Death, Hope, and Love Preproduction

As I'm sure many of my avid site-watchers have noticed, I've updated the film page dedicated to Death, Hope, and Love, and there's a reason for that--I will be turning it into an animated short film as my senior thesis project!

Currently, I'm in the preproduction phase; focusing on preliminary art, casting and recording, 3D modeling, grant applications, and animation testing.

Preliminary Art

This has mostly been consisting of working on character designs, art style, and color profile for the film. The design for the Reaper as been difficult to pin down, as its such a conceptual character. The character designs for Clover and Camellia haven't changed too terribly much since the renditions I made for the animatic; mostly honing in on outfits, and slight changes for casting. Speaking of...

Casting and Recording

The film has now been casted! In this category, the next steps are rehearsal and recording.

3D Modeling

While the film will be hand-drawn 2D, I plan to make use of 3D prop references. Specifically, the film has a car, and it will make the animation process much easier and simpler to model the car in 3D first.

There is only one problem...I don't know how to 3D model. So, I've been learning Blender via that guy's donut tutorial. I spent a bit of time yesterday on that, and I'm about halfway through. Wish me luck on creating more complex models in the future.

Grant Applications

Yep, I've applied for some, quite recently actually. Fingers crossed on getting some funding! It will be taking up quite a bit of my time, considering I will be doing all the animating myself, so having funding will be incredibly helpful in terms of giving myself the time and freedom to give this project the attention it deserves.

Animation Testing

Despite taking on a animated short film by myself, I actually have very little animation experience. As in, I've only done some basic ball-bouncing animations, walk cycles, and overlay animation for my short film Ripping Your Fingernails Out With Your Teeth. Part of the motivation for this project is my longstanding want to learn how to animate; my problem has always been lack of time, and lack of deadline. The big idea with the thesis project is giving myself the time and space to learn as well as a specific goal to work towards.

All these aspects will come together by the end of the year in time for production in the spring, at which time I will begin on principle animation, sound design, and compositing.

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for updates!

-Naomi :)