It´s been a loooong time since i write here but!. Finally i can see something!!, after 2+ years, i can finally animate , the render takes too much though, but i´m happy with the outcome, i hope to finish all the animations (not the renders), before my next birthday (end of may), but who knows hahahah, maybe… i keep moving forward, so that´s something valuable i guess, anyway, here are the fisrt two minutes of my movie, there are still some minor mistakes to fix, but no showstopper so , no sound fx yet though, just my original score , also the following video is not on the original size of the movie wich is 4k (4096×2160 pixels), but only on hd (1280×720 pixels), because i dont know yet what codec to use for 4k hhahahahha.
So, to celebrate with everyone i want to share with you 2 videos, on one you will see the modeled, textured and rigged 3d characters that i have so far, and on the other there are some animated backgrounds that are part of the “other dimension”, the music is part of the original score i did for the movie.
Just some quick test to see how the background works with the textured character, i like .
A quick update about the Elulu movie status, i hope to finish the color grading of the backgrounds and the music this year, then i will make an animatic with those, and after that will model some models that i have left and finally animate the movie.
I have a new computer!, so i can go back to work on monday !, it´s 3x faster than the pc that died, so i hope i will be able to speed up a little the workflow and recover the 2 weeks that a i lost making no advance in the movie… anyway, i´m not in schedule but at least i´m moving forward,
Greetings!
Unfortunately from a month or so, my computer is kind of dying, problem after another i have manage to sort it out, but right now is currently on intensive care, i´m now currently installing for a second time in a month the Operating system, i hope it breaths again :/, at least everything seems to point out that the hard drives are fine, so Elulu seems to be safe for now, but i´m getting behind schedule again…. i have lost a week of work now, and it seems that i have to change my computer for a new one, but i´m in bankrupt :/ so… my first movie is in stand by for the moment until i manage to have again a computer up and running… damn it :C
First, one of my favorite movies of all times: Princess Mononoke (1997)
animated by Studio Ghibli, and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
It is a videolist, so when a video ends, the next part starts playing inmediatly.
Hello!, a little preview of my first movie (on the making), showing some color graded backgrounds!
The original size is 4k (4096*2160 pixels), the camera movements are made from stills in a stop motion dolly, the music is part of the original score i did for the movie (96 khz-24bit).
*** I still have to model, texture and rigg more characters
Backgrounds:
26.154 x photo files, complete backgrounds of 64 scenes (real locations)
Almost 9 scenes have a color graded background
*** There are 8 more scenes that i still have to make the background, but those scenes will be made in 3D
Music:
92 minutes of original music made with original recorded samples
I still have to mix 2 more themes (4 more minutes)
To make the music i made a total of 41 hydrogen drumkits from wich 8 have been released under creative commons and are freely available to download and use.
*** I would probably make 1 to 3 more themes.
Story:
127 pages of storysketch, with an average of 12 to 15 drawings per page
After the storysketch i wrote the script (just to understand better the story)
I´m currently working on the color grade of the backgrounds, then i will make my first cut with the graded backgrounds and music, later i will make the 3d characters that are still missing, after i will animate, and the final stage will be the recording and mixing of the sound FX.
Just a little update on the OMMP, here are the three model stages of the comet from the scene 60:
1:First i carved a polystyrene ball
2:Then i added epoxic clay and modeled craters and holes, i printed the pattern of a rock that i have, applying pressure with the rock over the clay, i also use some round sticks and my hands.
3:And finally i painted the surface of the model using a technique called dry brush
(First you apply a black paint all over the model, then you apply several layers using each time a lighter color. To apply the lighter paint layers you first wet the brush on the paint, and then you remove the paint excess on a absorbent surface (like cardboard), and then, with the dry brush you paint the model)
Now i have to see if a can make a 3D scan following this opensource tutorial
Hopefully the next 74 minutes will be ready by the end of 2013, early 2014…
Tech specs: 4k, 96khz-24 bit, (for now, only stereo audio, i will make it in 5.1 eventually)
This is the OMMP, at first i was going to make it in 3d stereo, but due to lack of technical equipment and too much render time, i decided it to make it just in 2d, but at least in 4k, i hope to find a cinema distributor once i finish.
