THE PAGE OF GREAT DESTINY

Great Destiny Man is my final year film for Uni.  I am required to keep a progress blog.

26/10/09

Almost finished, just got to do a bunch of pictures for the opening and closing credits now.

19/09/09

I am taking a break to work on another project for Q&A.  I've done most of the sound now, but haven't yet started lip syncing, and have lots of small bits of animation still to do.  By the time I finish the Q&A project, I will still have a month to finish.

Here is the music so far.  A kind gentleman named Jordan has offered to record some glorious trumpets, but before that I need to know exactly what tempo it will be, and before that I need to re-record some of the voices that aren't quite there.  I didn't have the Gain set correctly on the mixing board on the recording day and a lot of the loud samples are distorted. 

10/09/09

*phew* backgrounds are done, except for some minor touch-ups that will no doubt be left until a day before the due date.  Now to go through and do all the bits and pieces of animation like moving hair and capes that I haven't done yet.  Here's some finished shots.

The blur tool in Flash is adequate for making energy...blasts...or whatever they're called. The flashing blue background behind his head was fun to do, I think it's effective.

Don't look at it too long or the blurriness will hurt your eyes.

01/09/09

I decided I didn't like the forest I painted a few months back, so started from scratch.

I like the "Lens blur" in Photoshop.  It does not make the subject slightly painful to look at (like wearing someone's glasses) like other blurs can do.  I thought this one was too dark though.

I don't mind this one but it took too long to do the layers of bush, and I liked the ambience of the first one better.

I like this one most, it's light enough to see the foreground bushes and the overall ambience is what I had in mind.  Even better though is that this one consists of mostly copied elements from the first two, so I can reuse a lot of stuff for shots like this where there is no perspective tilt.

30/08/09

I've done almost all of the animation (minus lip syncing), now to start on the backgrounds.

This is my first attempt at some music for the ending, but it is too mild, it needs to be epic...I think it needs horns of some description, but I don't have really convincing horns.

This run took me an absurd amount of time...and I've just realised I forgot his scabbard.

21/08/09

I've done about 80% of all the animation, but haven't yet started on the background paintings.  I have a feeling I'll have a solid 2 weeks of painting to do and will probably expire from boredom. 

13/08/09

Have done the character animation minus things like hair, capes and atmospheric stuff for the fight scene, and coloured most of the characters.  Have started on the second scene with the girl.

23/07/09

Using the envelope tool I can quickly and easily animate hair blown by a breeze. 

I had planned to give him an aura too but I don't think he needs one.

Grr!

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20/07/09

It occurred to me that absolutely everything I do uses black outlines, so for this film I'm going to try and shake it up and use colours instead..  This is only my first attempt at colouring GDM, I am definitely not 100% happy with it yet, I think his sword is a little bright and his skin is too pink.

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This was more to work out the colour scheme for the forest.  I'll paint with more detail for the film.  Also, flash adds some funny edges.  Because of all the paintings I'm not sure if I'll even be able to make a flash version of the film at this stage.

Here is a screen capture of the painting in Photoshop pasted into another program.  Why do the colours look brighter in Photoshop but when I save them they're dimmer, regardless of which format I use? 

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GDM has to fight three demons.

I think she is the coolest of the three.  Probably because she is kinda hot.

This guy's got a complex design but he only moves a few times.

This guy's pretty much just a hovering cloak who carries a sword.