#and found the first animatic which led me to the second

[aeryssickfics]

Both by natsumeoww on youtube!

I love them both very much but specifically the two birds on a wire one just destroyed me.

[saixria]

The ICHBW live stream animatic is hitting me hard hours after the fact I’m not a crier but I’m actually tearing up. Now I can fully articulate what I love about Athena’s part. Athena’s character came together so well I love it and I think the visuals combined with a day more of thinking + discussing with friends really helped me better understand everything. Those last 90 seconds of ICHBW was the BEST PART OF THE ENTIRE SHOW. Ridiculously long Athena character analysis under the cut which quickly devolves into thematic discussion lmao

First of all, the expressions they have on the animatic makes it abundantly clear that ody and Athena weren’t separated. HER SMILE!! HER LIGHTNING SCAR!! ODYSSEUS’ EXPRESSION SOFTENED TO A SMILE AFTER GETTING OUT OF QUICK THOUGHT!! Odysseus definitely pieced together what she did for her right then, there’s no other reason for Jorge to show Athena showing Odysseus that scar otherwise. It’s like they immediately slid back into place like puzzles pieces even after 10 years. They’ve been changed in completely opposite ways. Odysseus the mortal has been turned to be less human, more ruthless, while Athena the immortal goddess has been turned to be more human, more empathetic. The latter partially because of Odysseus. Tbh Athena ever showing her face to Odysseus after My Goodbye and saying “I can’t help but feel like I’ve led you astray” is as close to an apology as it’s gonna get LMAO. The unresolved WOTM melody in the end is actually because their story together hasn’t ended, it’s because Odysseus doesn’t have to be her warrior of the mind anymore.

I once said that open arms is more than mercy, but treating the world kindly to lead to kinder souls down the road, to change the world for the better, and it holds true even more now. Odysseus is too tired for this. He’s just a man, he knows a better world is possible but he can no longer be a part of it. He can’t witness the better world in his short mortal lifetime, he just wants his happy ending with his wife. He doesn’t want to be Athena’s warrior of the mind anymore, and that’s ok. And yet, and yet he knows it is possible. He needs it to be possible, and he needs Athena to make it possible. Athena accepts it with a soft “very well”. That doesn’t mean they won’t ever see each other again, just that they no longer have that obligation of mentor-student, they’re just two old friends. They can rebuild their relationship slowly but surely with what they have.

Telemachus is the Warrior of the Mind now (AHHHHHH HIS ATHENA CAPE AND HELMET I LOVE HIS UPGRADE). From here, Telemachus and Athena are gonna truly fulfill Athena’s mission of “making a greater tomorrow” except it isn’t to turn the world more logical and ruthless like she once thought, but to make the world more empathetic and kind — she’s finally found what she was fighting for. Perhaps this is why the WOTM melody in God Games ended with Legendary — Telemachus is the new warrior of the mind. Odysseus fought for a world where his son can be safe and grow up kind and he succeeded in that. Far from war, Telemachus grew up able to afford kindness and empathy while also retaining the ability to be ruthless in face of obstacles — and now he can use this to change the world to Athena’s new ideal — where people held each other with more empathy — as Athena’s new Warrior of the Mind.

Athena’s verse existing is a sign of her reconciliation with Odysseus (in character might I add! I don’t think they’re the type to express their affection so easily, they know each other so we’ll that they just know), so instead her verse is there to expand on the show’s theme as I will be talking about next.

I absolutely adore the depth Athena’s ICHBW verse adds to the thesis of the show. I’ve always thought of epic as mostly being about how it was best to strive for a balance between ruthlessness and open arms, but circumstances only allowed Odysseus to become ruthless which was tragic, while different circumstances allowed Telemachus to be both. But it’s not just that. Sure it’s good to have a balance between the two ideaologies but what if we could make a world where ruthlessness wasn’t needed at all? What if we could be unconditionally kind and be treated with kindness in return instead of taken advantage of or hurt? Where, when given the choice between open arms and ruthlessness, people would choose open arms? It wasn’t possible for these characters, but it could happen someday in the future. If Athena and Telemachus can work towards that future so can we. So should we, considering we’re in a much better place compared to them. A friend of mine said this was a call to action to us in the present and I just. Have not been able to stop thinking about it.

Athena has always thought in “maybes” about her purpose. from WOTM to My Goodbye we’ll be fine to ICHBW. “Maybe one day…” -> “One day you’ll…” -> “maybe if I…” -> “what if…” it’s like she’s representing the future, the “greater tomorrow” of what could be, because as Odysseus said, she’s immortal and she will live to see it and change it. Circe saga has something similar — “Maybe showing one act of kindness leads to kinder souls down the road”, “maybe one day the world will need a puppeteer no more, or maybe one day the world will need a puppeteer more”. The connection of these hypotheticals “maybe one day” with a future world that could possibly be changed for the better by spreading kindness and open arms extends from Athena’s songs to There are Other Ways, one of the only times in the musical where, when Circe could choose between ruthlessness and mercy, she chose to show mercy and help them in hopes of spreading kindness to the world and making the world a slightly better place — aka a scenario that showed how unconditional kindness, “open arms”, could work, for kindness isn’t the inability to be cruel but choosing kindness even when you have the choice not to be. “Kindness is brave”, like Polites said.

Because of her immortality, Athena is the character who’s most connected to “time” in the musical with her time-related abilities like “time dive”, making people think quicker, having a domain essentially outside of time and space… She doesn’t just have a connection with the future but also the past. As someone who lives forever, she is the one who can connect the past, learning from past mistakes, to change the future: “To fall is to learn one way”.

Speaking of her connection to time, You can almost see that at one point Athena was the narrator of the story (see cut songs: full speed ahead demo and Ismarus) like Hamilton’s Burr: simultaneously an observer and a participant of the story. In the animatic of ICHBW she’s overseeing everything happening from her hour glass, wondering out loud from a meta perspective about the themes of the show, hypotheticals of what a different story, a different world could have looked like, and bringing everything to a close. It really feels like Athena is who’s gonna “live and tell their story” as per Hamilton, as always has been the case from burrthena narration days of Old Epic. She’s not just the bridge between the past and future but also between the story and the audience, by bringing up these themes on a meta level to directly tell the audience to make the world a kinder place, because we have the choice, unlike Odysseus who can only choose to accept his actions and move forward. Because she lives forever she can carry on their memories forever. She can keep telling their story over and over again to remind herself and others to change the world by showing empathy and open arms, and she will keep telling this story to us until ruthlessness is no longer needed in the world. The world where this is possible is not theirs but OURS. It is WE who have the chance to choose between ruthlessness and open arms and the show is telling us that, when we have this choice and aren’t forced to be ruthless, to always choose kindness and empathy. Like Circe, like Telemachus. So that we may impart some kindness unto the world and make it a better place.

“Maybe one day we’ll reach them and we’ll make a greater tomorrow then they’ll see I know we’ll change the world cuz we are the warriors of the mind!” — yes, they have reached us. We are all also warriors of the mind, doing our part to change the world for the better, to be kinder.

To me, one part of Athena’s character that’s never clicked for me was her motivation in WOTM. “Make a greater tomorrow” “we’ll change the world” why? How? What’s the point of including this in her song when it’s never come back up again? Now with the ICHBW verse, everything is tied up with a beautiful ribbon. She has always wanted to change the world for the better, and now she’s finally found out how — to spread empathy and Open Arms — and it’s inspired by the desire to help her friends, to prevent what happened to Odysseus from happening again, honoring him, just as how Odysseus tried to embrace Open Arms to honor his dead friends’ memories.

All in all, I’ve grown to genuinely really really like Athena’s verse in ICHBW. It’s so short but so effective at conveying so much. I hope that made sense bc it’s more a compilation of thoughts I had rather than a structured essay. Perhaps one day I will restructure this into a proper essay but not today for after all I’m- *gets shot

[buzzybee3]

Okay so pre the other comic… for the experiment au. I had another one…

They weren’t meant to be connected but recent events led to me having an… epitome?

So this comic is supposed to be just a random day in the daycare or whatever but I will change the interactions between the characters slightly in the fic.

I’m the animatic it’s gonna be within the same 6 ish hours but in fic time a lottt of stuff has to happen before then!

Basically very lore heavy but we will learn about Venus’s past (from the kids in the beginning) and then some time later they have a random conversation with a kid and they glitch out sorta. Their parents remind them of their own (this is y/n’s fault but Venus is worried about her)

And so… chaos ensues.

Venus promises to tell sun at the end of the day (later) and sun gets elated because he thinks he’s learning more about her. And while he is… it’s not what any of them expect.

Sun because he doesn’t know what to expect, Venus because they thought y/n would tell him about her theories, and y/n because they chicken out at the last moment and tell sun about her and Venus. The fact that she is the person piloting her.

And that is the start of the imagined comic, sorta. After Venus and sun part ways at the end of the first comic, the song another believer starts to play. (Might as well be an animatic agent this point)

During the intro as the instruments start up the actual sun moves through the sky outside of the actual Plex and then imagined comic starts.

At the very end of the imagined comic (if you want the details on that one then I’ll tell y’all) the third and final comic of this imagined, unfinished, not very thought out chronologically idea, and the song exit music (for a film) starts.

It fits too well for me to think it’s real but have at it what you will.

I might write out the contents of number two if I get the time soon.

This is comic one:

Transcript if you cannot understand my handwriting (which is understandable 😭):

Second panel:

Y/n : Bye!! *waves off random kid*

*Turns*

“Hello!-“

Venus: *scans kids* Error, match not found message’

*Zooms in on the plush the boy holds and a small clink happens inside of their mechanics*

Y/n: *whispering in slight horror* “…spots…?”

Sun: *appears* “Hey, Venus!”

Y/n and Venus scared out of their shit: *turns to look at sun, Venus’s eyes display an exclamation point*

Sun: “…You okay?” *gives them a look of concern, the most they can at the moment at least.*

Y/n: *hesitating* “Yea sorry… you scared me”

Sun: “No not that…”

There’s a pause

Sun: “Those kids-“

Y/n: “It’s nothing” *looks away guiltily*

Camera pans over to the child holding the stuffed animal and his older sister. She is sweating nervously and both walk into the depths of the daycare.

Sun: sounding lost “what about them?” He assumed he heard Venus say something.

Y/n: “They looked like-“

Sun: “Like who?”

Y/n: they falter after being cut off by sun. “…no one important!”

Sun: silent and hesitating. “…Okay”

There’s a ding at the desk, another kid has entered the daycare.

Y/n: *Kneels and greets the new kid. Getting distracted from the conversation*

When they stand, Sun leans over them and they sag playfully

Venus’s eyes display text that reads “sigh.”

Y/n: knowing that this will be a moment to regret “I can tell you later okay?”

Sun visibly brightens up, not having expected that.

Sun: “Okie!”

Sun leans in closer and his left arm goes under Venus left arm and his hand holds hers as he leans his head toward her cheek.

He repeats the same word in his exitement and bonks his face against their cheek.

Sun: Muah!

He runs as Venus and Y/n spin to look at him angrily, blushing of course.

Y/n: Exclaims, “SUN!”

and both Venus and y/n contemplate the moment before Venus Blue screens and y/n is left a mess.

Woah the ending got a bit close to fanfic.

Anyway that’s it. Just a small thing!

If you want I can explain the second unillustrated and hopefully soon to be roughly animated comic!

[izlaria]

Someone you like (part 1)

This work is inspired by the animatic called Someone you like by honestlyprettychill. I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to do all of the povs showcased in the video, but I just really loved the idea that Lance would eventually come to like Pidge, a romance born from  years of friendship. Friends to lovers is my jam.

I’m posting this on tumblr in case I never finish it, because I just wanted to share what I’ve written so far. I might upload the whole thing to AO3 later.

I made some changes to the video’s initial idea, because I wanted to follow canon ages and I didn’t want a 14-year-old to fall for a 12-year-old. At that time, it’s a pretty big difference in development. So I wanted to establish the basis for Lance to eventually romanticize their first encounter, despite not having been attracted to young Katie.

Spanish to English translations at the end.

14 years old

The truth was that Lance went to Space Camp because Veronica could be a little pest. She knew their parents wouldn’t let her go alone and so had enticed her younger brother with the promise of travel and foreign girls and no parental supervision.

Veronica had obviously left out the fact that they were essentially going to school on steroids for a month, smack in the middle of their summer break. Cool as Miami might seem, Lance wasn’t exactly excited for all the extra work the camp would entail.

“No es un acampamiento,” his sister repeated for what felt like the thousandth time. He wasn’t listening anymore. “Tú sabes que el campo de explotación espacial no está muy desenvuelto en Cuba. Si realmente quieres trabajar con eso, entonces simplemente cállate y no insultes a nadie.”

“¿Cuando he insultado a alguien?” he shot back, defensive. Veronica didn’t dignify that with an answer.

As much as Lance might like to think himself very smooth, there were still times when he stumbled over his words, especially in English. More than once he’d meant to pay someone a compliment and had accidentally started an argument of some kind.

Veronica looked impatiently at her watch. “Mira, tengo una reunión con mi orientador. Y tú tienes por lo menos dos artículos para leer para las clases de mañana, ¿por qué no vas a la biblioteca para trabajar un poco? Prometo comprarte una hamburguesa después.”

Lance pouted at her, arms crossed over his chest. “Me debes más que una hamburguesa y lo sabes, Ronie.”

His sister snickered, but it was as much of an acknowledgement as he was going to get. Veronica pressed a quick kiss to his hair, already turning to go into the main building.

“¡Gracias, hermanito! ¡No te arrepentirás!”

In all honesty, Lance wasn’t as irritated as he made Veronica believe. He knew that a summer program in Miami was a really good opportunity, especially if he wanted to get into the Garrison in the following years. It was just difficult.

He was diligent and studious, but not as naturally gifted as some of the other kids. Besides, he hadn’t been to the US in a couple years, since his parents had mostly settled down in the family farm, which meant he still had to fall back into his English, a task made even more frustrating by the xenophobic comments from one of the boys in his AP geometry class.

The teacher had put an end to it right away, but the words stuck with Lance, for some reason.

With how much humanity had progressed in terms of technology, one would think they would be able to get past petty rivalry between nationalities and usually that was true, but the influx of foreigners following the establishment of the Galaxy Garrison in the US desert still annoyed some people, despite its existence as a multinational center for space exploration. It irritated Lance to no end, especially when so many of these scientific advances came from international collaboration.

If only he could shrug off the inadequacy that now grew in his chest.

Straight ahead, there was a path that led to a green area in the middle of the campus. The other students had taken to calling it the Woods, though it was more of a middle-sized park, with benches and picnic tables where anyone from the Institute could go to relax. That’s where Lance went, mind too full to really focus on homework.

He wondered if people would react that same way if he ever made it into the Garrison. He didn’t know how Veronica dealt with it all, especially when she was alone in Arizona most of the time. Barely a week had passed and Lance already missed his parents, the tenderness of home-cooked food and well-intended lectures.

No, he had to believe that Billy Underwood was an exception. The other kids hadn’t joined in on his taunts, even if no one had moved to defend Lance. It was still too early to make conclusions on his colleagues, especially when everyone had seemed so charmed by him before then.

