Raiders of the Lost Arc

 Bad puns aside, that was one of the highlights of the otherwise tedious effects work, finding the blade when the actor is moving so fast that even the staff is almost invisible. Fortunately there was an upside to that challenge. If you the animator have to guess where things will be based on blurry hand positions, the audience will also likely have just about as much a clue as you.

 

Also among the highlights of the week, we start readings this Sunday for a short promo project. Like the other shorts before, the goal is to give people a dramatic introduction to the world of the next project, and the concepts behind it. More details will follow when we also have pictures to go with them.

That's about all for now. Until next time!

Three Blades, One Minute

That, ladies and gentlemen, is all that remains of the lightsaber animations for the LCC. I suppose that actually means three minutes of animation, but y'all get the gist. There are a few other things that will need to be finished when all of this is done, such as the sabers cutting into the ground, victims, and the odd particle effect or two, but I am still very happy to have reached this milestone.

For an insanely busy week I feel like there should be more news, but that's about all for now. Until next time!

No Shiny

That's right, sadly we have no pictures from the current phase of the work, mostly because I'm currently neck deep in it and a couple other things. Currently we're 40% of the way into blade 3 of 4 in the group fight sequence, with number four taking up much less screen time. With that in mind we're probably in the last quarter of the first section.

 

To get "Chaos" off the ground again after the lull, we're looking at a slightly unorthodox method for creating the backgrounds and environments, but one which will keep within the spirit and tone of the piece. Pictures will be forthcoming as soon as we have a sampling.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

On the Color Red

 Okay, maybe not so much ON the color, but the color has certainly been occupying much of my working time. With the Jedi Sabers completed in a timely manner, the Sith get all my attention. Ah, the joys of finding the great disappearing blade, especially when both the stuntie and camera are moving fast enough to make the entire arm disappear. Still, we are progressing, with 3/5ths of the first minion blade animation being completed these last two days.

Before I dove into the more complicated parts of the work, however, I animated the last shot of the entry, to figure out what, exactly, I was doing.

 

 

Turns out red blades against a blue sky make for some interesting color challenges.

Anyway, that's about all for now. Until next time!

Hammering It Out

 Greetings, one and all! We have now begun the period of relative quiet. By which I mean running around frantically, but with less people in tow. A good friend is getting married in a week and a half, and I'll be in the ceremony, so that'll be taking up a wee bit 'o my attention. Even though the LCC edit was "locked" last week, there were still several things I wasn't quite happy with, so five iterations later we're a tad bit closer. A few seconds of saber animation have been completed, but since I didn't want to start work on any of the parts that are in flux, as that would be a waste of hours of work, that's as far as we could go this week.

 

The last few weeks I was working on a new script idea, but fifty pages in I realized it wasn't in keeping with the spirit of what I was trying to accomplish and scrapped it. Now I'm a mere seven pages into the newest idea, and it looks to be more in keeping with the flavor of what we do. (*editor's note: Yay!)

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!