Once again, thanks for posting these. They're very informative. You do a good job of explaining things as well. Hmmm, when you import video into flipbook, how are you getting color? I import using avi and using flipbook studio, my vids are black and white.

I would really like to get in on this, right now though I'm working on walks and body mechanics. How much more animation is there? Will you still need help in 3 months? Are there simpler shots someone with out as much skill can get? Thanks, keep up the good work. I enjoy watching the progress.

Podcast Episode 10 is out... the usual links or you can go here:
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/p … imation-in
or here:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/AnimationInProgress

The VFX artist known as Softdistorion and I talk about collaborative film-making over the internet, then I take the opportunity to give a status update on Devils Angels and Dating.

Our latest animatic with lots of new animation. We're now 25% through the animation phase and eager to hear from other talented animators.

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We've been doing incredibly well for an online team with no budget. I can't stress how impressive it is, and I'm in a huge debt to such an amazing community of artists persisting to perfect their craft.

We're now 30% through the animation process, which only started animating back in January this year. You'd expect the first few months to have teething troubles while we worked out the kinks in the pipeline and the rigs, but we've moved into a decent routine pretty quickly and the process is very stable now. I've talked to a lot of other short film directors and they've all stressed how hard it was to get animators, so what we've achieved here is very unique.

We're on the approach to getting the teaser trailer done. Most of the animation is done with just a few shots still in progress. I'll be spending the next month picking up the scraps and helping with the lighting and rendering setup. Then we can expect a large chunk of rendering and compositing time. If we have any team members with strong Maya Mental Ray experience we'd love to hear from you to assist. Hopefully we'll have it all done in time for Siggraph in LA, which I'll also be attending. Here's the latest Teaser Trailer edit:
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/v … imatic-v54

If you know any Austin, Texas based generalists with strong Maya skills please send them our way as we can certainly use the extra on-site help over the next couple of months to get the teaser trailer done, while we're juggling the rest of the production.

The latest full film animatic is here:
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/v … imatic-v54

Thanks to everyone that's made the project what it is today!

Rendering is about to start.

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Continuing to develop the rendering pipeline, this is another work in progress. I was hoping to have included the better lit scythe and motion blur but had some obstacles so this is what I have so far. She doesn't have Ambient occlusion here but we're considering using that. I need to learn more about how to set it up. The God rays seem rather lifeless and I'm wondering if simply animating a rotation down the length of the beam could be enough to give it some life. The particles are only in the background here as I've not setup a mask to allow them to appear in the foreground yet. I've still not solved the reason for the clouds not rendering in batch rendering mode, but after recreating the entire cloud scene from scratch... I realized I could just import the reference to solve that problem temporarily.

At this point it's pretty clear we won't have a fully animated and fully rendered teaser trailer before Siggraph as we'd hoped. It's not the end of the world but it is a sign that, as I've pointed out before, you just can't really set a deadline for a team of volunteer collaborators spread over the internet. Better to let people work at their own pace and manage the work across the project as things lose pace in certain areas. You can see where the state of the teaser trailer is in this snapshot of the tracker.



We were lucky that we had so many shots in progress as it meant that as the shot's I'd planned to put in the teaser slowed down or stopped it was possible for me to choose different shots to replace them, which reduced our Animation dependencies down to only a few animators. But even those animators got side-tracked and we don't have 100% of the animation done. But we did rather well regardless, and as the pace picks up again after Siggraph we should have enough animation for the teaser soon.

I underestimated how many people we'd lose as we moved into the northern hemisphere's summer and on the approach to probably animation's biggest calendar event of the year, Siggraph. It's understandable that (I'm guessing) there are a lot of team members preparing portfolios. I'm just hoping we get most of that talent back again in August. But I'll redouble my efforts to find new talent anyway just in case we don't.

Rendering has been our biggest issue though. In order to really crack the surface we needed the assets, textures, shaders and light rig done months ago. I pushed for it but it turned into a bottleneck. Even now we don't have every last issue ironed out, so even if we wanted to render everything it wouldn't be final. So that's an area I'll have to keep pushing.

Beyond prep for rendering, the actual render setups have been making progress. Or at least the ideas behind the plan. I've been learning a lot, perhaps more than I'd planned! But it's all worthwhile and the more I know the better the plan we have in place and the faster we resolve issues.

Rendering became the highest priority on the approach to the show so I threw myself in. Essentially the deadline forced us (as a team) to redirect our efforts and there's been a lot of progress made even if we didn't meet our end goals. But the downside is that since I've taken my eye off other areas things have slowed down in departments that were working. I stopped animating, many other animators starting getting less in depth feedback from me, etc... and animation suffered. We also received a full musical score that I've been unable to spend any time providing feedback for... and that's criminal considering how important the score is! So I'll be changing gear, letting rendering go back into the hands of the experts to some degree and refocusing on animation.

Here's a peek at a couple of the work in progress renders that should help kick start the rendering side of the pipeline.

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http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/v … ndered-and

I'd like to thank those team members that have put in the hours or simply been here to support the rest of us. It really makes a difference and I know who the super heroes are. It won't be forgotten!

As a little perk we're hoping to have some of what we have screened at the Austin Siggraph Chapter event before the main Siggraph show in support of a Texas Animation Festival planned for later in the year.

Last edited by michaelcawood (07-14-2010 2:53 pm)

There's been some really cool animation going on and I just wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the best examples here. They're still work in progress but even at this stage you can see how promising they are.

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And here's one mostly rendered:

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We're going to be ramping up ready for more new animators soon so now's a great time to sign up and register your interest if you want a new shot for your reel.
http://DevilsAngelsAndDating.com

Here's a few recent cool highlights form the film's work in progress.

An effect for a dress transforming by Jon Ambrose
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/v … on-test-20

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The bubble effects by Iskander Mellakh
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/v … nd-goals-1

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Animation by Michael Cawood
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/v … cision-v02

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Some blocking for a cool scene by Dorian Soto
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/v … ockedmov-2

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This update has seen some things trimmed out of the edit. Some sections were dropping the pace a little so I cut a few shots. The biggest cut was the entire section after Cupid's defeat through to the fade to black. It was a nice piece of business and has in earlier edits it's been an important addition to the film but as the pace picked up in earlier sections I watched it and felt it killed the pace without providing enough important information that wasn't more effectively conveyed in the final ending after the fade to black. So essentially I settled for the quick kiss on the cheek later on in order to show that the relationship had progressed. This was about 20 seconds of the edit that was cut, and included no animation since I'd been thinking for some time the ending was a little inefficient.

I could be too close to the film now but my next concern is that the ending is too cliché and obvious. Maybe bringing Cupid back and having the characters swap wands is nice twist, maybe it's obvious. Not sure. But either way the final kiss is really obvious... maybe it's what it needs but if anyone has any interesting suggestions I'm still open to developing the ending as long as we're not adding significant screen time.

Another addition to this version of the edit is a sight crude tint and colorization to the central window to provide a hint at the color pallet. This is based on the new color script paintings at the bottom middle of the screen. I'll see if people like this new trick, if not I may drop it in the next version.

wow mike, the film is in quite a good shape.....great stuff, pls keep it up!!