Lance was so lost in thought that he didn’t realize he had been standing in front of one of the benches until a new voice broke through the peace of the park.

“Are you just gonna stand there?”

The words were somewhat harsh, but when Lance lowered his eyes to their source the girl winced, grimacing. She seemed to have spoken impulsively.

“Hmm, yeah.” Lance blinked at her for a moment, before finally sitting down on the bench. He made sure to leave space between him and the girl, not wanting to make the situation even more awkward.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” the girl said after a moment of silence. She looked at him sideways and her brown eyes seemed almost golden in the sunlight. There were freckles spread across the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks, and the green ribbon in her hair swayed in the wind. It was a soft sight, a contrast to the steeliness of her posture and gaze.

“It’s fine,” Lance hurried to assure her. She looked young, but so did he, and talking to complete strangers never failed to make him nervous. “Nothing like a little girl yelling at me to bring me back to earth.”

He gave her his best grin, the one reserved for first impressions and fancy parties. It was supposed to project confidence and kindness, even though Luis said he ended up looking a bit smug.

“I didn’t yell,” the girl pointed out with a light frown. Then her eyes shifted into a more calculating look. “You’re a bit of a goofball, aren’t you?”

“I prefer the term good-humored,” he replied jokingly.

She continued to stare. Lance got the feeling that the girl did this a lot. She had an untamed intelligence to her that Lance couldn’t completely understand. It was the sort of air that teachers sometimes carried, as if they could see something deeper in you if they looked long enough.

“It didn’t seem like you were feeling all that good-humored just now.” She tilted her head to the side, letting the words hang between them.

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true,” Lance found himself saying.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” She looked so doubtful that it almost made Lance laugh. The feeling, however, was overcome by the relief of finally having someone who would listen.

He had spent the week trying and failing to explain to Veronica what was truly making him feel down. She was too busy or too happy for Lance to tell her the truth, especially when it left him so vulnerable. After all, Veronica had taken to her work on the Institute like a fish to water. Lance was supposed to be more adaptable than this.

With the rest of his family away in Cuba, he felt unbearably lonely.

“Yes! Thank you!” Lance shifted in the bench to face the girl. She was taken aback by his enthusiasm, but didn’t move away. “There’s this cabrón in my class, who thought it was a good idea to mess with me, just ‘cause I said fábrica instead of factory in our first day here. He hasn’t really left me alone since…” he whined. “I speak two languages but somehow I’m the uneducated ass here!”

The girl nodded, eyes downcast. “I know what you mean.”

“You do?” He eyed the fairness of her skin and the almost ginger of her hair. “Sorry, but you look white.”

Lance’s comment must have taken her by surprise, because she actually laughed.

“I am white. I’m also Italian.” She rolled her eyes, but there was amusement in the tug of her lips. “I can be both.”

“That’s true.” Lance grinned sheepishly. It was good that she wasn’t offended by his lack of filter. “You don’t have much of an accent, though.”

“Neither do you,” the girl bit back, no real animosity in her tone.

He shrugged. “My family spent a lot of time in the US when I was younger. It used to be second nature to me. Now, I keep feeling like I have to hold back the instinct to roll my R’s.”

“I get that. My parents moved here right after I was born, but we used to speak Italian in the house.” There was a pause here, something that she couldn’t bring herself to say. “I think it’s cool that you can speak Spanish. It’s useful.”

“Yeah?” Lance sat up straight, feeling suddenly boastful.

“Sure!” she continued, encouraged by his interest. “The Bouman Aeronautics Research Institute really values multiculturalism! It is a hob of different nationalities and perspectives, created to foster new minds from around the world! Or that’s what my brother says, at least, and he is rarely wrong.” She gave him a smirk that quickly shifted into a grimace. “Don’t tell him I said that or he will never let me forget it.”

“Older brother?” At her nod, Lance smiled. “I got older siblings too. Sort of the reason I’m here in the first place, actually. One of them was accepted as a researcher and she tricked me into applying too.”

“Same, actually.” She seemed startled for a moment, pulling out her cellphone. “Freak, I have to go! I completely lost track of time while reading.” She got up to go, collecting the book she’d apparently put down to talk to him. It was a thick volume with numbers on the cover, but it didn’t look like math.

Another green ribbon fluttered to the ground, having escaped the pages of the book. Lance bent down to pick it up.

“Here.” He stretched it out to the girl. “Wouldn’t want to lose its pair,” he said with a wink.

“Thanks for reminding me!” She grabbed the ribbon hurriedly, then paused, turning back to Lance. “And for the conversation, I guess.”

Lance grinned at her. She was a little awkward but in an endearing way, like she wasn’t used to having the attention of others on her. Given she empathized with his circumstances in the Institute, it wasn’t that big of a leap to assume that she had trouble making friends.

“Bye bye, Italian girl.” He waved, glad that he could spend these few minutes with her.

“Farewell, Spanish boy.”

Lance meant to correct her about his nationality, but she took out running, clearly late for something. He laughed at the way she stumbled across the uneven ground, careless like a little kid. It was a strange juxtaposition: the thoughtfulness of her earlier words and the childishness of her smile now.

He settled back into the bench, feeling much more content than he’d been earlier. It was nice to talk to people outside of class, for a change.

And, well, Italian girl was pretty. A bit young-looking for him, but he thought guys her age should be tripping over their feet for a chance to talk to her.

“Hey, you’re Lance, right?” A boy had approached while Lance observed the girl disappear from sight. He was tall and robust, with shortly cropped hair, but his expression was friendly. “You’re in my Analytics class.”

It took Lance a second to place him. Analytics was one of the classes Lance struggled with the most, so he hadn’t had as much opportunity to joke around there.

“And you’re Hunk!” Lance snapped his fingers, smiling. “Sit down, man! What can I do for ya?”

Translations:

“No es un acampamiento.Tú sabes que el campo de explotación espacial no está muy desenvuelto en Cuba. Si realmente quieres trabajar con eso, entonces simplemente cállate y no insultes a nadie.” - “It’s not a camp. You know that the field of space exploration is not very well developped in Cuba. If you really do want to work in this area, then simply shut up and don’t insult anyone.”

“¿Cuando he insultado a alguien?” - “When have I insulted anyone?”

“Mira, tengo una reunión con mi orientador. Y tú tienes por lo menos dos artículos para leer para las clases de mañana, ¿por qué no vas a la biblioteca para trabajar un poco? Prometo comprarte una hamburguesa después.” - “Look, I have a meeting with my coordinator. And you have at least two articles to read for tomorrow’s classes. Why don’t you go work for a bit in the library? I promise to buy you a burger later.”

“Me debes más que una hamburguesa y lo sabes, Ronie.” - “You owe me more than a burger and you know it, Ronie.”

“¡Gracias, hermanito! ¡No te arrepentirás!” - “Thank you, little brother! You won’t regret it!”

Cabrón - Bastard

[jefferoni-quotes]

Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing

A oneshot based off of this animatic - THIS ONE - by @invireso ! Sorry it took so long-

Words: 3,018

TW: For blood, death and general sad times. I like angst oops-

- - -

Beware... beware Be skeptical

John, Alex and Thomas were always close friends. Well "friends." They were more like business partners. Perhaps like a trio of bandits galloping around the Wild West, taking out those in their way. They may not have been particularly fond of each other, but no matter what they had their groups back. Nothing got in the way of their jobs.

Their jobs being essential assassins. The group of vagabonds would be set a wealthy upper class target, and they were to dispose of them.

Of their smiles, their smiles Of plated gold

Alexander was definitely the groups leader. He ensured everyone had a job, a position and that's they stuck to their assignment like Elmer's glue. He was the brains behind the project. He was like the choreographer of their deadly dance.

John was act two. If the brawn didn't work, he would launch to attack, as if he were a rabid hound crouching in the dark shadows of an alleyway, just waiting for his prey to scamper past. He was ruthless and merciless. Heartless no doubt.

And Thomas? Well Thomas was the brawn. They strongest of the three by an overwhelming amount. His height was also good for intimidating possible witnesses into leaving the premise.

They were the perfect deadly salad.

Deceit, so natural But a wolf in sheep's clothing is more than a warning!

Then came that day.

The men had been given a rich woman to take out. Her name was Martha Wayles, a 24 year old female from Virginia who'd recently moved to New York.

Alex, John and Thomas were hidden in a tucked away alley, watching the woman move down the street, her phone in hand. Alexander clicked his tongue, signifying that she was coming their way. Hamilton and Laurens had pulled up their neckerchiefs up to cover their mouths and noses, but Jefferson concluded it would look more sketchy if a man in a mask lunged out of the darkness towards you. So he played it casual.

Baa, baa Black sheep Have you any soul?

Thomas saw the cool metal of a knife glint in the shimmering sunlight and took it by the handle from John, peaking out the wall. He chewed nervously on his lip, fingers hovering over the material tied loosely around his neck,

No, sir By the way What the hell are morals?

He ducked his head back in and turned to watch Alexander carefully swing a baseball bat over his shoulder and it brushed last his pony tail.

John clutched the cold steel of a pistol and narrowed his eyes, ready in case anything went wrong.

Jack, be nimble Jack, be quick Jill's a little whore

Martha scrolled aimlessly through her Facebook feed, chucking lightly at some sort of dead meme. She tapped a happy birthday message out to her good friend Dolley on Facebook.

And her alibis are turning tricks! So could you tell me how you're sleeping easy?

Thomas waiting for the brief signal from Alex. When the smaller man nodded he sprung into action, keeping the dagger behind his back and beginning to pull up his neckerchief.

Martha spun around when she heard faint footsteps behind her. She made eye contact with a man. He was tall with dark skin and curly hair. She felt a small flush run to her cheeks. Thomas went pink and coughed awkwardly before allowing the knife to slip from between his fingers and clang to the floor.

How you're only thinking of yourself?

"Uh, I'm, um..." Thomas bumbled stupidly. "I'm Tho-Thomas Jefferson."

"Martha."

Show me how you justify Telling all your lies like second nature?

Alexander grit his teeth and whistled, a sign for Thomas to leave. Jefferson heard the calling card and chewed the bottom of his lip. "I'm sorry, I have to go. It was nice to meet you!" And he scampered off, sighing into his hands. Hamilton was going to kill him.

"What the hell was that?!" Alexander gesticulated in anger.

Thomas shrugged.

"You're so dumb." John added.

Listen, mark my words one day You will pay You will pay!

That night at John and Alex's shared home an argument broke out. But no normal yelling. There was rage bubbling in their veins and if you were there, you would be able to smell the fury in the air. "What the fuck was that today?!" John started.

"I dunno, man!" Thomas answered calmly.

"'I dunno, man' isn't a respectable reply, Jefferson! You were supposed to kill her, yet you actually friended her on Facebook!?" Alexander shot back furiously.

"To be fair, she added me first."

"I can't believe you! What's gotten into you? We used to be the perfect team. Like the reverse Musketeers!" John yelled, sticking a pointed finger at Thomas' face.

"Get out of my face!" Thomas slapped his hand away. "Maybe I don't wanna be a part of this stupid group anymore! I wanna settle down!"

"Thomas, we're like a clan, you can't leave!" Alexander pressed.

"I can and I will! Damn you all to hell!"

Karma's gonna come collect your debt!

Thomas stormed the home, slamming the door closed so hard it shook the hinges.

Over the next months, he and Martha Wayles formed a close romantic relationship. He took her out. Just... not with a weapon.

He'd never believed in the idea of soulmates yet... here he was. His mind had been flipped because Martha was the half he was missing, and man it felt good.

In fact. It didn't take long for him to propose. To with Martha accepted, tears gathering in her eyes.

Aware aware You stalk your prey

Alexander grit his teeth and scrubbed his hands together. John stood on his left, and he dug his nails into his palms. They watched through the large - if not slightly dirty - pet shop window at their old buddy and his fiance. Thomas held up a black kitten, and watched Martha's face break into a glittering grin.

The cars zoomed past them, yet both Hamilton and Laurens seemed to forget, or many ignore, the metropolis around them. They gazed on with a deadly stare as the owner of the store placed the cat in a carrier and filled a bag with all the things the couples needed to raise their cat. And then, the two walked out, but Alex and John were no where to be found.

With criminal mentality You sink your teeth into the people you depend on

The photos that were pinned on the cork-board in the two' shared bedroom were slowly disappearing, but Thomas nor Martha noticed. John spread them across his table. He couldn't help but smile at some of them where Thomas looked especially happy, quickly changing his expression to stern when Alex waltzed in.

Alexander stared over John' shoulder at the pictures and shifted them around. He paused on the one of Thomas asleep with the cat lying on his chest, and Martha hushing with a smile. The two can almost hear the woman's dazzling laughter and kind of softened. Kind of.

There was another of the couple on the day Thomas proposed. They were close, beaming with glee and love. The shining engagement ring may not have been the centre of the photo, but John's eyes were still drawn to it.

The last one they focused on was what appeared to be a nice selfie of Martha and Thomas, but they were being photo-bombed by their cat, that they had named 'Sabrina.'

Infecting everyone You're quite the problem

Alexander finally snapped from his nostalgic trance and snatched a red Sharpie from the pot on top of the desk. He scratched big, crimson exes over Martha's face in the pictures with a serpent like hiss. John looked up at him, hurt surging through his eyes which he quickly masked as satisfaction. Alex tossed the pen across the room, capless, meaning it would dry out quickly. John wanted to go pick it up but sat stoic still instead.

The two had skipped the wedding, finding it unnecessary to attend. They were past the point of caring about Jefferson's feelings, already knowing how they were going to break him. Martha had to go.

Fee, fi, fo, fum Better run and hide

But now, it was the after party. Alexander and John had invited themselves, and were fully prepared.

They scanned the room, searching for their target. And there she was. Standing by her new husband, holding his arm lovingly and gazing up at him in admiration. John looked at Alex, and the greasy haired male nodded discreetly. John strode off towards Thomas, tapping him on the back. Alexander snickered at their old partners shock and watched notedly as Laurens led Thomas off.

I smell the blood of a petty little coward!

Once Thomas was out of the picture, Alexander sauntered over with his phone in hand. He glanced at John, who caught his eye with a knowing smirk. "Hey, Martha!"

She turned around and smiled sweetly, crinkles showing up by her eyes as she did. "Hello, do I know you?" She sipped from the champagne flute in her hand.

"I'm... an old friend of Thomas'..." Alexander beamed dashingly before holding up his phone happily.

"Oh! You must be... Alexander Hamilton?" Martha held out a finger as she asked.

Alex nodded and gestured to his phone again. "Can I have a photo...?"

Martha giggled. "Yes! Of course!" She took one last sip of her champagne before swinging an arm around Alex as he held up his phone in selfie mode.

Alexander coughed loudly. "Oh, sorry, Martha."

Jack be lethal Jack be slick

John took the signal and walked away from Thomas mid-sentence. Thomas looked around in confusion and chugged some alcohol.

Laurens dug into his pockets, and pulled out three little pale, pink pills. John quickly scattered behind Alex and the new bride just as his partner took the photo. He dropped the drugs into the remainder of her drink with a smirk. Now, all they had to do was wait.

