Hey all.
I am in the last semester of my bachelor’s course, and as such must create a thesis work. I have like 2-3 months left to accomplish this, and it is quite scary to think about, but I’m just going to do my best to make this thing, since that’s all I can do…
The work I decided on is an animated film. It’s a 2d/3d hybrid project, as I wanted to try and work with Blender’s Grease Pencil tool to produce a full animated short.
“devlog”?
“Devlog” is more commonly used and presumably catchier than “prodlog”, production being the more commonly used word for making a film. That’s my reasoning here. Will there be more than one entry? I sure hope so. I need to get used to writing again. For my thesis to be complete, I need three components: the main work, a secondary work, and a written work. That’s a lot of works! I am scared!
The main work is, as you may have assumed, the film. The secondary work will be a video documenting the process of making it. A behind-the-scenes type thing. And for the written work, I’ve decided to focus on how I use almost exclusively FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) to make both.
I do kind of wish sometimes I had chosen a less technical topic for my thesis but I couldn’t come up with anything on time to submit the paperwork. It’s fine, I guess. I can just grind through it…
So what is this film you’re making?
I won’t be outlining its plot here, as I think it would be best to just wait and see the whole thing. I mainly want to focus on the process in these writings. I want to organize my thoughts on this whole endeavour, and also prepare myself for the ordeal that will be making a long form documentation of all of this.
To give some sort of idea on what I’m working on, the main character is a fox (yep, again!) that has to deliver a scroll, defeating various obstacles in the mountains it has found itself in. 2D animation in a 3D environment. Mainly inspired by me missing participating in MAPs and animating some straightforward animal dramas. Fighting, running, walking, pawing, biting, that sort of thing.
I want to try to exclusively use open source and libre software for all this, which shouldn’t be hard, considering I’ll be doing 90% of it in Blender.
What I have so far
So far I have:
- Made a messy 1st pass storyboard
- Established the total number of shots I have to animate (33)
- Finished a walk cycle for the first shot of the film
- Learned a looot about Grease Pencil and Blender in general
- Made some basic 3d environments for like around half of the scenes
The storyboard is not that great, but it’s good enough for me to get an idea of what I want to do. I really really wanted to do a second pass at least, but with the deadline coming so fast, I think it’s best I leave pre-production and enter production proper. Which I have, I think. So far I’ve finished a walk cycle for the first shot.
I’ve also started putting together the environments. I’m using sketchfab models under permissive licenses for this, because I hate doing backgrounds, whether it’s 3d or 2d art. I could force myself to do everything, but first of all, it would not be pretty, second of all that’s more work on top of everything. Besides, in my opinion, there’s nothing wrong in taking advantage of the public domain, in fact I think it’s quite awesome to do so. I want to cover “free culture” in the written part of my thesis in addition to FOSS, so this also makes the film fit the theme more.
What I’m doing
Next thing I want to do is finish that first shot, at least the rough sketch.
I don’t know if I’ll manage to work on it today, I’ve been having a really bad stomachache and I’ve been feeling barely awake this whole day, which might’ve become reflected in this blog post. I’ve been facing some health issues again and it pisses me off. I think the thing that sucks most is that I’m avoiding caffeine because of it and that’s what’s been keeping me productive.
I’ve been avoiding my classes and stuff, due to fear and the health stuff, and I am really scared about it and hope it doesn’t bite me in the butt later! I should try better, probably. Next time I’m at the doctor’s I’m going to attempt to get a paper that lets me avoid uni legitimately. This semester there is a class on copyright law and it seems one of the rare professors that take attendance seriously is in charge of it.
Conclusion?
Hope this little update was entertaining to read. As I’ve mentioned, I’m getting to know Grease Pencil really well, so if you’re struggilng with anything in particular, feel free to contact me about it! Maybe I’ll make some tutorials or something out of this whole project.
Until next time.
