Category: A moment in the sun

A comedic animated short I started working on in April 2014. Currently in pre-production.

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A moment in the sun Journals Stuff I made

Robots and bus stops

I won’t lie – 11 to 17 December 2016 was rife with distractions. Rife. Like the English actor. In order of distractiness they were: Oculus Touch controllers; a not-very-good banjo ukulele; 14-year-old video footage that loads into Blender without extra conversion; and lovely relaxing warm weather. But I still got a few things done!

I’ve got a rough draft of 3D visuals on a stinger shot which takes place at a majestic bus stop. I’m already considering ways of re-doing it to make it funnier, including a poster instructing Gronky not to bury the bus stop.

Bus stop (without signage which I haven’t done yet)

In my head, Gronky’s compulsion to bury things is building up to a backstory where he’s been sent to the desert to bury things and mark where they are… possibly even created to bury things and mark where they are. Not that it needs to be part of the story – it’s vague sub-text and only makes Gronky compulsive about burying things and putting little flags next to them. Maybe I’ll explore Gronky’s situation more in a later story.

I’ve also built the layout version of the robot. It’s a bit crap and low poly at the moment, but it should be fine for layout with a couple more tweaks (like a Floor constraint on the mono-leg). Here’s a sneak peek of the robot flying around.

Robot fly!

 

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A moment in the sun Journals Stuff I made

Stories, shovels and scene-referred display

The shovel in all its glory.

It feels like I didn’t get a lot done this week of 4 to 10 December 2016, but gut feelings are often self-deceiving lies – I got many things done. 🙂

As of Sunday evening, I have four A4 sheets of thumbnails telling a simpler, shorter  story than before. The only extra bit I’ve added since Sunday is a new stinger ending, recycled from an abandoned version of Sombrero that’s about a year old and the version of AMITS I abandoned just before that – except now they’re mixed up together. Yay bus stop!

I’ve been trying to pin down the exact design of the robot as well. It’s tricky. Rather than stay stuck, I created a military shovel for Gronky. Here’s a gallery of renders of the proud new shovel owner.

Why more than one render? The super cool thing this month in the Blenderverse is Troy Sobotka‘s nifty filmic LUTs. Read this for more info on why it matters. Big shout out to Troy for creating the filmic LUTs and evangelising them like a boss!

The Cycles materials in the render are all temporary placeholders, but the wider dynamic range is very welcome. Check out #filmic_blender on Twitter for better examples.

To finish up this week, here is the shovel in “pick mode” tumbling through the air thanks to a rotation pivoting system I rigged into it. Look out! 😀

Shovel FLY!
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A moment in the sun Journals Stuff I made

When fun turns to humdrum, add a robot

Roughly by the middle of 27 November to 3 December 2016, the project had reached a crisis point. After a month of rewriting, tinkering and procrastination on “Sombrero” since Blender Conference 2016, progress had ground to a halt. I’d completely lost confidence that I could deliver “Sombrero” next year – injuries, stress from the office job and family-related stuff are already pain points in my life, and I didn’t want Pointy and Gronky standing in the same queue bringing me down.

After about twelve months of development, I’ve shelved “Sombrero”.

2016-12-03-baai-hatI rethought things with the new central notion that this project is meant to be a fun and fulfilling use of my spare time. and I want a movie to show for it next year. So on Wednesday I downscoped the project to tell a shorter, funner and funnier story.

There’s a lot of fun to work with already. Gronky and his playful antics are already fun. The consequences of Pointy’s characteristic lack of forethought should also be fun. But that bloody hat just wasn’t bringing the fun.

So now there’s a robot. It’s a very helpful robot – at least, it’s trying to be helpful…

The new story is much shorter. I’m retaining the characters as is and snatching up fun ideas from previous rewrites and generally avoiding the foul Gordian Knot of character motivation and story logic that comes with sustaining a longer film, so AMITS is back to being short and sweet and weird and funny, like it should be.

So it’s a fond but possibly overdue goodbye to “A moment in the Sun: Sombrero”, and a warm hello to “A moment in the Sun: Robot”. 🙂

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A moment in the sun Journals Stuff I made

Props to the props

That was 18 to 26 November 2016 – a slow week. There was a family emergency from the previous Saturday to recover from. The weather turned properly summery (37C today) which means taking it nice and easy. The characters are somewhat in flux and Pointy is still having his identity crisis. But let’s ignore that little blue ham for a second.

There’s a few shots in the old reel where Gronky is digging with his hands. Placeholder dirt is being thrown into the air behind him. During the review sessions at Blender Conference 2016, more than one person asked “What’s he doing? Is he casting a spell or something?” – what do you think?

Gronky digs
Behold, the mystery of the metaball particle system

It hit me this week that I’m not using props to communicate intent very much. If Gronky goes to dig then surely he should pull out a shovel – that way people instantly know what he’s doing. And if he pulls a shovel out of malletspace, all the better to say what kind of character he is and what kind of universe the movie takes place in.

There’s effort involved in making a prop like a folding shovel, but if it means a less confused audience, it’s worth it. It’s also a welcome respite from the more open-ended task of rewriting.

And I thought, well, if Gronky’s going to carry a shovel around with him, I want him to have The Best Shovel Ever. If you haven’t heard of the Chinese Military Shovel, multifunction tool of Internet legend, you’re in for a treat. 🙂

I’ve even got an actual Chinese Military Shovel here to reference for modelling. Spiders have laid eggs in the spade bit but other than that it’s fine.

See you again next week!

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A moment in the sun Journals Stuff I made

Stoppity starty stoppy start

It’s been 13 to 19 November 2016. Between inhaling large chunks of “Independent Animation” and settling back in at the ol’ day job, it’s been a week of rewriting, retooling and experimenting.

I restated the story beats and compiled a shot list early in the week. For an attempt to condense the film and cut the fat, It still felt too much like reshuffling what was there instead of compressing it. I expected something much more streamlined – less shots, less pauses in the action, less to do. After that early misstep, it turned into a rewrite week where I zeroed in specifically on issues of character motivation and pacing.

The task before me is to condense and arrange the events of the story to get the right tone, pacing, character interaction and comedy. It is very tricky. I’ve settled into the groove of rewriting in passes, seeing what I like and most importantly making no assumptions that any new rewrite will be The One.

I’ve found that the trick is to have a specific problem to solve (e.g. solving lumpy pacing by spreading out the introduction and revelation of certain things), and to not to get desperately attached to anything like thinking “YES! THIS will be the one where everything will finally come together!” before I’ve even started that draft.

Unfortunately the rapidly changing requirements of the story has meant that poor old Pointy’s had a bit of an identity crisis, shifting from self-proclaimed Zen master to inexplicably (but consistently) angry little man and many steps inbetween. Hopefully the coming week will be kinder for everyone. 🙂