Happy new year everyone!*
*Remember though, that every minute, and every second, of every day, is a new year, everything depends on the eye of the observer
Even though there is no standard on how to draw the camera movements on a storyboard, this is a comprehensive guide of what i have seen used, and of what i use to draw the camera movements on a storyboard, above all, the most important thing is to be clear, that´s why if you don´t remember how to draw an specific camera movement, just write down what the camera does below the drawing, here is the guide:
Panning to the left
Panning to the right
Tilt up
Tilt down
Dolly / Travelling in
Dolly / Travelling back
Dolly / travelling left
Dolly / travelling right
Crane down
Crane up
Zoom in
Zoom back
More complex camera movements can be drawn in the following way:
is a floor plan of the scene that indicates what the camera does, in this example is a travelling around a dancing character.
the arrows indicates in which direction the camera travels, and where to stop
the round line indicates the path of the camera (the line can be changed to any desired shape, indicating different camera movements)
the triangle indicates where the camera is shooting
the beautifully drawn character indicates where the actor is
there can be other elements of the scene as needed, such as a couch, a tree, a dog, another character etc..
if it is a too complex movement it can be drawn using an entire frame of a storyboard (as the example above), or if is clear enough, you can draw it below the frame, as this:
3 Blank templates of Storysketch (4:3, 16:9, and Cinemascope)
3 Blank templates of Storyboard (4:3, 16:9, and Cinemascope)
3 Blank templates of Animatic (4:3, 16:9, and Cinemascope)
To learn how to properly use this templates click here:
The award of the Hydrogen drumkit contest has arrived from Belgium , thanks to Thijs Van Severen for sending it, and organize the contest, and to Michael Wolkstein (aka Wolke) for making with his own hands the awesome H2 Drumbody ; here is the prize:
And to celebrate with everyone, i have just finish a new drumkit, a Glockenspiel, you can download and enjoy this new drumkit from my own Drumkit Feed,
i have also updated the Xylo drumkit that it was already up on the feed.
Hello, Thijs Van Severen, one of the developers of Hydrogen (an opensource sampler software) told me that for the official Hydrogen server my drumkits are going to be recompress due to backup issues, so, just to make the uncompressed drumkits available to everyone y decided to make a Feed:
i won the spring drumkit contest , XD i sent 5 of the 11 eleven drumkits so it was ovbious that i had more chances of winning than the other participants XD, anyway, the drumkit will be available to download for everyone soon, here is the winners announcement , and to celebrate that i won the first prize here is another drumkit, a xylophone, recorded at 96khz-24 bit-Stereo, thanks again to the devs of Hydrogen.
The next step of the Storysketch, even do it is not a pre-requisit, it´s the Storyboard, the idea of the Storyboard is to have a deeper aesthetic development, that´s why the template for Storyboard has a bigger frame size than the Storysketch template, now, the next step of the Storyboard is the Animatic, the animatic is a storyboard but played on a timeline, now, if you are making an animated film you will find the animatic template useful (for live-action is not that handy), the idea behind the animatic blank template, is to be able to draw outside the frame if you need to (because maybe a camera movement needs to or you are drawing in more detail, or you are drawing layers), the animatic template is also useful to develop the layout (animation layers, for example drraw the background and the subject on diferent frames of the template).
All of these temples of course are only useful for hand drawn frames, if you have a digital pen, you only have to make sure to set the canvas aspect ratio according to the film aspect ratio and be sure to use an image software that can manage layers, such as the Gimp.
This is an example of the differences of a Storysketch, a Storyboard, and an Animatic, and later the final animated animatic layers:
The Storyboard templates are on the same format as in the previous Storysketch post (double click before saving the file to get the full resolution):
A movie made only with opensource software and only by one man, that´s the aim of the OMMP, and if everything goes according to the plan, it will be released on late 2013, as of right now, i´m on schedule (:
The OMMP started on January 2012, and this is what i have accomplish so far:
60 minutes of music, made with personal recorded samples at 96khz 24bit, on this picture i´m on Ubuntu (Operative system) using Hydrogen (Sampler), QjackCtl (to route the output from the sampler to the input of the mixer), and Ardour (as the mixer of the samples), the lovely kittie is called “Masita” :3
As of today, i have drawn 774 shots, the first storysketch book is full with 654 shots, i´m currently drawing in the second one (the lighter one of the frame), in my personal way of storytelling, 20 frames = 1 minute; 200 frames = 10 minutes and so on, so my goal for the OMMP is 1400-1500 frames, wich means 70-75 minutes.
Here is my animatic, done on Cinelerra CV, at the moment i have reachd 31 minutes in images, and i have premixed the music for the first 7 minutes with my original score.
Here i am using Blender (3D software) making a character for the movie, this pic is from late may, the design has improved a lot and as of today the rigging (animation control) is almost ready for this, my first character.
So, there is a lot of hard work still to do, but, everything is moving forward, and according to the plan (:
Here is a cheap solution if you want a straight light flare, like the one an anamorphic lens gives, you will be needing a fishing line, permanent markers ( if you want a colored flare), and a way to hold this in front of the lens (for this i used a third party cokin P filter holder, the cheapeast one i could find on ebay)
The only technical consideration is that the fishing line is spaced by 0.5 cm, because that is the spacing that i discover works best on a Canon fd 50mm 1.4., from f1.4 to f8.
