Video Reference

Okay, here is Salem as the ringmaster and he even made the hat. What a sport!



Untitled from 2DANM8R and Vimeo.



Untitled from 2DANM8R and Vimeo.



Shot 5 Video Reference from 2DANM8R and Vimeo.



Shot 7 Video Reference from 2DANM8R and Vimeo.



Shot 8 Video Reference from 2DANM8R and Vimeo.

Shot Breakdowns

So I finally got around to filling out those excel sheets. Doing this really gave me a sense of how much work we really have to put into this thing to finish it. It's quite a bit!! I didn't even fill in the sections for time projections, mainly because I have absolutely no idea how long it's going to take us to go through each shot since we're all working on this "part time". But I think we can do it. We just have to be smart about deviding up the work...Probably something we should take care of in the next meeting. Now that our shots are all locked down, we can assign key animators and assistants for each shot/character.

Model Sheets (Latest Update)

Shot Planning (Shot#2)

-Denny, when doing the layout for this shot, make sure to print this out and use the same HORIZON line and V.P.
...Ignore the blue lines...they're only for the character.



-Trung, Ed suggested we shoot reference for this shot...I think that's a good idea.

layout

This is test layout design I've been working on.

Say and I talked about it last week, and we thought instead of a guy sleeping on a wooden post, a small mouse (or rat) would be better.

One Man Band

Fire!!!

Fire test...

Untitled from kungfu hampster and Vimeo.

This is a test Hanna and I did in flash for the fire ring. I did the initial pass and Hanna did the inbetweening and the cleanup.

Some stuff that Bonnie sent me a while ago...

Magician Pencil Test

Hey guys. I started working on a rough animation test for the magician. I wasn't sure if it's really where we want to go with him since he is not one of the main characters. A cyclical animation might be better. Anyway, I figure I give it a shot just to get the animation juices flowing again.

Here are some things that came to mind while I was working on it and that we should probably have settled by monday or really soon:

Who is animating what?
What is each character doing at the end?
Which characters will have limited animation?
Which ones will have cycles?
How many frames do we have to work with for each character?

I'm sure there is more stuff we need to figure out as well. November is creeping up!!



Rough magician Test from 2DANM8R and Vimeo.

Welcoming Denny and Say on the project!

Denny and Say have officially joined the team as our layout guys (girls). They've both joined the blog and I gave them an overview of the project earlyer today. We also went through the animatic with salem and picked out all the main shots from his 3D model. I'll post those at the bottom of this post. Any layout inquiries from this point on should go through the layout team.

If everyone's cool with the shots we picked out, we can make large printouts of those and start animating on top of them while the layouts are being done.

Animatic...

Well, here's a finalized animatic...let me know what u think!



Untitled from kungfu hampster and Vimeo.

Idea for stage and last shot

Julian's comment about the stage looking like its been "lived in" got me thinking. What if these performers did live in this stage? Traveling from town to town and putting on a show night after night after night. It would then make sense why they look so tired in the establishing shot. I thought it would be cool if the stage was part of there traveling freak show caravan like they did in the old west, so I sketched up a rough of what it might look like. And instead of zooming in the camera, the camera can zoom out to reveal all the characters already in position and doing their act. What do you guys think?



With possible character positions:

Stage views

Here's some ideas for the stage.

Rough Layout for Shot 2

Here is the same layout with possible positions of the characters:

3D Stage set

Worked on a few simple 3D layouts of the stage. i hoped i could get more feedback by e-mail, but deu to the Santa Cruz trip we had this weekend, i guess i didnt get enogh PC time :S
but hopefully what i have now would still help :)

see u all monday

Pulling a rabbit out of a hat?

Could we have the bearded ballerina step out of the magician's hat? Check out "Emile" athttp://www.gobelins.fr/galerie/animation/gen2007-06-Emile.htm
Also the ratio of white to color might be a source of inspiration for the finalie
B

Reference Material

This is from the musical Cabaret. I thought it would be good to see for lighting and shadows with stage lights and spotlights.

In the first video, I like the way the Emcee enters on stage with the spotlight already on and how it slowly reveals him as walks toward the front of the stage. Good Stuff.



In the second video, I like the staging of the performers. Notice how the band members are on platforms behind the dancers and singers. Maybe we can use this trick for the secondary characters who will have limited animation. Some of the camera movements and angles were nice in this one too. I also like the music. Very jazzy, funky, etc.

Rough Layout for Shot 1

By the way, have we decided what character was going to be in the rafters?

Rough Character Lineup

So here's our final lineup...woohoo!!


Just tried to do a rough representation of all the characters in relation to one another. I think we made a great selection! Just looking at all the silhouettes I can tell it's going to look really cool seeing them all up on the stage....Nice variety of shapes and sizes.

More 3D Reference

Layout and Color Inspiration

I stumbled upon Uli Meyer Studios via Cartoon Brew and found these really cool screenshots of a Flash short that they did. I love the style, colors, and compositions of the layout and thought it might be a cool way to go with our project. The characters in their short are also painted flat which kind of blends them in with the background, but I think if we go with a sketchier line quality with our characters and keep the layouts flat, we might be able to accomplish a unique style.