Production Tasks:
BACKGROUNDS
Overall feeling I wish to create:
Isolation, crisp clean beach but is littered with light bulbs
I want the audience to feel that Lewis is the only person left on this world
Non threatening, peaceful almost, and yet lonely and homesick
The sky has a lot happening up there and Lewis knows this. The sky is always active almost a bit of a war zone as it pelts light bulbs towards the beach.
I want the backgrounds to be interesting and quite layered, using mediums that create texture and a feel of movement such as paint on glass
So here are some avenues as to how I will go about it:
Possible Mediums:
1. Glass
a) Ink
b) Water colour
c) Pastel
d) Sand, coloured sand, in order to colour sand will have to colour it with food dye, soak it for couple of hours then dry it out for a day.
Application of possible mediums:
a) Drizzle
b) Direct strokes
c) Sponge
d) Flick
e) Fingers
f) Pallet knife
g) Dilution
h) Pouring sand
2. Paper
a) Water colour
b) Pastel – translucent paper?
c) Paper template
d) Pencil
e) Pen
In order to achieve the layered look I will require a set up over a light box, I need a clamp that can hold another layer of glass above the first layer. This is actually called a rostrum
Materials needed for production:
1. Rostrum
a) Metal pipe
b) Drill
c) Clamps
d) Ply wood
e) Butterfly screws
f) Lights
g) Glass
2. Light box
3. Laptop
4. Wacom
5. Tripod
6. Camera
7. Portable hard drive
8. Paint brushes
9. Painting mediums as previously mentioned
10. Turpentine
11. Glass cleaner
12. Stationary
a) Paper
b) Pens
c) Pencils
d) Pastels
e) Folder for production bible
f) Large art folder to store drawings and work
ANIMATION
Overall feeling with the animation of course is fluidity, with a strong influence of Hayao Miyazaki, also slightly Tim Burtonesk.
Software programs needed for production:
a) Flash CS5, or CS4
b) Photoshop
c) Celtx
d) Word
e) Excel
f) After effects CS5, or CS4
g) Mind mapping
h) Final cut pro if available, otherwise
i) Premier pro
j) Dream weaver if feeling ambitious with time on my hands
k) Stop motion software preferably free and easy to understand, as I need a live feed from my camera to the laptop.
Dragon has a 30-day trial but this isn’t enough.
Set elements:
1. Drawings by Wacom tablet
a) Line art
b) Fill colours
c) Photoshop and After effects to refine drawings
DATA MANAGEMENT
1. Photography
a) Images on glass
b) Digital and named accordingly to proposed file naming conventions
2. Storage
Set elements:
a) Digital files received from digital camera stored and named in their appropriately named files and folders
b) Different files for each software component
c) Paper stored in large art folder, and also scanned in to create a separate digital copy
d) All files and data stored on laptop, portable hard drives # 1 and #2 using the time machine on Macs.
e) A back up process will be carried out every one to two days, preferably every one day.
3. Back up
Possible disasters that could ruin me:
a) Animal interference, potential cat running across the production, breakages and malalignment of rostrum and or light box and camera.
Solutions:
Production will be created in a spare room and nobody will be allowed in unless supervised or has permission by myself.
b) Possible (although unlikely) natural disaster, i.e. fire, floods, earthquakes.
Solutions:
To back up everything not only where the production is created but to also have a copy outside of the premises
c) Equipment breakage or failure
Solutions:
Once again to make sure that the production is backed up on a minimum of three different devices at all times.
Production Plan
How am I going to do this?
SOFTWARE:
· FLASH 2D
· Animation will be digitally drawn with a Wacom using Flash CS4
· Editing will be done in After FX. After FX will be used for compositing/keying the backgrounds that are painted. After FX will also be used for special FX on the water, light bulbs, lighthouse, Fizz the mechanical bird, generally the entire animation. After FX will also be used to play around with the composition of each shot.
· Sound will be composited in Final Cut Pro? Or Adobe Premier if Final Cut Pro is unable to be obtained for my laptop.
· Photoshop will be used for Titles and to clean up the scanned or photographed background images.
· Maya could possibly be used to help with the architectural design of the lighthouse and even the bulbs, and then redrawn over the top with Wacom.
· Dream weaver could possibly be used to create a promotional website for the animation.
· Exporting will be done at: 1920x1080 HI REZ
· Animation will be 12 or 24 FPS; this really depends on what action is taking place.
My file naming convention will be similar to last years, it worked for me, it did get messy at times but this wasn’t the process it was just my being slack and keeping things in their specified folder.
Here is an example of how I shall name my files:
SCENE SHOT ASSETS FILE NAME
1 1 2D, Flash, After FX, Photoshop 001-LR-001
LR = Lewis Runs and 001 is the scene and then the shot number at the end of the file name so 001-LR-001 tells myself or others that Lewis is going to be running in scene 1, shot 1.
I will have a designated folder for each asset that is used, for example all software gets its own folder, images gets its own folder, drawings their own folder and so on.
Then all of these folders will be grouped into the main folder titled Lewis and the Light.
This is a simple way for somebody to open up the folder and get a clear understanding of what and where everything is.