Jill will leave you lonely Dying in a filthy ditch!

Martha walked away from Alexander with a wave, starting up towards Thomas. She drank down the rest of her champagne as she skipped up to him.

Then, she stopped. She coughed. And then she dropped her glass.

"Patsy? Sunshine, are you alright!" Thomas rushed forward, avoiding the shattered glass like the plague.

Still retching her lungs up, she reached forward and clenched the front of Thomas' suit. "Tommy..." Martha managed to spit out.

Thomas widened his eyes. "Someone call for help, goddamn it!" He yelled, watching people scrabble left and right, calling ambulances and policemen. Everyone except from two people. Two that stood solemnly in the corner with their heads down.

So could you Tell me how you're sleeping easy? How you're only thinking of yourself?

Everyone was whisked away from the scene.

"Martha!"

"Martha! Let me see her!"

"You killed my wife, you bastards!"

Show me how you justify Telling all your lies Like second nature!

Thomas placed the white lilies on the vibrant grass by his late wife's grave, tears streaking down his cheeks. Shadows loomed over the gravestone and Thomas turned to his left where Alexander placed a tender hand on Jefferson' shoulder. "Hey, buddy..."

"A-Alex?" He shuddered, tears continuing to fall like crashing waterfalls down his cheeks. "Wh-What are you doing h-here...?"

John cleared his throat to announce his presence.

"J-John? You t-too?"

"Come on, let's get you home." John nodded, almost smiling as Alexander smirked knowingly at him.

Listen! Mark my words someday You will pay, you will pay!

Alexander helped Thomas into the back of their 4x4, and John climbed in the passenger side. "I'm so sorry about your wife, buddy."

Thomas just hung his head, gathering his spinning thoughts. "They think I did it." He finally came out with. "The cops had suspicions it was me, but I would never-"

"We know, Tommy... it's alright. You'll be fine." Alexander stared straight ahead and turned the key, the engine starting with a low grumble.

Karma's gonna come collect your debt!

Alexander sat out in the car as John lead Thomas into his home. "You sure you'll be okay on your own?"

"I just need some time to myself." The taller insisted, leaving Laurens at his doorstep. "Bye, Jackie."

"See ya, Thomas."

Maybe you'll change Abandon all your wicked ways Make amends and start anew again

That next evening, Thomas was crouched over his office desk in his home, photo album open. He traced over the image of Martha in one, where she looked so happy... He flipped the page, and where several photos that were originally on his cork board should've been, there was instead the white paper. He narrowed his eyes and flipped again. He smiled sadly as his gaze fell to a selfie of Alexander and his wife.

Maybe you'll see All the wrongs you did to me And start all over, start all over!

There it was. Small but there. The obvious puff of his friends ponytail. Of Johns hair. Thomas blinked, unsure he was seeing it correctly. And then. It clicked, something in him snapped. Martha's beautiful laugh rung through his head, her beaming smile filling his mind. It went silent, before the image of her crying and gripping his suit as she choked suffocated him. Thomas cracked.

Who am I kidding? Now let's not get over zealous here!

The thundering rain beat off Alex and John's house windows, the lightning flashing across the sky lit up the rooms with bright white light. They lay, reclined on the sofa, self righteously sipping a cold beer each.

You've always been a huge piece of shit! If I could kill you, I would! But it's frowned upon in all fifty states

With a clap of dark thunder and a blast of lightning, Thomas was there. He paused for a millisecond, looking up at the red brick home. The grey curtains that clouded the living room were drawn shut. Thomas kept his hand wrapped around the handle of his blade, stepping forward. He knocked gently on the door, listening for the shuffling inside.

Having said that Burn in hell!

The handle was tugged down and Jefferson kicked the door fully open, glazed eyes landing on John who was sat on the couch. Alexander stumbled back and fell onto his back, as Laurens leapt up in horrified shock. He was seeing scarlet, clouding his vision as he charged up to John. The man ran, he sprinted up the stairs and could feel Thomas hot on his heels.

Alexander fumbled for his phone, shivering as he pressed the numbers to call.

John tripped up over the stair, and tried to shuffle backwards as Jefferson stood over him. His lips twisted into a sinister smirk, all the rage blocking out the rapidly approaching police sirens.

So tell me How you're sleeping easy? How you're only thinking of yourself?

Red. It's a horrifically tranquil colour.

Roses...

Or blood. And blood is the substance that was coating the pristine walls of the home. The door busted open again, but this time it wasn't a murderer. It was someone from the NYPD.

Show me How you justify Spreading all your lies like second nature?

The policeman rushed in and helped Alexander to his feet. "Are you alright?"

Alexander nodded. "Y-yes, I'm fine... B-but, J-John-!"

The man patted his shoulder and looked up the stairs, where Thomas was creeping down. He let Alexander go and calmly started forward. "Drop the weapon." Thomas just looked at him through his hair. "I said drop the weapon!" Jefferson kept his hand firmly wrapped around the blade. "Come down the stairs, keep your hands in the air."

"They killed her." Thomas whispered.

"Pardon?" The policeman watched as Thomas stumbled down the stairs.

Jefferson looked up. "They killed her!" He yelled.

"Sir, drop the knife and kindly put your hands behind your back."

Thomas ran forward and he stumbled back. "Sir, stop." He reached for the gun that was rested by his side. Jefferson hit the front of his helmet.

He ran back, still being targeted by the killer. The officer, who's name tag read, J. Madison, threw his helmet away as the cracks were starting to cloud his vision.

Listen Mark my words one day You will pay, you will pay

James leaned against the alleyways wall, fear filling his eyes. He looked up at Thomas who was looming over him and held out his hands. "N-now... lets not b-be to rash." He attempted to keep the waver from his voice.

Thomas stopped. He didn't even notice the knife falling from his hand and hitting the concrete floor with a clang. When he looked at the police officer, all he could see was the terrified look of his late wife. He stumbled back, hands cupping his face as his hardened facade crumbled.

Karma's gonna come collect your debt!

Madison took Jefferson's moment of weakness as it flittered by. He grabbed it and ran forward, hitting the man in the face, He caught him by enough surprise to easily drag him to the police car.

Thomas looked down at his hands. There may not have been anything there, but there was metaphorical blood all over them. He looked up front into the mirror, looking over the police-mans face. When James looked back at him, Thomas immediately gazed back down.

He should've been destroyed that he was going to jail, yet he found himself numb. At least he'd rid the world of a murderer.

Karma's gonna come collect your debt!

He was escorted to a cell, and all his belongings were stripped of him. He was handed a stereotypical orange jumpsuit which he was commanded to change into. And he did. From there, he sat himself on the lumpy bed.

His face slowly contorted into a sickly sweet smile as he clasped and unclasped his hands on his lap. Thomas pushed his hair behind his ear and didn't stop smiling.

Karma's gonna come collect your debt!

- - -

I’ll be writing more oneshots, so I’ma open up requests! Thanks for reading!

[mr-blake]

Brick, Mordecai, Tina, Hammerlock siblings, and August for the ask thingy if you want? :~D

holy hecK ohboiohboiohboi

ALSO I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK ME FOREVER TO GET TO AAAHH

but here we go

Brick:

First impression: big funny chara in a duo dynamic, possibly recurring rival? heart of gold. too brief an appearance. (tftbl is what opened the door to borderlands for me so ye ckxbdk)

Impression now: Best Big Boi. Heart of gold. He's as full of muscle as he is full of love. I'd die for him. For the love of god let him have a dog that lives.

Favorite moment: Ohhh too many god. Like all of the commander lilith dlc. The whole "no one's ever said that to me before...I LOVE YOU MAN!!" Just. All the moments. There's also some bits at the end of the normal story of BL2 that are gold bUT one's a dirty joke so im hushity.

Idea for a story: iii got a fic/animatic idea that's been bonking around in my head for a while. It's mostly story that fills in between the gaps of the first and second bl games.

Unpopular opinion: pfbbbtt i cant rlly think of one except that he, along with the rest of the original vault hunters don't get enough love in the fandom? Granted, that's been like. Changing lately with BL3 coming out n the new Commander Lilith DLC finally being enough of a push to get some folks in the fandom lovin him.

Favorite relationship: well, obviously i ship him and mordy, but that relationship being golden is a given, so imma say the paternal bond he's got developing with Tina bc it's so fucking wholesome and sweet and also rlly funny bc they are both balls of chaos.

Favorite headcanon: oohh there's a lot of good ones. but rn the fave i can think of atm is that he has an actual living dog in bl3 bc it's what he deserves and it could very well just be missing a leg. Let him have a dozen dogs or more plz. Let the puppers be bffs with Talon too.

Mordecai:

First impression: tall scrawny mc-pointy beardy guy in a funny lil duo dynamic. Thinks he's rlly cool, and sounds like he practices things he says to people to try and make other people think he's cool but he's wearing a blanket wrapped around him like a toga shirt thing does he have back problems wonder if that works. his interactions with muscle man are adorable and cute plz tell me we can see more of them this is too brief of an appearance come back. (again, tftbl was my intro to bl, so find my happy surprise that he n brick were in all the rest of the bl games cjxkcb)

Impression now: tired bird grandpa with a heart of gold. he's the sweetest, most caring lad. I stan him so much he's such a great dad, he deserves better im so happy he's recovering. i love his sense of humor. i love his birds. he deserves happiness and the world and his b team family. i love him i love him i love him i love h-

Favorite moment: uNGH all of them. He has so many good moments, in and outside of the games. But rn imma just say the whole of the Commander Lilith dlc bc that was chock-full of Grade A Mordy content, from sweet and wholesome to rlly funny.

Idea for a story: Aaaalll my fic/art/animatic ideas basically. im kind of a gremlin when it comes to my ideas for some reason, but like it's hard to explain them without basically infodumping a summary of some big fic idea i have. But uH ig with my latest lil art comic i did?? it def involves my idea with which Mordecai and Roland first encountering Tina when she was little bc Dad Time���️.

Unpopular opinion: iiiiii rlly am not a fan of how a lot of the fandom has basically stuck him with the personality of Old Drunk™️ bc uH. For one, he's not anymore. He's recovering. And two, he wasn't always like that and people need to take note that for the duration of the main BL2 storyline, he was at one of the lowest points of his life which led him into falling deeper and deeper into alcoholism and being actually rather out of character for himself. So like. Commander Lilith DLC was a good glimpse at Mordy being presented more in character than ever. Not the other way around.

Favorite relationship: Besides the obvious of him being married to Brick and being a dad to Tina bc i adore that a lot and they are def faves, i;;;; rlly love his bonds with Lilith and also esp Roland. Like,,,, outside of the game,, mordy n roland have had some adventures and how they click and connect with each other is rlly interesting and fun and also a big thing i wanted to explore in one of my bigger fic ideas cjdbfkfb.

Favorite headcanon: he's a great friggin dad?? but like. that's canon. i have. a lot of hcs for him. I'd have to make a whole ass post just for him with those tbh.

Tina:

First impression: gremlin child

Impression now: chaos with a heart of gold (yes they all have hearts of gold chdbdkb). she's been through a lot and the whole chaotic persona she's built up seems to be a way to cover up a lot of the pain and suffering she's gone through. iiiim hype she's teamed up with her dads and she better be mcfuckin having these parents stay alive or ill die.

Favorite moment: the whole of the Commander Lilith DLC, but also the butt stallion mission that led to the origins of bl3's b team.

Idea for a story: same fic ideas ive mentioned before cjfjxkcb

Unpopular opinion: i am definitely critical with how various aspects of her character are portrayed, but that's on bad/problematic writing on gearbox's part so i kinda just. ignore those. like im sure a lot of folks who enjoy her character do.

Favorite relationship: her and all of her dads. im a sucker for found family

Favorite headcanon: it was both roland and mordecai who first found her which is why after roland's passing that she's protective of mordy. bc it was only roland and mordecai who knew her full story and had been trying to fill in paternal roles for her after the trauma of what hyperion did. and like hell she's going to lose another parent again.

also aHHH im soRRY I would do all but im such a rambler fbdkxBcfkb i hope just these 3 for this post is okay?

[ramunestation]

This is a little belated update on tumblr but I’m happy and relieved to announce that I was granted my Masters Degree in Storyboarding for 2D Animation and can finally show you all what I’ve been on and “Birthday Party” is one of them.

These past three years have been the most intensive and rewarding time in school. “Birthday Party” is a simple story that is part of a much bigger tale in mine and @hinoart​‘s webcomic “Here in the West”. Thanks to these characters, my thesis project was a complete success. 

It’s important to me to share how these girls came to be where they are today.

So this is gonna be a long post. Get some coffee/cocoa/snacks and read on if you like:

Animation and I have a long and complicated relationship. I flirted with the idea of an Animation career but I didn’t have the courage that time to pursue it. When I left high school, I had no clue on what I wanted to do and the common pressures of college life and being whisked away into adulthood was stifling. Thanks to one bad English teacher, my initial dream of becoming a writer was dashed and I fell into a very long dry spell.

Despite that, Art was the only field I wanted to work in and I thought about becoming a comic artist. At the community college, I took all the art courses I could find to build up my fundamentals and anything related to Illustration. My teacher at the time, Blair Thornley, suggested that I should consider getting into animation. However, I shied away at the thought but I did dabble in animating small things like eye blinks and pixel art. Nothing more than that.

In 2012, I studied abroad at Osaka University of Arts; in Tondabayashi, Japan. (A prefecture in Osaka). Ironically, I was burned out on art. I wasn’t into any recent anime or manga, my Japanese was poor, and I lost all motivation to pickup a pencil. Then I asked myself, “Why did you come here, at all?” 

As lost and confused as I was, I couldn’t give [art] it up. It’s damn near impossible to dismiss something that’s very much apart of you. So, I went back to the nearest point where I felt an ounce of inspiration, which was rewatching DC cartoons and catching up on shows that friends recommended me over the years. By doing so, I ended up watching “Motorcity” a few months after it’s release and (as cheesy as it sounds) this show changed my life.

I often refer to Motorcity as my “Second Renaissance” because it was the same excitement that I felt when I obsessed over Sailor Moon all those years ago and I knew this was something special. Looking back, most of my frustrations stem from being stuck, artistically. My skills were limited and I didn’t push myself hard enough to tackle my weaknesses, such as: drawing men, technical machinery, extreme perspectives, etc. and Motorcity threw me in head-first to face them all. The urge to draw became more like a desperate need and nothing was going to stand in my way; not even myself. But most importantly, this show inspired me to write again.

As I delve deeper into Motorcity, I had an epiphany about what I wanted to with my life. I finally found a clear direction and I gave myself permission to pursue an Animation career. When I left Japan, I felt greatly accomplished and I couldn’t wait to start the Masters Program at my dream school, the Academy of Art University.

Like many fans, I made an OC for Motorcity and partnered up with Hinokit’s character. A shameless self-insert, to be frank. However, in the years that led up to this project “Birthday Party”, these original characters developed and evolved into their own entity that merely share the same universe as the show. All the training I endured helped me push these characters further and with Hinokit’s help, the webcomic and this animatic are the results of that labor. Although the chances of Motorcity being revived is slim to none. This is my way in honoring their memory. 

