January Preview

Dear Patrons,

Hope you've all had some wonderful holidays and a happy New Year! With Christmas in-between, it feels like quite a while since I've sat down and written an update. Such are the quirks of time perception I guess. I myself have just finished my first week of work at the new job. So far it's proven quite manageable, even if I'm still getting accustomed to a new software and technique. I've been able to stay ahead of my daily quotas and get home to work on Tales of Zale. And speaking of which, let's jump into the updates!

THIS MONTH'S PREVIEW:

This month I thought I'd bring along this lil' scene that I don't think I've shared in a while. It's probably the slowest scene in the episode. Before, the characters were quite still, but this is a scene where I've gone back in and added line-wobble to the clean-up after the fact. The wind is blowing, and while it isn't enough to move the characters' fur greatly, it felt a bit too static without the line wobble. I think it also just adds a bit of extra life to the otherwise subtle animation.

EPISODE 3:

I'm happy to report that I've fixed the Premier Pro issue I wrote about in the last update!! It took ages, but at long last I'm now dealing with manageable 15-minute export times, rather than the previous 15 hours. That's been great, because it has meant that I can start sharing the episode around to the sound folk. I've got composer, sound mixer, and now also sound designer ready. Most of them will be ready to start work around February, and this weekend I'm setting up a Slack chat for us to start bouncing ideas. We'll be taking it a bit slow, as everybody is doing this on top of other jobs and obligations. But that suits me fine, because it gives me some more time for polish.

Previous comp:

New comp:

100% of the animation is done, but I still think I can do a bit more to make the episode the best it can be. In particular in the compositing department. Right now I'm going over some scenes that I'd previously already given a round of compositing, and seeing if I can push them some more. In the shot above I went in and gave all the characters wobbly lines, since it's a windy scene (and it felt a bit too static for the very first scene in the episode!). I also did some slight animation touch-ups. Then I went to town on the compositing. In particular, I'm working on making the shots work better in grayscale too, increasing the contrast on some elements. I increased the vibrance to make certain colours pop, and then made the foreground warmer and the background colder in order to better separate the two levels. I also added and animated shadows underneath the characters. I also also added a slight bit of blur to the background, just a smidge. I think it all works to give the scene a bit more of an expensive look, and it covers some of my more pronounced illustrative weaknesses. So far I've given this treatment to the very last scene of the episode and am about halfway giving it to this very first (doing the animation adjustments takes some extra time too). 

TV-SERIES PITCH:

We've just had some downtime over the holidays, so there's not a lot of new stuff to report - just that the Copenhagen pitch went quite well. It presented us with some options in case our plan A doesn't work out. Other than that, we're meant to have a meeting pretty soon to plan our course of action for the year. Personally, I hope I can get to go to plenty of pitching forums! -- um, but as always we'll have to see which side of the pandemic wave we fall on during summer time.

OTHER APPLICATIONS:

Lil' extra side-project, because I just love doing applications apparently. There's a work grant that I've decided to apply for with Tales of Zale episode 3 + the TV-series. Chances of getting it with this type of project are slim, but it's not entirely unheard of. So I thought I'd give it a shot. Since I've committed to working a full-time job for the next four months it sure would be dandy to transition from that into work-grant-time right as we enter animation festival and forum season. So that's another little thing that I'm up to whenever I need a break from animating.

OBS! PATREON CREDITS:

Hey uh, so remember how one of the Patreon rewards is to get your name in the credits of the episode? Well that's no joke, it's always been the intention. Whether it be somebody who supported me way back at the very beginning and then had to cancel their pledge later on - or somebody who's still supporting me to this day. All are entitled to a thank you in the credits. I've been trying to keep track of everybody in this list, but maybe I've missed somebody, or maybe you'd want to be credited by a different name than your Patreon username. For that reason I'll be writing out to current and former supporters in the coming days, as well as push it on my social media in case some people don't check their inbox. If you see your name among the credited and are happy with the titling then you can simply ignore the message I sent you. But if not, feel free to write back and let me know what I can do for you.

ROUND-UP:

I might be a little less active on social media during this adjustment period to the new work-schedule, but you all know I'm still working hard at it all! I don't want to repeat myself too much right off the bat in the new year, so I think we'll leave it at that :)

Here's to 2022 being the year of ToZ!

All the best,

- Sif