"Dear Dad, Love Maria"

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

No Longer 35mm, Some Story Stuff, and A Short Manifesto

I decided that due to costliness I'm switching from 35mm to 16mm. It's going to still cost a lot but not as much. I went into the fourth draft of maria and something about it didn't feel right with me, and so I sent it to Andy and he noticed that it feels overworked. He told me to step back from it for a few days and try to get more into her shoes and write it again from scratch. So I'm going to take that advice. In the meantime I think I'll read over it a few times just to see what I can glean from it. This piece needs to be as good as I can get it. This is my last short as a student and my first as an independent animator. I want it to be worthy for people to see it in a festival and hopefully take the story and feel it for themselves. So for that I have to feel it for myself, and then once I do, put all the work I can into it. I don't just want a piece that is funny or if I make it a comedy is funny just to be funny, I want them to be rooted in something in me, so if its funny its funny because I've been there and maybe the audience too. I want to make pieces that mean something to me. That's all I really want to do with my life, make pieces that mean something to me and make people laugh, cry, and feel it along with me.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Fourth Draft Complete

I finished the fourth draft of maria. I like it, but still am not sure I'm getting everything across I want to. After Andy gets back to me, even if he says I'm good, which I doubt, I want to write another draft. Something isn't totally clicking with me yet. I don't have enough of my first version in the fluidity of the second version for me to be satisfied storywise. I don't know something just bugs me about it.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

New Title?

I've been writing out a new piece of the maria story, and, as suggested to me by Andy, I wrote a letter as maria to her father. I like where its going and I'm thinking about the possibility of , though I fear that people will inevitably see the connection between this piece and A Letter to Colleen. As for now the working title is maria, but it may change to Dear Dad, Love maria. As you probably have noticed, maria doesn't capitalize her name. In character its because she's overwhelmed by capitalization and doesn't want to apply it to herself. Truthfully, I just like the way it looks aesthetically. People may think that the lower-case is a mistake, but oh well, they'll see the absence of capitalization when they see the piece. Though I may do the who title like that for the animation. I'm rambling now, I think this post has gone on long enough.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Budgety Things

I figured out a basic budget for maria today. I researched a few things and now should be all squared away for when I start accumulating things for it. I also talked to Andy today and got his email address so I can continue to send him my stories as they come. He's excited about the piece and that in turn helps me to be excited about it. I have a draft of something but I want to do more work on it before sending it to him.

Monday, May 12, 2008

From Life Portrait 4/28


This was my best drawing from the last figure drawing session I was at. I was quite pleased with the result.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Best of My DeviantArt








Back to Writing

Andy just gave me my crit and I'm excited about the whole thing, I just need to go back and study Maria as a character, inside her character. I want this film to be the best film I can make, so I'm going to continue to have Andy crit me on it until it is the best film on my subject. He really likes the idea but Maria needs to be more active in the story, and in the moment. So, keep moving forward.

My Senior Thesis Film

maria my senior thesis film has semi-officially begun preproduction. The story is in its second draft and pending a good review from Andy London today, if he has the time step away from his class and give me a little crit, will move into storyboarding within the next two weeks or so. I really want to get this piece all fleshed out ASAP. I'm really excited about it and can't waste any time since its going to be shot in 35mm. I was researching Blu-Ray Disc burners today and found one i'm going to buy with my budget, which got me excited for the piece and got me to put the story into its first draft form today instead of just the notes that existed in a file on my computer. I talked it over with my friend Jess. She and I worked one rearranging the story so it flowed, made sense, and was understandable. I'm getting some visual ideas for each segment as well, which is nice. so keep on the lookout for maria. I'll be giving updates on it more frequently as production goes underway and the short takes over my life. All frustrated rants will be on my other blog, leaving this for status updates and minor mentioning of the frustration that I'm sure will occur while using the Oxberry camera.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Professional

I'm trying to make this site feel more professional, but I don't think I'll fully manage that until I have my own webspace.

Storyboarding Final



The basic idea behind this project was to create two character designs based on one of the two possible character pairings and then create a story where they go on a journey and come back. The characters I chose were 2129 the Mailbox and Larry the Fireplug. The story I created is called Moving Up. Larry and 2129's corner is being moved to outerspace, where they discover that it's an elaborate plan to take over the world. They have to defeat the Moon Movers company and return their block to Earth. The story part of the project was to take seven key scenes and illustrate them. We were to imagine ourselves as working at Pixar or some other company and creating these as storyguides to pitch to the higher ups.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Official Animation Bloggery

Well, I needed to create a different blog to host official animation related things, seeing as vinceroni.blogspot.com turned into a personal blog. Consult that blog for my personal issues and current events. This one will be related to my current projects and art posts.