So today I now have oficially 9 days left for making my sophomore film. 10 including the day before the deadline, but I perfer to have everything completed by then and just add little touches, if needed. I definitely feel the stress now because I have other assignments for my other classes that are due roughly around the same time and i'd rather be more concentrated on my film, but I dont want to fail my other classes. I used to play volleyball with my family in a league on Monday nights. I didnt go this week and wont go next week so Ican have more time to do more work and finish the movie. I figure if I finish up all the animation today or tomorrow, all I have left is the dialouge which by with all the cutting I did shouldnt take up much time and then majority of next week will be all the sound/music which is already done and just needs to be placed on the timeline to sync with the asnimation.

So just this past weekend, i went over to my cousins house to get a good collection of sound effects and music to support the film i'm making. when we went on youtube it took us awhile to get what exactly i wanted for. we found gun shots, gun loading and water splashing. as we played the sounds in my mind, i was picturing the shots playing and thinking of the right pitch it would need to be. And then when it came time to making the monster, we found more growls and screams than iu did to make my animatic last semester. as for the car sounds we were thinking about driving around the streets with a microphone closeby the tires, but instead of doing the ecxtra work, we just typed it in the search bar and found good sound effects of the ignition and take off.

Here are some of the following film festivals I hope my film to be played at:

 Ottawa International Animation Festival
1.)https://animationfestival.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=166&Itemid=808

Deadline for entry forms: Friday, May 18th, 2012

Deadline for preview DVDs: Friday, June 1st, 2012

2.) Buffalo Niagra Film Festival
http://thebnff.com/submit/
The 6th Annual BUFFALO NIAGARA FILM FESTIVAL runs from April 12 – 22, 2012.

3.)360/365 (aka Rochester high Falls film festival)
http://film3
Since our 2012 festival has been postponed to 2013, we are not currently seeking submissions. Check back soon for updates.
60365.com/festival/submit-a-film

4.) Chicago International Children's Film Festival
http://www.cicff.org/content/applications-deadlines/3
Short film or video (under 60 minutes): $40.00 USD

5.) Rochester International Film Festival: movies on a shoestring
http://www.rochesterfilmfest.org/submissions/submissions.html

• Entries must be postmarked no later than January 15, 2012.
i figure i can wait till next year to submit my film to this one.

6.) The Citrus Cel Film Festival
http://citruscel.com/
 entry deadline is July 31, 2012

7.) Drunken Zombie Film Festival
http://drunkenzombiefilmfestival.com/?page_id=11
Submissions for the film festival for November 2012 are now open. The deadline is August 30th.

8.) Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation
http://spikeandmike.com/sitepages/festival.php
Currently Accepting Film Submissions
Sick & Twisted Festival &
New Generation Animation Festival
Email: Spike@SpikeandMike.com

9.) Fargo Film Festival

http://www.fargofilmfestival.org/submissions

Early-Bird Submission Deadline: August 1, 2012 postmark ($15)

10.) Montreal Animated Films Summit

http://www.cinematheque.qc.ca/en/sommets

 The next Sommets du cinéma d’animation de Montréal will be held from 28th of November to 2nd of December.

So in fearing that i would never complete my dream of hand-drawing every frame in my first movie, my teacher showed me to animate in photoshop. at first i wasn't sure and almost skeptic to think the line quality would be noticeable when finall completeed compared to my hand drawn scenes. when doing a simple test of the villain in my movie, the monster, i realized that you could use the timeline to test and examine the timing between my extreme poses and determine the inbetween count for them. this sure as hell beated drawing at the table, then having to take each individual frame and clicking the camera for it to show on flipbook and examine it like that. plus with it being digitally done, i could skip the scanning process and just touch up the characters and then paint bucket them with minutes. Tyhen i would take thoses pings from photshop and then put them into after effects and put them accordingly to the timing on the timeline and watch it come to life in the end. This will definitely help me out in the ned. Since my discovery i've completed three shots within a week's time instead of possibly one and a half shots.

Here's my first pencil test of the Dad character. In this scene, the two have just heard a strange noise and when there's no answer to the fathers hello call, he plans to check things out and wants the son to stay at the fishing site. It's on "ones" which means that there are individual drawings on every frame of film. In total I drew 53 drawings in this sequence. I plan on working out the timing alittle more carefully in the week or so and plus add in the dialouge mouth parts for his line. I might even re-posistion himself at the end and have the mouth hang at the corner of his mouth, which would make the lip-sync more easier and less time-consuming.