[katherinesisakproduction]

A9 Final Pitch

Wow! After nine weeks, we’re finally at the end of the quarter...so without further ado, here’s a quick summary of the work behind ‘Origin’. 

Theme: Appearances can be decieving/life isn’t always black and white

Logline: When Dennis -a superhero-obsessed boy- is dragged to his dad’s office for a ‘Take Your Child to Work Day’ he comes face-to-face with some titillating family secrets. Could this be the origin story for Voltaic City’s newest crimefighter? 

Link to final animatic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0V-kj4Sc9Q&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3npV64LbHoybTt2JF6xB35kJiMK4cPKXZCDfXtOLDYqATOlXm7SUYTqcY

In this version of the animatic, I addressed the notes about establishing (more clearly) the initial setting of the office, as well as changing the design of the desk that Dennis hides behind in order to make it more plausible that Eel Man wouldn’t be able to see him. 

Supplemental Materials: This section ties in well with the characters/world

Dennis: 

To rehiterate, Dennis is a seven-year-old boy who is obsessed with superheroes and comic books. He views his favorite comic book as his ‘guide to life’, believing that the world contained between the pages has the answers to everything. In a way, his attachment to comic books represents the very ‘black-and-white/good-and-evil’ view of the world that people have in their youth, because more traditional comic plotlines (of the past) tend to be very formulaic in that good always triumphs over evil. 

In terms of new material, I reviewed the SCAD Animated Short handbook and developed a rough turnaround sheet and expression page for Dennis. After doing so, when this goes into production, I’m wondering if it might be a good idea to revist the hair design. As much as I enjoy the asymmetrical swoop from the frontal and 3/4 views, since this will be 3D, I’m not entirely certain if it will silhouette well from the sides. 

The expression page for Deninis was a lot of fun to make: since he’s the main character and the type to wear his heart on his sleeve, I got to play with a lot of large facial emotions...His roundness makes him a lot of fun to sketch out. 

Eel Man/The Dad:

Eel Man is the secondary character in the film: he’s a systems analyst for a Tuna Company by day, and a super-their by night. He’s calculating, insecure and has a little bit of an invisibility complex. He began his life of crime after his job cut his benefits and began by selling classified corproate information to rival companies for money. Eventually, he went from hacking/digital theft and branched out into stealing top secret tech that was being developed by other types of companies: his theft of a sonar weapon (mentioned at the end of this short) is his first ‘big’ venture into typical supervillainesque crime which is why it made the news. 

As a mid-level office worker, he feels very stifled and invisible at times. He definitely feels like just another cog in the machine and the noteriety he recieved in the criminal underworld for being a ‘super-theif’ helps stave off his greatest fear, which is going through life forgotten and unimportant. 

Doing the turnaround sheet for him was a little tricky because I’m used to drawing him in poses that allow me to really exagerrate his ‘s-curve’ shape. But since characters are typically kept in a neutral pose for the sheets, it felt a little tricky to ‘straighten him out’, so to speak. 

Unlike his son, Eel Man is a bit of an enigma in the short. He does need to keep a little bit of an ‘air of mystique’ so that it is plausible that Dennis could misinterpret his status of being a villain. Additionally, with the visor, drawing expressions was doubly challenging because it removed two of the main three components that really drive facial expressions (eyes, mouth, eyebrows). I did draw two images of him without the mask to hint at how he emotes around his family.  

To round out the requirements for character in the Animated Short book, here are the action poses I submitted as a part of my pitch package to indicate how the characters will move. To me, I always begin with action poses before I even finalize character designs because it helps me connect character design, movement style and personality together. By drawing out how they behave, it helps me clarify (even to myself) a character’s identity/sense of being. 

Dennis, ever the excitable kid, has very big movements. He puts his entire body into action and is very open with his behavior. I tried to remember how I moved when I was that age and personally, I remember being very impulsive and confident with everything I did: there was no planning or second-guessing, only action.

Eel Man also has exagerrated movements, but in a different way. His ‘s-design’ was chosen to specifically favor poses with strong lines of action: I really wanted to capture the dynamic poses typical to superhero comics, but also soften the seriousness behind the fight scenes by adding a slick, slithery element to his movements. He ‘slips’ and ‘slides’ everywhere. 

The World: Style, Lighting and Color

The short takes place in a corporate office and has two main sets: The cubicle and the lair. The cubicle is a very tight and slightly dreary space, so the colors will be mostly beiges and neutral tones to convey a sense of corprorate drudgery. The lightingin the office (during Act 1) will be fairly even to indicate that this is the ‘mundane world’...The story has not truly taken off at this point. 

The quick color study here is a rough indication of the palette for the transition between sets. It carries over some of the beige/muted orange elements from the office set while the intense blue forshadows the color palette for the lair. This is the still I’m most likely to revist to finesse the color a little more so that it is congruent with the other panels. I’m not entirely sold on the color of the slide and want to explore what a blue-grey might look like...or perhaps a more saturated bronze color. 

In Act 2, when Dennis is looking around the lair and starting to come up with ideas of what this foreign space could possibly be, the color palette changes to a high-pitched, limited palette of blue/blue green. This was heavily inspired by Lou Romano’s color key work on the Incredibles, because the vibrant, limited palette imbues the space with a sense of ‘otherworldliness’, removing it from what both Dennis and the audience associate with our ‘day-to-day’ reality. The lighting is bright and still fairly even because not only do I want the audience to be able to drink in full ‘grandeur’ of the set, but tonally, the emotions of the piece are still largely positive -it’s a moment of discovery. I also want all of the props (such as the giant coin, the costume carousel, the supercomputer etc) to be highly visible. The narrative relies heavily on props to drive the plot (with each component acting as an indicator that the dad is a hero) and its also important to establish props that will come into play during Act 3 when the fight sequence happens. 

In Act 3, however, the lighting changes. As Eel Man (our secret antagonist) enters the set and Dennis gets visual confirmation that his guess was right (sort of), the set darkens a little and the lighting becomes very high contrast to create a visual intensity that foreshadows the conflict. The color palette of the set is still blue, but leaning a little bit away from the turquoise end fo the spectrum.  

These are two production stills for the film. I chose Dennis and Eel Man’s first face-to-face interaction in the film to showcase because their relationship is what lends impact to the revelation off Eel Man’s true identity at the end. I attempted to do a little more color blending to convey a ‘3D’ quality to the image, but I feel like I want to keep working on it because currently, some elements such as Eel Man’s arm and hand could use a little less exposure to the yellow light for higher overall contrast. But overall, it serves its purpose to convey the general lighting in the scene. The scene is illumnated with warm yellow light to be visually misleading, conveying the beginnings of something wonderful and new... 

This is the second production still depicting the big ‘reveal’ when Dennis finds out that his dad is a supervillain. In this scene, he is illuminated by the LED lights of the television that is playing the broadcast that completely turns his worldview upside down. The teal highlights act as a visual calllback back to the palette of the lair,but now, the lighting is darker and far more dramatic to convey the sinister turn of the story. 

Looking ahead, I really want to develop a more concrete color script for this short. What I have now gives a decent indication of color, but I’d like to push the lighting and shading within the style frames to more closely match the quality of light within the production stills. I also feel like at least two more stills (one of the office and one more in the lair during Act 2) would strengthen the color development, giving people a more concrete idea oft the final ‘look’ for the short. However, I did end up prioritizing the fixes to the animatic, as well as the creation of turnaround sheets over a color script at this current time because those items were the ones definitively required by the SCAD Animated Short Handbook.

Why Animation? 

My answer to this question can be found in my description of both the characters and the world. When it came to development, I was favoriting very stylized and exaggerated designs. The character’s shape based design language to inform their acting, as well as the saturated yet limited color palette for the hero world should work in tandem to create a visual universe that far removed from anything that the viewers can easily associate with our ‘day-to-day’ reality (i.e. live-acton). The stylization and exaggeration, which can only be accomplished via animation, serves to make Dennis’s conclusiion that his dad MUST be a hero more believable to the audience by lowering the suspension of disbelief: if the audience doesn’t have a comparison point to explain the unfamiliar space, it excuses Dennis’s runaway imagination. 

Although this story could be done in live action, it would change the tone of the story to something a little more corny (similar to Disney’s live-action film Sky High). Even though I personally enjoy campy superhero stuff, in this case, it would tonally undermine the theme that ‘life isn’t always black and white’, which I would like to avoid. 

Final Notes and What Comes Next: 

Taking this pitch from start to finish was a really interesting endeavor, especially in seeing how the concept evolved over time. I’m a large fan of DC comics, so getting to play around with some of my favorite tropes was a definite plus with this story. I know I personally enjoy hero origin stories a lot...I think the stories people come up with to explain what could drive a person into acts of superhuman heroism/villainy are pretty interesting because they reflect the things that majorly impact people’s lives (loss of family, social injustice etc, etc). 

In a way, Origin, for me is as much of a coming-of-age tale as it is a superhero story. Dennis’s discovery at the end, that his dad was not the man he thought he was is an amplified version of how at a certain age, you realize that your parents are not necessarily these godly, untouchable super-humans who can magically solve all of your problems. Awknowledging that life isn’t always easy is a, difficult, yet essential, part of growing up and I wanted to touch on that in my film. 

But-with that being said- I’m finally going to reveal what I think would happen after the title card! Originally, I had thought of this idea as a pitch for a television show and I think that after the revelation, Dennis would agree to be Eel Man’s sidekick so that he could try and discover WHY his dad would become a villain. I think he would actively try to sabotage his dad’s villainous escapades, because he’s still a good-hearted character, but I think his loyalty to his dad would lead him to agree to be his sidekick so that he could try to better understand his father. I think that if it were further developed into a series, that you could have a lot of fun coming up with various ‘heroes-of-the-week’ that Eel Man and Urchin Boy could encounter...So in a way, this short could double as a good ‘hook’ for a pilot. 

In terms of moving forward with the production of the short, I’m really looking forward to seeing what my future teammates will bring to the production. The thing I enjoy the most about being an animation student at SCAD is being able to discuss and develop ideas wth other people who also love stories and storytelling. Everyone has such a different and unique way of viewing the world, that even being a small part of their stories during the feedback process makes me happy. 

In the end, this was rewarding experience because it reminded me that storytelling is about finding common ground with other people.

Well...Onwards and upwards, I guess! 

[somecynicalanimator]

Module - Creative Collaboration

After having finished this page of the storyboard, I was able to receive feedback on my storyboard up until this point from a first-year student. They found the gags we’ve written up until this point quite funny, so I feel somewhat confident that our comedic timing and jokes in this project are on point, while also teaching about the dangers of climate change due to human activity.

Given that many of our backgrounds aren’t ready yet, I’ve been largely interpreting descriptions from the script in order to settle on background designs and text movements/layouts, taking liberties with these elements as well as camera movements.

Link to Vimeo: Rough Animatic

Using my storyboard pages so far, combined with thumbnail storyboards drawn by others as well as Bobby’s play-blasts/renders, I’ve been able to stitch together an animatic for our presentation tomorrow, ready to be critiqued. With this first draft video in place, I’m able to easily update the animatic while replacing older clips made from rough thumbnail storyboard frames with full-detail ones. I had trouble trying to implement camera movements/camera zooms, due to not setting the initial keyframe before trying to add the movements. I’ve also drawn up thumbnail sketches for our ending ideas, which I wasn’t able to implement in this animatic as the segment wasn’t written soon enough to allow any of us to produce a storyboard. The overall script could do with further edits anyway. What I found when editing was that the actual timing of each frame tended to be half as long as I wrote down on the storyboard, as despite trying to count the seconds while mouthing out the dialogue, I found that I was actually counting every half second. I found that I tended to bob my head forwards and backwards while counting, like a metronome, but it turns out I was still counting too quickly.

We presented our work to our class during a recent critique presentation. We were able to throw together a PowerPoint, which gave us a better guide to work with compared to last time (Although the animatic wasn’t embedded into the presentation, instead being on a pendrive). We were better this time at discussing our project, as each of us discussed our individual roles, while discussing certain aspects that overlap. We found that the animatic, even without the final segment implemented, was too long, almost 4 minutes. We’re going to have to vet the script, and by extension storyboards/animatics further. Given how last minute our presentation was, we weren’t able to include all the turnarounds, playblasts, artwork, etc. that we’ve produced. So, in future, while this presentation was better organised than our first one, we still need to place more thought and planning into out presentations. A general criticism applied to all our presentations, though didn’t happen too much in our’s, is talking over other members of our group. I think I had a personal habit of butting in when one of our other group members was talking, which is something I need to work on fixing. We were asked during our presentation about the trans media elements in our project, and we answered by telling about our Instagram account, and how we intend to post each of our individual vignettes on there, as well as the website we plan to make. I also came up with the idea to produce a poster to promote our work.

Heading to the next week, I’ve managed to produce two more sheets of character designs, with suggestions for expressions and colour palettes. When producing the designs for the polar bears, I largely based them on thumbnail sketches David produced that I felt had a lot of appeal and charm.

When it came time to animate, David ultimately changed the designs of the two characters, making them more rounded and full and allowing for more expressive faces. I then drew these designs for documentation, finding the similarities between David’s designs and the ones I produced.

Link to Vimeo: Animatic 2

Since presenting our animatic, I’ve managed to storyboard one of the segments that was roughly storyboarded earlier, I’ve managed to produce some more storyboard pages. I was able to combine the designs I produced for this gag, in conjunction with the thumbnail storyboard David produced, to draw the characters and their movements, along with figuring out the positions and staging of the characters. One idea presented to us recently was that we could use different types of music, such as Pop music or Rock, to differentiate our vignettes. I’ve also managed to string together another animatic using these frames.

We’ve also been coming up with more ideas for our finale, one that I suggested being that the TV stops working because it ends up being completely submerged in the water, leading to a more sombre ending. However, it appears we’ve decided to go with the more cheese-y, empowering speech approach.

Link to Vimeo: Animatic 3

I’ve produced another iteration of the animatic, in which I’ve managed to incorporate some of the audio we’ve got for the animation. This has led to me altering the timing of the on-screen images to fit the recorded audio. I was also able to implement the thumbnail sketches Jack sent me.

[cameron-ashurst22]

Mystery Box Weekly Summaries

Mystery Box Weekly Summaries

Week 18 

Day 1- introduction to mystery box brief

Today I had the introduction to the mystery box brief. In this introduction I had the choice of CG or stop motion when creating the animation for the brief. I want to specialise in CG as a career path so I picked CG for the project . This introduction outlined what will happen in the next few weeks of the course, I found that the character enters from offscreen then looks into the box and reacts to its contents.The sequence is to be 10 to 15 seconds longhand has a duration of 4 weeks.

Day 2 - character acting class

 Today I had a workshop on developing reference for the mystery box projects. Initially we did a series of exercises to warm up and fully engage with key poses and telling the story without facial expressions. I found this workshop quite challenging as I find it hard to let loose in a public environment as I am reserved in nature. However I tried my best and am pleased with the contributions I was able to make during the workshop. I ended up coming up with the idea that for my mystery box project the character was to be a thief who would sneak into shot and then be caught stealing.We Took video reference of performances and I chose Sam’s interpretation as the on I want to adapt further as you can clearly see the line of action in his body through the key frames.

