December 25, 2010

make a list and check it twice

Often I like to make lists of things to do and it's not a bad idea to keep track of progress either. I've planned my budget very carefully so I can buy all the things I need to make my film. Most of these things I already have... in Canada. It costs more than it's worth to ship items over. Many items I need are simply not to be found here in Oz! Before I got here I looked online to see if any artstores would sell lightboxes, animation paper or pegs. None seemed to and now that I'm here it holds true. The only animation thing I've seen for sale in an artstore thus far is Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair. I know there are animation studios here that do hand drawn animation and Disney had a studio here for a time so beats me as to where they got their supplies. Shipping stuff over is pricey. I ended up purchasing my own paper punch (!!!) as it was cheaper than shipping over punched paper. Insanity. A paper punch took a fair chunk of change to get and I had to pay extra at the airport to get it here. (The box it was in actually got opened up by airport staff and searched unbeknownst to be until arriving in Sydney. Then when I got to Syndey it was sniffed by dogs looking for drugs.) I think it looked questionable when x-rayed. It's not everyday that people are taking animation paper punches with them on airplanes to other countries.
As for electronics, the plugs and voltage are different in Australia. So my trusty Canadian scanner would be useless here, (unless I was lucky that it *could* accept an Australian voltage and then I would have to get a power converter. Those aren't cheap either.) So again, it's just not worth it to bring electronics over. The only electronic devices I brought with me were a small lightbox that could fit in my suitcase and my milk frother since it runs on batteries. I brought a small lightbox since my own full sized one would be another $200 to bring as extra carry on. Buying a small one and stuffing it in my suitcase saved me a bit of money.
I am doing my best to be frugal and economic while filmmaking. I think I'm doing well as far as watching my budget. It's a wonderful surprise when things turn out to be cheaper than I believe they would be and then there is more wiggle room in the budget.

DONE:
-wrote/recorded music with Larra
-worked out a budget
-rough storyboards
-rough leica
-some life drawing and gesture drawing
-rough colour script
-planned the layout and look/contents of the environments
-bought a lightbox, desk lamp, animation paper punch, ruler, triangle, utility knife, glue, cutting mat
-researched grants (very few are applicable if any, especially since I am out of Canada)

TO DO:
-MORE life drawing and gesture drawing!
-finished concept art
-finalise storyboards/leica
-practise drawing characters
-buy a scanner, paper, moniter, power converter or light source, bone folder, paint, brushes, wooden stretch board (for painting), pencils
-finish reading Life Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton and Animated Performance by Nancy Beiman
-go to the zoo to draw
-build paper sets of film locations
-paint the sets and backdrops
-photograph the sets
-apply for grants
-animate my film!!!
-post production (clean up, scanning, compositing, colour, make DVDs etc.)
-apply for grants (very few are applicable if any, especially since I am out of Canada)

*ps., Blogger says I put this post up on 25 December when really... it's 8:51pm for my on 26 December. So no, I am not blogging over Christmas day... Blogger is weird.

December 22, 2010

new office in Sydney

Working away on some storyboards... This is from my new office in Sydney, Australia. I arrived here November 24. Since then I've settled into my new home and done some good wandering. As for my film, I've been drawing, boarding, putting together concept work, creating a colour script. Often when I have pages of work and reference material, I like to see everything relevant to what I'm currently working on at once. That leads me to tearing pages out of my sketchbook so I can see all the previous pages and not have to continuously flip pages.

Come with me to the Ghibli Museum!

I made a video for my youtube channel about my visit to the Ghibli Museum this past March.