Making Of

A behind the scenes look at the film. As part of the submission we had to produce a 'making of' film documenting the production process. A few folk have expressed interest in seeing it so I've uploaded it.

This was made right at the end of production when I was pretty worn out, so much as I tried, I don't sound very alive. Maybe I'll hire a narrator to re-do it...

Me

Hey there folks! I'm noticing some people are linking to this blog, which no longer updates (the film's finished!) so here are some links to some more current work:

My sketch blog

My portfolio

Trooper in Higher Quality

If you're going to see the film then you might as well see it in quality, so here's the Vimeo version!

Trooper from Mark Haldane on Vimeo.

Film Available Now!

I finished Trooper about 3 weeks now (seems like 3 days) and the Degree Show is now open! You can see Trooper and all the other films from my year on the website!

http://artanddesign.dundee.ac.uk/degreeshow10/animation/trooper.html

Or visit the Degree Show here in Dundee to see all the films in superior sound and picture quality.

Final Poster

Done done done.

The Film is Complete!

Trooper is complete! And I'm just finishing off the "making of" video just now. So I have time to do stuff like this.

Animation Complete!

Nothing left to do on the film now but finish the sound!

Poster Design

A super quick concept painting for the poster to experiment with layout and colour. What do you all think?

And coming up to the Finish Line...

One for the log. Today I got the final music for the hand in from Hans Zimmer's secret love child Sarah and it's getting added to the film with along with the sounds Tom and I recorded tomorrow. I've nearly finished scene 2B, which would only leave scene 43B. However, I've now divided that into scene 43B and 43C - so I've given myself an extra scene to do but actually reduces the amount of animation required while at the same time making that part of the film work better. These should be finished tomorrow too. Then I just need to piece together all the components I've collected for the making of reel and Bob's your Uncle, Fanny's your Aunt, I'm ready for the hand in! Then it's putting together the folio and preparing for the degree show and getting some much wanted sleep. The end is in sight.

Bouncy Bouncy

48 down, 2 to go

Steady...

43 down, 7 to go.

Smashing!

I have so many fecking camera angles of this chamber and room it's stupid. More to go, too.

I don't want to upload the scene but it's one of several recently that have really pushed what I though I could achieve with my animation. Just by doing the stuff I planned with software like Maya and After Effects I've inadvertently learned so much. I'm looking back on my early shots and I can't believe how timid and simple they are by comparison.

38 down, 12 to go.

Wuh-oh!

37 down, 13 to go

Scene 37

32 down, 18 to go.

Scene 31 Sneak Peek

25 down, 25 to go

Production chart and storyboard pages so far (minus two additional scenes that haven't been added).

Updates

No media to post, just some words for the log. I've finished all the paper animation and as of tonight it has all been scanned in. I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks killing my eyes staring at a computer screen as I animate, clean-up, paint and composite like crazy. So far I've got 20 scenes 100% complete and another 30 to go, all at varying stages of completion. I've also been to the recording studio to do some foley and get my actors recorded. Trooper now has a voice!

See you in summer!

Explosion in Progress

Went back to work on the explosion scene tonight. This bit was painstakingly drawn frame by frame, with a little blur and glow effects added after. Still some other elements to add to the explosion so this isn't the final thing.

Scene 44

One of three scenes finished today and my first attempt at animating Hollywood-style electricity effects.

B*tch Slap

Scene 3

Sooo close to finishing this shot, but alas I must sleep. Life drawing and fund raiser later today!

Star

Part of the title sequence I've just finished... and am no longer sure will be used...

Scene 2

Simulated Lens Flare

I've been making and collecting various elements to build a good looking lens flare for my title sequence. The final thing won't be this intense or realistic mind you, this was just testing out the elements to see if they could create something more real than simple shapes or filters. The final one should be simple and subtle, probably only noticeable when the camera moves.

Scene 2

Scene 2 Playblast

Just need to sort the textures and lighting and then this baby's getting rendered!

Trooper 3d shots from Rob Connor on Vimeo.

After that I just need to composite the 2D animation to the window on the ship and then add engine and cannon fire effects!

Scene 9 Complete

Cleanup - One for the Log

Did my first cleanup in Photoshop today with the Wacom (as opposed to inking over the pencils on paper) and dammit, it works better. I can onion skin and get in as close as I want to keep the lines tight and in place. Takes slightly longer and involves staring at a computer screen for ages, but it yields neater, less wobbly/boily animation.

Trooper HQ

My constantly expanding studio space. I'm gonna be sad when it comes time to take it all down.

Scene 18

Another 3D shot (partially).

Updated Leica Reel

After the last peer review there were some issues with the film that I'm trying to address - namely that some people got the impression Trooper was alone on the ship, which only served to confuse. So I've added in two scenes I cut long ago to try and fix this problem. I've added them to the leica reel so if you want to have a watch and let me know what you think, that'd be great!