Day 3 - character acting class

Today I had a workshop on reviewing what I had filed in the previous session. The aim was to look at the poses and shapes the body made with reference to pin, ball and wall as well as pyramid body shapes. I found this workshop interesting as it helps convey emotion through the shape of the body. We reviewed clips of Charlie chaplains work and picked out specific body shapes he was making to convey the emotion in the scene.

Day 4- storyboard masterclass

Today we learned the fundamentals of what makes a great storyboard. I found out that storyboarding was developed by Disney and the role of the storyboarded was to visualise the script and that character performance is absolute key in the storyboard. 

There are two types of storyboard a presentation board which is more refined and polished. The other is a shooting board which is widely used on Tv series and animated features, these tend to be rough and expressive to once again enhance character performance.Storyboarding is also used in live action as a tool to plan out complex action and effect sequences.

I also learned about visual storytelling and how a shot is a series of images in a sequence from the same camera angle. A sequence is a series of scenes telling the story from beginning to conclusion . An act is the structural element formed by a group of sequences with a longer story.

Every shot must serve a purpose and cutting is used to shift the audiences focus to important aspects of the story.

We then redacted the storyboard we had to complete using new camera angles and techniques. I found this extremely interesting as I want to enhance how I tell a story in an animation and learning the fundamentals to this is key for me to push forward in the process.

Week 19

Day 1- Mystery box animatic workshop

Today I had a workshop on how to create an animatic using the storyboard I had previously done around the mystery box project. I found that this was extremely beneficial as it helped digitise my drawings using tv paint. As over the study week I had done this on photoshop I was happy with getting to use the software again while receiving feedback. I found that my panels told a story but needed development on screen through in-betweens. Helen suggested I take some of the newer panels out of the animatic due to them conflicting with the premise of the story itself. By using the different camera angles it helped me gage the timing needed for the character to move and react to the mystery box itself. To improve on the animatic itself I will begin to use a background layer for any constant objects like the box that are not moving. In addition I will work on multiples layers the more advanced the storyboarding process goes.

Day 2 - Mystery box

Today I had the introduction to using a rig and creating walk cycles in maya. This proved extremely beneficial in helping me to decide the movement for the mystery box project. We started with an exercise on creating dynamic poses using the rig I found this difficult at first due to the mechanics of the rig. However I quickly got to grips with the software and started to really enjoy posing the rig considering the characters line of action and silhouette. The next exercise was to complete a simple walk cycle using only the legs and torso of the rig. I enjoyed this aspect of Maya as it was quite simple to do. However I did struggle with key framing as I would forget to key frame after I moved the character meaning I had to start again posing. To continue my development in the software I will continue to do a series of poses using the same rig and further develop my mystery box iteration.

Week 20

Day 1- Mystery box

Today I started my mystery box animation. I was able to complete the walk cycle through the legs but further refinement is needed as the back foot begins to slip underneath the floor. As I wanted to create `a sneaky walk cycle I watched the reference footage from the acting workshop to help create the posing of the cg character.However the opening movement for the character was too fast and gave a more determined walk. I decided to space out the key frames and the action became more fluid and resembled the reference material. I like the way the first pass places emphasis on the twist of the body and the use of the arms of the character. To improve the animation I will fix the emphasis on the feet as well as complete the rest of the animation on the arms. I am looking forward to completing the first pass of the project as I feel with refinement I can get the right character performance.

Day 2 - Mystery box

Today I completed the first iteration for my animatic for the mystery box brief. I used the advice from he previous sessions with Helen to create the animatic. I focused heavily on the posing of the character especially in the sneaking walk cycle. However there is some inconsistencies with the spacing of the walk cycle and the hair of the character as it changes between frames. In addition I decided to simplify my character down from the storyboards I had digitally created as I felt this would be easier to animate. After watching how Pixar storyboarded there film I decided to use a similar colour palette of greys and whites as well as some of the camera angles . Furthermore I found that the animatic was at its strongest when the line of action and facial expression matched up to give a believable performance.Overall I am happy with the first pass of the animatic and will try to rectify the mistakes I have made with the consistency of the character.

Day 3- Mystery box 

Today I continued with my mystery box project but also looked at the posing of the character rig sitting down at a desk. This was to understand the line of action and how to offset certain parts of the animation. I then used this technique to develop my walk cycle further by offsetting the way the feet touch the ground.This helped place emphasis on the sneak and added weight to the walk. In addition I lengthened out the end of the walk as it was too fast and blocked out the next part of the animation where the character reacts to the box itself. Furthermore, I amended problems in the feet of the walk as they where disappearing through the floor and was advised to not fully lock out an arm or leg. This would detract from the overall smoothness of the animation . For the next session I will continue to focus on the arms of the character as well as add sway through the hips.This will help give a realistic walk as the character is shown to be shifting weight.

Week 21

 Day 1-Mystery Box 

Today I continued with the mystery box brief but took a different approach to the walk cycle. As I was unhappy with the outcome of the previous iteration I decided to start the walk cycle again.  Found that the difficulty of having splined and stepped key frames was too challenging to create the correct spacing and timing for the walk cycle itself. By having splined and stepped keyframes the animation was jittery and didn’t offer the flow a stepped keyframes animation would give. In addition I found that limbs would twist and be in positions I didn’t place them in meaning It would take longer to fix them than just starting the walk cycle again. 

    For the new walk cycle I used reference from the animation survival guide with the tip toe sneak as I felt this best suited the character I wanted to portray. I found it easier after the practice of the previous animation to place the character in key poses. Instead of doing the separate parts of the character moving I focused on every aspect of the character. For instance instead of just animating the legs I focused on the legs and waistline together. This is because the waistline would dictate the position of the legs. With the walk cycle itself I found that the top part of the body would arch forward which intern would push the shoulder up closer towards the ears.This meant that little animation is needed on the arms due to them being held in place by the character as he is sneaking.

     When creating the walk cycle I decided to use the heel roll and to roll functions. This complicated the animation as I was using the toes as reference when interacting with the floor. This led to the character feeling weightless and lacking consistency when he walk. There was no weight to his steps and he appeared to float across the screen. To fix this I began to remove the heel and toe roll as well as the rotation of the foot. By doing this I made sure the foot was firmly planted onto the floor this added weight to the step. To develop this I can now add the heel roll which will then emphasise how the foot hits the floor and how softly the character is walking. 

    In addition I realised that on the upwards pose on the step the characters body would have to lean back to emphasise the greater step. This would push the knee higher and up towards the mid stomach. By changing this from the previous iteration it gave a more realistic walk cycle. This is because the body now moves with the waist and drives the legs forward pulling himself along to emphasise the sneak.

    To conclude, the animation needs improvements through the heel roll and the spacing and timing between actions has to be offset. I will continue to take reference video to ensure that this is presented accurately. In addition I will begin to change the position of the arm to emphasis where the wight has shifted on the body and ultimately move the head to complete the walk cycle up to the box. I am looking forward to completing the walk cycle as I feel like I have grasped the main aspects of Maya in this process. Furthermore I am looking forward to creating a believable interaction with the box itself as I feel like this will compliment the walk cycle itself.

Day 3- Mystery box 

Today I fixed the foot placement and the timing on my mystery box placement. With the placement of the feet I made sure that they were firmly planted on the floor before emphasising the heel roll. This was the best way to ensure that the foot would plant against the floor and not sink into it, therefore adding weight to the characters walk. After watching the reference videos again and trying to walk myself in the same way I realised that when someone sneaks they are on there tiptoes and then place the rest of the foot down when they take a step. To complete this in Maya I used the heel roll on impact and then proceeded to straighten the foot up. This helped emphasise the walk. 

The next step for todays session was to adjust the timing to emphasise the step up and act of the body. To do this I spread the key frames out on the graph editor and began tweaking each of the poses so the emphasis was placed on the line of action of the character. I am pleased with the result of this as it adds to the weight of the walk. However there were difficulties with he legs as they began to pop and create a disjointed walk cycle. To amend this I tried to adjust the position of the waist but this would cause the leg to bend in the complete opposite way. I realised that there was something wrong with the knee controls and began to straighten that out to ensure that the leg remained in the right position. This then allowed me to bend each leg and create a realistic walk cycle. 

To improve further on this walk cycle I feel like I should improve the movement of the arms as they remained fixed in a position for the entirety of the walk. In addition there are certain parts of the cycle where the movement is nominally quickly and this detracts from the overall smoothness of the cycle itself. To fix this I will have to look at the key frames in the graph editor again to ensure the timings are correct in both the legs and the waist.

Day 4- Mystery box 

Today I removed a large amount of key frames from my walk cycle to fix the balance of my character as he walked. The previous walk made the character become off balance on the passing pose.To fix this I moved the waist back therefore arching the the back and making the character balanced. To further the animation and walk cycle I will have to fix the in-betweens of the character and the positioning of the feet as they begin to become sucked into the leg when the cycle is placed on spline.

I also looked at how to light and render my animation to give a polished feel to the animation. The position of the lighting intrigued me and also helps to develop the visual narrative being portrayed. I decided to place one light infant of the box so the shadow passes on the face of the character and two behind him. This gave the character a roundness and showed that he was three dimensional.

Overall I am happy with the progression I am making with Maya as due to me starting over again multiple times I become quicker in key framing. Also by starting again I begin to see the benefits of repetition and the ease of which I can now produce walk cycles more rapidly.

Week 22

Day 1 - Mystery box 

Today I ironed out the major flaws in the splined animation of my walk cycle up to the box as I had been previously working in stepped. I fixed the foot placement when the foot leaves the ground and lifts with the leg. This was due to the foot morphing into the leg and giving an unrealistic ankle joint . This then made the character jolt forward which detracted from the overall walk cycle. In addition I worked on the timing and spacing of each step making sure the character hung up in the air for a long period of time before suddenly swooping down to the next step. This allowed more emphasis to be placed on the sneak itself giving the character a shift in weight.

Furthermore, I decided to block out the reaction of the character to the box as he is caught for stealing. I found this difficult at the Strat as I was trying to understand how the character would spring back and act surprised. This would allow him to hold his hands up ready for the police to catch. At first I started by just having the character spring up but it gave a robotic feel which didn’t allow the character to fully perform. To emphasise the shock I shifted the weight of his body backward and tried to make him step back in shock. This then would allow for me to place head and body swivels to show that he Is looking around due to being caught. However there is improvements to be made as the spring back is not timed correctly and needs extending due to the body quickly flashing in movement. Also the body swivel don’t encompass the full range of motion as I have to make the feet move with the body instead of just sliding across the screen.

Finally, I played around with the facial expressions of the character this completed the whole performance on the walk cycle and the action. I chose to add a cunning facial expression as his head rotated to show that he is scanning the room ahead. I also emphasised the shocked look on his face as an alarm goes off fully extending his jaw down leaving it gaping.

Overall I am happy with the progression of the mystery box project and look forward to getting feedback off John in the next week.

Day 3 - Mystery box

Today I worked on my mystery box animation again trying to flesh out the back end of the animation for this I wanted the character to jump up in the air and act shocked as he is caught. This would entail him raising his arms above his head and looking around anxiously. To achieve the jump I watched a series of tutorials on how to create an effective jump in Maya. This then allowed me to understand the key framing and how the body squashes and stretches on impact.

However, after the first pass of the jump I realised that by just watching the tutorials I had mimicked the same emotion as the video and this is not what I wanted to portray. To fix this I kept the placement of the feet in each of the frames but altered the angle and position of the body. As the character has a shocked jump his arms will raise up going to an extreme above his head. They then will go down for impact and rest at a state where they are still raised. In addition I altered the curvature of the spine as it will bend more towards the ground on impact than it would as he jumps. The spine will bend backwards in this instance to emphasise the shocked expression of the character.

Next I worked on the the steps backward the character takes as he moves around anxiously after the jump. I tried to place emphasis on the facial expressions and how quickly the head turns to show panic. However I feel that this needs a large amount of work due to the character appearing to dance I stead of moving around with urgency.

Week 23

Day 1 - Mystery box 

Today I began to finalise the ending of the mystery box project. I am happy with how this project is turning out as I feel I have correctly created a sneaking walk with the right sense of balance and timing as well as a jump that shows a shocked reaction . The ending of the mystery box cycle is that the character will hold his hands up and drop to the floor much like a suspect would when getting caught by the police. I tried to emphasise the timing and emotion of this by having the character place his hands to his head in disbelief at first before resuming to place them behind his head. I feel this works well as it complements the piece showing that he was incapable of achieving his goal of stealing what was inside the mystery box. To improve this I want to achieve a crying emotion like his hands and head are shaking as he is distraught at being caught. For this I could add more key frames moving the shoulder up and down swell as the body back and forth this could give the emotion I want.

Next I decided to fix the key frames around the waist of the walk as there was too many and the character didn’t have a flow to the sneak. With advice from John I decided to distinguish a clear up , down a passing with the waist. This then allowed me to elaborate and add more key frames to smooth out the animation. With the adjusted waist this added more weight to the overall walk of the character this then played emphasis on the sneak.

Furthermore , I also started to look at the lighting for the full scene. I moved the previous lights backwards as their intensity was to strong when rendered. I found that having this three light setup gave the best angles to show the characters movement and emotion. To further improve this I am going to research how to add a moving light into the animation itself. This spotlight will follow the character to the box and be placed directly on him when he is caught this creates the illusion that someone is chasing him.

Day 3 - Mystery box 

Today I fixed the lighting on my mystery box project. I wanted to ensure that the lighting would cover the entire screen highlighting the shadows and shapes of the character so I used four lights. These four lights acted as a base to light the character from all angles. I kept the intensity of these lights low as I wanted to give the impression that the character is trying to steal something from the mystery box. I also introduced a spotlight that would be mobile. This movement established a sense of urgency in the characters walk as he is clearly not trying to be caught or seen. I like the way the light pans around the scene before fixing on the box when the character is caught. This helps present the sense of shock and anguish on the characters face.

Furthermore, I also fixed the initial issues on the first few steps of the sneak cycle. I found that by removing key frames gave a more fluid sense of music instead of having fixed positions for the up and downward poses in the animation. I found the most issue in the second step as the waist had failed to move as the step progressed . To fix this I moved the waist upwards on the passing pose as this would add continuity to the up pose. I then fixed the positioning of the legs and removed the keyframes I no longer needed. This left me with 3 main key frames which I could clearly distinguish each pose. In addition on the first two steps especially the legs of the character began to pop when the animation was changed to spline. To combat this I moved the waist of the character down on the keyframes where this happened. This helps to contribute to a realistic and smooth sneak cycle.

Finally, I rendered out my mystery box animation in Maya to see what the character would look like when lit. This gave me a great sense of what could be improved with the animation as a whole as I could see an almost finished article. This was a long process to render but I found that the outcome was rewarding and I am looking forward to completing more CG animation in the future.