So I've finally begun the animation process for my film. To me this is the best part and although it will take me a while since im doing majority of it all hand drawn, there will be such discipline while I perfect my craft. To get it out of the way and be done with, I decided to do the car sequences first. Drawing cars are not my thing and I can barely draw one just freestyle. I have to look at a picture closely and from all angles so that I can get a good rendering. Here are some pencil tests of the opening shot of the father and son driving towards the lake. I might have to re-shoot the first scene on 2's and change the size of the very first car and hold the pause of the car as its climbing up the hill.

So for my characters, I want the audience to follow them throughout the movie and get a feel for them. I would like if they had empathy for the trio( Allen, Tommy and the Monster). Whether they not exactly had the same experiences as these characters will have but I'm sure divorced parents and their kids will have a better understanding than those kids whose parents are still married. Allen is trying to patch things back up with his son Tommy who is having a difficult time dealing the seperation. If I wanted the two to come together again, what better way to have it with a monster in the forecoming. it might be a tad cliche, but to me I didn't care. Even though the audience might feel bad for the creature as he gets shot down, we really dont know his background at all. Why is he doing this? Was he a divorced child too? Or was he just plain hungry? But in the end as the father and son drive away in the distance, we go back to the lake where the beast has fallen in and zoom in closer. The water begins to ripple and splash and suddenly one of his arms appears and reachers to grasp onto the icy wreckage.

So when i do start my animation, I plan to give my characters a classic look. now when I mean classic, it's a take on the old school Disney, Warner Brothers character design. that doesn't mean that I'm going to be doing exaggerated facial expressions or have them suddenly burst into a musical tangent. I want them to have a believeable personality and have the audience care of what happens to them if things go wrong. I don't expect them to cry or anything like that but I want to have my three characters to have the viewers relate and have somewhat of empathy for them. it would be nice to have a good set of characters in my lineup to start off my filming career.

 here's a photo of the two driving up  towards the lake. now one thing i'll admit i'm not good at drawing cars, but it reads clear and that's what was all important for me. when i was creating the story at first i wasn't sure if i wanted any color at all in my movie and possibly go for a black and white montage to the classic cinemas in the early decades and dlassic horror films such as The Wolfman and Frankenstein and many more.

  her's a picture of the father and son fishing at the lake. its very detailed for a little storyboard sketch but i was in no rush at all. i wanted my boards to be very clear and precise so that the viewer(s) can read and understand every picture in my movie.

So to start off my adventure in making my first film, my appraoch is to get rid of the backgrounds out of the way. this way with all them completed, i can animate the characters and have them be porportionally correct in every scene. when we first watched my animatic in our class, i felt that my was alittle too long timing wise and figured that my teacher would want me to trim some scenes out. Actually, she said it was fine and that it was the dialouge that was not really neede. some lines were better off not being said at all and just have the characters play them out. So now here are some early layout picturews from my styoryboard from last year's spring semester in which i created my story.

Wow that was alot of mispellings by me didn't mean to do that LOL. Anywho, i figure to just gor straight ahaead with my movie, first doing all the backgrounds and getting them out of the way so that when it comes to the animating part, i can place my characters in the right posistion and not have to worry about them being too small or way to big to fit in the certain enviorment depending on the scene. even when it comes to the animation procees, im thinking on again depending on what scene it is, is to do it hand-drawn or digitally on my ne bamboo tablet i received this christmas. Then when it comes to the sound and editing processes, i figure i can go to my cousins house and he'll help my with all the sudio technology he's absorbed throughout the years. another thing im still deciding on is to wheter or not to keep the same audio voices i have for my characters or just re-record them at his house.

beginning of my sophomore film

So i'm beginning to do my first-ever movie. im excited to work on it, but i wish i didnt hsve any other classes that will most likely get in thee way and have me to cut down, or even trash some stuff. my biggest priority will be finishing my movie that on the animatic process runs about 3:30 minutes and to do that while working on other classroom assignments will be a challenege by itself, but sure enough i know i'll get it done and have a finished product i kin ow i'll be proud of.