Here you will find two blank templates to be filled in, they have different aspect ratios, and as the idea of making a storysketch before making a film is to see how the story will be told, how the story will be framed, the format in wich the film will be shown must be same in wich the storysketch is drawn.
The first template has the must common anamorphic proportions, from the outer frame to the inner frame, the proportions are: 3,55:1 (on HDTV scale is 1920X540 pixels). then it comes the wider Cinemascope in 2,66:1 (on HDTV scale is 1920X720 pixels), and then the less wider Cinemascope on 2.35:1 (on HDTV scale is 1920×820):
The second template is in the Four thirds standard format (the format of the oldie SDTV, NTSC-PAL )
Both templates are in letter size.
To know how to use these templates please refer to this article: The Storysketch
The Storysketch is used as a comic to tell the story of a movie, every frame is going to be a different shot, it is the early stage of a storyboard (A more artistically elaborated storysketch) , the idea of the storysketch is being able to fill it in quickly, without too much hazzle about making the draws cute, does why the thumbnails are small.
It must have info about the framing, the perspective (optional), the light (optional), and the camera movements, if you want to be even faster at the drawing stage you can use names, instead of drawing all the grass of a shot, just write, grass and draw a few….
…On a personal note, as part of the OMMP i have noticed that making 20 frames of storysketch is better than making 10 or 5, because i get focus more on the storytelling and i actually lost myself in the story, while if i set my daily goal to be 10 i´m more concerned about reaching the number, and start doing a less passive activity…
Here is a guide of how to use this particular storysketch:
A quick guide of some camera movements and linked frames:
And here is the blank storysketch (letter size) to be printed or photocopied (double click on the image before saving it):
*The inner frame aspect ratio is 16:9 (wide HD television (1920*1080 pixels)) and the outer frame is 4k (Digital cinema format (4096×2160 pixels)).
The franken lens, (:, just a fun proyect of the weekend, i took an old polaroid camera, of the ones that printed the images in the 80´s, took out the plastic lens and placed into mi micro four thirds camera, the tubes that you see are macro tubes, that are used to been able to have the lens in focus (In this case the distance from the lens to the camera sensor must be the same distance that the light traveled from the lens to the printable paper inside the polaroid), luckily, to these tubes a 52mm ring can be screwed, so i simply attached a 52mm ring into the lens, to make the Frankenlens interchangeable.
*The white goo is epoxic clay, i used it just to hold everything together in a sturdy way
**The diaphragm is part of the internal mechanism of the original polaroid camera, thats way the franken lens has such a weird shape, to keep the blades of the diaphragm working (the lever wheel and the spring are also part of the ancient mechanism)
I can also control the two blades lens diaphragm in two different ways.
By turning this screw i can hold the diaphragm in a desire position.
And by pulling this little lever i can have an stepless diaphragm.
above the diaphragm and inside the 52mm ring, there is a little hole, this hole is used to give a ghosting effect to the images, just a little effect that make the Frankenlens more unique, and by covering the hole, from the outside, with the finger, the ghosting effect dissapears. Here are some two photo examples:
no ghosting.
with the ghosting effect.
no ghosting.
with the ghosting effect.
So, as you can imagine, i will probably never use this lens again (:, but is a nice thing to have just in case you want that effect of an old plastic camera, on my camera it almost look like a 75mm lens (on 35mm equivalent), and the lens needs a lot of light in order to work, this is probably because it doesn´t have a focus mechanism, so i don´t know, maybe it is an F8, and keeps everything in focus, problably only useful for daylight or long time exposure pics in the night.
As part of the ¨OMMP¨ since January 2012, i have been recording samples to make music, as i´m using Hydrogen (opensource, available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS) a drum machine, running on Ubuntu (opensource OS), i have created several drumkits, that i will be uploading from time to time, this post is to let you people know that, as there is currently a drumkit contest organized by the developers of Hydrogen, i´ll be uploading 4 drumkits to this contest and they are going to be released under a CC-by license, yes, that means that everyone is going to be able to use this drumkits, even for commercial puposes, as long as they give me the proper credit (Gabriel Verdugo Soto, www.belofilms.com), the 4 drumkits are: Acoustic guitar-normal, Acustic guitar-normal strums, Acoustic guitars-muted, and an eclectic drumkit of fruits, cans, books, leafs, human noises and a djembe from Senegal.
Everything was recorded with a mono-unidirectional-condenser shotgun mic and also a stereo-cardiod-condenser mic in an AB pattern at 96khz 24bit (best possible audio quality), mixed and edited with a little reverb on Ardour (opensource available for Linux and Mac OS), an imported later into Hydrogen.
The drumkits will be available for everyone, once the contest finish.
, the render takes too much though, but i´m happy with the outcome, i hope to finish all the animations (not the renders), before my next birthday 