[titmasjack]

Mystery Box Briefing

For the second half of BA1b, and as our brief overlap just before our first submission due on the 26th of February, today I was introduced to the ‘Mystery Box Project’. Our largest element of animation that will be produced in the first year, this project gives us the opportunity to focus on and explore the medium of our choice as an introduction to not only choosing a specialism but interpreting, designing and creating an outcome in a much more industry-led process.  

With the opportunity to explore either CG or Stop-Motion our brief introduction to either medium over the previous three weeks gave us our first initial insight to the programs, processes and techniques I am expected to incorporate throughout either path I decide to pursue. Whilst I don’t have to initially decide today, my first instinct was to pursue CG not only for my keen interest in the medium itself but its inherent dominance in today's animation market. And with the capability of spending additional time in one area of animation, I believe it would best suit me to pursue and explore the medium that I could most incorporate within an animation career down the line. 

Although I have particularly enjoyed stop-motion more over the past few weeks, I believe I would be able to create a more refined and better-animated outcome through the use of CG. Using a pre-determined rig provided by the ‘11 Second Animation’ Club, I think that my approach to animation would best suit CG’s process of iteration and editorial capabilities in comparison to Stop-Motion’s very much straight ahead approach to animation. 

Having to consider how I can best incorporate the principles of animation into my work, I believe that through CG’s inherent ability to reiterate and add additional animation through the use of passes I would be able to create a much more ‘refined’ and ‘animated’ character that uses and exaggerates more prominent principles such as exaggeration and secondary action in comparison to the same rigged character using stop-motion. 

Brief Expectations

With four weeks to create a short animated sequence using a pre-defined 3D rig or stop-motion armature, we’ll be exploring an industry influenced process in which I establish the journey between the beginning to the final outcome of my main animated piece for the second half of BA1b. To create an 10-15 second animated sequence, I will have to establish a character entering on screen, interacting and looking into a ‘Mystery Box’ followed through by reacting to its content. 

Whilst the action must take place within a fixed shot, I have the flexibility to explore the use of angles and dynamics of the character as well. Considering who the character is through their use of action can I determine a character through their use of posture and gesture alone. Even though we’ll all be working with a pre-defined character and rig, how can I ensure that my character is unique through the way they act? What's in the box, even though I’m not allowed to show the contents of the box to the audience, will I allow what's in the box to determine how my character reacts, how will this establish the characters fear or intrigue to the box in the first place? 

These are all things I can consider and will have to build upon throughout the first weeks of my project. Not only expected to create an animated outcome, but I will also have to deliver an established variety of storyboards that showcase my original ideas. A detailed animatic that shows a moving image sequence detailing the intended actions of my characters, and my up to date blog that highlights not only my progression, reflection and thoughts on the weeks that go by but the array of research I have gathered to support the development of my project. 

We’ll be breaking down these tasks into the upcoming weeks, establishing how one acts upon another, if all goes to plan, I should be able to a clear progression in how my work has developed in the hopes of a final animated outcome. Introduced to a new task each week I understand that it’s my responsibility to keep up to date and on top of any work we are given by working additionally outside of NUA hours to get my work to the standard I hope to achieve. 

Week 9: Setting a Foundation

Introducing the brief, this week establishes how we can pursue the briefs outcomes through either specialist pathway. Through introducing us to the importance and continuation of reference footage we have our second lesson with Sarah Perry in a performance workshop that will establish how we can use ourselves and peers as an influence to build a character. This lesson will re-establish the values and lessons we learnt in BA1a as a refresher to the importance of acting in animation. 

Alongside this we will be introduced to Helen Schroeder, a storyboard artist for films such as Aardman’s ‘Arthur Christmas’ we’ll reflect and criticise our initial storyboards to develop, suggest and evolve our ideas to how we can establish a better and sense of clarity to our final objectives of the brief. 

This will give us the chance to reflect on our initial ideas and take what we’ve learnt before establishing a more refined rendition of our first thoughts and processes surrounding the mystery box project as we begin to develop our ideas.

Week 10: Developing my Ideas

Branching off the ideas we established in week 9, Helen Schroeder will showcase how we can translate our storyboards to a much more organic and industry-led, animatic. To showcase a more in-depth rendition of our ideas, this will help re-iterate the key poses, gestures and actions we want to establish throughout our scene.

Our first chance of animation in this project, this will establish how I can use the process of blocking in a much more loose and organic style to represent the motions of the character. Although I have chosen to pursue CG, this will hopefully give me the opportunity to once again introduce TVPaint in my work, as I have found so far that this is easily been the most prominent program I have relied on and gone back to, to establish and develop my ideas to a standard that I can understand. 

Week 11: Transitioning to Animation

With an established idea for my project, Week 11 would initiate the starting point for our animated outcomes. Using a new program such as Maya, I want to ensure that I have enough time to not only get to grips with the software once again but consider any overlap for the previous week's work that I may have to catch up on. 

Although having a plan of the work I intend to produce is great, this week of overlap will allow me to catch up on any work that on the off chance I don’t get around to completing. Although I’m fairly enthusiastic to kick start this project, this is something I must always consider as I will have to produce a blog alongside my work, finding time to reflect on each week work as well as handing in previous projects that have already been established and will be handed in during this week. 

Week 12: Refining my Outcome

Solely focusing on producing my animation, I will spend the majority of this week in the Media Lab, animating, refining and creating loads of iterations and passes on my animation in the hopes of showcasing how my ideas have not only developed but incorporated the animation principles throughout my work, justifying my reason for originally picking CG animation.

Although not set in stone, I will discuss my reasoning for picking CG and my first initial animator influences based on research of existing artists and processes that are used in the industry today. I'm excited to get a head start on this project and to establish a strong foundation as I make my way through the four weeks of this project. Unlike previous projects, I aim to once again start to get my blog back on track in completing each blog post the day or within 24 hours in which we learnt about the subject. I believe that once I’m able to get this upcoming deadline out of the way I’ll have the time and resources to solely focus on this ‘Mystery Box’ Project to produce the best outcome possible.

To summarise;

I established what I’ll be completing over the course of the next four weeks and how they will be used to produce my intended outcome.

Consider how I can begin to create and establish a range of ideas using external influences and storyboards.

Begin to research existing animators and influencers that may widen my knowledge on the industry-led process or how a character has been used outside of the animation industry.

Discuss which specialism I hope to pursue and why I have made this decision.

Sources;

‘Mystery Box Animation Reel’ Youtube Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsYlrbdcLpc

‘emmakniemis’ Instagram Link https://www.instagram.com/emmakniemis/

[lois-sketchbook]

Weekly Summary- 4thMARCH-10thMARCH

This week the first thing I did was attend the first pass review group teaching session; this gave me the opportunity to look at other peoples work and take in the feedback that everyone was given. Luckily the animation production studio was available immediately after this session which allowed me to promptly catch up and complete my first pass animation. 

Whilst animating I found the armatures to be quite difficult to manipulate in comparison to the wire frames we had previously been using due to the drastic difference in how stiff/strong the armatures are. Whilst animating I referenced the live action footage I had previously shot as well as the animatic I created last week; this helped me to position the armature in strong key poses as well as helping me to think about the timing in a practical way. The day after having complete the first animation attempt I asked for feedback from some of my course-mates as well as analysing my own work after having stepped away from it to come back with a fresh outlook- this led to some noticeable changes within my second animation attempt.  

Whilst animating the second pass, I focused more on the animation being ‘readable’ therefore leading me to decided on re-staging the first section of animation which effected the overall timing and spacing of the rest of the sequence. I also wanted to incorporate more holds, however I think this could be further improved. 

Regarding both the first and second animation attempts I found the live action footage, animatic and story-board to be extremely useful for the overall animation production process and I intend to continue to implement this in future projects related to coursework as well as my own personal and professional endeavours. 

Overall I am happy with the improvements made from the first attempt to the second however, I still think that the animation could be improved, and I look forward to taking in some constructive criticism next week in our group session which will hopefully allow me to figure out where to go from here. 

[izlaria]

Someone you like (part 1, updated)

After uploading the first part of my plance fic here, I ended up writing more on that same period of time. It’s not much, but I thought I would add it anyway.

This fic is based on the “Someone you like” animatic by honestlyprettychill. Their work is super bomb, so I ask you guys to go check it out and give the artist some love. With this update, I’m hoping to have wrapped up on the pre-Garrison time period, and I have already started writing Pidge’s pov of their time as students, so you’ll have that to look foward to, if you end up enjoying this fic. My other post has more disclaimers, so you can find it here. This story is also available on AO3.

The part I added comes after the -- that I used as a page break.

Thanks to everyone who has liked and reblogged this verse. Feel free to add comments in the tags or to straight up come talk to me. I love feedback.

Spanish to English translations at the end.

14 and 12 years old

The truth was that Lance went to Space Camp because Veronica could be a little pest. She knew their parents wouldn’t let her go alone and so had enticed her younger brother with the promise of travel and foreign girls and no parental supervision.

Veronica had obviously left out the fact that they were essentially going to school on steroids for a month, smack in the middle of their summer break. Cool as Miami might seem, Lance wasn’t exactly excited for all the extra work the camp would entail.

“No es un acampamiento,” his sister repeated for what felt like the thousandth time. He wasn’t listening anymore. “Tú sabes que el campo de explotación espacial no está muy desenvuelto en Cuba. Si realmente quieres trabajar con eso, entonces simplemente cállate y no insultes a nadie.”

“¿Cuando he insultado a alguien?” he shot back, defensive. Veronica didn’t dignify that with an answer.

As much as Lance might like to think himself very smooth, there were still times when he stumbled over his words, especially in English. More than once he’d meant to pay someone a compliment and had accidentally started an argument of some kind.

Veronica looked impatiently at her watch. “Mira, tengo una reunión con mi orientador. Y tú tienes por lo menos dos artículos para leer para las clases de mañana, ¿por qué no vas a la biblioteca para trabajar un poco? Prometo comprarte una hamburguesa después.”

Lance pouted at her, arms crossed over his chest. “Me debes más que una hamburguesa y lo sabes, Ronie.”

His sister snickered, but it was as much of an acknowledgement as he was going to get. Veronica pressed a quick kiss to his hair, already turning to go into the main building.

“¡Gracias, hermanito! ¡No te arrepentirás!”

In all honesty, Lance wasn’t as irritated as he made Veronica believe. He knew that a summer program in Miami was a really good opportunity, especially if he wanted to get into the Garrison in the following years. It was just difficult.

He was diligent and studious, but not as naturally gifted as some of the other kids. Besides, he hadn’t been to the US in a couple years, since his parents had mostly settled down in the family farm, which meant he still had to fall back into his English, a task made even more frustrating by the xenophobic comments from one of the boys in his AP geometry class.

The teacher had put an end to it right away, but the words stuck with Lance, for some reason.

With how much humanity had progressed in terms of technology, one would think they would be able to get past petty rivalry between nationalities and usually that was true, but the influx of foreigners following the establishment of the Galaxy Garrison in the US desert still annoyed some people, despite its existence as a multinational center for space exploration. It irritated Lance to no end, especially when so many of these scientific advances came from international collaboration.

If only he could shrug off the inadequacy that now grew in his chest.

Straight ahead, there was a path that led to a green area in the middle of the campus. The other students had taken to calling it the Woods, though it was more of a middle-sized park, with benches and picnic tables where anyone from the Institute could go to relax. That’s where Lance went, mind too full to really focus on homework.

He wondered if people would react that same way if he ever made it into the Garrison. He didn’t know how Veronica dealt with it all, especially when she was alone in Arizona most of the time. Barely a week had passed and Lance already missed his parents, the tenderness of home-cooked food and well-intended lectures.

No, he had to believe that Billy Underwood was an exception. The other kids hadn’t joined in on his taunts, even if no one had moved to defend Lance. It was still too early to make conclusions on his colleagues, especially when everyone had seemed so charmed by him before then.

Lance was so lost in thought that he didn’t realize he had been standing in front of one of the benches until a new voice broke through the peace of the park.

“Are you just gonna stand there?”

The words were somewhat harsh, but when Lance lowered his eyes to their source the girl winced, grimacing. She seemed to have spoken impulsively.

“Hmm, yeah.” Lance blinked at her for a moment, before finally sitting down on the bench. He made sure to leave space between him and the girl, not wanting to make the situation even more awkward.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” the girl said after a moment of silence. She looked at him sideways and her brown eyes seemed almost golden in the sunlight. There were freckles spread across the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks, and the green ribbon in her hair swayed in the wind. It was a soft sight, a contrast to the steeliness of her posture and gaze.

“It’s fine,” Lance hurried to assure her. She looked young, but so did he, and talking to complete strangers never failed to make him nervous. “Nothing like a little girl yelling at me to bring me back to earth.”

He gave her his best grin, the one reserved for first impressions and fancy parties. It was supposed to project confidence and kindness, even though Luis said he ended up looking a bit smug.

“I didn’t yell,” the girl pointed out with a light frown. Then her eyes shifted into a more calculating look. “You’re a bit of a goofball, aren’t you?”

“I prefer the term good-humored,” he replied jokingly.

She continued to stare. Lance got the feeling that the girl did this a lot. She had an untamed intelligence to her that Lance couldn’t completely understand. It was the sort of air that teachers sometimes carried, as if they could see something deeper in you if they looked long enough.

“It didn’t seem like you were feeling all that good-humored just now.” She tilted her head to the side, letting the words hang between them.

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true,” Lance found himself saying.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” She looked so doubtful that it almost made Lance laugh. The feeling, however, was overcome by the relief of finally having someone who would listen.

He had spent the week trying and failing to explain to Veronica what was truly making him feel down. She was too busy or too happy for Lance to tell her the truth, especially when it left him so vulnerable. After all, Veronica had taken to her work on the Institute like a fish to water. Lance was supposed to be more adaptable than this.

With the rest of his family away in Cuba, he felt unbearably lonely.

“Yes! Thank you!” Lance shifted in the bench to face the girl. She was taken aback by his enthusiasm, but didn’t move away. “There’s this cabrón in my class, who thought it was a good idea to mess with me, just ‘cause I said fábrica instead of factory in our first day here. He hasn’t really left me alone since…” he whined. “I speak two languages but somehow I’m the uneducated ass here!”

The girl nodded, eyes downcast. “I know what you mean.”

“You do?” He eyed the fairness of her skin and the almost ginger of her hair. “Sorry, but you look white.”

Lance’s comment must have taken her by surprise, because she actually laughed.

“I am white. I’m also Italian.” She rolled her eyes, but there was amusement in the tug of her lips. “I can be both.”

“That’s true.” Lance grinned sheepishly. It was good that she wasn’t offended by his lack of filter. “You don’t have much of an accent, though.”

“Neither do you,” the girl bit back, no real animosity in her tone.

He shrugged. “My family spent a lot of time in the US when I was younger. It used to be second nature to me. Now, I keep feeling like I have to hold back the instinct to roll my R’s.”

“I get that. My parents moved here right after I was born, but we used to speak Italian in the house.” There was a pause here, something that she couldn’t bring herself to say. “I think it’s cool that you can speak Spanish. It’s useful.”

“Yeah?” Lance sat up straight, feeling suddenly boastful.

