Carol of the Elves (alternate music)

Carol of the Elves (Alternate Music) from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

My 4th Year film again, this time with music arranged by U of T student Trevor Hewer. It was a collaboration between Sheridan animation students and University of Toronto music students to work together to make a soundtrack that we actually get legal rights to use on our films. Thanks Trevor!

Carol of the Elves

Carol of the Elves from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

Well, I finished the film last friday, so here it is. I may be tweaking a few things here and there over the next couple weeks, but this is pretty much it. I had a lot of fun making it, and I hope you have fun watching it!

P.S. I recommend Vimeo for uploading videos. The file was almost 300 megs and Vimeo took it like a champ. I think most video uploading sites limit it to 100megs, so if you want to keep good quality, Vimeo's the way to go

The First 30

The First 30 from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

The first 30 seconds is now DONE. Although since its mostly just a zoom in to a background its not that much work. I've still got a ways to go before the rest will be complete.

Rough Animation Reel

Rough Animation Reel from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

The rough animation for the film is essentially complete. I'm kind of refining things a bit during cleanup, so hopefully it will look a bit better in the end.

Feb 8 Reel

A few more additions. Still need to update the sound fx.

EDIT: I've been told the videos aren't loading for some people. I think it has something to do with blogger's video uploader. Here's another version that should work:

Carol of the Elves, Feb 8th Rough Cut from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

BGs

Some background paintings. It was slow going at first but I'm starting to get the hang of it. The whole painting thing, I mean.

Feb 3 Reel

More progress...

Scene 026

The first "finished" scene from the film. I'll probably be tweaking a few things, and I think the BG needs work. I don't know if I mentioned this but I am drawing it all on paper, not tradigitally as I had previously said I would. I kind of like the scratchier lines, not that normal people would even notice the difference. It was coloured digitally in Digicel Filpbook, with two tone, and a slight gradient over the whole character which I think looks cool.

There's a better quality version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWX21Jiy_jw

Just in Time for Christmas

A BG painting from the film. Santa's workshop from the outside.

Rough Cut With Some Animation

The most recent rough cut of the film so far. Mostly layouts with really rough poses, with a few scenes rough animated. Some of the sound effects are out of sync as I haven't updated them in a while

Almost Final Character Designs

A bunch of designs for the background characters that will not be used in the film because they are too individual. I don't know why I didn't think of it at the time, but as slaves it would be more likely that they would all wear the same uniform. Duh. I might keep the faces though.


I tried a bunch of variations on the costumes, one that would ideally work for all the Elves. And ended up with something like this:So, here is the official uniform for Santa's little helpers. Note the addition of pants on the male version. He originally had red and white striped tights too, but it looked a little fruity.

And here's Mr Claus. He's less wide than the older version (posted a little while ago), and I think this one is a lot more animatable. There's also more of a hip connection than there used to be.

Animation Test for the Ol' Film

A little animation test I did before starting any animating on the actual film. This was done completely digitally in Digicel Flipbook. I was planning on doing my entire film in it, rough animation, clean up animation, colouring, etc, but after doing a cleanup test today I'm beginning to have doubts. The perfect laser line you get from cleaning up the flipbook way sounded good in theory, but it really drained the life out of the drawing. I'll give it another shot tomorrow, but if it doesn't look good I might be doing it all on paper after all.

Layout/Pose Test Reel

This is the layout/pose test reel for the film. Layout (background drawing) was the part I was dreading the most, but it turned out to be somewhat less excruciating than I predicted. All the backgrounds are drawn now, however the character poses on this reel were pretty rushed. The actual animation pose tests will be a lot more refined. This was a good way to see how things work (or don't work) one step closer to the final film. There are a few things I'll have to adjust between now and the end, but this is more or less what it is going to be like.

Leica The Third

This is the third leica reel so far, although only the second that I've posted. This is my favorite version so far. I'm going to show it to a couple teachers this week in the hopes of getting it torn apart

In Living Colour

A couple quick colour studies

Also, you have no idea how weird your character designs are until you draw what their skeletons would look like

Film Stuff

So, 4th year is underway, and so is preproduction on the ol' film. For those that don't know, it's tentatively titled: "Carol of the Elves," and its about the Elves revolting against Santa Claus. Here is the Pitch Package from this past week:

I also have a rough preliminary leica reel I did a couple weeks ago. I'm making a new one as we speak with a lot of refinements and more exploration. The first pass was basically just to get the idea down. Now I know what you're thinking: 'why would you put your leica reel up so early? Don't you want your story to be a surprise?' Well, the thing I learned about film making from last year was that if you try to keep your story a surprise, the only surprise is going to be how bad the film turns out in the end. Only after showing people and getting harsh critiques did we learn what worked and what didn't (and there was a lot that didn't). So yeah, I would encourage viewers to critique the hell outta this thing if you have the time. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Or, if you want the story to be a surprise, then you don't have to watch it.

So behold, Carol of the Elves version 1.0
(p.s. its REALLY rough so hopefully you can at least understand whats going on :P)

Animation Test

Didn't have much to do today so I did my first animation test for my film. Just an elf running. It took a few tries to get it to look like a run, it's been a while since I did one of those. It is kind of on the fast side, though, could use a few more drawings.... This was done entirely in Flash. I'm planning on doing my whole film tradigitally (that is, drawn frame by frame, but on the computer). As much as I like the tactile feel of drawing on paper, this way is a lot more efficient. Immediate feedback without having to waste time at a line tester, not to mention not having to scan anything. I'll probably do it in Flipbook rather than Flash as it has a pretty good pencil tool. It's a good thing I'm getting all this practice drawing with a tablet at my co-op.

4th Year Film

I figure its about time I updated this blog o' mine and what better way to do that then with my concept for my 4th year film. I've had 20 something ideas over the past few years including a few in just the past couple months (actually, I had another one today too), and I'm finding that sticking to one is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. But I've gotta settle, so I'm pretty sure this is the one I'm going to do:

The Elves, right, they're fed up. They've spent decades enslaved in Santa's sweatshop making toys for greedy little children, while Santa goes out and gets all the credit, all the glory, not to mention all the milk and cookies. So they've had it. A few elf revolutionaries stand up to their evil oppressor and fight to free their race once and for all. But Santa isn't going to take that sitting down.

It's basically an action movie with a familiarly lighthearted setting, but told with a serious overtone. Sweet, sweet contrast. No dialog, it will be set to an awesome rock version of a classic Christmas melody (not unlike the work of Trans Siberian Orchestra), and will probably have three main characters, the Leader (who may be female, to keep it interesting), the tech expert (a dork of course), and a crazy warrior/fighter elf guy. And Santa is going to be a beast. Think the incredible Hulk with a beard.

I don't really have much yet, I've been extremely lazy this summer, aside from animating all day at co-op. But I hope to have at least one first pass on a leica reel before school starts. I think I may also create a new blog to chronicle the process of making this thing, so as not to weigh this one down with tons of rough ideas and crappy leica reels. I'll keep you posted.

Here's a quick poster thingy I threw together. As you can tell, I put a lot of effort into the background :P