Our Backyard Screening!

Every week before Halloween, my family has our annual Pumpkin Party and this year, we added a screening in our backyard for our WIP, Work in Progress of WatchCat.

Greg: I have to admit, I was a little bit nervous going into our first screening of a rough cut of WatchCat. I knew there would be a lot of kids and adults of all ages at this party but, I was still nervous. It was nine months of hard work that was about to be displayed in front of viewing audience, as well as kids, who show you no mercy if they don't like what they see, and it was a rough cut, which means that it wasn't completely finished.


Jim: I had been getting everything ready from working on a final shot, to finding a video projector and then coming across a movie screen a few weeks earlier. We did a test screening the night before and discovered, we had a great picture, but the sound was coming from my laptop. You could barely hear it a few feet away. I seriously thought I would have to do the narration myself.

Greg: Will the audience understand  watching a rough cut? Would the kids care? The episode itself is only 2 1/2 minutes long, but if the crowd isn't engage in what we had to offer, it could be the longest 2 1/2 minutes of my life!!

Jim: And animation without sound is always harder to watch...

And so, our annual Pumpkin Carving party was well attended with family and friends who were also our first test audience for the first WatchCat episode.

Our backyard graveyard was the perfect place for projecting a film.

Filmmakers Lee Anthony Smith and Jeremy Foley were in attendance and could be heard discussing their various upcoming projects before the screening.

As the day turned to evening, a few BoxTrolls showed up with some speakers and wire. They helped us figure out our sound situation moments before the big screening!  

Jim: We now had Sound as well as a big picture! 

Greg: The crowd grew bigger and bigger in front of my eyes. Here we go!! As the light hit the screen, the kids sat quietly as they watch our images popped up before them. And the moment our cat appeared, they...loved him!!!

 And the captive audience viewed ...

the rough cut of WatchCat Episode 1...

Our audience reacted to our cat character and laughed at the humorous situations better than we thought they would. I was noting all the scenes that still need work, but it was so good to see and hear the reaction to our work so far. It gives you so much positive feedback to go back and finish the rest of the animation work.

And after a second screening, several kids in the audience asked if there was more to see. Well, we have storyboards and plans for future adventures and hope our audience grows and wants to see more too. The night was a success!!! But now, the real race begins... less than 25 days before the approaching November 21st deadline. Can one animator finish and fix up everything before its due?

Is there a cat in your neighbor that you always see hanging around? Perhaps its a WatchCat? We have a feline there may be more then one, so please let us know and send us a photo if you can. And check back here every Watchcat Wednesday to find the answer to these and other exciting questions! 

Until then, Have a safe and Happy Halloween, from the WatchCat crew.

A New Pen, a new hope...

Before the weekend arrived, my brand new Wacom Bamboo pen appeared in my mailbox and thus ended a week of no animation work. 

 

Thanks again to everyone for all the nice comments and concerns about this temporary set back in our production. 

Work was still going on even without the use of this pen. Adrian was hard at work putting buildings together and creating a camera move thru the cityscape. Here's a rough preview...

Citypan01 from Toondini on Vimeo.

And so, I wanted to have the final animation finished by our Halloween party Oct 25th, but that doesn't look good at this time. If I can finish the other scenes before our November 21st deadline I will be amazed. So far, every scene has been hand drawn by me and this is what takes the longest time to do. When we begin on the next episode, I will set up my characters a different way to allow anyone to animate them, while still keeping them on model.

There are a lot of scenes that I have tried to keep simple, but walking is always difficult to do when using a puppet rig. This scene I animated two walks by hand and am starting to regret it. Don't get me wrong, animating a walk can be fun to do, but it does take a lot of time to get it right. I think I have managed to get away with it in this scene, although I cheated a little on the big guy walk. Notice you never see his feet.

Here's the first animatic showing the timing of the scene.

ending001 from Toondini on Vimeo.

And now here is the animation of the bad guys walking and searching the room with their flashlights.

ending002 from Toondini on Vimeo.

I am currently finishing up this scene and will add the flashlight beams in After Effects. I'm also need to add our cat character. Once this is completed, color will be added and the layers will be imported into After Effects along with the background. Hopefully, next week I will be able to post the finished scene.

Lots to do and the November deadline is just around the corner...

Wacom, We have a Problem...

In good story telling, the main character(s) struggle against a conflict(s) which they must overcome to continue and complete their journey. Throughout the course of the story, the audience follows along to witness how the character(s) will solve certain situations and that surface. 

In real life many things can go wrong while working on a project which, in the end, actually makes the process more interesting; however, at the time, it's a pain in the aesthetic. In fact, this week we've had some highs and lows. 

Beginning with the low, my tablet stylus (aka the pen) has somehow managed to escape. I have been using a Wacom Bamboo tablet with a stylus throughout this project and this week, after using it somewhere else and upon returning home, I discovered the pen was gone. I retraced my footsteps, racked my brain, looked everywhere, even considered putting up "LOST STYLUS" signs in my neighborhood. 

Well, I thought, it would be easy find a new stylus; so, I went to BestBuy to get a new stylus and resume my animation work. Time has been my only drawback when working on this project, but now, without this pen, all drawn animation has come to a stop and time is ticking on.

As it turns out, when Wacom makes a tablet, it makes a stylus pen that only works with that tablet. You can't use a new pen model to replace an older one. And so, my only solution was to buy the older pen off of Ebay for the tablet I already have. I'm now waiting for it to arrive any day. I didn't think things would get any worse.

And then, the sound files disappeared from our After Effects file...

HAVE WE BEEN CURSED BY A GYPSY!?

I managed to track down all the sound files and put them back into the correct folder. I am now in the process of working on other scenes that don't require any drawing work. 

