More quickly made characters. 33 down, 28 to go!
Yeah as long as you know why you’re doing this nothing should stop you !
I’m sure you’ll learn a lot of stuff, even the simplistic project always hide challenges and is an opportunity to improve !
When I look at all the characters, the sets , the duration, the output will be epic in it’s very own way !
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Just raced through a small stack of mainly sideline characters. There are 11 characters left to do, and then, it’s about animation! I maaaay do them today, but I’m feeling oddly lightheaded, so for now, here’s just a few more citizens of Ida Lund’s Nakskov:
Just knocked out two more. Still a bit lightheaded (weather is crazy here, storms and heatwaves etc., makes me woozy), but I think I also have some inate problem with doing the random background characters, which I’m kinda getting to with the last 9 ones waiting. Maybe I really am some fluffy artistic sensitive thing deep down, too aloof to do the grunt work… never thought so, but…
Some townsfolk and a thug teacher. All I still need to do are a bunch of random thugs. Dunno why I’m procrastinating so hard on that last lap of the race… hmmm…
DONE! 191 individual assets have been made for the movie, and I have already learned a lot about what lacks I need to see to in my own skills before the next project, even before animating this thing! For one, I know absolutely NOTHING about fashion, judging by how hard it was for me to put together 61 very basic characters. Heck, I realized I have no idea what kinds of PANTS people wear, other than jeans and slacks! How do I even dress myself?!?
Oh yeah, poorly. Aaaaanyway… here’s the final bunch of characters!
Next, it’s time to start animating, and figure out how to deal with dialog. But for now, I think I deserve a bit of a rest. I didn’t even expect to have all assets done for almost a week, so I guess that gives me nearly a week of sleep. Yay!
First scene has been animated. It’s… well, it’s goddamn awful. Horrible. Should not be viewed by mortal humans. So logically, I’m trying to decide how to make it visible to the world! Laughably crappy as it is (the assets you have already seen, so no surprise), it has given me an INSANE amount of insight in what needs to be done to rise fully to this challenge! As I have a habit of saying, to learn from mistakes, make many. I practice what I preach.
And yes, I’m considering making a development blog, so as to not clutter this thread with updates like this. I’m just so very tired right now, so those big ambitions belong in the future…
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It’s… oh, it’s bad.
Just got the first few clips together, it’s taking more time than expected due to some problems with how Blender works (or, in these cases, does not). They’re minor things that only pop up when you get in a crunch, but I do need to find workarounds. Once that’s done, productivity sould increase, so to speak.
Note that apart from the very low quality, I’m a former teacher, so I depict the kids in the animation as I know them, not as the proper and polite Harry Potter types. Sorry if your nerves are a bit raw on that point…
Hey , I had’nt realized that it was you that also make this post :
What I say there apply to projects that tries to match quality standards we used to see , in your case it’s a bit different and you can actually pull off something in a short amount of time.
If you have time to add sound and music it will help a lot to get into the story.
All that said, even if the framing could be improved it’s nice, timing and editing is also good.
About the dialogs sadly I don’t understand everything because I’m not a native english speaker, but anyway it’s fun to watch. All that said I may not watch the entire movie once it’s released…
Thanks! I’m not expecting a lot, or really any, people to sit through the whole thing when it’s done. It’s a challenge and an experiment, not a “real” movie project. Cool that you endured what’s up now, though! I expect to publish now and then just to keep myself sharp, it’s likely going to be over 5 (6?) minutes when the day is done. I doubt I can make it in time, but damit, I am going to try!
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Yeah ! That’s the spirit !
Keep up the “good” work !!!
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I think you linked to the wrong post.
So did you decide to make it only 5-6 minutes now? Sorry that post was not clear.
Oh, no, sorry about the confusion. I meant that when this day is over, I should have reached 6 minutes of animation. I still aim at maybe 100 minutes in full, although it’s starting to look like an actual challenge at the moment 
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What do you mean?
Yeah you will have to average about 3 mins per day finished animation.
I mean sozap linked to my post rather than yours.
Was anything discussed about the nature/scope of the film or content of the story? Or was the specific story chosen before?
The reason I ask is that there are a 101 different choices around all aspects of the story and the making of the film that would determine the effort to make it. A ton of things could be said about this subject alone.
Just curious.
But regardless, if your concern is not about the quality at the end but to actually get to the end, I have one suggestion you may not have thought of.
This is a concept in art that is considered as “broad strokes first”. And this is where you could sketch something out in its basic form first and then work to fill in the details.
And I can see that this entire effort is more or less following this rule. But here is an idea for the animation side of it that might help you down the stretch.
Would go something like this:
- Determine the lowest common thing that has to occur in order for all of the scenes to be finished.
This would probably be obviously the characters in the locations with props and at minimum one camera to capture the scene.
No animation, only dialog if you have it. No various camera angles.
This might require first sketching or listing this out as broken down in a practical sense from the screenplay or other story form This list or sketch you might consider 0)
This is the most basic effort that must be complete. If you don’t at least do this. You don’t have a film. Get the idea? And there is a lot of work to do here.
Then work gradually more detail in, uniformly to all of the scenes:
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No animation, but all shots set up with characters in position.
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Any character basic movements in each shot. Meaning if they walk, only slide them.
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Camera animations
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More detailed character animations, but very basic and blocked out with no curves - constant leyframes.
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Basic animations with curves
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any other details you have time to add.
Basically something like that.
This way no matter how much time you have to finish details, you have at least satisfied the end goal of finishing the complete film in its most basic form.
This process is also known as an animatic in animation. I am doing something very similar with my film.
One popular technique is the animatic can be built on and built on and move gradually into the final result.
You could do the same thing here.
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Lots to go through in that one 
The story was decided on at the challenge, being an early draft of something I wrote a year or so ago, without “interpretation”, meaning things seem a bit weird because written stories don’t always transate perfectly to visual ones.
The basic limits on “quality” (as much as it is) are no floating and a semblance of both camera work and motion. It can be a really, really bad movie, but it has to at least look like a movie.
The method you described is actually the reason for the whole challenge. I started talking about how it essentially takes a few hours to make a really, really no thrills movie (floating characters, no flashy camera work or modelling, etc.), and the challenge sort of grew from that. I am trying to find good ways to implement something like it, but there are some issues with Blender that are making it hard to execute, especially in the way rigging works (if I move a character as just an object and later add the pose animation, things quickly get wonky). If you have anything, ANYTHING on that methodology for film making, please let me know, because it is EXACTLY what I am trying to do, it is just harder than expected!
And I think my average is around 1 minute of output per day, so I need to up my game!
I read through all this project and i think it’s an interesting task.