“Sure!” she continued, encouraged by his interest. “The Bouman Aeronautics Research Institute really values multiculturalism! It is a hob of different nationalities and perspectives, created to foster new minds from around the world! Or that’s what my brother says, at least, and he is rarely wrong.” She gave him a smirk that quickly shifted into a grimace. “Don’t tell him I said that or he will never let me forget it.”

“Older brother?” At her nod, Lance smiled. “I got older siblings too. Sort of the reason I’m here in the first place, actually. One of them was accepted as a researcher and she tricked me into applying too.”

“Same, actually.” She seemed startled for a moment, pulling out her cellphone. “Freak, I have to go! I completely lost track of time while reading.” She got up to go, collecting the book she’d apparently put down to talk to him. It was a thick volume with numbers on the cover, but it didn’t look like math.

Another green ribbon fluttered to the ground, having escaped the pages of the book. Lance bent down to pick it up.

“Here.” He stretched it out to the girl. “Wouldn’t want to lose its pair,” he said with a wink.

“Thanks for reminding me!” She grabbed the ribbon hurriedly, then paused, turning back to Lance. “And for the conversation, I guess.”

Lance grinned at her. She was a little awkward but in an endearing way, like she wasn’t used to having the attention of others on her. Given she empathized with his circumstances in the Institute, it wasn’t that big of a leap to assume that she had trouble making friends.

“Bye bye, Italian girl.” He waved, glad that he could spend these few minutes with her.

“Farewell, Spanish boy.”

Lance meant to correct her about his nationality, but she took out running, clearly late for something. He laughed at the way she stumbled across the uneven ground, careless like a little kid. It was a strange juxtaposition: the thoughtfulness of her earlier words and the childishness of her smile now.

He settled back into the bench, feeling much more content than he’d been earlier. It was nice to talk to people outside of class, for a change.

And, well, Italian girl was pretty. A bit young-looking for him, but he thought guys her age should be tripping over their feet for a chance to talk to her.

“Hey, you’re Lance, right?” A boy had approached while Lance observed the girl disappear from sight. He was tall and robust, with shortly cropped hair, but his expression was friendly. “You’re in my Analytics class.”

It took Lance a second to place him. Analytics was one of the classes Lance struggled with the most, so he hadn’t had as much opportunity to joke around there.

“And you’re Hunk!” Lance snapped his fingers, smiling. “Sit down, man! What can I do for ya?”

--

“No, I promise you, she’s a cutie!” Lance exclaimed, hands waving around in the air. Hunk chuckled at his exuberance.

“I believe you, Lance.” His friend’s tone was fond and amused, which brought a smile to Lance’s face. “You’ve told me about Italian girl a hundred times already. Why don’t you just approach her again? You said you saw her on campus.”

It was true, he had seen her: running across the woods with her arms full of books; sitting by the big windows in the cafeteria, papers spread across the nearby seats; standing under an oak tree with her face turned towards the wind, her long hair escaping from where she’d tied it back.

Lance pouted at Hunk. “She hasn’t spoken to me since…” he mumbled.

“Well,” Hunk scrunched up his brows in thought, “you did say she seemed younger than us. She’s probably just embarrassed about venting to a stranger out of nowhere.”

Lance threw himself onto his bed so that Hunk wouldn’t see his face contort in a grimace. He hadn’t meant to twist the story so badly, but he had already started talking about Italian girl before he realized he didn’t want to share his insecurities with the other boy. Hunk was almost excessively easy to talk to, but they’d known each other for too short a time.

“She didn’t seem like the shy type,” he retorted, arms spread over his head. “Too snipy.”

Hunk had gotten up from his place at the desk and moved to sit on the bed, shaking his head at Lance. He had kind eyes, something that Lance hadn’t really noticed on that first week in the Institute. Some things just got lost amid the noise, he reasoned.

“For someone who feels no shame hitting on random girls, you sure are hung up on this one.” Hunk poked him on the ribs and Lance recoiled, twisting away.

“It’s not like that!” Even as he said it, Lance could feel his neck grow warm. He wasn’t really attracted to the girl, but there was something pleasant about her that did leave him faltering. “Seriously, dude, she’s probably the same age as my little sister!”

Hunk hummed in acceptance. “If you say that’s not it, then I believe you. You just talk about her a lot for someone who you only met once.”

Lance sat up to look Hunk in the eyes. It was true that his mind kept drifting back towards that girl, but he didn’t think the emotion she awakened in him was romantic.

“I’ve just never clicked with anyone like that,” he confessed, bringing his knees up to his chest. “And maybe that’s also why I haven’t talked to her again. ‘Cause what if it was a hoax?”

“So you don’t want to ruin the memory of it?” Hunk put a finger to his chin in a considering motion. “That’s fair.”

There was more to it, but Lance didn’t feel like explaining himself further. Several times he had gone by Italian girl in the library, even stopped to look at her, considering, but whenever she raised those amber eyes to meet his, Lance froze. He blushed and blustered and eventually left.

It was nice to see her smiling, though, even if it was at his expense. She was always alone when Lance saw her and it reminded him of how isolated he’d felt before befriending Hunk.

Italian girl was clearly smart, probably smarter than almost anyone in the institute, given how fast she went through those complicated-looking books. She also spent a lot of time in the library, because it was where Lance most ran into her. It was always her and her astronomy books and her ribbons.

Maybe he was projecting. Luis said he did this a lot.

“I just hope she found a friend here,” he said, more to himself than to Hunk, “someone who will also end up a little late just because they want to hear her out.”

Hunk studied his face, making Lance shift his position in discomfort.

“Who could have known?” the boy started teasingly. “You’re actually a good guy behind all that arrogance.”

Lance used his elbow to push Hunk off the bed, complaining more dramatically than was truly warranted. His friend laughed as he got up, only to throw himself back onto Lance to mess up his hair.

“What the hell, dude? Going for my hairdo?” He tried to free himself from Hunk’s arm around his neck. “Friendship over! We are no longer rooming when we get to the Garrison!”

Hunk didn’t let up and the two continued to laugh well into the afternoon.

Their time in the Institute would end in a little over a week, and Italian girl would drift to the back of Lance’s mind to become a lovely memory, just the afterimage of someone who could have meant more to him.

Translations:

“No es un acampamiento.Tú sabes que el campo de explotación espacial no está muy desenvuelto en Cuba. Si realmente quieres trabajar con eso, entonces simplemente cállate y no insultes a nadie.” - “It’s not a camp. You know that the field of space exploration is not very well developped in Cuba. If you really do want to work in this area, then simply shut up and don’t insult anyone.”

“¿Cuando he insultado a alguien?” - “When have I insulted anyone?”

“Mira, tengo una reunión con mi orientador. Y tú tienes por lo menos dos artículos para leer para las clases de mañana, ¿por qué no vas a la biblioteca para trabajar un poco? Prometo comprarte una hamburguesa después.” - “Look, I have a meeting with my coordinator. And you have at least two articles to read for tomorrow’s classes. Why don’t you go work for a bit in the library? I promise to buy you a burger later.”

“Me debes más que una hamburguesa y lo sabes, Ronie.” - “You owe me more than a burger and you know it, Ronie.”

“¡Gracias, hermanito! ¡No te arrepentirás!” - “Thank you, little brother! You won’t regret it!”

Cabrón - Bastard

[lorrainecparker]

ART OF THE CUT with a trailer editor

Recently I asked readers of Art of the Cut about what types of editors they wanted to hear from. The poll numbers showed: doc editors, trailer editors, indie editors and then blockbuster Hollywood editors, in that order. I’ve done several documentary interviews, including one recently and another coming in the next couple of weeks. Also, I’ve done interviews with several recent indie film editors, so trailer editors seemed to be the natural choice to fulfill the readers’ desires. Please enjoy this interview with Doug Brandt who is CEO and Executive Creative Director at Ant Farm, a leading agency in Hollywood, and Industry Creative, the theatrical trailer division of Ant Farm. Doug started as a trailer editor and also created a sound design and music house – Phantom Power – that caters to trailers and the film and TV industry

HULLFISH: Does everybody in the world want to be a trailer editor? That’s what I want to know.

BRANDT: I think if they knew the hours that you put in: It’d be no. I think a lot of people think it’s an easy job.

HULLFISH: I know it’s not easy. I’ve cut a few trailers myself, but not at the scale you’ve done. How did you get in the trailer business and where are you in the trailer business now? You kind of evolved into your current position, right?

BRANDT: I got into the trailer business, like most people did 20 years ago by accident, because nobody really knew it was a job. I spent more than a decade being an editor, now I’ve evolved into a CEO / Executive Creative Director. I had a friend who helped my girlfriend (now wife) get a job at a trailer house. Coincidentally, the trailer house that evolved into the one I’m running right now. She used to work here as an assistant editor. That led to her hearing about an assistant editor job at another company and that as my entrance into the business. I spent a lot of time editing in high school and in college, we were one of the first schools to get Avid. I went to Ohio University. I think we were the 3rd College to become an Avid licensed training center in the country. I think the others were NYU, USC or UCLA film school and then Ohio University became the 3rd one. It was a huge advantage for me when I came out here. There were editors that had been editing for years who were just getting into how to run an Avid. I was coming in with that experience and that was a huge help.

Ant Farm Industry Creative common area.

HULLFISH: What year was that?

BRANDT: I came to LA in ‘95, I started doing P.A. work on commercials, then worked as a video game tester, then entered the trailer business in ’96.  I got an assistant editor position at a small trailer house. As an assistant, I was also doing the finishing and chores like ordering tape stock. I had a bit of a graphic design and animation background and I saw that they had a very good print department but they weren’t doing motion graphics, so I knew some After Effects and was able to take the print work and make motion graphics for the trailers that we were working on. One of the first trailers I was involved with, not as an editor, but motion graphic designer was Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. I was kind of hooked after that. It was a lot of fun working on trailers. I became a full-time editor there after 6-months and worked on movies – mostly TV campaigns at first. When you’re getting into trailer editing your first assignment is 15-second spots and review spots, before you start working on the longer form stuff because it is a higher level of difficulty. After a few years I went freelance and worked on some TV pilots. Then I landed on a show on MTV called BioRhythm. I was actually a fan of the show and sought it out because I really loved the editorial style of it. When you look at it now, it’s very 90s: images with pans and zooming in on things all the time, it was like Ken Burns on steroids and speed. But it was a half-hour show where you were telling someone’s life story through interview clips and music videos and motion graphics. I met some of the best editors I have ever known on that show. Many of us continued on to another TV show after that one ended and then I brought some of them over to trailers because I thought they’d really like it. Some of them have become the best editors in the business. Now, I’m a CEO / Creative director so my job is to help guide editors. I really do enjoy helping to develop talent and I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of very talented editors.

HULLFISH: Tell me a little bit about the editing process for some of these bigger trailers. What is the team like, as far as a writer, a producer, a creative director and editor? Who is helping the process? And how does the process really begin?

BRANDT: We collaborate with the entire team at the beginning of the process. A great idea can come from anyone, but It really begins with a conversation with the clients. We really interface with the studio marketing department, because the studio is the one who is really trying to figure out what message is going to make people really want to see this movie more than any other. So we begin the conversation with them. That can range from “make it cool,” “do your thing on it” to “here’s the position we want to take on this movie” and be very detailed about what’s important and what not to do.

HULLFISH: Do you get a lot of creative briefs? The couple of trailers I’ve done, I got a creative brief of who the audience was, what they felt the main messaging was in the movie or in the video that they were trying to support, or is that something you’re getting from the conversation?

BRANDT: We’re getting that in the conversation basically.

HULLFISH: I know from a couple of trailers I’ve cut and from editing some features that oftentimes the trailer editor is working with a film that is only partially edited. So what do you do to cut a trailer for an unfinished film? Definitely VFX aren’t done yet.

BRANDT: Sometimes the VFX will get accelerated for marketing and that’s why you’ll see different versions of the shot over the course of a campaign so it might appear as a teaser and it was the best that they could get it for that release and then over the course of the trailer and final film – especially if it’s a difficult shot that keeps improving over time – we’ll get updated VFX on that shot over the course of the campaign. Sometimes we are getting dailies as they’re shot.

One extreme example would be the Cloverfield teaser. That script was not complete yet when we started the teaser process. They have had a long treatment written, about half a script written. We read it and got the jist from conversations with the filmmakers and with the studio, which was Paramount. We had a meeting to talk about what the film would be like. Since they were doing “found footage,” we took clips from YouTube of kids at parties and filming their friends and then clips from creature movies, disaster movies or even real disasters without getting too gross. Just something where people are reacting scared to something and did a real rough cut with YouTube videos first to get a feel of what this thing would be like. Then they did a special shoot for that teaser. That teaser was all a special shoot, but they also knew they were going to have this party scene in the movie and they knew that the characters running up on the roof and running outside and seeing the Statue of Liberty head rolling in the street. They knew that is how they wanted to end the teaser.

HULLFISH: That’s one extreme right? You’re shooting stuff just for the teaser. On some of the films I worked on, they accelerate the VFX on certain shots based on what the trailer guys want, not necessarily about what we want. Could you talk to me a little bit about that process? What level of the movie completeness are you actually seeing where you think, “Oh that will be a cool shot eventually. I have to have that in the trailer?”

BRANDT: A lot of times we are working with dailies as they come in and Animatics. We are getting the early version of the film where we are given access to all Animatics to try to help figure out what those memorable trailer moments are. Of course it all depends on how it fits in with the story. The story is the main thing that we always want to sell. As we go through our creative process, we’ll sometimes get feedback from VFX like “no that’s not going to be possible” knowing that the trailer has to come out by Christmas or something. So sometimes the challenge is to make the best thing that you can make out of what you have. Sometimes we’ll be cutting something on a tight deadline and maybe a week or two before we’re supposed to be done a new shot comes in that works great for the trailer then the studio and director figure out how to get at least part of the shot done in time for the trailer.

HULLFISH: Two of the things that I think trailers are known for — especially looking at some of the trailers, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – is relying on a fantastic music track. Talk to me a little bit about. Does that music get chosen first? What’s the process?

BRANDT: A lot of what we do is finding that right tone and music is key to that. A music cue can make or break a marketing campaign, so we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the right music is. A lot of times we find something that is in the ballpark and sort of move ahead to get the cut going, but we’ll continuously be looking for other options for what we feel is going to meld with the material correctly. That’s the thing about songs in film. There are some combinations that they just make each other more magical. We’re always searching for that combination – whether it’s a lyric or the style of the song that complements the footage and story you’re telling. That’s always extremely high on our list. Sometimes we find it close to the end and sometimes we find it right at the beginning.

We are blessed to have an amazing music department. We have 3 music supervisors and 2 full-time composers and sound designers on staff. A lot of what you see with trailers now-a-days is doing cover versions of famous songs or just stripped down versions where it’s just the minimal recognizable lyric of it and then the song is heavily modified. That’s definitely trending right now.

HULLFISH: That’s what your composers are doing?

