Two Final Shots from the film!

Title and composite update

We're on the home stretch and the film in coming together slowly but surely. We have put off our title shot for some time now but finally have a stand in.

Retro Rocket Ship Take Two

Rocket Ship Fire Test 2 from Halcyon-17 on Vimeo.

We wanted the rocket to have more of a paper puppet sort of feeling and the old flame wasn't quite right. Buying some trick birthday candles and a barbecue lighter, we had some fun compositing a homemade fire effect and shaking the rocket around like a wet noodle.

Text Testing

Here's a rough attempt at making words that solidify into text solidify into uh... dirt? Check it out!
 
Text Experiment v01 from Halcyon-17 on Vimeo.

Rocket Test

Here is the result of a quick tutorial given on a possible way we could quickly produce fire using After Effects CC plugins. Later in the week we will be filming a butane torch and a sparkler to explore other methods and looks to the flame.

Composite Test Animation

Shot 5 has been our test dummy for animation and compositing since production has started. Below is the final direction we will be using moving forward for the film. It includes the backgrounds which are painted in Photoshop utilizing real textures from photographs, the animated character in Toon Boom and live action cherry blossoms composited onto the animation footage with post lighting in After Effects.


Our animation style has slowly been moving to a simplified cut out style that has minimal, if any, slow ins and outs between keys. This example straddles the new direction with some motion tweens but maintains the stiff cut out aesthetic to the movements.

Falling Pedals

After the shoot

Today we sequestered ourselves in the green screen room to shoot some practical effects for the falling cherry blossoms. This footage will eventually be composited over the animation.

Discussing how we will shoot the practical effects

Setting up the camera to drop pedals from above

Dropping the pedals at variable densities