Ugh, it’s been a rough 3 weeks for Uncle G. Immediately after my previous post I was plagued with a head cold, nasal virus, and something I rather not talk about. *cough* Once my body was clense of all evil’s, I continued upon this journey of moving illusions. I do however need to take a moment and thank my cheerleaders Phil Kauffold (Lead Animator) and Tina Hunter (Writer) for the constant motivation and putting up with my bul-skata. (skata = shit in greek)

Before getting into the thick of it, I feel it’s important to understand the fundamentals needed to get started in this type of gig.

“Art, in many instances, requires transcendence of it’s own medium; it speaks on its own accord“. -Derek Derakhshani

You really need an artistic mind, patience, and to be savvy with math if you want to get extreme about scripting but artsy is a good place to start.

What are the stages of Pre-Production? Well simply..

• Le Script - Most of the time animation scripts are written without dialogue.  Why? Animation is somewhat of an abstract art and dialogue can sometimes spoil the writing/creation process in the beginning , depending on your team of course.
• Storyboards - Breaking apart the script from words into a storyline of rough drawings that portray the script visually. Honestly they could be stick figures but I prefer something slightly nicer.
• Concept scribbles – We never really know what we want until we start scribbling it down on paper and tweaking it to our liking. It’s actually very rare to know exactly what you want.

The Wall of Night

The Wall of Night is a 3D/2D animation short (5-6 minutes) that I’m working on with Phil and Tina. It begins on a planet that does not rotate, this causing one side of it to be continually night and the other side day.  Lynn (a girl) ventures far beyond her village boundaries foraging for food and stumbles upon a forbidden altitudinous wall separating day from night. Reaching this wall has started a chain of events will forever change her life.

Mind you I’m not the greatest  synopsis writer but that was my best effort for today at least. =) So far Tina and I have almost finalized the script. This weekend I’ll be working on storyboards + concept scribbles and we’re planning  to have the storyboards and concept art done by the 22nd which is pretty realistic date. Oh yeah, to create the concept art I’m using Corel Painter 11 on a Cintiq 21UX. In my opinion Painter 11 is the only drawing software that gives you realistic results, as if you were drawing on on real paper. I do have a couple rough drafts handy but I’d rather finalize a couple of them before I show ya. Maybe early next week I’ll post a couple of them.

-Giannii

P.S. Apparently, I’m Sexy: Top 10 Sexiest Geeks by Violet Blue

We humans dabble with many things during our lifetime in the name of happiness and rarely do we ever find something that leaves us with nothing but a glowing smile at the end of the day. For this entity, animation brushes my cheeks with that red warmth. The only bad part is I forgot how to do most of it! Ha

Back in the early 2000’s, ya know the days of the Back Street Boys and all. I attended an art school pursuing a degree that encompassed all areas of digital and traditional art. I never did finish but for a good reason outside of horrible tuition. In summary, an opportunity arose that I could not pass up but I’ll save that story for another day.

Today I embark on journey to learn Autodesk Maya 2009 (3D Animation Software) over the next 6 months and release a animated short 8 months from now. The book I will be starting out with is entitled “Introducing Maya 2009″ by Dariush Derakhshani.

Dariush Derakhshani is a creative director and head of CG for Radium|ReelFX. Needless to say he has been in the industry for a long time and has plenty of experience. I plan to learn from his experiences depicted in this book over the next 3 weeks.

Goodbye halcyon nights.