Completion

The first draft of our film is complete! On the off chance it gets sent to festivals or something, we're refraining from posting a final copy.

It's been a wild ride, on which we've learnt many crucial lessons about timekeeping, shortcuts, narrative structure, team management, and last but not least, After Effects.

I developed a knack for Photoshop, and am frankly flabbergasted I managed to churn out so many aesthetically-satisfying backgrounds. My Flash skills have developed, my work method having become more streamlined and precise, and my leadership skills, although fundamentally lacking for someone who isn't really a director at heart, have come along in leaps and bounds.

Gary and Jake had moments of inactivity, and there have been some frustrating moments, but their unwavering loyalty to the project meant that I never felt the project was jeopardised by anything they did. Ultimately, that loyalty (and, at times, genuine love) for the film was the saving grace, coming together and making sure there was something to show for all the discussions and development work.

Overall, I am delighted to report that the feel of our final film is pretty much how I envisaged it at the beginning, narrative and aesthetic tweaks aside, and my team did well.

Further tweaks are to be made for the blu-ray submission, finishing extra shots and polishing the footage more, but for now I intend to sleep.

Compositions and animations

As the 3D elements made slow progress, that aspect of production was shelved, and the textureless 3D environments were used as perspective reference. Jake moved onto working full-time on post-production, and as I've been animating shots he's been adding the backgrounds to them and lighting them where possible.

Jake's work has improved in quality and quantity since changing from Maya to After Effects. AE is clearly a program he feels much more comfortable with, and he seems to derive genuine enjoyment from experimenting with the software to create some cool effects.
His experimentation is paying off - we've discovered a wealth of options within After Effects that could serve to make our film look fantastic.

To demonstrate, here are a few of the latest shots:

Final Backgrounds

Here are the final backgrounds.

There may be a couple more here and there as we encounter more reasons for stuff to be drawn, but for now it's the basic definitive set of backgrounds.

The Completion of The Big Shot

Shot 4 was always the one I was dreading, as it's a long, continuous take of the man performing key actions for the film. But aside from the addition of the bird at the beginning and the hanky dropping at the end (quick finishing touches), it's done now, and I can post it up and seek solace in the knowledge that the remaining couple of little shots won't take nearly as long to do.

Audio

Alex O'Brien and Lilly Cording have been lovely enough to conjur up a fantastic soundtrack for our film! A link to the final work is here.

More Backgrounds

Background Development

After a decidedly slow start to the whole background side of production, I'm happy to report that things are looking pretty. The trickiest look to nail down was the park, but after a few simplifications and a better understanding of colours, I feel it's making progress.

There needs to be a couple more shadows here and there, and the trees are going to have a few leaves, but that's pretty much it for this shot.