So as the year comes to an end, the "Villa Boys" has finished production and now going to be premiered tomorrow night downtown at the Market Arcade Theater. I'm proud to have work on a fantastic film with an extraordinary group of gentlemen that I've become friends with over the past few years. I cannot wait to see my animation being put on the movie screen for the first time in my life. I hope it happens again when I get accepted into a major studio. To see all that hard work be shown at a theater, there's nothing that can top that. I quote Frank Thomas when he talks about finishing a movie, and especially, the characters than an animator worked on."You know you don't own this little guy anymore, you did for awhile. But now he's all grown up and making decisions all be himself, doing quite well thank you. It's like a parent who's sent their kid off to school, and they're growing up right before your eyes."

Here's a teaser poster I decided to come up with last night. It shows the four of us in the lab at school. like the characters in the film, our real personalities are exactly the same. the three of us as always at work in our exact places. Sean on the computer designing backgrounds, me at the light table doing the animation, and Andrew(being our group leader) making sure we are all diligently working hard as ever. Lee of course, being the goofball in the group is playing video games on the television on the wall instead of compositing.

I couldn't have drawn a better pose for dear Andrew. In this scene, he, Sean and myself have just discovered via Text from Cone that Lee has kidnapped Sarah. Like the classic cartoon when all three boys gasp in a comical pose and hold it for some time (making it funnier) only Sean and I will be distraught by this devastating event, while Andrew appears as though he couldn't care less. I think when we hold on these poses, the audience's  reactions should be resulting in a big laugh.

Here's the cycle of when Sarah is now creeping towards Lee and he is now banging down the door begging for the Villa Boys for help. Lee's going to have a field day with the clean-up act. Me and him were talking about making the tips more rounder and connecting them together to make a more clothy-like appeal to it.

Here's the 2nd and last of Lee's walk cycles. This when his first attempt of creeping on Sarah backfired on him and she threw him across the room. Here you can tell you he is dizzy and beated up looking. The funny thing is that he has no idea what she has for him this time when he comes up to here again.

Here's the cycle all completed. I liked how it came out, even though there's a little flick in how the beard follow throughs at the end of the second step to regenerate the cycle. I'll tell lee to either draw it how #16 or #17 is.

Here's about 77-84% of the same walk completed. Just a few more in-betweens to be completed. After this walk cycle, i will have to do 2, yes 2 more! the next one will be of Lee. This time, he will be more beated up looking than this one, so the walk will have a more slower paced to it. I just recorded him the cafeteria for reference as i did the other times I needed help with a scene. The last walk cycle will be of Sarah when she herself is creeping upon Lee( who ironically is trying to break down the door).

Here Is one of the walk cycles from our film. The scene is when Lee has captured Sarah and has her all to himself in the one lab. As she is desperately trying to break down the door, he is creeping up behind her, step by step. This is the fist pass of the cycle, meaning that there are only keyframes and a few in-betweens. I'll be uploading the next versions of the cycle when they are finished.

My mind has just been all over the place lately. But besides the point onto my film making process. My group and I were just recently downtown at GCR recording studios to lay out the vocals for the characters. Even our main professor went with us to perform as herself in the movie. For everyone, it was a moment in this semester and possibly there whole college career they'll never forget, I know I wont. We recently submitted our recent rough cut to our friend Jeremy with about the correct timing for ACT I for him to score correctly. i'm still planning out scenes, but just finished the animation of our other teacher who is standing outside the door wondering how to help out Sarah. what I will be currently working on is the footwork of Lee when he first capture Sarah at the podium.

So heading into Week #9 I think of this semester, I'm feeling still confident that my group is going to finish. I even think we could possibly be the first film to be completed, that's even including the senior films that are in the making as well. I personally am in the mid 30s as far as shots go out of 50 total. It'll be something to see my drawings all colored and composited for the theater to screen it. I will soon be heading into the second complicated scene of our film where i have all the major characters in the same background. Plannning and staging will be the most important things in terms of shots like these so the audience wont be confused or say "Hey?! wait a minute..?" "What?!" to make it easy for my group, I'll draw each character on their own level and then they'll be brought together when put into After Effects.

Here is another test I did of Lee. It's still in the blocking stage and the only images here are the key frames. I will soon be configuring out the spacing between them. Lee has discovered that Sarah is all alone and when outside spots a car.The lip-sync will be added on later in after effects as well as the other dialogue will be too. I'm actually surpirised on how it's looking so far and with the rest of the drawings put in the mix, the action will cycle smoothly.

Here is an experimental pencil test I did today of Lee. The scene is where he discovers us in the arcade eating pizza and thus figure out that Sarah is alone and unprotected. He then rushes outside and then puts on a burglar outfit. I'm not sure if the part where he pulls out the outfit and sets it on himself will be final but I do love the anticapation section. I'll show this to Lee and  Sean and see what they say, if not ok in their opinions, Sean can easily smear inbetween the poses and when color comes in the picture, it'll be even more clear of differing his two outfits in the movie.

