‘Bear’ Colour Week 1

If you’ve been keeping up with these updates, then you will know that last week I finally finished the outlines and made a start on the colouring. This week I managed to colour 35 shots in full, as well as making a solid start on the background designs. So all in all I made good progress this week. I know last week I stated that I’d do a post on the backgrounds, but I just wanted to make double-y sure that the style I have chosen is the route I want to go down, before fully committing to it. As far as I’m concerned it is, but I’m just mulling it over in my head a little more just incase I have some last minute thoughts or inspiration! So do expect a post on that soon, but just not right now!

To be honest there’s not much else interesting to report on how it’s all going, so just going to casually manifest/ put it out ‘there’ that after this short I want to direct a rotoscoped feature. I guess I’ll see you in the background style post…

Here’s an image of the most recent colour swatch (has developed a fair bit since last week):

'Bear' Colour Style

Deciding on the colour style for ‘Bear’ was a fairly straightforward process, as while I was creating the outlines, in the back of my mind I was always thinking of how to colour it. Before the animating began and even in my initial ideas phase for this film before it was even a script, I also had a quite strong idea of how I wanted it to look.

I guess this is because I’m a fairly visual thinker and when I have a story idea or concept, I usually have some imagery alongside that, whether that be in my head or down on paper. It’s also come from a development of my style in the work I create outside of my films, such as the short clips you read about on this very blog or see on my Instagram.

Not only this, but I had to bear (no pun intended) in mind that there’s a fair amount of shots to colour in a limited time with a crew of just me, so I can’t be overly complex with my designs or I’ll never manage to finish the film! Despite this, I wanted to move away from block colour, like in my previous film ‘Nothing New’ (and a lot of my other short films) as to say that I have developed as an animator/ artist, while still wanting the workload to be manageable.

So, I bet you’re wondering what style I ended up going for? Well look no further…

As you can see, I have used block colour for the most part of it, though have added some shading on the character to give it a little something extra. I did this using EbSynth. I also textured the bear head. I would have loved to be afforded the time to have textured the whole thing because I’m a sucker for the textured look, but I feel having the bear head as the only thing which is textured makes it stand out (which it should do), plus gives a sense of fur. So I’m totally cool with the decision to texture only one element.

I coloured the character in TVPaint using the CTG layers, which is a fairly quick process- at least on the shots where he isn’t moving around too much! In just over one day, I managed to colour and texture 25 shots, which I was super happy about. I feel the EbSynth shading part will take a little longer due to the amount of touch up which I’m anticipating, but if I colour the rest of the shots at a similar rate, the timescale shouldn’t be a problem. I considered leaving the shading out due to time, but I do think it adds something to the character, plus really shows development in my work which for me is important to display in this film. I textured the head in TVPaint as well, using the brush ‘Acrylic 4’- which gave me the look I was after. Even though there are probably ‘better’ brushes elsewhere such as Photoshop and Procreate, I wanted to keep everything in TVPaint as for the life of me I can’t stand how non-specific animation programs have their weird way of animating- it feels really unintuitive and I honestly can’t get my head around how it’s done! I love the way programs built for animation make sense such as TVPaint and Callipeg, though the latter unfortunately lacks in brush options. The TVPaint brushes are more than sufficient for my needs and I know I can either make some or purchase some, should I need.

Below is a screen grab of the swatch I’ve created for my main character.

I went for a fairly muted/ desaturated palette, as I felt it would suit the tone of the film more than using bright/ vibrant colours would. Without giving away any of the narrative, the story isn’t exactly a super happy one, so using fluorescent colours definitely didn’t suit! I’m really happy with the colours I’ve chosen, after a little trial and error to get something which works.

This week will mostly be colour/ texture work, though I’m going to make a start on background designs too, due to not being able to colour some shots without a background- so look out for that post in the next few days…

Outlines Completion Post!!

Here it is- the moment we’ve all been waiting for! THE OUTLINES ARE NOW COMPLETE!! Wow. Can’t believe I’m saying this and to be honest, at some points I really didn’t think it would happen. But it has and I’m mega proud of what I’ve achieved so far.

After a second post-animation vigorous editing process (yes, some shots I animated needed to be cut to tell the story better) I watched the outlines version of the film ‘in full’ and I actually quite like it. It tells the story I set out to tell and I think it’s a nice, compact film. If a little odd!

Despite this, there is some animation I would like to touch up. Some of the shots I completed nearer the start of the project need a little more work, due to not having fully established the style to extent the later shots were completed. Over the course of animating the outlines, I have improved my animation immensely and looking back now, there are some shots I’m not quite happy with, along with a few inconsistencies. I appreciate I don’t have the time to go back into each one and alter all of them so I need to be slightly selective, though there are some which are a ‘definite’. I think I’ll make a couple of lists for this: one for the ones which are important to rework and another list for if I get some time, it’ll be nice to rework… So that’s where I’m at currently!

Even though finishing the outlines is a massive step/ milestone, in no way does that mean it’s plain sailing from here: it isn’t. So I will not be taking my foot off the gas until I’m well underway in the colouring process and therefore will have more of an idea how long the rest of it might take.

The next step now is working out the colouring and the background styles. I hope I’ll be able to have another little clip to be able to share at some point next week- it will be nice to put something out in celebration of this landmark, so that’s something to look forward to…

Here’s the screen grab of the outlines timeline:

And here’s a couple of pictures of my notebook I use to track the time of each shot/ my days work. Maybe one day I’ll add the whole thing up to see exactly how long the outlines took- but I think I’m going to finish the film first!!

Will do another post when I’ve sorted the colouring styles- catch you then!

xo

'Bear' Animation Week 13

Back on it this week in full force! As far as metrics are concerned I completed 12 shots- I honestly thought I’d have done it this week, but animation is always slower than you think/ want, so I haven’t quite got there- but almost! Really almost, almost! You’ll definitely hear about it on here when I have completed the outlines. In fact, I think everyone will hear about it everywhere! Let’s hope I can write that blog post in a couple of days…

In other news, there was another ‘MAF Presents’ #MAFPresents screening this week, held at the wonderful Chapeltown Picture House in Manchester. These are monthly short film screenings and networking events run by Manchester Animation Festival and are well worth checking out. The selection of shorts they select are always a treat and it’s brilliant to be in a room full of other North West based animators/ animation fans. Keep an eye on their socials/ website for more details.

xo

'Bear' Animation Week 12

If I’m being totally honest, this week hasn’t been the best for animating on this project- there’s been quite a few things going on in my life (animation aside), which unfortunately slowed my progress somewhat. Despite this, counting up the completed shots now, I managed to complete 11 in full which on paper doesn’t sound all that bad. I thought I’d only completed around three or something!!

With the 11 shots added to the timeline, it has really bulked it out and there are only a few sequences left to complete now. With making slow progress in the week, I thought the timeline wouldn’t have seemed so full, but having looked at it yesterday and this morning, it is encouraging to see and has given me a well needed confidence boost going into next week.

For the first time since starting animating, I also watched the film in full- just out of curiosity really and to check whether it looked ‘alright’. I thought it looked great, plus it felt like a reward to see my hard work sequenced up. There are a few scenes I feel I need to swap round to make the story more impactful, but on the whole I am quite pleased. I can’t wait to start creating the backgrounds and to colour it.

Nearly there Flora, keep it up!!