Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Post Pupal Perils

Here's a rundown of the Animation Contest...

eD and some of his friends entered a 300 hour animation contest (end of Feb/early March).  They had 12 days to create an animated short out of a theme, character, and object supplied the start date from the contest via email.  They recieved their criteria on Feb 23rd which was Theme - Aging, Character - a Mother, Object - a Bottle.  By the next day they had decided on a final idea, which was a Mother Fly teaching her Maggot children the rules to live a healthy life to, and it just so happened to take place inside of a bottle.  

eD spent the next few days fleshing out the idea, working on designs for the characters.  He spent about 2-3 days on character models and rigs while waiting on final script.  He had the fly almost finished and the Maggot models rigged when his friends Rich and Dave came over to help him with the script, as well as coercing him out of the house with the promise of Thai food.  After dinner we recorded voices for the short.  A few different versions of each, giving many people chances for their interpretations of the characters. 
They started working with the scratch audio on March 1st setting up shots, trying to get an edit set so they could determine shot lengths, and get the audio timed for lipsync.  Some animation was started on the 2nd of March (the first and second shots since they could be placed in the edit without much hassle), but most of the shots weren't blocked until the 3rd of March.  The deadline was the 6th so there was only a few 24 hr days to animate 42 shots, so they decided to cut 10 shots to save themselves some work.  Since eD wanted to get ahead of things 4 of the shots that were cut were already animated, but that happens all the time in production.  There were many sleepless nights at the beginning of this project, which turned into sleepless days (plural).  eD finished animating a few hours into the afternoon of the deadline day, but they were still not able to get all the renders finished, shots comped, and edited together in time to submit for the contest.  If they would have been given three more hours, I believe it would have been submitted, but I was just there drinking beers and rooting them on.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Website Revamp

We adjusted the website a tad.  To make it a little more fun to navigate around the page.  Added 6 pages for individual gallery and reel viewing.  a back button (which makes little sense considering most browsers have a back button, but we figured why not?!?!) was reworked so it will take you to the last page of the site that you were on, instead of taking you to the main page, like clicking the eDMcD3D logo would do.  We also made it a little bit more clear.  Didn't realize it was optimized as much as it was, and it made everything somewhat blurry.

All fixed now, and will not be touched until a) eD makes a new reel or b) we get more images for the gallery, but with the new revision that will just mean adding in another polaroid with the images on it, but maintaining the look and feel of the page.  We had fun with this one, much more creative than the last, and we can brush that "little johnny" character under the rug.  (Don't tell eD I said that.)

But enough rambling, if you haven't seen it yet, check out the new site here:

Monday, March 19, 2012

The Adventures of Wally Fresh #6

The collaboration of eD & artist Turner Lange was solidified in print with the release of issue #6 of the Adventures of Wally Fresh at this years WonderCon in Anaheim, Ca. eD made a paper mask cutout (reminiscent of the comics back in the day) for the back cover.  eD mentioned that this will be the first in a line of paper masks based on characters from the Wally Fresh comic. 
Here's a scan of the back cover.
Here's a Colored Version in normal print size in case anyone wants to print out their own Barry Mask.
More information on the Adventures of Wally Fresh can be found here:

Sunday, March 18, 2012

New Website is Up & Running!

The new eDMcD3D website is up.  We are going to be making some changes with the Gallery and the Reel pages at some point.  We are very happy for eD, and definitely loved the SSP Logo link on the bottom of the main page.  The last version of the website had the link to the SSPlog as more of an easter egg.  Maybe this will boost traffic, we shall see.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

New Website Soon...

eD has been busy toiling away at building a new website.  He had me grab some images for a gallery, and then he chose from then.  Then of course I went through again to pull out images like this...
although it looks kinda cool, and shows that he can model and texture things pretty well I didn't think it fit so well with his other renders that are much more... well... less creepy...
The new site should be up by this weekend.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Animation Race Character Models

eD & his friends entered the Animation Race contest which was a 12 day animation contest, based on a theme, character, and object supplied the day of the contest start date.  They ended up not making the deadline in time.  It was a sad few days at SSP, after the contest had ended.  I think that was primarily because eD slept almost an entire day after the contest.  He hardly slept throughout those 12 days, if I saw him at all I saw him working.  he even moved his new computer down into the living room so that he could work while watching TV and "being social" with his roommates.

The theme was aging, the character was a mother, and the object was a bottle.  They ended up going with eD's first idea which was a mother fly talking to her maggot children inside of a broken bottle on the side of the road.  I haven't even seen the finished version but it seems that eD made it back into the files this morning, when he sent me these work in progress images of the characters he created for the short.
Maggot Designs, at first they had arm nubs with mitten-like hands.
Maggot Model, after removing nubby arms.
Textured & Rigged Final Model
Many different Fly Designs
Original Fly Model
Fly Mama final Textured & Rigged Model
 I'm pretty sure the short will be released at some time, I just have no idea when.  eD may be reworking some animation before shoving it out into the world.  I'm not really sure, he hasn't told me anything, and he likes to change the subject a lot...