Christmas in gatorland

The semester is over and I'm done with college foreverrr. Gatordog has come a looong long way, but it's still got a lot of work to be done before its safe to say its complete. I've got a fully animated workreel done, with some rough foley put in, and i'm going to be spending the next few months perfecting animation and then moving on to full color!

I'm really hoping I can get some sort of funding, because while i was doing my crummy sound myself, I realized I might need help from someone with actual experience doing music for it to work out.

Other than that.. taking a christmas break, then back to work! im excited, it feels so weird not doing anything after working from the second i woke up til i went to bed for so long.

22 days and counting

HOLY SMOKES!

its finally almost overrrr, Gatordog is almost completely done as far as animation goes, which is good. Going to do layouts over thanksgiving break and hopefully some more clean up.

holy smokes

the days are flying by fast, and i've still got a lot to do!

Working on the shot i've been putting off for almost a year now (many tries, many fails) all seems well SO far, but im sure tomorrow i'll barf looking at it. I'm finally working on inbetweening everything, and starting a hefty pile to go to tie down/clean up. Im not as worried about clean up now as before, because i've been talking to a lot of underclassmen about helping me with all of that so i can get it cleaned up and colored quickly after I graduate.

oh gatordog, will you ever get finished!?

Why yes, yes you shall C:

aaaanimation

You know that awkward time when you're trying to get back into a good flow of animating, but it never quite goes as smoothly as you'd like? Thats where im at now. Seems like everything is just taking forever without any real decent results (Aside from one of the shots). I'll get back into it soon, though. And at least I actually animated for some of the summer so i'm not toooo bad. i'll have stuff to post soon!

Boards

I whipped up new boards a week or so ago to make a new animatic with, the final boards (this, for some reason, is an older copy and a few board have since been removed) and animatic have been finalized and I start animating today :)

The game plan is in motion, I think I've got it down to the bare bones story plus some extra gags that I can easily remove if time gets a little tight later on.

Soo Yep. Gatordog. Its gonna happen.

hello update

S'been awhile, hasn't it??

alriiighty, so, school is back in session, i'm facing my final semester here at CCS, I've been pumped up and inspired from my recent visit to the Ottawa International Film fest and the last time you saw any animatic/shots from Gatordog have probably been removed or improved upon. The film just had its last final touch ups, and now I can finally get to animating. Unfortunately, the film wont be colored by the end of the semester (so by mid december) but assuming that it'll be animated as amazingly as i hope it will be, i'll definitely be working after graduation to fully complete it.

Sooo, whew. Grind time is in full effect, I have a loooot of animating to get done in the next 3 months!!!



here, have a froggy, a color test for the film.

Gatordog: The game

A few times in class we've all spoken about how to make marketable merchandise for our senior films and characters, well check this out! Gatordog the video game! haha.
I was surprised today on Deviantart with these images, someone had been inspired by Gatorgirl's model sheet and decided to try modeling her in Blender! Pretty cool huh? I asked if they were going to do one for Gatordog, and it looks like they want to give it a shot!






So thanks to Saeblundr For making a cool little model :)


In normal Gatornews, production has picked back up after a particularly slow last two weeks due to spring break and a nasty cold. The goal of the semester is to get everything roughed out (and hopefully more than that, because i'd really like to include all the shots I temporarily cut from the film.)

I hate having to upload stuff to youtube to post so hopefully i can just load this to blogger, but heres some rough keys for the shot where gatordog scrambles up onto the raft to get at the pie.



Suuure okay, it can be severely red tinted and laggy.

Scarfy Sidetrack!

A few of you may know about how over the course of the entire summer i had planned on doing my senior film about Scarfy, the poor disfigured goblin character I have, and then a week before school started i was randomly inspired with my current gatordog idea.

WELL. Awhile back i ordered a doll of Scarfy for an obscure amount of money from a very talented doll artist over on Deviantart (you can check her out HERE)
And she's just sent me this update, which has completely rekindled my excitement to see Scarfy completed!




I was originally going to get a doll of Gatordog, but as far as her style goes we both agreed Scarfy would probably look a lot cooler.

