Brainstew

Brainstew Final

2006-05-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

Well its been a long haul, but Brainstew is finished! Making this film has been an interesting experience and was worth it. I think what I have produced is pretty similar to what I decided for my final animatic, so I've achieved what I planned. Being very weak technically, it made things difficult for me, but I can use after effects now and couldn't before I began the film!
Brainstew is complete and can be accessed at this address: http://www.brainstewthefilm.co.uk

1st Cut- First half of Brainstew

2006-04-11T09:59:00.000-07:00

Hiya everyone,
Here's the first cut of my film (i've removed the second part as it's all animatic) that was shown at our crit on friday. There are one or two shots missing aswell as no sound. The music playing is from Devil May Cry and was merely there because I hate sitting through stuff in silence! Theres also some poor quality lighting sounds but other than that, this is how the film will look but not how it will sound. This is only the first half of the film. The second half isn't animated yet.

http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=75299

Opening Shot

2006-03-29T03:37:00.000-08:00

Hello!
My god I got super slack after the dissertation. I was like "Ah well that's over, now I can relax", but no! I forgot the film lol.
Anyways i'm well behind on this **** but here is the opening pic of the castle. It was gonna be in a dark gloomy forest or something but I thought it would be more amusing if his super secret lab was plonked in the middle of the city.

Shots 12 and 13

2006-03-08T03:58:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a couple of scenes using the keyframes from my animatic. It was very useful creating a newer animatic with more images as i've been able to transfer a couple into my main film. So I've animated the snake slithering along the ground, i've also got him shaking his ears as if they were a rattle. He lunges for the snake and bites it but i've not animated him slowly eating the snake, neither is the snake himself yet animated.

Shot 17 animated!

2006-03-03T09:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday and today I worked on compositing the frames for shot 17 in after fx. The scientist is lacking his brain and the octopus isnt animated yet, but other than that its pretty much done. Just need to sort a couple of cycle frames for the octopus' tentacles. Nick showed me some nifty blur effects to really give the scientist a sense of speed. It made a huge difference. Well just a couple of screens so you can have a visual idea of how the shot is looking.

Sound recording with Pedro and Milton

2006-03-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

I joined up with the surreal friends lads to record some sound today. They picked up some excellent sound effects in mah garden using the stray bits of glass, metal and wood. I got some nice sounds for suction of the brains using my mighty hoover and squelching brains with the power of wet tissue paper. Ben also performed a fantastic maniacle laugh for the scientist!
I'm currently animating shot 17 (Scientist panicking about angry mob) but for now here's some piccies of our sound day and me animating.

Codemasters

2006-03-02T08:45:00.000-08:00

Two animators from codemasters visited uni last friday!! The are working on some interesting stuff, but I've got a few years to go before I can work anywhere like that. Still they took a look at my work and gave some cool feedback. They mentioned toning down the BGs so that they don't detract from the main animation. They liked the rabbit a lot and thought it had a cartoon network feel which is what i'm going for :)

More lab backgrounds

2006-02-21T05:57:00.000-08:00

The line of tanks is for the pan in the intro, and for when the camera zooms in to the scientists face towards the end of the film. I've left them pretty plain as they are there for no time at all as the zooms happen almost instantly. I love how the lab randomly changes design and the tanks move around. Typical lazy cartoon network stuff here and I'm guessing noone will notice when the animation is happening!

Scientist against a background!

2006-02-16T09:40:00.000-08:00

I'm still working on backgrounds today. This one has taken ages and I have absolutely no idea why!! Just ben working slowly I guess, plus its all completely random, I didn't design anything. This is the window the scientist will see the supposed angry mob through. I coloured a scientist frame from my animatic and whacked him over the top to see how his cell shading works over sketchy pencil and painter backgrounds.

Backgrounds

2006-02-15T09:51:00.000-08:00

I've been working on backgrounds over the past few weeks. I keep getting moments when i'm ready to give up on this film entirely, so i'm getting really behind on work. But anyway I've managed to clear my head on occasion and get some BG's done. Here's a few of them.

Business Cards

2006-02-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

These are some business cards that were part of my film production bible. I think I prefer the scientist ones best, though all of them imply that i'm a lot better than I actually am lol.

The animals!!!

2006-02-15T09:42:00.000-08:00

These are finalised designs for animals, though only the rabbit and monkey will be full colour as the film is half sillhouette. There are also a couple of pics as the scientist with his brain inside the croc and monkey.

Concept art

2006-02-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

Ok it's been forever since I updated this blog. It seems pretty empty so i'm gonna take a few steps back, whack up some concept work and then post up how the film is going so far. First here's some concept work of animals that may or may not have featured in the film as well as some pics of Scientist.

Scientists lab..maybe?

2005-11-03T07:44:00.000-08:00

Well I was just messing around here. I constructed this image so that Johnny Luu could work his after effects magic and give me an idea of how my film could look after he's beautified it. This is the image without any of his effects I will send him the full file and post the avi when he's done with it.

This is in no way a final design for what the lab will look like. This was merely for a test.

Colour/design tests- dream sequences

2005-11-03T07:27:00.000-08:00

Well during my film my Scientist will be interrupted by a group of animal activists. He is going to have to decide what animal would be most fitting for him to brainswap with in order to defeat/kill the activists. He will go through a number of imaginary sequences in his head where he imagines swapping with certain animals (an octopus for example) and killing an activist. I want to set these sequences apart from the realtime events, so at the moment I think his imaginary sequences will be just one colour with black silhouettes. Here are a few images with varying colour. Each image reveals one character defining detail of the scientist, for example in the yellow image he is all black (or all yellow) apart from his brain showing. I'm trying to decide what defining feature I like best, or whether I could use a different one for each sequence.

Scientist full colour

2005-11-03T07:22:00.000-08:00

Well I decided to colour him! I wanted to give myself an idea of what my film might look like if I bother to colour it properly. Hopefully I will keep on track with things and be able to keep it looking nice (or capture and enslave a 2nd year to do it for me!!! Yes Arin, i'm talking about you, mwahaha).

Scientist final design

2005-11-03T07:19:00.000-08:00

These are revolve sketches for the scientist's final design. I don't think I want to alter his fundamental design aspects right now but will most likely have to simplify him down for animation purposes.

Initial sketch ideas

2005-11-03T07:15:00.000-08:00

Early sketches, before my idea was fully formed. I wanted a film involving the swapping of animal's brains, but hadn't thought of a story at this point. The scientist is infact the last character I thought of.