Close to Starting Day 6

Don't get me wrong, when I started Moon Diary, I intended it to be epic, but it keeps increasing in intensity at an accelerating acceleration. Just spent the last month brainstorming the script for day 6, which included reading half of Godel, Escher, Bach, to increase my understanding of what it means to mean something. The team held weekly brainstorming sessions where we would mix the ideas we had come up with since last week. I specifically spent hours researching paradoxes, both visual and literal, and despite everything we're not even really done yet. We've only nailed down the structure, not the details. I guess we'll try to work that out in story boarding to try and streamline a bit.

The one year anniversary of starting this project is vaguely around this month. Originally I intended it to be a short project that would only take a couple months. Woo yeah! All my efforts to reduce my workload just encourage me to get obsessive about other aspects! Moon Diary might not be done this Summer as the trailer suggests. How embarrassing.

Can you believe I'm being paid to make stuff like this?

Cinco De Mayo Update

Day 4 is DONE, as of several weeks ago, which means there's only day 6 and 7 left. I estimate day 6 to be two minutes long and day 7 to be three to four. Moon Diary is currently 12 minutes long, and once you add titles and chapter transitions that means this thing is going to be just under 20 minutes when it's done. It's already the longest thing I've ever made.

I got commissioned to do an infomercial type animation for naesai.org. That means that, for now any way, I am a PROFESSIONAL animator, in the literal sense. There is absolutely no mistaking it for a hobby any more, I'm being reimbursed for work with money. Since I've decided to post fewer screenshots from Moon Diary I might be focusing more on this paid animation on the blog for a while.  

Here's the character design for the narrator.

Wolves

Moon Diary has been progressing well the last couple of weeks. We got a sound guy who has been working on foley art, and we had a company picnic at wolf haven where we all got to observe real wolves in action. They didn't move too much while we were there, no surprise, but I feel like the experience has lead to a sense of authenticity in the wolf movement none the less, they have been turning out really well. Chris Duncan, our sound guy, tried to get some wolf howling while we were there but all we got was a bunch of ravens screeching, and the tour lady talking.

Like I said, work has been progressing nicely. If all goes well, Day 4 might be done by the end of this week.

What a cutie!

In other news, I got another eyelash stuck in my upper punctum (although it was the other eye, wtf,) I just invested several hundred dollars in gold in case the economy collapses, and my supply of 36 cans of mountain dew is just about run out, so I'll need to go get more. These scenes with people take forever, since they have to be drawn and organized before they can be animated and plus there's so many of them. But I'm putting in some good long hours when I'm working, at least.

Money Pump

We could really use one of these for the office.

Moon Diary Trailer Hits the Fan

We made a new trailer for Moon Diary and it's really great, but we took a short cut and just used an Azure Ray song for the music. YouTube then deleted the audio, and, as you may know, audio is like 80% of what makes a trailer good. I need to read up on the law, I think that if we play a cover of the song then it's alright. If it's not then we'll probably make a song from scratch, but for now the trailer is delayed due to copyright infringement. Jeeze!

However, there is a new section to the site, the "Soon" page which shows the next upcoming project, in this case Moon Diary. It will be the future home of the trailer, as well as screen shots and a general progress report of how Moon Diary is going. There's a few new screenshots from finished parts of the animation.

 

You can visit the Soon page at http://www.yesbutwhatisit.com/moondiary/

Our animation studio has three employees. There's me, there's Erin Tanner over at http://www.erintanner.blogspot.com, and then there's our most important member, Bay Bay the cat. Usually she's in on time and never complains.. But see, Erin Tanner took her outside for the first time a couple weeks ago, and she was for the first time able to look up into the vast and infinite sky. Can you imagine looking into that bleak void for the first time? Bay Bay's productivity has dropped sharply, but we'll try not to let that delay Moon Diary too much.

The image above was posted on Erin Tanner's blog. I thought it looked really cool as a screen shot, so I decided to post it too.

Frame by frame gets pretty tricky. I recently got a part time job (Working for an Elevator Inspection Certification Company, yeah!) so the 8 hour animation days have been more like 2 or 3. I spent the last week or so working on this water effect pictured above. The image shows the outline of every shape in the water sequence, about 200 in all. It's a 5 second sequence in the animation, but at least it looks awesome!

10:39 am

Sometimes I forget how crazy flash looks from a distance. Do I really know how all those buttons and knobs work? Seriously? Have I been wasting my life?

Keep it simple stupid

Well, two full days of work has amounted to this nice shot. I mean, it's great, but if I spend this much time on every shot I'll never get done. This is just the opening! Today is not over yet, so hopefully I can draw a whale or two, and maybe add some sailors.

Moon Diary day 5

Here's a preview frame from the upcoming animation Moon Diary. We just finished this scene, and I really liked the way this bush turned out. The leaves move in response to the rabbit hopping between them. I wish I wouldn't keep topping myself and forcing myself to make the whole animation more complicated, but look at that bush! How could I not?