Anyways.. just wanted to share my excitement, i'll have some pencil tests up soon once Youtube stops being a turd and turning all my submissions red!!!

UPDATEEEEEE: Just got this new pic of scarfy, he looks so freakin SNUGGLY!






ALSO, I've been slowly trying to update my porfolio if anyone is interested! Scarfy has a page to himself if you want to at least check him out. Gotta try and get my Demo reel worked out to turn in tomorrow. DX

Click for Portfolio!

Cut 'Em Up

I found a little sketchbook and a cool pen the other day. C:

SO..
Everyone seems to be making cuts, it was suggested i do the same.
People think i should cut the whole chicken/pie scene, but i rather like that one, and instead i think i going to leave out the whole intro scene since it really doesnt have anything to do with the characters or story. That and some other small shots here and there are going to be ditched out for a shorter film. Although i do have an extra semester, so I feel like it's still technically doable..

Anyways.. finished a whole shot finally, cleaned up and (almost) colored, once i relearn how to do the batch capture thing. Cleaning up in photoshop is working a lot better for me than on paper, but I might give flash a try next because it also took forever and a half to do it in photoshop.

I've also slightly tweaked the character design? I know right, wth am i doing XD
Not a drastic change, i ended up drawing Gatordog a little differently for one shot and i really like it a lot, adds way more character just to the drawings alone. Gatorgirl hasnt reaaally changed, but I'm still trying to get used to drawing and animating people, its so hard!

Gator and the Frog

I'm planning to start working on the frog scene, which will be nice to get out of the way since its a pretty big shot. Im a little concerned about the design for the frog though, in the animatic his actions bring character to him, but overall hes a little wonky. I did a few sketches but they havent varied far from the original design so I might have to do a little more digging.. Did anyone like the original frog design as is? Or have any suggestions? The frog doesnt ever really move from that front view in the shot.

GatorBackgrounds

You know, this whole doing the entire film by yourself thing really makes you get a sense of what part of production you're good at, okay and, and just flat out hate.

I've been poking around at the backgrounds lately. I had wanted to get most of them at least fleshed out over break but the whole laptop death sort of wrecked that idea. I was hoping to do them in more of a.. beautifully illustrated Disney style, LOL. But that would end up being way too much work, especially since background paintings arent my forte.

I'm still fiddling around with styles right now, I need to find a way to be able to do them fairly quickly while still looking decent, this is especially hard because I have to do them at such a large scale so the quality isn't lost, a lesson well learned from Gladiator.

I did a quick mockup with Gatorgirl actually in the image this time, to get a better feel for her colors as well. At this scale it looks alright, each is a different style I considered, now I'm thinking about taking it even more simple and panterly.





Wow, blogger destroys the quality of images.

Work reel

*copied from youtube*
Okay.. so there are a few glitchy parts from my last save, and since my recent laptop crash i havent had access to after effects to fix them, so hopefully you can just deal with it. :)
I just wanted to upload something more recent since people have actually been looking at the old Gatordog animatics, even though thats totally going to ruin the surprise!

I've taken out most/all the dialogue since it wasnt really needed, and i've added in some of the rough animation I did this semester. Needless to say, i have to kick it into high gear if im ever going to finish!

I've also tweaked/changed/added some shots, which wont be display in the workreel until i actually animate them. Just some minor things to hopefully strengthen some scenes.

Winter Break Bummer

This winter break has been terrible! My macbook pro decided to die on me, leaving me relatively computerless the whole break. But hey, i can get it fixed right? Guess again! Although it was under warranty, apple supposedly found water damage to the motherboard, despite my having never spilled anything on my laptop, and despite the fact that since the day I got it it's had a rubber protective covering over the keyboard just to avoid issues like this.
So unless I want to dish out 1,400$ for a new motherboard, my old laptop is gone to the grave (which hopefully means i can sell it for parts on ebay or something.) I just got it back today.

My roommate has an old macbook, which hes letting me borrow for the time being, but it's got no programs or anything on it. And luckily it seems like i was able to get most of my files off my old harddrive.

But now break is almost over! And the production of Gatordog can resume.. on this tiny poopy little laptop.

So here, have something fun to look at for having to read all my whiny ranting.