Rendering times. That's the thing that's going to be the most annoying, but I think everyone knew that. Having done a lot of test renders, and still frame shots, based on the complexity of the textures and the lighting, I've been getting renders going as long as fifteen minutes a frame, although this was with some complex texturing - such as leather on the chairs, and paint on the walls. I've since changed a lot of it to fit better with the equipment I have.

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As well as colour, lighting and texturing (what I like to know as the "overall theme and look" of the short), I wanted to focus on movement. While I didn't get to do a lot of that, I did spend some time filming myself and looking for online videos of people using magic wands or casting spells, to examine their arm movements and get natural flow to the action.

My first video shows a pretty solid, not very loose movement:







which I improved with the next one, which has a lot more body movement







And here is another one, with another movement









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Finished animatic, although there is no music after one minute thirty: due to time constraints.


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Using morph to work with expressions on the witch, although edits on the model will be needed. Again here it really is just a test. At this point I'm experimenting with different techniques and looks and I really like this one right now. But whether or not I will be in the future, when I have an even better visual idea of how the short will turn out, remains a question.

But for now, it's pretty good.

Not much time to work on things, as I've been focusing on other prjects, but done this.

A complete remodel of the original witch. More birdlike features, more animation points and overall better look to the model. Much better - used planes instead of boxes, which works a lot better, if takes a lot more time.

A fairly badly embedded silent animatic (with a few bad sound effects in). Music to come soon

Better modeled blob - with bizarre (and temporary) eyes.


And, uh, this



Also done a few animation tests. Modeled my blob in clay, for stop motion tests

And here are the finished storyboards. Working on the animatic now, after painfully having scanned, resized, fixed and cropped each storyboard. Who else is as tired of them as I am?

Here are some more in-depth renders of what the room is going to look like (lighting is still in the works):







It's come to my attention that creating fire in 3DS Max looks good (if done right), but takes a ridiculous amount of time. Far too long. So I have decided to do them in After Effects - at least the lesss important and prominent sparks and flames.

This test looks good, but took far too long to do:




Click on it. It's HD and looks damn good. When fire is prominent I'll do it this way. But it takes forever and a day to render.


Storyboards coming along nicely. Almost done. Soon I'll work on the animatic. I have the story all worked out and have all three witches have good parts, and one of them I might not have to render fully (although to compensate I'll have to do a frog)

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I'm definitely going for the original story, of the creature being chased around the room Tom and Jerry-style. It's a nice, simple, solid story idea which I can have a lot of fun with.

Having decided that, the last few days I have spent detailing out how the cottage interior would look - having started a week or two previous. It struck me that if I am going to do a "chase" style story, then the layout of the cottage is going to be a lot more important than I thought it would be. After all, where he runs to is entirely based on how the thing is laid out.

Originally I had a long corridor leading up to the room with the chimney and cauldron, lined with bookshelves for things to be knocked over, but I realised that wouldn't work, and if it had nowhere really to go except forward and back, the witch could catch it within seconds.


Pretty boring.

So I opened up the cottage a great deal, and began sketching up where I think things should be, and the best way they'd flow. I'm going to start storyboarding soon so there's a lot to think about in a short amount of time. Here's the basic layout of the cottage. I'm also currently modeling all the furniture:




It's shaping up well. Been doing some modeling and texturing, too, on the witch, although there are very little animation points on the face and I'm going to have to re-model properly soon:

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I spent some time last week thinking of another approach to the story. While my earlier story involved a chase scene between an old crone witch and a blobbish creature created from the cauldron, I thought of another story, in which three witches are greeted by a young man who needs the witch for one reason or another.

The three compete and try to out do each other, putting in all kinds of things into the cauldron, when it eventually explodes and the roof collapses or something.

But I can't help but think it simply isn't as visual as my previous story, nor do I think I can do four human characters. While I wanted to have three witches in the other scenario, they might not have to ben fully rigged, while these witches would all have to be. I have designs ready, but I don't think this is the right way to go.

I'll give it some more thought, drawing out possibilities for both stories. I'll come to a conclusion soon


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The idea behind the witches is in the classic "three witches" coven idea, popularized (if that's even the right word) by Shakespeare in Macbeth - featuring the Crone, the Motherly one and the Maiden characters.

This has been reused over and over again, and my particular inspiration behind these witches is in the coven of Granny Weatherwax - a prominent character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - a set of books known for lampooning everyday life in fantasy environments and exploring the idea of beliefs and folklore.

In mine, the crone is really generic - like all the traditional Hallowe'en masks, the mother is a sweet, gentle type (whose looks I based off Dawn French) and the Maiden who is a girl who thought she was going to be joining a satanic wiccan cult (which we all know is a load of nonsense)

Having been briefed on our assignments for the year, I have come up with a rough idea for an animated short called Toil and Trouble.

I sort of know what plot and ideas I'm going to use, and, as a sort of jumping off point, made some quick Max renders:









and a room render :


And that's it


Working on getting a screenplay done properly, and some good character modeling, which is hard and annoying but probably the most important part of the whole thing. I have a couple of weeks to do a storyboard, but we have a proposal presentation on Wednesday, so the narrative's got to be done by then.