Hit the ------FINISH LINE----\(^o^)/

     This is a film about a lonely wind up cat discovers a mysterious box that may contains friendly creature. In order to open the box, he explores the planet and tries different keys.

     This is a film NOT only about the loneliness. It would be too sad.
     This is a film NOT only about the self- sacrifice. It would be too big.
     This is a film NOT only about friendship. Every thing on the planet is unique as individual.
     I guess, this is a film about a life similar to our own, but it just takes place on another planet.

    There is no specific target audience...I wish people just simply enjoy it, as a kid.

Final Mix Day!

It is a big day today, thinking about almost totally done with the film. It is kind of sad but also relief.
Mixer: Chris Bonis

It was a stormy week

That is what I mean. Very,very stormy, for the little cat...

Post-Production is a looooooong war

After I finished shooting on March 8th. The way I work has changed... Instead of standing for hours everyday, I sit in front of computer day by day...I don't it is more relax for sitting down or more tired. Neck pain and sour eyes take the place of heel and knee pain. /(-_-;)\

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I have been working on 2D animation for almost two weeks and finally, I figured out the look of the bubble from the box I wanted.

Thanks for Jeixi's help, I achieved the meteors in the cosmic.

This is how normal meteors looks.

This is how the mysterious box.

Recording Session- Exciting

It is me and my composer Annie in the middle~

Ooooooops...

    This shot cost 28 hours in three days to shoot as 9 layers that includes different elements.

Cat animation

Group leaves

Leaves with more complex animation

    The entire animation was divided into different sections and elements in order to have better control of everything. However, the set slightly shift height between two days shooting and the color was slightly offset when the camera went to sleep mode during the lunch break. It is a little bit annoying to fix all those problems in the post. I guess there will always be advantages and disadvantages. haha...

Planning for the forest

Slow leaves...

    I am not planning have leaves visible in the framing because that would be too much work and not worth it. I made only tree trunks and some small plants that would grow out on the tree trunk and bottom of the tree.
    For the tree top, I am still trying to figure out what would be a good way to create the shady look around the tree. I can carve black foam board or glue leaf shapes onto wire mesh, but I cannot ensure the final result.
    Things are slowing down here and I am feeling hitting on a wall and struggling on finding my way out. At this point, I am behind the schedule about 4 days already when I still have not everything ready to go.

This the final result of the tree trunk.

          Last night                                           Second time coloring

    These are the leaves I made and colored last night. It looks good before they totally dry out during the night. This morning when I see those leaves, I was about to scream...The color all run away from the center of the leaf and gather only on the edge with ugly pale area because of how the water evaporated. I decided to re-color them one more time and this time they are much darker when they are wet. I hope they can be the right brightness this time after they dry up.

    When time passed by, I began to get worried again, because the color are still super dark even though the leaves are almost dry. I guess I have to try to wash off some color this time and hope the best.

Trees are coming together

    The forest scene is the one I left to the end to work on, because there are too many uncertain and experiments. It was a long process to plan how to fabricate the tree into the way I want it looks like.

I started with cutting base pieces for the tree so I can put T-nuts on for the tie down. I glued poster tube with the base I made and add detail of the tree roots by craft wire mesh.

  

I only make half the tree so the it still looks fine in the camera but saved a lot work load.

This one specifically will be the tree which cat will interact with, so I left some room on the right side of the tree for cat to stand. 

After finish the detail with wire mesh, I put some hard material on the surface to enhance the shape.

Tree bark is so fun and so hard to do. Wrinkled fabric looks exactly like natural tree bark. However, it is pretty difficult to glue the fabric onto the poster tube while not changing the nice wrinkle of it. In the end, most wrinkles on the finished tree was shaped one by one...

A Nice Break_Just For Fun

I love those old stage technique! They are so brilliant!

Maybe I will make more in the future.

Shooting Star and Clouds

   I tested shooting star by light drawing. It was so fun to work in the darkness with only a flash light.

    This is the resulting frame of composite light drawing with my footage. It was just a little bit hard to keep the drawing consistent frame by frame because Dragonframe doesn't help any in this situation. The preview pictures in Dragonframe which are suppose to allow people to check animation, are captured before the camera actually work. Therefore, the preview pictures looks so different with the actual pictures taken by the camera, especially when the camera is set up to take long exposure frames.
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 I am fabricating clouds that can be animated, and it is kind of hard.

    On one hand, I want the cloud look cute and puffy, so I picked cotton as the outside material. Because cotton naturally has the perfect ability to let part of the light though and have a soft and fuzzy edge. On the other hand, it is required to be animated, which means the clouds should have some wire or sort of armature inside to hold the shape and allow animator to control it frame by frame.

    I start with the armature. My first thought is wire. I bend wire to loops and some of them are overlapped so they can support each other that they won't be too "soft". And then I cover it with thin foam wrap. In the end, I put layer of cotton on and shape it with a felt poking needle.

    This is very rough animation test of the cloud moving with a turning key. It is kind of fast and it is not a perfect loop. I just want to see if the armature and cotton is easy enough to handle or not. It is okay if I handle it with extra care. 

    To make it easier for me, I tried a different armature: wire mesh.

    It looks cool, but it doesn't meet my need in the end. It is more rigid, stiff and stable when I touch it during the shooting but the surface still move around slightly after being touched, just like the first one cloud test. 

    There is a shot that I need the key turns and clouds be stretched and squashed. So I need to keep trying to make different clouds. 

加油！

Forest_to the trees

The test framing of the forest shot.

    This the shot of the forest where the cat will pull out the key from the tree and then the leaves will all fall off. I was hoping the tree tops won't be shown in this frame so that I can save a lot work of making leaves. But I may make some small branches with some leaves at the lower position in the picture. In that way, It can kind of give the audience of the idea of those leaves. Beside the small branches, I will carve a piece of black foam to create the shadow of tree tops. (Maybe mixing with green gel?)

the bird view of the forest.

There are actually only 8 trees. And in the real fabrication, there might be only 6 of them. G1 and G2 are the same tree in different angle and they will be filmed in two passes. D and F can be the same tree. So do the B and C. It all depends on how hard to fabricate the tree and how much material is available.

This is the plan of how to fabricate the tree.

  The main point, like all other plants on this planet, is fabric. Felt is still the best choice with nice texture. The color will depend on how the fabric looks and possibility of coloring the fabric with paint.

New Semester_New Calendar!

I kind of felt guilty of doing nothing over the winter break but also felt good. It was actually very nice to take a period time away from a project and go back onto it with refreshed mind. This is the schedule for the new journey. 

New semester comes sooner than I felt it should have be. But I totally rested over the winter break and had been inspired by a lot of stuff and I am ready to fight again!