Pick Up Sticks

(Above: Getting into the swing of things)

(Above: A frustrating pause and lack of ability)

(Above: Violet freezes)

(Above: Glaring away)

(Above: Focus Pull)

(Above: Violet put aside)

(Above: Wood Grain I)

(Above: Wood Grain II)

(Above: Violet Down)

(Above: Wooden Hills)

So here I am again. 

During the later days of last week I had an extremely helpful tutorial which lead to the discussion of added shots for certain shots to make the continuity flow neater.

Fascinated and excited (if a little deflated at first) by the prospect of more work needing to be done, distracting from the already taxing duties of editing and working on the soundtrack in partnership with my sound design, I went away and drew up a little list of shots I would "pick up" the following week.

And so that was how I spent my day.

Admittedly the day didn't consist of much exhausting animation, just the tedious annoyance of ineffective puppets and props, my fault entirely, I should have built them better.

Anyway, after several frustrated hours working with my First Year Animation student helper (frustration was in no way due to her help, it was purely by my own hand and clumsiness) we managed to get the needed shots to a good standard.

They were nothing major, just little nudges here and there to push the continuity into tighter positions to help the flow.

Plug some of the holes I had left whilst filming the week before.

My main annoyance today was due to trying to make Violet climb a staircase leading to the bedroom in her new house.

I had originally not drawn her going up the stairs in my storyboard, explicitly aware of how time consuming not to mention complicated such a scene would be to make. I had intended to explain her using the stairs through sound.

My First Year Student and I fought to get Violet to at least look like she was going up stairs, but she simply was incapable of it. Violet, not the First Year Student.

So regrettably this little sequence will have to be cut.

I would rather it was taken out than be included and be of bad quality.

Which is a shame, because in individual frames, it actually looked rather convincing, it was the movement that let it down.

So that was it for today. Possibly the final day of the shoot.

I tinkered with the edit soon after finishing filming the bits and pieces and it seems to work very nicely indeed.

All that remains now is the soundtrack from my sound designer, which I wait for with bated breath.

More to come...