BRANDT: Absolutley, a great example is our trailer for “The Woods” aka “Blair Witch”. That was recorded and composed completely in house. One of our music supervisors has an amazing voice so she sang on it.  Our supervisors are also working with outside library companies. A lot of them are putting out cover songs, because it’s so popular now they have albums of cover songs that could be used for trailers. Things like a pop song, that when you strip it down and put it into a minor key becomes something that is good for a horror movie or just makes a pop song feel more cinematic and dramatic.

HULLFISH: You mentioned sound designers. That’s obviously the other huge thing with trailers. Do you have a sound effects library? (I ask sarcastically)

BRANDT: (laughs) We have many. I started my own sound library back about the time I started working on Transformers. When I watched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer that had the middle section with the repeating photograph sound to it and it inspired me and reminded me of one my favorite teasers of all time: the original Alien teaser. Alien has a repeating sound that evolves through it. And so I started experimenting with sound. For the Transformers teaser I made the entire sound bed for it with drones and sound design and hits and things, after that I started a sound design company: Phantom Power. We make all kinds of music for trailers and advertising.

HULLFISH: Let’s talk about the video editing. You said the story is very important. With some of the trailers that I’ve cut – It’s not necessarily the story of the movie that is the story of the trailer, correct? Tell me a little bit about figuring out what the story can be once you watched the movie? Is there an example where you could say, “here’s the story of the movie and here’s the story of the trailer” or how you make those decisions about what you’re trying to tell people?

BRANDT: The main goal to marketing is to put butts in seats. And the challenge for us, a lot of the times, is not to just make it about the lowest common denominator, don’t just appeal to that, but also stay true to the film’s intent. Over the last few years especially, there was a lot of backlash, lets say 8 years ago, of people being very vocal that trailers were being deceptive. Nowadays, there’s a desire to stay true to what the film is, but yet sell its best parts. We don’t do a lot of bending, I think we do positioning, we try to focus on the best parts, but we don’t try to out right lie about what it is.

HULLFISH: I was thinking about the Transformers trailer that I saw. It doesn’t tell you too much of the plot. You don’t want to give them everything, because that’s a big reason why people want to go see the movie. They want to know the story and if you tell them the story in the trailer they’re like “great I just saved myself 2 hours and 10 bucks.”

Timeline for a trailer. Clip names have been removed to protect the innocent.

BRANDT: Exactly. What we ideally do is create intrigue and make people want to know the answer to questions that we bring up in a teaser or trailer. That’s the best place to be, to feel like you gave the audience the set up, the basic idea, maybe the feel for the characters and show what sort of conundrum they’re in and make you want to see how they’re going to get out of that. Do they get out of that? What happens? If we’re leading an audience to want to know more, than we’ve done our job.

HULLFISH: When I’ve cut trailers I go through a movie and pull sound bites – mostly exposition that I might need to start telling the story. What does the audience need to understand what the dilemma is? And then I pull great visuals: “this is a perfect little motion, that’s a great action, that’s a perfect head turn, here’s some emotion.” Plus additional quick emotional or propulsive soundbites… like one-liners. Talk to me through that process of watching the film and deciding what your elements are that you’re going to work with.

BRANDT: When we break down a movie, we categorize our dialog, do a master string of all the dialog and snip out all the air and break it down by character. So if you’re looking for a line by one person, because you need them to respond to something, you can quickly go through their entire dialog. I sort of pull my A+ favorite lines as a separate one as well. We also sometimes transcribe it so we can easily search for dialog. We do the same for the visuals. A lot of times editors will actually turn off the audio and play some music or something and go through the movie and just organize the shots by wide shots, action shots, character close ups, emotions, things like that and categorize them so that as they’re making the trailer they can quickly see what their options are for that character. It’s nice to see the movie and by turning off the audio you can think of other ideas of how this shot can be used to explain some other idea.

HULLFISH: That’s something else in trailers that is key. That there are usually two things going on at once. The audio is almost never the synced video. You almost never see anyone speaking an entire line of dialogue. We hear him speaking, so let’s show him doing something else. Talk to me a little bit about that process of starting to build the trailer.

BRANDT: It all starts with the audio bed and the dialog structure and we end up filling in picture last. I would say that is the traditional way trailers are built. I always like having a process, but it’s also important to know when to break it. There’re trailers that I’ve done linearly from beginning to end. I get the dialog and the music going and fill in the picture for that scene and I feel like I can’t move on till I know exactly what goes there. The Battle of Los Angeles trailer, I did it that way. I had to have those beats lay out and feels the emotion to know where to go next. So that was one where I broke the way I usually do it.

HULLFISH: Someone was just telling how good the score was for the Battle of Los Angeles movie. Someone used it as temp score. I’m assuming you don’t have access to the score when you’re cutting the trailer.

BRANDT: Usually it has not been done yet. Sometimes we’ll get the composer’s work-in-progress. I do a lot of work with Michael Bay and he loves what Steve Jablonsky does for the movies, we’ve worked with Steve a few times on the trailers for Transformers movies.

HULLFISH: Jablonsky’s trying to do a score for the movie and score for a trailer at the same time?

BRANDT: We’ll get an early version of the movie score and If there is a track that works we might ask him to add more drums or something so that we can make the intesity build in the trailer. He’s modifying what he did for the film to work for the trailer it’s not completely from scratch. If I could cut every trailer with a click track then have Steve Jablosnky score it my life would be much easier, he’s amazing.

HULLFISH: Is there anybody actually writing it? Or is the editor constructing the trailer without a script?

BRANDT: It varies. Most of the time we are roughing out the basic moments in a conversation: “This is a good opening moment. Here’s the general story we want to tell in the middle. You’re building to the big action packed end. Or we want to leave the audience with this thought.” But I would say overall, with trailer editing, the editor has a lot more freedom than a lot of other forms of editing that I have experienced. We’re not given storyboards. We’re generally not given paper cuts. But if we feel like we’re struggling, we’ll all come together as a team and have producers help write it out. The way it usually works best, is that the editor is bringing some storytelling skills to it and some style to it. Working as a creative director now I’m hopefully giving them the general idea and letting them express themselves.

HULLFISH: What about pacing? One of the things I liked a lot from the 13 Hours trailer was the slow burn build into the more and more danger. Not every trailer has to be “killer speed” from beginning to end. Talk to me a little bit about pacing in trailers.

BRANDT: A lot of that is about the emotion you want to express. That trailer in particular, is a about the tension of what’s about to happen. Those are always some great trailer moments and great movie moments when you know the danger is there and you’re seeing the characters expecting this and waiting to see how they react to that. Pacing on a trailer, the thing that I like to do most, is do the unexpected. We zig when you think we’re going to zag and give you something that you never thought would have gone that way. For example, in the early Transformers, they sound more like horror movies when you listen to them. It has to feel natural to the footage as well, the pacing of it. You want to have audiences excited. You hear all the time that trailers tend to build in the back end. You’re given all these plot stories and get invested in the characters and see something amazing happen to them or see them face incredible odds. So a lot of times we’re planting seeds early on and really ramping up the pace in the back end of a trailer sort of build excitement and feel exhilaration.

HULLFISH: And the thing with the 13 Hours movie is everybody knows how it’s going to end, so it’s more anticipation that you’re trying to build.

BRANDT: Right, It’s about experiencing a side to the story that you don’t know, even if you know how it ends. I think that in editing in general, the things that are most interesting are when people bring influences from unexpected places, whether it’s from some piece of art or a song that is not the norm. That is sort of our consistent challenge: “don’t do the expected thing” or else no one is going to be impressed. You can’t just support the movie. You’ve got to elevate the movie to its best possible form.

HULLFISH: I was thinking of one of the trailers that I watched that had an unexpected lack of sound: it was in the middle of a huge gun battle and there’s no gunfire sounds. Or the Transformers crushing the city and there’s just silence as somebody looks around in awe but there’s no sound effects. Talk to me a little bit about that idea: the lack of sound sometimes is powerful.

BRANDT: That allows your imagination to take over a bit more. Being selective and focusing on the emotion in a close-up of a character. It’s about pointing the audience in a certain direction or leading them to a void to fill in. A lot of times we use the phrase “theater of the mind.” Sometimes black is more interesting than any shot could be, if combined with the right dialog and the right sound. Having a character’s dialog line under black. If they’re just an in ordinary room or something, like you’re seeing fantastic on either sides of that line. Having their line in black sometimes makes it even more impactful. That allows your imagination to take over a bit more.

HULLFISH: Did you think there will ever be a return to the Don LaFontaine voice-over guy?

BRANDT: That’s something that’s gone away. Audiences became more educated about advertising and more aware of when they’re being sold something. That was a tool that was always in the trailer toolkit that we basically had to take away. So that’s made it more challenging. When you look at the more old-school trailers, it’s narration from head to toe with a few lines with the characters here and there, because that narrator is telling you the message they want you to hear. We’re one of the only forms of advertisement where you’re really getting a free sample of what you’re going to be buying, but it’s not going to be exactly the same when you go see it. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to voice over. If we do it, it’s more in a cliché, fun, retro type of way, but I think that form of storytelling is not really working right now, because audiences feel like they’re being sold something and back away.

HULLFISH:  Graphics also seem to have gone away. I don’t see a lot of those “in a world” on the screen kind of thing. For a while big text replaced the voice over, but that’s gone too.

BRANDT: We used to do much more complicated motion graphics. Big 3D intricate graphics. Now it’s more about embracing what’s in the movie and being simple and letting the film speak for itself, because that way people feel like they know what they are getting. I do still love it when we get to devlop the graphic brand for a film, we have an amazing motion graphics department. I’ve thrown them some big curveballs and they always manage to make it great. They work on everyting: main title sequences, brand content, large scale projection you name it they can do it.

HULLFISH: Any little tricks of the trade?

BRANDT: Part of making trailers is keeping up with trends or ideally creating new trends. It’s always about not just copying what someone else has done and always trying to make something fresh and new.

HULLFISH: What are some of the favorite trailers you’ve seen lately? And what did you like about them?

BRANDT: I did really like the campaign for The Witch. The campaign for that movie was very scary and very unique. I also really liked the red band trailer for Don’t Breathe; I thought it was really solid. Kong: Skull Islnad had a really sharp final trailer. That recent Transformers trailer with the epic score is a really good one (wink wink).

HULLFISH: What are the editing trends in trailers right now?

BRANDT: I think the biggest thing is still is how much it’s about the music. The music is so important.

HULLFISH: Does everybody edit in Avid? Or are some people in Premiere? Or nobody cares?

BRANDT: Most shops are moving to Premiere. Some are hanging on to Final Cut 7 for dear life. Any of the major shops have moved over to Premiere by now. We’ve been with Avid the whole time and not moved over but we’re always looking to see how the tools are evolving to evaluate what’s best for us. Avid and Premiere are definitely the two top right now. We are a big shop so having that large network environment and the media management of Avid is what’s been key for us.

HULLFISH: Are you usually working on multiple editors on one campaign?

BRANDT: It depends how big the movie is. The big tent-poles, yes. We’re cutting teasers where we’re usually doing two or three versions, so we’re working with two or three editors and by the time we get to the TV campaign for something like Transformers, we have a dozen editors working on it.

HULLFISH: It’s been great talking with you. Thanks for shedding some light on trailer editing.

BRANDT: Absolutely I love talking about trailers, they are a very demanding but highly creative form of editing that’s unlike anything else. Thanks for having me it’s been great!

To read more interviews in the Art of the Cut series, check out THIS LINK and follow me on Twitter @stevehullfish

To hear Phantom Power music and sound design check out THIS LINK

The first 50 Art of the Cut interviews have been curated into a book, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV editors.” The book is not merely a collection of interviews, but was edited into topics that read like a massive, virtual roundtable discussion of some of the most important topics to editors everywhere: storytelling, pacing, rhythm, collaboration with directors, approach to a scene and more. Oscar nominee, Dody Dorn, ACE, said of the book: “Congratulations on putting together such a wonderful book.  I can see why so many editors enjoy talking with you.  The depth and insightfulness of your questions makes the answers so much more interesting than the garden variety interview.  It is truly a wonderful resource for anyone who is in love with or fascinated by the alchemy of editing.”

Thanks to Abraham Contreras from Moviola for transcribing this interview.

The post ART OF THE CUT with a trailer editor appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

First Found At: ART OF THE CUT with a trailer editor

[katiestainesa2media-blog]

Evaluation Question #1- How did you use media technologies in the planning stage?

The use of digital technology has expanded through to my planning stage and with Year 13 including two ancillary tasks as well as a main task, this allows me to develop my skills in this area even more.

The planning stage is the second stage in creating my media product. This was very useful to help me organise my research and my time management skills ensured that I was able to meet deadlines and I feel that digital technology has allowed me to have more effective planning. My planning skills last year were limited in effectiveness and so feel that this year I have improved.

The first way I used technology when planning was creating my Pitch that I then presented to my focus group. My Pitch was vital for my planning stage as it mapped out all my ideas into one display and enabled me to visualise what my final task will look like. This has changed since my planning last year as I only created my Pitch using Powerpoint and it wasn’t very engaging. However this year, I created my Pitch using prezzi.com which is an online presentation website. I decided to display my work using this method as it looks more professional as it’s interactive and is more engaging for the focus group. My Pitch consisted of my genre, narrative, location, casting and costume ideas which I was able to gain feedback from my focus group so I could correct and adapt to what they said. After presenting my research and planning, I uploaded my Pitch to tumblr.com showing another technical platform.

Last year, I communicated with my actors differently to this year. For example, I would only speak to them at school and plan when we were all together. However, this year I used the social media app FaceBook Messenger to communicate with them. This allows easy contact to arrange filming dates, locations and costumes with them so I am organised for the filming day. This links to my skill of time management to arrange my actors well in advance.  

To show my digital technology development, I created an animatic storyboard on IMovie. In Year 12, I only briefly sketched my ideas and so this year feel I have used my resources more effectively. For this, I took photos of the shots I wanted to include in my final short film and edited them together to form a short sequence. This was very helpful as it planned what my short film would look like and so this helped me to change or correct what shots I wanted to use and what editing techniques I could use. This was better than a sketch drawing as I could visualise it more and so feel that this use of technology allowed me to use more effective planning.

I filmed my actors for casting videos on my phone and edited them using the app Splice which helped me plan what actor I will use in my short film so I was organised and had my actors well in advance so I didn’t have any problems when it came to filming. Last year, I failed to make any casting videos due to my time management and didn’t prepare enough and so this year I was much more prepared and used my time wisely.

When planning the title for my short film I used the website mindmup.com to display my options in a presentable way for my focus group to give me feedback on. This was an effective use of my time because it allowed me to look at all my options together. When I chose my title I used the website dafont.com to choose a certain font and then displayed them in a list for my focus group so they could vote for their favourite. This use of digital technology allowed me to choose a title, font and receive feedback much easier. Last year, I didn’t prepare for my title fonts and found myself unorganised when actually creating my opening sequence and it took me much longer to make then if I would have planned.

Overall, I feel that my planning has been much more effective this year than last year as I have used more of the resources around me such as technology because I have access to wide ranging websites that help me to plan and used my time much more effectively leading to my short film being well organised and planned out. Therefore, the detailed planning process has led to a more successful media product.