Trooper Leica Reel from Mark Haldane on Vimeo.
Password: possward

Scene 14, aka Deep Shot

The first picture is how the shot starts, when the ball rolls in. The camera then cranes up and looks down the large chasm as seen in the second pic. By this point the camera movement will have tipped off the audience that this is a 3D shot, so I'm not too worried if it looks a bit 3D at the end... just as long as the first camera angle looks 2D enough so that the audience won't notice we've cut to a 3D environment before the camera move.

And here's another angle. It's not in the film, I just want to give another view of what Rob and I have put together. I'm really happy with it.

"Deep Shot" in progress

This shot is doing my head in. Playing with colours and shaders to try and get this 3D environment to look as much like my 2D backgrounds as possible. The pipes are about there but the rest has some work to be done. It's a slow, trial and error process that I do not enjoy. I also have to tweak a lot of the geometry (not visible at this angle) to match the 2D layout that comes after. That is my story.

Scene 4 Finished

For real this time. First scene to be cleaned up on paper.

Really not sure how much camera shake to add to this scene. On a small scale like this, it almost seems like too little, but on a big scale it seems a bit extreme...

Scene 4 in Progress

Cleaned up this scene today (in-betweened by Freya, making such an act possible) and then coloured and composited it. The technique worked well but I made a silly mistake that warrants me re-doing the whole thing. Grrr. Tomorrow's job.

Videos

I know a lot of the videos here still aren't playing. This is a known issue for Blogger and hopefully they'll fix it as soon as possible.

• "Thanks to everyone for all the detailed data on the video display issue. We have enough data now to move forward with our fix, so I'll be locking this thread to keep the house tidy. In the meantime, please keep an eye on our posted Known Issue about this bug, which we'll be updating the second we have more information to share:
  
  http://knownissues.blogspot.com/2010/01/some-users-are-experiencing-problems.html
  
  Much thanks again for your patience!
  
  Gatsby
  The Blogger Team"

Scene 40 Background

Rather proud of this one. Got the colours right. Makes me want to go back and redo some of my others ones, but alas I have not the time for such endeavours.

Scene 13

Warp Speed?

I am sick of inbetweening a slowly expanding fire cloud

Shall need to get some opinions on the explosion... I'm scared that it's not working well on 2s and that I'll have to do MORE 'tweens...

Explosion Shockwave

Having never properly animated an explosion before I decided today was going to be the day I started working on it. And I've ended up spending all my time on a new idea of having a shockwave element.

Ignore the crummy explosion in this video and just enjoy the first shockwave test.

EDIT: Okay, at that quality you can't really see anything. I'll upload a better quality version once I've animated the explosion itself.

RE-EDIT: It'll be interesting to experiment with the sound for this scene. I guess the sound of the explosion shouldn't be heard until the shockwave hits the camera (which isn't obvious here due to the quality and not enough camera shake).

Animatic Update

I've updated my animatic with some minor timing changes. I've added some of the animation I've done so far, as well as the first two pieces of music by Sarah Gillespie!

Fornax Chemica

Wouldn't mind doing the poster for my film like this...

Pirate Flag Animation Test 2

Again, the flag motion is driven by a robotic arm which will be holding the bottom right corner.

Pirate Flag Animation Test

It's a flag in the vacuum of space, I know. That's why there'll be a wee robotic arm at the bottom right corner waving it.

EDIT: I think I'll make the background of the flag a little lighter so it's more visable against a space background.

Pirate Ship Turnaround

The toon shader causes some jarring jumps when a flat surface turns out of the light, but when lit right the shots I need should look okay.

Pirate Flag

Nothing terribly original, but it gets the message across quick and clear.

Pirate Ship

The texturing doesn't look like much but man... nearly killed me.

Coming Tomorrow

Videos Not Working

I don't know what all this crap is about. Blogger videos work sometimes and not others. I've yet to discover a pattern. I'll keep trying to fix it.

Cannon Ball Smoke Update

I realised I hadn't uploaded this test before. It's an updated test of modifying particle smoke generated in Maya to help blend it with 2D animation. You can see the previous test and the concept art in this post.

Blueshift Turnaround

BALLS - In stunning 3D!

The beginnings of another 2D/3D blended shot, with help from Paul for the 3D. When the balls are shot from the right angles and toon shaded I'm hoping it will work well.

«Spoiler warning! Click 'read more' below to see the video»

Read more...

Line tests

Some of the stuff I've done the past three days. No in-betweens yet.

The Blueshift

The fruits of tonight's labour. I'll need to look at it tomorrow with fresh eyes but I'd say it's pretty much finished. Just need to finish off the pirate ship and we can start animating!