Luckily, there have been some good things that have happened like seeing some CG work being done which will be used at the very beginning of the film. Adrian Bolio is working modelling a city in Maya which we will combine with my animation to it later. 

Basic building shapes in gray.

Beginning to place the buildings together.

And then seeing this made my day...

While Adrian is busy adding more building to the city skyline, we got to listen to the original music being done by Marcello De Francisco.

There always something magical that occurs when you put music to animation, especially if someone like Marcello is scoring it. We gave him a rough animatic a few weeks ago and this week we got to hear the results. We added the music to our animatic and it added so much to the scenes we have so far. We can't wait to share it with you, but until then, here is a link to Marcello's music samples.  

Our deadline is rapidly approaching and originally we wanted to have everything done by Oct 25th, but now our revised deadline is November 21st. Greg and I will be attending this year's CTN Expo and hope to meet anyone who might be reading this blog and wants to see our first webisode as much as we do. Now if only that pen would arrive...   

Step by Step

Years ago at the CTN Expo in Burbank, I met Pixar story artist, writer and director Jim Capoblanco
and director of "Leonardo", an animated film which took him many years to create. He described working on his personal film project as if it was a shark. "You have to keep work on it even if you have small amounts of time in order to keep the production moving and alive," he told a large roomful of people at the conference.

And so, I thought I would take you through a shot that I've been working on this week.  Here's the original storyboard panels...

Its an important shot, but its one of those shots where it needs to be shown quickly, simply and in an interesting way if possible. Sometimes a storyboard panel can be a good placeholder, but when you start working on it, you have to find the best way of doing it in 2D without getting to complicated.

During this shot, there is a lot of dialogue until we get to panel 3, then the camera has to zip pan away. The problem, I discovered was getting the cop with boots, into his car, showing the Police Car door info and then panning over to show the cop and his dog in the police car. This would be find for 3D, but I'm working in 2D and I don't want to spend a lot of time animating the cop getting into the car. How can I simplify this shot, but still keep all these key details?

This is when you have to revise your shot. It happens and storyboard artist do it all the time. For me, it takes time to see the shot from a different angle or perspective. Sometimes, I walk around all day with a shot problem in my head trying to figure out how to do it. Of course, your audience has no idea how long each shot takes to make. They only get to see the final results of all your hard work.

Ok, back to the shot at hand... Only 5 to 6 seconds in length, camera pans over title on side of car which reads, "Metro K9 Patrol". Next the camera trucks in to reveal a cop and his dog sitting inside the car, the cop looks to camera and then we pull away to look at something else.

I researched images of Police cars until I found one that suited the shot. I took it into Toon Boom

            Research Police cars...                                                 Cartoon version of car.

                

 Here's a rough test of the shot with the guard dog and the cop turning his head...

SC04 WIP from Toondini on Vimeo.

What do you think of this shot? Watch it a few times and let me know if you notice anything that may look odd to you. As an Animator, we have to watch our work and be our own critic. We have to ask our ourselves, is there anything we can fix or add to make the scene better.

When adding the dog to this scene, the drawing was drawn at a larger size and when I scaled down it down, the lines double in thickness. This happens in this software, but also in Flash and is a problem, but I'm hoping I can get away with. Did you notice it at all or do you have animator eyes as well?

Here's your chance to direct a scene! I've got 25 scenes to finish, 2:20 in running time and I would appreciate any comments you may have and if I need to change this shot or let it be.

Thanks, Jim

The Real Watch Cat...

Ideas come from the most unusual places sometimes, for our project Watch Cat, it all started with my friend Greg, who noticed a cat who always seemed to be guarding this certain apartment building.

This is the real Watch Cat on duty.

This simple observation sparked an idea which grew into a story, then a storyboard, turned into an animatic and now is baking into an animated series of short webisodes.

Watch Cat Backstory
by Greg Bradley

I'm a screenwriter who's always looking for good ideas, but I never thought I would find one in my own backyard. 

Every day when I walked home, I would see this black-and-white & brownish cat sitting at the corner of my block. I've often wondered what kind of life this unusual cat lives. Every time I see him, he would be sitting on the same corner seamlessly all day, all night, as if he was protecting his house, his owner, or the neighborhood. To be honest, I'm not even sure if this cat has an owner. I would see a guy sitting outside his apartment sometimes, near where the cat sits, but I never ever actually saw them together. And this cat never wears a collar. People come by to pet the cat, play with him or even sometimes feed him. He rarely ever moved from that spot at the corner of the block which went on for years.

Every time I would pass by that cat to go to my place, I often thought to myself, what a lazy cat.

But I then started thinking, what if, this cat actually leads an amazing life. Full of adventure and excitement that us humans would know nothing about. What if, this is a crime fighting cat, who's sole purpose is to protect the neighborhood.  Wouldn't that make him the people's cat, the neighborhood's cat. I like this idea a lot! That's when I came up with the name, "Watch Cat." He would become a watch cat for the neighborhood, like "Watch Dog", or "Neighborhood Watch". Now, I'm really liking this idea and decided to do something with it. I thought it would make a great story. Maybe, even a great screenplay.

But four years later, I never really did anything with this idea. I did tell my closest friends about it, and they would all say, "hey, that's a great idea," but nothing ever came of it, until January of this year 2014, my friend Jim Richardson, an animator, contacted me about possibly doing Watch Cat as a web series. All of a sudden, it clicked!! To me, that made perfect sense. Everything came together after that and Jim and I have been working around the clock for nine months on the first ever episode of Watch Cat.

Has it really been 9 months?  I guess it has since we have also had to juggle our lives around family and work. Let it be know, we are just to regular guys sharing an idea to put out a series of adventures featuring not an ordinary cat, but a Watch Cat...

Here's the first episode...