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Wednesday, November 26, 2003Disney's Latest 2D Casualty  According to Animation Magazine: At $70 million and counting, Disney’s Brother Bear is helping to stuff the studio’s turkey this holiday season. Still, the team of animators that created it, and the hit Lilo & Stitch before it, is being dismantled. Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida in Orlando has been ordered to stop production on a predominantly 2D feature with tentative titles ranging from "A Few Good Ghosts" to "My Peoples." iPHONE ALCHEMY Monday, November 24, 2003The Way of Manga The Way of Film?!  In his smash hit Voices of a Distant StarDVD extras, Makoto Shinkai says in an interview that the technology of today has brought animation into the realm of manga whereas one artists can do it and keep control of their story and artistic vision. I wonder if that is the only way the technology has changed the way animation can be made. I had a thought, considering my recent post of how manga is done in Japan. Because manga is done on a weekly schedule in magazines like JUMP, it makes for a very unique style of storytelling. Stories can actually evolve and grow. That is to say, the manga artists doesn't design, storyboard and layout endless volumes of manga before starting. They work chapter by chapter, allowing the story to grow and change as they do. They may begin with an outline of their entire story planned, but according to Katsuhiro Otomo, in speaking of Akira, his outline changed many times over as the story grew, changed and evolved over the years. As indie artists, able to create our films however we want to, or whatever way is best for the film, can we learn from and apply any of these methods to tell greater stories? Creating a film is a long process. When you're at a studio, you may spend a year or more perfecting one scene or sequence, not worrying as much on the bigger picture. When, on the other hand, you are writing and directing and animating, is there a way that lets you keep that same focus, over a longer period, covering any number of sequences? There are things that happen in life that influence what you want to say and, perhaps, how you want to say it. How do you keep your project open to that? Have you ever been deep into a project and, at some point, due to all the things which you have seen and experienced, felt you needed something else? At the same time you dread deviating from your strict boards. Do you sometimes forget that as an indie artist, not bound by any system of creating art and content, you have the freedom to accommodate such change? Here is what I will do for my next film. As always I will create a detailed "step outline" to plot the whole thing out. I will not, however, board the whole thing before beginning. I will approach it step by step, allowing for some boarding, some modeling, some animating and seeing some final content before moving forward. I will allow the project to be open to growth as I create it. This combined with what I wrote earlier about the boards being done in a Mirage project, at the final resolution, beginning an ever evolving compositing process of getting to the final scene, will make for a project that can obtain the rest of the benefits of filmmaking being brought into the realm of manga.  In other news, the all 3D anime film from Romanov, titled Urda, is apparently out on DVD today in the Japanese market. No word as yet whether it will be brought over here or not. iPHONE ALCHEMY Thursday, November 20, 2003 Man, I am glad I didn't run out and buy the whole Robotech series on DVD when it first came out. I always wanted it, but as is always the case in the world of DVD, there has to be another edition: from Animation Magazine: Anime distribution powerhouse ADV Films announced plans to release Robotech Remastered: Extended Edition, a complete remastering of all three acts of Harmony Gold's classic’80s animated series. The first DVD volume will include the first 12 episodes on two discs and will go on sale everywhere January 27, 2004. iPHONE ALCHEMY
There was another software synth recommended by Frank Klepacki, and it is the HQ Orchestral software synthesizer from Edirol.
After listening to the samples of each a number of times, I am leaning toward this one over the Garritan product. It seems more fit for movie soundtrack work. The fact that Garritan is having trouble shipping their product isn't helping that side of things either. iPHONE ALCHEMY Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Thanks to Frank Klepacki, the artist who composed the score for Westwood Studios game titles, my music research may already be over! He recommended The Garritan Personal Orchestra, an all-in-one digital orchestra package for $249.
You have to listen to the samples on that page. I think that would go far to beat out the sound quality of the Roland JV1010 used on Chaos wouldn't you say? I may be ordering this very soon. iPHONE ALCHEMY Music Research Part II Once again I will hit the web in search of music solutions. Last time I found what I believe to be the absolute ideal method of all digital music. Now I will find the solution I can actually afford. :) SO I am thinking that this solution will involve sound samples, found on CD that duplicate in some fashion the type of modules I used in the past on Chaos. That was done on a Roland JV1010. Right now, I would be happy to even get back to that level of music production, just all on the computer. I figure that thing had 64MB of memory for samples at best. If there is a CD library for orchestral sounds out there, it should far outdo the JV1010 right? The real question becomes, "How do I use it?" What I seek is method similar to what is done with Fruity Loops. You can create an entire song, mix it and do all your FX and then output a wave file of the finished piece. While I don't know, I am hoping that Sonar, being made by the same company can do this same thing with a fully sequenced piece using sound samples on the computer. This may involve the use of "soundfonts". I have heard some incredible stuff done in this arena in the past, but never embraced the concept because I had hardware modules. Are people still into this? Is this a Creative Labs only thing? Anyway, today, among other things, such research will proceed. I will post my findings here later. iPHONE ALCHEMY Sunday, November 16, 2003
Things don't seem to be going too well in the land of manga. Not too worry, my book is on track. The polish pass is on schedule. This is another issue. It's about how manga is done. I guess many artists are having problems and not meeting deadlines. This has little, in my view, to do with the skill of the artists, but the mindset of how it is all done. I am talking about the difference between manga production in Japan and in America. Let me break it down.
