Raw Footage taken of Petals Falling

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

Layout for Shot 5

Here is the layout for shot 5. The next step will be to composite this layout with the animation on which we are currently working. Look forward to seeing the finished shot! We are working through the whole pipeline to smooth out the kinks of production. This will allow us to plan our time efficiently for the next couple weeks.

Exploring the Animation Style

Unfortunately we have 5 short weeks to finish this film. Because of this we have started to explore ways to economize the animation. Shot 5 is our test dummy and will be used to find a compromise between the original tradigital style and the new symbol animation direction.

Symbols aligned ready for animation

The character has been broken down into sections to be animated using the drawn keys as reference.

Symbols separated (missing right hand and book)

Rough Animation Tests

We're ramping up for production and to kick it off we started on some animation tests. Some very, very rough, volume morphing, off character sheet animation tests that is. But we are beginning to refine the staging and explore the acting in a few shots. Working first on the longest shot when Goddard reaches the top and at the base when he first looks up to see Mars.

These are two critical shots. One exploring how a 62 year old man might climb a tree; slow and hunched over.
The other focusing more on acting to show the young Goddard's reaction to this beautiful glowing planet that looks to be living in the tree.

Film Title

We spent a short meeting yesterday brainstorming some titles for our film. "Red" has been the working title however there are already several films with the same title, both live action and animated.

Below is the mind map created as we explored titles.

The top names are the following

1899
Elysian

Halcyon-16

Hutchins

First Cut Animatatic