Domestic violence isn’t a laughing matter in real life, but in the XandY film the relationship between Marie Clarkson a woman of relative small stature and her taller but awkwardly weak husband Douglas brings comic relief to the otherwise serious tone of the film.
Marie slaps Douglas
To animate the slapping motion, I started Douglas moving before the actual sound of the slap to create anticipation in his movement. It took about 1/2 hour to key the basic movements. I then moved onto the next shot which Douglas delivers a short 20 second line. To lipsync the dialog I used the Blender Shape Key function for Douglas’s mesh.
I did this while watching the Golden Globe awards, which I didn’t find entertaining. This awards program doesn’t actually have any entertaining like singing or dancing in between the industry patting itself on the back.
Anyway, back to the couple of shots I worked on this evening for the XandY Film. I don’t have any interesting challenges to report. The whole exercise was rather routine actually, so I’ll sign off with that and try to think of ways to make the dry busy work of translating my vision to the animatic more interesting.
The final film will be produced as a live action feature with Visual Fx.
Browse the journal belowl for preproduction media including concept art, storyboard sketches, animatics, temp track music clips and documentary photos/videos.
Story Vids are internet media that I have embedded here for your enjoyment.
Each review includes my reason for selecting the internet media for this collection. Video sharing websites are a promising outlet for showcasing creativity. I’m personally interested in finding media with story content. I’m particularly partial to Science Fiction or Fantasy related stories executed with Visual Fx, but not exclusively.
Unfortunately, real works of story based creativity (Story Vids) seem to be buried in large quantities of what I describe as noise media. So I search out Story Vids for my own enjoyment and while doing so, provide them here if they meet my criteria for being worth the effort of a Story Vid Review. The length of my reviews vary. Some selections may be entertaining but not deep enough to provoke anything more than one to two lines of commentary. Of course you’re free to disagree. Register and comment to let me know what you think.
The work below has been selected based on a four broad criteria of personal tastes.
The work must be a production of passion, not a hollywood studio commercial film.
The work has to have a discernible (to me) story and that story has to be compelling enough to keep me interested in experiencing the entire work.
The work must be complete. No trailers.
The work should have reasonable production quality, but this can vary depending on the strength of the story.
In this Starwars based vid, you travel along with the Empire, “Discovery Channel,” style as they pursue Rebels on a forbidding planet. This vid is a faux documentary with a professional look.
In the words of the director, “A young boy in the 1950s re-imagines a family conflict as a rollicking, black and white outer space serial.”
I’ve been accused before of liking Buck Rogers style nonesense, but the “real” action set in the 1950’s is reasonably footed. The Sci-Fi action sequences are intentionally campy.
Maruader’s Mistake is a short animation set to classical music. I chose this film because I enjoyed how the Director placed the action with the soundtrack. There is no dialog or sound effects, so it’s like getting a visual intepretation of a classical piece.
The story follows the exploits of a male “Marauder,” who steals a gem and fights with a band of theives for its protection. What happens to the prized possession? I’ll let you watch to find out.
