I Wish I Was There bts #3

This will be the last clip in this mini ‘making of’ series for my short film, or at least for now. This is one I actually shot back in my hometown of Worcester, where I was able to source a community centre for some of the wider/ full length/ longer shots, which I didn’t have the space to film round my house:

Thanks to my mum for sorting the location out in this instance! Luckily the community centre had a corridor next to the main room, which was perfect for this shot. I could have shot it in the main hall, but because shooting in an actual corridor would provide for a better reference when it came to drawing the background, I opted to shoot it there.

…so I went with that. The background took a fair amount of work for this one, so I’ll add in a few pics of the process it went through. The first version was quite faithful to the actual corridor:

Oh yeah, and if you’re not familiar with my way of working, I tend to do all my backgrounds with whacky colours when I’m creating the mattes in Photoshop. This is so each panel is clear and so I know what’s what for when I finish them off in TVPaint. And also so that the colours aren’t too similar to final colour palette, or I’ll be lost when I’m designing it.

Despite being very similar to the corridor I filmed in, the background just did not look right. It irked me for the longest time, before deciding it needed some tough love and re-doing altogether. So I went back to drawing board and sketched out a version I much preferred:

And here’s what it looked like in ‘neat’, before finalising it:

And the final background image:

I’m so pleased I went through this process and didn’t settle for something I wasn’t happy with and that didn’t look very good. The finished background is one I’m actually pretty proud of, because perspective shots like this are not easy! Or at least not for me anyway… And I love the aesthetic of it.

It’s actually been quite fun revisiting these shots from my film and digging out a few behind the scenes bits to show on here. It’s also been quite inspiring for me- I’ve not animated now for almost a full year and coming back to this project has really got that side of my brain excited again. I am still keeping very creative- I’ve been doing a lot more ‘art’ in the more traditional sense of late (I’ll likely stick some of that in here at some point), plus working on a really cool crochet garment I’m pretty hyped about, but there’s nowt like just sitting and animating is there?!

In terms of animation, I have though been busy working on my feature treatment/ pitch deck these last few months, as I expect I’ve already alluded to several times in this blog, though unfortunately that is on hold for the time being due to personal circumstances. So once I’m ready to get to work on that again, I’m sure test shots/ storyboarding images will come flooding out of me. That’s kind of a weird way of putting it, but whatevs!

And lastly, I have 2 BIG screening announcements to make regarding my film, so as soon as the embargo has been lifted on those, you will be first to hear!! Exciting times ahead… xo

ps. apologies if the grammar etc is all over the place in this one. I'm tired af because slept terribly last night, but wanted to get this post out today regardless

I Wish I Was There bts #2

Here’s the second clip in the ‘making of’ videos I’m posting this month:

So, yep, this blank wall in my bedroom did indeed become an airport departures lounge! I wrote about it in more detail in this post so I won’t repeat myself here, but this one went through a fair amount of iterations in terms of the location (train first, then a taxi), before settling on the airport setting.

I don’t have a load more behind the scenes goodies from this shot unfortunately in terms of extra imagery such as sketches or anything, but I found this mockup reference I created for the background:

…As well as this screen grab from the animatic:

Which was still using the original train setting- though I get that you can’t really tell from this shot, as there’s not much going on outside of the character! But suppose it’s nice to show anyway. I love seeing the progress of the storyboard/ initial sketches through to the finished piece, so I’m guessing I won’t be the only person who enjoys seeing that side of things... xo

I Wish I Was There bts #1

Morning! As it’s been over 7 months since finishing my short ‘I Wish I Was There’, I thought it was high time that I shared some behind the scenes footage- don’t ya think? I’ll be rolling 3 clips out over the next 3 weeks, so keep an eye out on here for those.

Besides writing about screening selections etc, I’ve not really put much on here about my film since it was finished, but over half a year on, it’s nice to revisit it a little and show some of the workings behind the final piece. Maybe these extra clips might even tempt you to go check it out at an upcoming screening if you haven’t already done so. Who knows…

There’s also a lot more of a detailed deep dive into the ‘making of’, on my weekly updates I did on here throughout the whole process of creating the film. You can see those if you click HERE (scroll past all the screening selection stuff and then you’ll get to all the relevant juicy bits). Also, if you’re lost at any point, I wrote a dedicated post about rotoscoping 7 years ago, which you can see HERE, where I explain what it is and how I use it etc. Granted some of the links might not work anymore because I’ve changed IG handles and that, but the essence of the write up still stands. Maybe I should get round to changing those links.

I filmed a lot of the reference material of the film around my house and this first BTS clip illustrates that. So yes, I was lay on a sun lounger in my front room, dressed in a hospital gown, surrounded by skateboards in the depths of December 2024!

The process is basically outlines first, which I drew by hand frame by frame (side note: I DO NOT use AI in my work, just to clear that up. Generative AI can get to f*ck), using the reference material as a guide:

Then colour:

Lastly, I draw in the background. This one went through a few stages before settling on the final idea. As it was a dream sequence, I eventually decided I wanted a sort of surreal/ impressionistic background, harking back to the holiday setting the film is in, as opposed to the more literal representations of a hospital I had for the first few iterations of this scene. The first image below is the one I ended up discarding.

Hope this has been an interesting little look into my process. See you in the next one xo