This week I kept right on animating. I'm focusing on lighting my characters in in surreal ways for the middle portion of my film, and it's been a lot of fun experimenting with different ways to get the creepy effect i'm after. The least fun part is trying to upload the huge tif files from the computer to my hard drive; it takes from 4-8 hours for a 5 gigabyte file to transfer.
Progress is going well, and I hope to finish on schedule if all goes as planned. I've been looking into composers and have found one that is possibly willing to work for free, so I may go that route instead of using netmix or free opensource music.

An encouraging week

This week I accomplished a lot, both in terms of animation and in figuring out the way I want the final look and feel of my thesis film to be. I am currently on schedule with my shots completed. The most fun part of the week was scrolling through my animator and realizing that all the badly-drawn storyboards are now finished animation, hopefully less crappy than the storyboards. The worst part was the backache I got from spending so many hours bending over animating!
I am considering changing the middle portion of my film where the ghost doppelgänger and stick bug attack the boy, to make it more surreal and abstract, since it is after all a dream. I want to experiment with lighting, cool flickers and colored gels, crazy camera angles and weird materials to give a super creepy vibe. The narrative will still be there, but this will give me more flexibility to work within time constraints without having to stick to a tight schedule.

this week

This week I've been revising the animation I've done, as I continue to complete even more shots. I've enjoyed creating each shot and making them more unified through editing, zooming, and creative editing.
 One thing that has been difficult this week is realizing that I'll probably have to cut some of the more extraneous shots in order to finish on time. It won't hurt my story, but it will be hard to see some of the shots that I was very attached to be cut out of the story. If I have time at the end I'll be able to add them in, though.
All in all, another productive week!

more animating

This week I've been continuing to animate. Things are going well for the most part, and animation is taking abuot as much time as I estimated it would. The most fun part this week has been seeing my characters come to life as I work on some shots that require more acting and facial movement. The least fun part has been that, although the animation itself is not taking longer than I thought it would, it does take a longer time to set up each shot within the camera to get an acceptable composition and match up the eyelines and characters to the previous shot, to keep things consistent. This is harder work than I imagined when I was just drawing up the storyboards and could easily put the character anywhere in the frame that I wanted without too much worry about physical limitations. All in all though, production is going well and I'm optimistic that I'll finish in time.

animation!

This week I finally began animating. My goal is to complete 7 shots per week, though I left several weeks for unforeseen errors in my production schedule. The first day of shooting went well, and in addition to figuring out the lighting and camera settings I animated 4 shots. The most fun part was seeing everything I've built come together under the camera to create a scene with a certain feel and mood. The least fun part was probably either dealing with all the logistics of negotiating a shooting space, or the time when I got a nasty splinter and my finger started dripping blood all over the place.

Puppets are done!

Well, I finally finished my puppet's costuming, head sanding and painting, and eye insertion. The most enjoyable thing was seeing the puppets I've been working on and planning for more than a semester finally come together into a finished product. The most difficult thing was working nonstop and skipping sleep to try to finish on schedule. Pictures below of the finished puppets, as well as some set photos.

update

this week I've been working mainly on sanding, painting, and finishing the heads I printed out on the 3D printer. I also worked out an eye mechanism to make the pupils rotate in the skull, and fitted the two tiny magnets into each separate piece. I had a lot of fun figuring out which colors to paint the characters to make them fit the coor scheme but without needing to have extremely realistic flesh and hair tones.
Costuming is also coming along; the most difficult thing this week has been figuuring out how to make the shoes for each character; in terms of materials that need to be both flexible and tough for when I animate the walk cycles.
A lot of the feedback I got when I presented my animatic to the graduate seminar advised me that the beginning of my film was too slow, and that I should speed it up and get to the main action of the stick bug and ghost boy. This was really helpful, and should allow me to cut even more out of my animatic, making it more feasible as I am nearly but not quite on schedule for animating.

I will post pictures hopefully tonight of my progress so far, unfortunately I don't have a camera right now so I need to locate one