In Japan, manga is published weekly. Based on the one or two artists I know or knew, and all that I have read, the artists meet with their editor once a week, usually early in the week. They discuss the “name”, a storyboard style version of that week’s pages. Now the editor may have suggestions and changes, but unlike what is happening in the American company, they don’t go back and redo the name and come show it again. NO. They go and make the finals incorporating those changes. When those finals are turned in, guess what? They go to print. PERIOD. Many times artists, especially those known for being somewhat slow, turn in pages literally minutes before they must go to press. You see, the editors only correct going forward, never backward. You can’t go back and redo pages. You have to say, “Ok these are some things you need to improve or work on. We need more fights. We need this or that. I don’t like this so stop doing it in the future.” But you cannot go back and change what’s done. In the American company there’s too many chefs stirring the soup. Everyone wants to make their mark on it and they just noodle it to death. Few have any real artistic vision and most will noodle over things that are entirely subjective and no two people may agree on anyway. This is why a Japanese artist can do 25 pages a week and an American artist, at least working under these very typical conditions, never will. They can yell about assistants all they want. Many great artists do work alone. It is possible, but what we are dealing with is a mind problem. More accurately, a mindset problem. iPHONE ALCHEMY Friday, November 14, 2003Real DVD News! Ok. Here is some real DVD news. I am talking about how we as indie creators should be looking at this market. This is where we can shine, but make no mistake, the big guys will hem this up and keep us out if they can. They can't stop us from making DVD's. They are so cheap now it's easier to do than comic books. They can keep is out of the market at large by sheer volume though. They may not fill every niche, but some that we want, we need to get in now! The info: (according to Animation Magazine) [Finding Nemo]The animated blockbuster from Disney and Pixar sold a record eight million copies on its first day on shelves, and went on to sell a total of 17 million DVD's and VHS tapes in its first week, according to Reuters. With DVD's making up 80% of sales at $19.99 each, total sales for Nemo have already topped the $300 million mark. It took the film eight weeks to earn that much in theaters. How does this help us? Well, I am just illustrating the size to which this home video market has grown. You see, according to Video Business Journal, people buy DVD's more than rent. Because of the extra features and added value, people want them to keep. Make sure you put plenty of good extras on your disc! Don't get me started on how extra features have gone downhill to E! level material in recent years. Compare the extras on Contact DVD to anything of this year. Even Reloaded was a disappointment. The 13-episode series Ben & Izzy is created specifically to address cultural differences between Americans and Arabs. Distribution will principally focus on the fast growing worldwide DVD market. Rubicon CEO Randa Ayoubi, Layalina Prods. chairman of the board Ambassador Richard Fairbanks and Fat Rock CEO David Pritchard are spearheading the project, budgeted at $5 million. That is no small chunk of change to spend on a direct-to-DVD title?! This is showing us that people think that market is viable enough to spend money on. It is also showing that this thing in international. DVD is everywhere, because it is cheap! Original development?! You bet! Innovation?! Absolutely! High returns?! Of course! This is it, folks. If we're not taking advantage of the stage set before us, we have only ourselves to blame. Our respective audiences are out there waiting for content, but they'll keep on buying up the same old stuff if the innovation doesn't come. Niche markets, specialty projects, all these things are the domain of this market which is our market. Let's start making stuff! iPHONE ALCHEMY The Rest of the Story You want DVD news? I got DVD news! I am talking about the market at large and what it means for us indie guys, not the story of agony of trying to burn that DVD in the previous post... But I'll tell it anyway. So I downloaded the patch for the dongle driver. It worked now and I authored the disc and created an image on my hard drive. I also installed PrassiPrimo burning software which came with my Pioneer drive at the time I think. I go to burn the image to disc. PrassiPrimo doesn't recognize the Sony +/-RW drive on this computer! My computer comes with Veritas Record Now software. Surely it works. It came with it. I could find no way to burn an image from it though. I check the online help. It says that you choose to copy a disk and then where it asks which drive to copy from, you can hit a "change" button and select the image. I hit the button. My DVD ROM drive opens. I hit it again. My DVD RW drive opens and the other closes. This repeats each time I hit the button. Never was I given an option to choose the image on the hard drive. Web updates saved me last time right? I thought I would just go to the PrassiPrimo website and get an update that recognizes new drive. Well the PrassiPrimo website points to the Veritas website. Veritas bought them out. I already have their software and it didn't do the job. I guess being simple bundled software it wasn't worth mentioning on their site either. (they tell you updates come from the computer maker) I wasn't finished yet. Remember, I also downloaded a new version of ImpressionPro DVD. So I installed it. One of the new features in version 2.2 was burning from right in side the package. Great! I get it up. I choose burn an image to disc. I select the image I had made. I get an error saying, "You have to build the image first"!!! This program doesn't recognize it's own image file from .1 versions ago!!! Well all was not lost. I basically started all over and did everything from start to finish in the new version of Pinnacle and I got the disc burned. This is what it all felt like! iPHONE ALCHEMY Tuesday, November 11, 2003Web to the Rescue! I decided