*Crashes through the ceiling.*
May just ended with a big crushing project. I decided to participate in a 48 hour film making challenge and make an animation film in the given time. It’s been a brutal workout but a very rewarding one as got to practice and hone my animation skills again as well as experiment with directing to music.
It was a rather spontaneous decision but I got the offer to participte a few days prior and had nothing in particular planned for the weekend, taking the risk of potentially wasting my weekend if I were to fail the deadline. Out of a pool of 5 keywords, I chose 3 to feature in my film. The most prominent one was ‘Last-minute-panic’ giving me a conflict for the story, then I felt ‘pyjamas’ and ‘middle-finger’ to be quite interesting so I started brainstorming. I quickly got the idea of a character driving towards a gate that is closing and he has to speed up to get through. Then I turned to YouTube’s audio library where you can find free music to use and the very first track in Rock was a super good fit. I browsed a few more minutes but knew that Gone Away by Blue Beat Review set up a very nice mood and had a great crescendo at around 40s – the song would dictate the story beats and give me a framing how long each shot could last. With the story more fleshed out, I opened my journal to sketch the storyboard, which neatly fit on one page.
Even though it is a short film, it’s still very ambitious to be completed within 48 hours and has just as many shots as my 3 Minute Animation Short that I spent 2 years on making and already was very simplified. I knew I had to exploit the medium to my advantage to make it work, so I decided against coloring and stayed with base shapes and light here and there, maybe a gradient to insinuate depth. Then I needed to be able to hold shots for a while, or not animate at all and just move a frame to the side in Davinci. Reuse of shots and background elements was also vital and not to mention how everythig had to be sketched very crudely, little inbetweens were added and no polish could be made – hoping it would still look appealing in the end.
What it culminated to was a very fun little short that heavily relies on the music playing. Still, there’s a good amount of story in it with enough vagueness to leave room for interpretation – which makes it more interesting I believe.
Tonight, I will see how it reaches our small audience and upload it to my socials to see how people will respond and who knows, maybe I’ll keep at it with the challenges even though it is truly daunting to think of sacrificing another weekend for it in the near future >v>
But yeah, I just had to get it out of the way since it was fresh in my mind. The month was not very thrilling apart from the Animation Festival at the start of it. I had a decent amount of input at FMX but compared to last year, I was much less interested to take notes and just inhaled the talks and short films. Work also was quite calm this year and I’m looking for the next one for sure! I also could bring my mom and my boyie to watch a screening with me on mother’s day in between my shifts so that was a good call. After the festival, I had a pretty slow week to calm myself from the weeks of work in advance, I got to go to the sauna and completely refreshed my system then take care of some errands with little progress to my suiting project and drawings and studies here and there. I continue to do my daily sketches while sometimes (like this weekend) I also allow myself to focus on other things. But they are very neat and often times I find myself spending more time with the routine than planned and always looking forward to the next. Going out and taking this booklet with me also proved to be good, though I have to be careful with it in public as I’ve also put my naughty sketches in there.
On a side note, I did my very first sculpting project! I went to uni to be working in a good environment to get dirty with clay and did a small couple of figures. Though I yet have to see how they hardened as I haven’t had time to access the room due to holidays i nthe past weeks. Then I’ll know whether they worked out and I can get to color them.
The upcoming two months will be busying (again) due to the upcoming conventions. At the end of the month is going to be another festival for me, in Annecy this time and I also have to finish a submission for Awoostria this very week if I want to apply for the con book. Plus lots of stuff for the art auctions at Awoo and EF and I have a hefty lot of space to fill, so here’s hoping motivation and muse will be with me for the time.
With my watercolors, I’m more and more leaning into portraits without ink lines. Since, the graphite pencils leave ugly grey stains under my previous works, I decided to try out colored pencil sketches like with this one in red which work super well. I also have to get a bit more loose and open with my sketches as they’re disencouraging the use of erasers. I still need more practise with figures, which my daily drawing book is for. It’s interesting to me how traditional works completely took over my drawing history this year. I barely do any digital work any more aside from commissioned pieces.
The last digital thing that I did will have to wait to be fully revealed though, as I designed a lifesize standee for EF which will be very interesting to see in person ;P
Hmm so yeah I can’t think of anything else to talk about this month. But it has been a pretty lot, don’t you think?
Alright then, I wish you a very fruitful summer and happy days to come!
~Souvillaine