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.