early.  That will allow Raincoat to know that Jamari is allergic to peanuts later.  It also allows me to make this a personal mission for Jamari to save his friend from the coat.  I LOVE WORKING WITH STORY!  AAAH, its working better for me!  And I have TWO more calls with Karen to REALLY get this thing right.

Here’s a few pages of her revisions.  I love the big red marker.  It looks like authority.

So, I am revising the storyboards again.  I will keep you informed!

Second, fundraising for the film!

I finally set up an IndieGoGo page.  There’s a link for the site on the upper right side of the blog here.  For my Facebook Note section followers, I’ll put the link in the comments.  Like I said in the last post, I need to raise funds to get the computer I need to create this thing as well as ToonBoom Studio.  I’ve been talking to Sam Stroud (best photographer in town and big time fundraiser) about some things I can do to get the funds.  I’m going to have to use a Kickstarter page for it, for reasons I will explain in later posts.  But, I have my FIRST DONATION, and as per my IndieGoGo page:

Special thanks to Stephanie Hudson!  She donated the “Faith” level to the project, so she gets special thanks here, a credit in the film and an autographed DVD of the finished film.  I think I thanked her on the Facebook and Twitter too, for good measure.

But, I need to craft a fundraising video soon and during production I will post more stuff.

Lots of momentum here!  LOVING IT!

In other news, I need to spend more time on my GoAnimate stuff for my fans there.  The singer from my “Jingle Bells” music video, Natalie Brown, contacted me.  She loves the video, put it up on her Twitter and I’ll be working with her on another project down the road!  Time management, here I come.

Thanks for reading!  I’ll keep you posted, I PROMISE!!!!

IndieGoGo and Crowdfunding has Begun

Hi folks!

I have reached a very important point in creating this short film.  I can see the jump from pre-production to production right around the corner.  I can see that my current computer is aging and I need the benefits of Toonboom versus Flash.  Next week, I will be sending my storyboards for revisions.  To proceed, I’m gonna need a little help.

I have finally launched the IndieGoGo page for Jamari Animated.  You can find it here:

http://www.indiegogo.com/Jamari-Animated  

I will update the pitch clip and some other things soon enough.  Just wanted to get it up for now. 

The first goal is to replace my laptop.  I need a computer that has the processing power and proper video card to run Toonboom Animate Pro.   I need Toonboom Animate Pro specifically because it has the ability to create the effects I need for Raincoat’s superpowers and the weather changes that the story calls for.  It also has the ability to export in stereoscopic 3D (3D glasses).  It would speed up production DRAMATICALLY versus me trying to reproduce the effects in Flash and After Effects or Nuke (it would save money too).  Please check out the demo of the program here to see what I mean.   http://www.toonboom.com/products/animatepro/features.php

I tried to run the demo with my laptop to see if it could do it.  It promptly locked up.  So… gotta replace it.  I’m probably gonna use a site like TigerDirect.com get the most processing power I can for the money (Thanks Master Tom for the suggestion!) so the $1000 goal should handle the lion share of the cost.

The $1000 goal also does something else.  With my fiscal sponsorship with Fractured Atlas, once I raise the first $1000, I will be eligible to apply for grants, which will REALLY help.  I’ll be able to approach companies and other non-profits for help too.

After I hit the first goal, then I need to fundraise to get Toonboom itself and on from there as the needs arise.  There are fund levels there and you can get some cool stuff, including a credit in the film!  Let me know if those perks are cool enough, or if you have a suggestion for a perk.

It’s IndieGoGo, so even if you can’t support the film financially (there’s a $5 level!  Every little bit helps!), please Facebook or Twitter or promote with your social media.  You may know someone who knows someone that may want to help.  Thanks!

I’ll keep you informed as I get my storyboards revised by Karen next week.  I’m also working on two webshorts and I’ll let you know about those too!

The New Storyboards for Jamari Animated

It’s up everyone.  The revisions to the storyboards are online for you to review.  You can check them out below or on Hollywood Shorts’ Facebook page.

Jamari Storyboard Revision

Karen Lloyd told me that she could check them out at the end of the month.  Check back for updates on that!  It’s gonna be awesome for her to review it and rip it apart!

In other news, I didn’t win GoAnimate’s Creating for a Cause contest, but I did get a special mention on their blog.   Check it out, along with the winners.  Mine is the one all the way at the bottom.

You can see all my GoAnimate created webtoons online this weekend if you happen to be in Lynchburg.  I will join other local filmmakers for Riverviews Artspace’s first Open Projector Night and show work.  We only have 10 minutes so I’m giving it to my nephews cartoons, my Christmas video and my Creating for a Cause entry.  Stop by!  It’s Saturday night at 8pm in their brand spankin new screening room.

So, for now, I’m working on two new webtoons for GoAnimate;  another music video and a team up project with fellow user and GoAnimate favourite “Reddplague”.  I’ll keep you informed.

  

Oh, and sorry about the lack of video posts.  My computer is slowly dying.  I think I might need to revv up IndieGoGo and my fiscal sponsorship with Fractured Atlas and start fundraising!  I do need a copy of Toonboom too!  Do you like the story above?  Would you donate?  Even $5 helps!

Videos, videos and more videos!

Hello everyone!  Here’s yet another update on whats happening.

Before I start, I just want to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Amazement Square today!  They hosted the first film festival where I was a guest speaker and I am eternally grateful for that.  Have a GREAT celebration this weekend!

I hope you all like the new look for the blog.  I made it wider to host more high resolution drawings and videos and changed the look a bit.  This post, I’ve got a bunch of videos!

