TMGA: Year One

Coming June 2013! The Many Great Adventures: Year One!

Since I'm somehow not busy enough with class work and film work and portfolio work... I'm gonna be starting up a new project soon! I'll be posting snippets here and there while I get things going.

Watercolor Experiment

I missed Saturday as I was spending the weekend with my boyfriend for our fourth anniversary. :]

Anyway, here's a mid-week update with some watercolor experiments I was doing for the film! I've been doing the backgrounds in Photoshop, but several months ago, my boyfriend recommended trying the dream world backgrounds as paintings. I finally decided to sit down and play with the idea a bit. Here are a few quick tests:

Animation~!

So here's a shot I finished the other day!

seq02 _sc12_CLEAN from Lis Savic on Vimeo.

Clean Up Comparisons

No animation today; been a hectic week.

However, I figured it might help to see some of the differences between what I am doing now, and the old animation. Please click to see larger drawings. Also, each pair was scanned with the exact same settings on a pegbar, so they are all direct comparisons.

First up, here's Ellie:
A drawing from oh, about a year ago I suppose, vs one from last week, using the new pj's design:

And here's some with Celeste:

And the Phoenix:

So you can see it's actually pretty different now! Obviously the designs have changed, but the drawings are also more solid and have more volume. I didn't actually realize how much better the new phoenix drawings are than the old ones until scanning them tonight!

Animation Update!

Two pencil tests for today!

The first is the clean up for the rough scene I posted last week. It's finally done! (I did make a few edits after watching this.) And yes, the phoenix does have a body, but adding an extra layer made it too dark to see the animation.
seq01_sc02_CLEAN from Lis Savic on Vimeo.


The second was actually finished earlier, but for some reason I didn't post it! Either way, it's here now. I will be making a small change to this scene and adding the new pajama details, but otherwise it's also good to go.
seq02_sc07_CLEAN from Lis Savic on Vimeo.

Drawing Dump!

Here's a mid-week drawing dump! I post a lot of stuff over on my other blog, including TMGA-related drawings. I thought I'd go ahead and post all of those here too, where they belong.

Animation Update!

Hey, it's animation!

seq01_sc02_20120718_rough from Lis Savic on Vimeo.

Here's the redux animation for seq01_sc02. I suppose it doesn't look too different than the original, which is in part due to more-or-less just tracing over the old drawings. The new drawings, however, incorporate the new character models and, overall, are better drawn.

I'd hoped to have more for today, but due to an injured shoulder, I've been unable to really sit and animate. Hopefully that'll all be straightened out, so that next week there will be more!

Drawing!

Well, first here's a photo of a clean-up scene I'm working on. It's a MUCH better drawing than the old one. (Which, apparently, has vanished from my project folder, so I'll have to update with a comparison later.)

Also: I will have some pencil tests up later! Probably tomorrow sometime. I was hoping to have this scene finished to upload, which is why this post is late, but it's still not done. I guess that's what happens when I take 10-15min per drawing, as opposed to 3-4min per drawing like I was doing before.

Saturday Updates Go!

So here we are! It's already a couple of months into year three of working on The Many Great Adventures. And oh how things have progressed!

First, I've graduated! Completely! And since I'm no longer beholden to deadlines, I can make all the adjustments for all the things that were driving me crazy! This includes things like adding more detail to backgrounds, and updating character designs to reflect the growth of my art over the past two and half years from when they were originally "finalized."

For example (click to enlarge):

Ellie will still wear her other outfit, but her hair will retain some of this new volume. The phoenix and Celeste however, are actually being re-animated (if necessary) to reflect this new design.

Second, I'm no longer working at LMU at all! I've managed to set up a complete work station at home:

A camera hooks up to my laptop, where I use Adobe Premiere to test the animation:

Updating Phoenix animation in Seq01_Sc02.

Then I have a scanner and a desktop computer with Toon Boom Animate where I can color:

In progress toning/highlighting.

It's pretty exciting having everything I need in one place again.

My progress update next weekend will hopefully include less text and more drawings, and hopefully also an animation progression reel showing some differences between old and new.

See you next Saturday!

Witch Final Model

Since I did a drawing of the Witch as a kid over on my other blog last night, I thought I'd post the final model sheet of the Witch for the film here! I could have sworn I'd already posted it somewhere, but I couldn't find it!

The color is the base starting point. It will be adjusted from here depending on the various lighting situations.

Animation Test

This was today's work!

As the description of the video says, it was an experiment to try out a new workflow using Photoshop instead of ToonBoom Animate Pro. Well, after spending the better part of a day on just adding in the mum, I can say that I wish I had access to ToonBoom. There are lots of things that would be easier. Guess I'll just have to work something else out.

Color Line Test

It is far past time for some new posts around here!

First up, here's a color test I did today. The top frame is a re-draw, with colored ink lines, and some extra filters thrown over the top. The bottom is how the frame appears in my film today. Quite a difference a year makes!

Also, I realized that I never actually posted the more-or-less complete first act of the film:


The Many Great Adventures: Act I from Lis Savic on Vimeo.

Enjoy!