Here is apencil test of my fellow colleague Sean. His role will be the "Tom" from the original cartoon. In this scene, we arrive at the room in which Lee has hold our teacher Sarah hostage on the other side of the door. His performance is a take on the part when the trio sings just before they break down the door. Our song goes like this "Oh Sarah dear, oh Sarah dear, we're here to do what must be done, to pay you back for all the years, you made our class time so mych fun....The VMC's the place for me!!!"

Below is the character lineup for our junior film. What I like about our film because we're doing a parody of a classically golden age era style cartoon, the characters themselves are drawn in a late 30s-early 40s style. I guess growing up and constantly watching these cartoons alot has had a significant output on my drawing style and knowledge of animation. I wish that studios would continue to make cartoons with hand-drawn talent into the making process. We can mnake things faster with scanners and coloring cells with justa click of the mouse, instead of coloring 20-30 colors per cell which could take an hour at most for just 1/24th of a second.

Here is a still from the original 1942 cartoon classic. The characters present in this still are Dora Standpipe (Sarah), Larry (Andrew), Dick (Myself) and Tome (Sean). In this scene, the merry foursome are enjoying a gay afternoon at the park by playing hide and go seek. In our version, Sarah who has just taught us a #D class tell us to go on a lunch break due to the time it will render the files.

So I've spent the last twenty minutes or so on trying to upload the pencil tests from my recent film I'm working on. Sadly, there is a "bug" in Blogger that will not allow me to upload videos. So instead of posting them, i"ll tell you how i appraocha scene with an individual character or when there are several characters in a shot.
When it comes to animating the three heroes, I then start to imagine myself as them seperatly and how they would appraoch a situation. Sean is the big, one-tracked minded burly one of the group. So I puff out my chest and act all broadly as i can be. Interms of myself, i would picture that being the "normal" one in the group, i just slightly eaggerate my actions. The most goofy thing about my character is the hair spikes. For Andrew's animation, I think of someone who just doesn't care about really anything.
In the case of the female lead in the film, Sarah is a loose free-flowing body, almost cloth like. You would think she's not even real for how she is animated. I really wanted to get the secondary action perfect in the case of her moving in a scene.
Lee is our dastardly villain in the picture. For when he plans his devious scheme on kidnapping our teacher, I picture all those old-time "Snidely Whiplash" characters from the past and how they use their whole body for specific poses when doing the cliche tying and monolouging.

Here are some of the pencil tests I've been working on for the past couple of weeks. seeing the motion run through so fluidly makes all that time at the light table worth it. Hope you enjoy it.

 So today I began the opening shot in scene #14, where the audience is revealed to our villain, Lee Terwilliger (Dan Backslide). His back is facing us as he is over-exagerrating his actions to play the video game. I kept is nice and simple so that the viewer's wouldn't have a hard time knowing what he's doing. His body is a still image while I animated each arm seperatly. His left arm will be controlling the joy stick while his right arm will be doing two actions: one is shifting back and forth left and right. Two is a slamming action which will bring the "cartoony effect" to the scene.

So week #3-4, our group is still on fire. Lee sent me a message that will send you to his blog and on it is a fully colored shot of his character pulling out Sarah's picture frame and stating his love. After the first time i saw it i was like OMFG!!! Just the sight of how this film will look all colored and cleaned up will be just like watching those old cartoons from the 30s-40s. For my miletsones, im still on the fast linewith about 10 shots ahead of schedule. I'm currently working on the shot where the three of us are shunning the distraction projection in class.

So i dont know why this blogging thing is sometimes a jerk to me, but my first blog was about how mea and my co horts are now making our junior group film. we're parodying Chuck Jones' 1942 classic short "The Dover Boys at Pimento University". When at first released, Jones was almost fired because the studio execs didnt know much about animation techiniques and inventions. The cartoon was famnous for crisp timing with smearing inbetweens. I'm in charge of all the animation and supervising others work on how to move the characters or give them sketches for help. Sean's in charge of all the backgrounds and smearing. Lee is my assistant when it comes to the animation. He'll take my rough animation and trace over them with marker, making it less time when it comes to colring and scanning and that department is in the hands of Andrew.

So week #3 into the new semester and i feel really good about my junior group film. Just yesterday, i finished the main poses in one shot of the villain in out story, Lee Terwilliger (The "Dan Backslide" character) in the cartoon. It's the shot of him pulling out a picture of our main professor Sarah Hanson and then professing his love to her....cirriculeum. Those will be then sent off to my friend Sean, who is in charged of all the smears in the film, to make the timing seem more crisp and energizing. Then they will be sent off to our friend Lee, who will then trace over the drawings with marker on seperate sheets of paper and scan those into the computer will they will be colored and placed into the finalized background when compositing.