Check out this video first:

Watch live streaming video from chaostoon at livestream.com

I’m going to start creating my own Livestream show.  I wish I had visited the site and read the tutorial a long time ago, or I would have started using it when I animated that Dragon for GoAnimate.  I’m gonna start creating a “Making Of” series of videos for Jamari Animated and my web cartoons and just turning it on and welcoming anyone that just wants to stop by and watch me work.  I’ll keep the Facebook and Twitter updated with when I turn it on.

Now, check this video out:

From Word To Image Contest Winnah! from Karen J Lloyd on Vimeo.

I won the storyboarding book, From Word to Image by Marcie Begleiter on Karen Lloyd’s blog!  Yay!  Thank you Karen, Muk Muk and Margie!  Sorry about the Twitter stalking, Karen, but I’ve learned so much from your blog.  When I get done with thumbnailing these storyboards, I’m totally asking paying for your guidance and I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from Marcie’s book!

Okay, last video:

GoAnimate.com has launched a brand new contest this month in which entrants must promote a charity of their choice.  Of course, I created a video for Fractured Atlas.  I designed it to be a fun video that any member could use to embed in their blog or website to briefly talk about what Fractured Atlas is.  They could use it to introduce their fiscal sponsor or what have you.  As far as I can tell, it’s the first GoAnimate hosted cartoon to feature a character with real lip sync.  It was fun to make, even if I threw this together over a weekend.  Fractured Atlas liked it so much, they put it on their blog and Twitter.  Thanks Adam!  Of course, I put it everywhere, hee hee.  

The first part of qualifying to win is being among the top 4 in views.  At the time of this writing, I’m number 5.  Help a guy out and watch a few times?  No biggie if I don’t win though, the prize is a Wacom Intuos, and I really need a Cintiq, especially for my Livestream shows.  If I win, I’ll keep the Intuos and hand my trusty Wacom Bamboo down to Jamari.  I dunno though…  I really like my Bamboo… maybe I’ll give Jamari the Intuos, hee hee. 

Now, some thumbnails!  Here’s a random selection:

This technique of thumbnailing has really helped me.  It showed me that my film was way too heavy in backstory and setup in the front, so I’m simplifying the beginning and focusing on the middle and end.  Instead of having Jamari’s Bible powers materialize near the ending, I’m giving him those powers from the very beginning and simplifying how he uses them…  I’m getting rid of all the unnecessary flashy crap and just telling the story… not at the expense of the stereoscopic though, still planning that as I go.  I’m also redoing the ending and it is so much more satisfying and meaningful now.  Thanks again Karen!  I can’t wait for her to rip it all apart and help me make the story unbelievable!

I’ll keep you informed!

Storyboarding, a Successful Contest and Some Old (but cool!) News

Hello everyone!  Sorry for the long wait for the update.  I know you have been wondering what in the heck have I been doing!  Well, here’s the deal:

If you’ve been following my Twitter, you know that I’ve recently admitted a dirty little secret – I have no formal storyboarding training.  When it was time for me to take the class at SCAD, they weren’t offering the course that quarter, so I had to substitute it with another class.  Not that learning about comic strips with visiting artist Robb Armstrong wasn’t cool… but its not helping me now.

I did storyboard this thing out…  the next step is to take the storyboards and the audio from the actors and create a little movie called an animatic.  You do this to get an idea of how your movie is gonna look.  Well, I did that, and it’s not working for me…  not the whole thing anyway.  My friend Brian said he didn’t like the timing, so that’s what I thought the problem was.  So, I went back and reworked the timing over and over…  and it still didn’t work for me.  So I went back to my storyboards… and slowly remembered that I really don’t know enough of what I’m doing to fix what I’m feeling is wrong.  So, I did a Google search to see what I could learn online about storyboarding... and I found Karen Lloyd.

On her blog, she has a short series of posts where she critiques the storyboards of Aidan Casserly.  I learned SO MUCH from that.  My storyboards were similar to his in that they were more like comics than storyboards (thanks Robb).  She really showed me what I was doing wrong by proxy.  She also has a handy little series of posts about shots and WHY to use them.  AAAH, just what I needed!  So, I reached out to her on Twitter.  Hopefully, she’ll have the time to help me when she’s not as busy on Kid vs. Kat…  and that’s fine!  I’m having a BLAST digging back into my boards and they’re WORKING!  Between the knowledge from Tuck and Karen...  I think I'm gonna be alright.  -sigh of relief-

Here’s some of the thumbnails from going back to the storyboards and revising.  It will require some light re-recording from my actors, but I can probably do that in post-production, no problem.

Why am I thumbnailing on legal pads?  Well, there's something soothing about doodling on lined paper.  Reminds me of my childhood and doodling in class...  plus, they're just thumbnails.

If you are a storyboarder or indie animator, please check out Karen’s blog here.  It is SO worth it.

http://karenjlloyd.com/blog/

So, I will update you all on the story as it goes.  I’m working on it, Joe, I’m working on it…

Other updates: My first social media contest went GREAT!  I threw a contest for whoever used my pre-animated dragon and got the most views with it.  The winner was Juan Ramirez of Madrid, Spain.  You can see his winning entry and the other entrants here.  http://bit.ly/dragonchaos

Also, I forgot to mention in previous posts…  I was named a “Filmmaker to Watch in 2010” by Hollywood Shorts!  Yay!  Check out their article in LAist magazine about their African-American Filmmakers Celebration.  They said they were saving a spot for me next year!  OMG!

http://laist.com/2010/02/26/african_american_filmmakers_celebra.php

Looking forward to the OSCARS tonight!  C’mon Secret of Kells and Logorama!  I’m rooting for ya!