long lost neil
I haven't written in a long time.. sorry all. School and life tend to take priority lately.
I'm currently heavily involved in a 3d collaborative project with several of my friends. We are producing an animation short over the next few weeks about a hippo and a monkey. The hippo and monkey are on a quiet hillside, the monkey up in a tree and the hippo leaning against it. Suddenly the monkey stands up from his tree limb and proclaims, "I got it!" He jumps down and begins ranting on about a crazy story he has just invisioned involving monsters and aliens.. etc. The hippo obediently follows along with a typewriter as he leans against the tree.
As the rant goes on, the hippo begins to have problems with the typewriter.. the drum getting stuck all the way over on the side. Oblivious, the monkey continues telling the story. With most of the attention drawn to the monkey, the hippo is seen briefly struggling with the typewriter, trying to ram the drum back into place. At the climax of the short, the monkey finishes his rant and asks the hippo, "Did you get it?!" Just at that moment, the hippo finally gets the drum to slide back with a "ding" and says, "I GOT IT!" The monkey grabs the paper from the typewriter and notices it is filled with struggling fingerprints, streaks, and a few lonely letters of his story. Looking depressed, the monkey sighs.. and then suddently says, "GENIUS!" Cut to black.
The idea of the "genius" line is to reinforce the idea that these two characters are just a couple of idiots on a hillside tring to come up with a story. It's also a little gag about our own process, and how our own story has evolved and been re-written about 10 times.
I have an old animatic online you may view if you wish, though the story has been changed since it's creation. The story I just told you is more current than this animatic, but it's worth a look to see the character designs, etc.
2d Animatic Concept
Hippo Character Design
Monkey Character Design
We have a beautiful team for this project. I am the animation director, we have the best rigger at SCAD creating our control and coding -- pipeline man, responsible for all the complicated stuff we animators don't want to think about.. render farms, compositing, blah.. We have the best modeler at SCAD building the characters and the set, lighting the scene, texturing etc. It couldn't get much better than the way we have it set up, so hopefully in about 6 weeks we will have a completed 3d short film involving dialog and animated characters - not an easy feat.
Thats about all my life is composed of at the moment. I am also trying to develop my thesis project, an animation involving a pilot character telling a story to a pigeon. It is an essential tool right now to be involved in a short film production because I am learning all that is required to do the very same thing for my thesis.
Back to the real world for now. Oh wait, the real world for me is playing with fun little characters in a computer! You mean get to do this for a living?! Neilio is a happy man. Have a great day everyone!
I'm currently heavily involved in a 3d collaborative project with several of my friends. We are producing an animation short over the next few weeks about a hippo and a monkey. The hippo and monkey are on a quiet hillside, the monkey up in a tree and the hippo leaning against it. Suddenly the monkey stands up from his tree limb and proclaims, "I got it!" He jumps down and begins ranting on about a crazy story he has just invisioned involving monsters and aliens.. etc. The hippo obediently follows along with a typewriter as he leans against the tree.
As the rant goes on, the hippo begins to have problems with the typewriter.. the drum getting stuck all the way over on the side. Oblivious, the monkey continues telling the story. With most of the attention drawn to the monkey, the hippo is seen briefly struggling with the typewriter, trying to ram the drum back into place. At the climax of the short, the monkey finishes his rant and asks the hippo, "Did you get it?!" Just at that moment, the hippo finally gets the drum to slide back with a "ding" and says, "I GOT IT!" The monkey grabs the paper from the typewriter and notices it is filled with struggling fingerprints, streaks, and a few lonely letters of his story. Looking depressed, the monkey sighs.. and then suddently says, "GENIUS!" Cut to black.
The idea of the "genius" line is to reinforce the idea that these two characters are just a couple of idiots on a hillside tring to come up with a story. It's also a little gag about our own process, and how our own story has evolved and been re-written about 10 times.
I have an old animatic online you may view if you wish, though the story has been changed since it's creation. The story I just told you is more current than this animatic, but it's worth a look to see the character designs, etc.
2d Animatic Concept
Hippo Character Design
Monkey Character Design
We have a beautiful team for this project. I am the animation director, we have the best rigger at SCAD creating our control and coding -- pipeline man, responsible for all the complicated stuff we animators don't want to think about.. render farms, compositing, blah.. We have the best modeler at SCAD building the characters and the set, lighting the scene, texturing etc. It couldn't get much better than the way we have it set up, so hopefully in about 6 weeks we will have a completed 3d short film involving dialog and animated characters - not an easy feat.
Thats about all my life is composed of at the moment. I am also trying to develop my thesis project, an animation involving a pilot character telling a story to a pigeon. It is an essential tool right now to be involved in a short film production because I am learning all that is required to do the very same thing for my thesis.
Back to the real world for now. Oh wait, the real world for me is playing with fun little characters in a computer! You mean get to do this for a living?! Neilio is a happy man. Have a great day everyone!