to do some writing here since I am in the middle of a long download. I am working on a DVD for one of the many projects with which I am involved and I came up against a wall! Since the creation of Shadowskin, I have been using Pinnacle Impression DVD Pro to do all my authoring. I haven't been entirely happy with the program, but this was made worse by an error encountered when installing it on this new Vaio of mine. When I opened it, I got an error which simply stated "please check to see if the necessary hardware is installed and try again." Well, that could mean anything! My hardware key (dongle) was installed, so I didn't suspect it. I checked the manual only to find that it only works with certain types of video and sound cards, but still I should have met all the requirements. So I went to the web for support. Since I have been using the same few pieces of software forever, I am not used to checking for patches etc. It turns out that it doesn't see the dongle under XP. I needed a patch for the dongle driver. Lucky for me, I also found there is a new version free for download. Why be excited about a program I didn't care about anyway? Well, check two important new features: Impression DVD-Pro New Features: Windows XP Support - Import of DV AVI files (type-2) - Ability to write to DVD burners from within the application -DVD-R/RW and DVD+RW burners are supported. That alone is worth the cost... well... it's free. iPHONE ALCHEMY Sunday, November 09, 2003Status Report  I forgot to mention on Friday that I actually heard from the creator and producer of Justice 4 All. Apparently the show did get finished, though not entirely to his liking. The production company handling a large part of the post work seems to have dropped the ball. The show will air, though it sounds like some edits will take place first. Still, there may yet be more to come. I am currently about 1/6th of the way through the polish pass on the Hartz manga. Not exactly making great time am I? Well, the point of this whole thing was to spend the time to do it right this go around, so I am actually doing pretty good. Also, I think the pages that need the most work are in the general area where I am now. That looks to finish up mid January. Today I've been taxing Mirage to its limits (or was I just taxing my system?) doing some DVD menu and other video work on an as yet unannounced live action project. My project files are really getting up there in terms of having a large number of layers and a multitude of effects. It is fun though. One of things I have learned since starting this project, shooting on the Canon XL1s to editing and post production effects was that doing high quality live action films or documentaries is by no means out of the question. I also heard from someone on a Mirage forum that the program will even directly import footage from the new JVC HD camera. The direction that I am going with my anime work is changing considerably. As you can see my recent character designs are a bit more cartoony. I want to do some more fun stuff. That is by no means to imply that I don't have some very serious and realistic stuff coming down the line though. The time has come to really think about markets. Of course I always thought about it, but who is the target for what I do? I the past I aimed at the crowd reading magazines like Animerica and websites like ANN and the like. Is this really the audience who is seeking content such as mine? Or could it be that the "mainstream" anime audience seeks after that which fits a very narrow definition of "anime"? I, perhaps, have had more success in the general CGI community. Strangely, the type of films I like, such as Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell and Blood: The Last Vampire, also seem to go over much better in that community than the niche anime market. So who shall I target next? iPHONE ALCHEMY Thursday, November 06, 2003Some Characters  I said I was going to do some drawing. Here are a few early sketches of some main characters for the next project. iPHONE ALCHEMY
I changed my mind. The Shadowskin page is up.
I still can't get over that Innocence site. What it goes fullscreen like that, it's like being taken into another world... at least of computing. I still think a new OS should come out like that. Certainly if I ever redo this page it will be done like that. Anyway, it's time to get on with some character designs for the new project. I'll be doing some more fun cartoony stuff. Maybe I'll post some later. iPHONE ALCHEMY Wednesday, November 05, 2003
The Understanding Chaos page has finally been updated. One of these days I may get around to doing the Shadowskin page as well. I have to say, though, it is not likely to be soon.
Time to get to some drawing! iPHONE ALCHEMY Tuesday, November 04, 2003Ghost of My Past  There is a new Innocence: Ghost in the Shell trailer on this most beautiful Japanese site for the film. Man when that page came up my first thought was, "Why can't the OS for computers be cool like this?!" It's hard to believe that just last April I was there! I stood in I.G. and watched this film being made. I saw Lightwave 3D in action as some incredible background scenes were being put together. I was impressed then. They look much better today. That was over a year ago in their four year production cycle. Now more than a year later, I am here... doing what? iPHONE ALCHEMY Monday, November 03, 2003
The cleanup on Hartz pages continues. Since I have the time to do it right now, I am actually using more 3D from Lightwave, especially for the backgrounds. This makes a huge difference in the overall quality. The funny thing is, in my next anime things may go just the opposite.
I haven't done any testing yet, but my next anime will likely feature wholly painted backgrounds, done in a somewhat sketchy, water color style. I have the WACOM tablet after all. It really changes all the logistics of how I work. Every decision on how to do a particular aspect of a scene was based on speed and quality. The WACOM tablet makes for a big shift in what is faster as to 2D or 3D. I haven't finished yet the Chaos page that I started last week. It won't be too long though. It might even get done today. For now, though, I have some reading to do. iPHONE ALCHEMY |
