DAY #05 OF THE TOOTH ABSCESS

It has now moved to a new level of nasty. On day four it started to swell up badly...I don’t quite understand how I have tolerated it all for this long...but I’m now a man on the edge and my tolerance has completely gone. I just wanted to give it a fair chance you know with the antibiotics?...it is quite a important tooth, but the pain levels are far beyond acceptable tolerance right now...there was a lot of conflict in my head yesterday about what to do...and of course the pain isn’t hideous for 100% of the day when you look back on days previous...sometimes it calmed down a bit for about an hour...but It's now turning very ugly indeed though with massive swelling up of my head, steady severe pain and also flu like symptoms...I’ve had enough...heading to the dentist again today.

AND SO IT CONTINUES

I must be totally insane...but I had this idea on where to take While They Slept next...and had to go forward and do one of the new big ships. It was done with this horrific tooth abscess I have at the moment and there's quite a fair bit of bits and pieces from other things.

SO IN THE LAST POST I SAID THAT I DON’T CARE...

...which is actually...not quite true. I do care, very much so...and I think that it’s possibly a bit much, having the same chair on what is now three models. In retrospect it’s not exactly what I want...but I did it to save myself from going insane...the sheer amount of time it takes to make these solo animations means that putting in the same chair speeds things up a little bit...and I’ve felt that I strongly need that little speed up in recent years.

You can see them here (its actually quite funny too when I switch off serious mode)

SOMETHING NEW

The start of a bran new work in progress for a new rover vehicle. you'll notice it’s actually a bit of a con, because the wheels are from other vehicles I've made...but really, I don’t care. Anyway, its all part of the same universe...so I don’t see a problem.

I'll give you a tip here on being a solo animation creator...if you have a big library of stuff...canons, wheels, chairs, robot bodies...things go a bit faster, because you can just load up something and pop it onto the model, that’s what happened with the little canons on the desert ruin ship for While They Slept...they were taken from my other project I was working on previously.

WHILE THEY SLEPT AFTERTHOUGHTS AND HEALTH

I thought I could contain an entire story in the space of the chosen piece of music “Pie Jesu” from Faure...but I just couldn’t quite manage it...I’ve always found it hard to do that...I think every story teller is different and for me there is a ongoing fight against it...it’s a internal battle in my mind...the hovering man dressed in red above my left shoulder is telling me to do the speeded up story approach...and on the right dressed in white is another hovering man...he’s saying...no, that’s not you.

I believe anyway that there is no particular plan on these things...and you just uncannily weave the shots together...when it comes to the edit you just have to fit the shots round the music...and if the music runs out at four minutes...then well, the music runs out at four minutes.


What I have here now though…is a film that just stops quite abruptly in a crop field. It’s a problem...and I’m not really happy about it. If I can expand it then I think I will...there is actually more scenes that were created but never made it into the first four minutes. There is a crio tube scene and of course the big yellow flagship that is in a war in space.





My health at the moment is pretty horrendous. I have what is called impacted wisdom teeth...which can flare up and cause an enormous amount of pain from time to time...now I didn’t know this would happen or I would have stopped the dentist, but he did a filling which I think has triggered it all off again...the hot weather seems to be a part of the problem too.

I also have many problems with my head, a feeling that somebody is crushing my head...I’ve had this one for years though. The physiotherapist is really great at getting rid of that problem for an amount of time...but I’ve not been to see her in a while now. Will go there again when she gets back from her holiday.

I’m just amazed that I keep going with these animations though...it REALLY IS a need to make these things...I need and want to make them...and that’s why they get done (be it very slowly)...

WHILE THEY SLEPT GETS COMPLETED-ISH

Here we go.

While They Slept from Michael J. Dowswell on Vimeo.

TWO MORE SHOTS

Here we go!...I dont know if I'm done with this yet. But I'm happy that the thing is progressing along at a decent speed. It's quite tricky to get the balance right on the rocks.

CROP DUSTING SHOT WITH MORE DETAIL TO THE CROP DUSTERS

Ok well i dont really like repetitive sort of posting (probably guilty of doing it quite a bit though!) but it looks much better (apart from one shadow problem) so thought I’d share.

CROP DUSTER GETS MORE DETAIL

Had to go back to work on this. Really glad I did though.

District 9 Trailer 2

I gotto post this I really do. It’s exciting for a number of reasons. The first one being that is a full on science fiction film...the second, is the style of it...what instantly comes to mind is Half Life 2 which I was a huge fan of. So to see a film appear that’s in that style...is very exciting. It's looking great.

Bravo Neill Blomkamp...and THANK YOU Peter Jackson for giving this guy the chance to do this.

CROP DUSTING SHOT FOR WHILE THEY SLEPT

This is both the wide and 1.25:1 from one of the crop dusting shots.

TWO VEHICLES

Now probably not quite complete just yet, I think they need somthing...that somthing that will come to me...but here we go.

AND I'M BACK ONTO WHILE THEY SLEPT

Well today I suddenly decided that it was time to start doing the new sequences for While They Slept...and hopefully I can get the 4:3 version 1.0 of this beast completed…and soon-ish too. I don’t know why it is... that I feel ready to do this...but... I do. I've had some ideas on how it can be completed and am quite excited to see them done. I think that’s it really...that the excitement gradually fades from a project...I can only think that perhaps working on your own means that because things take such a huge long length of time that this unfortunately happens...there should be a team of people I do know this.

But I do get excited about other ideas and go off and do those...I don’t think it's uncommon for this to happen...I've heard that George Lucas is the same.

I’ll be posting some pictures of the new vehicles very soon.

BEST MOVIE MOMENTS #001

---

SOMETHING THAT YOU SHOULD LOOK INTO IF YOU ARE A KUBRICK FAN

Now, I personally believe...that there are films out there that you can say “Stanley would have liked this film” ...or…”Stanley might have liked this film”...with Grand Prix it may be possible to find out what he thought on that particular movie, but he sadly never got to see There Will Be Blood.



With both films there is of course a tremendous amount of detail and both films are aloud to breath through some wonderful long takes...and through some truly great wide angle photography...I think he would have liked the way There Will Be Blood was made.

COULD THIS BE THE LOOK FOR ERRANS RUBER V 4.0

Good grief!...so I have NOT been working on While They Slept...I’m sort of meant to I think. I don’t know what it is, but I find it difficult to stay on one thing for very long. Things are still very all over the place...I was even doing work on upping the detail on some of the Errans Alba shots.

But I ended up building up the detail on the Errans Ruber rover...which the file had actually been lost and I never got round to until now, putting all that onto it...from a very crude file.

I've put the astronaut character next to it. But it's just a bit of fun really...and I think therapeutic for me.

ERRANS RUBER AT A BETTER QUALITY FOR INTERNET VIEWING

I couldnt help but notice that the quality on the compression has been greatly improved over at Youtube.com and so had to upload this.

NOTE: Bare in mind that what you are about to see is old work made in 2005...it's version 2 of Errans Ruber. Version 3 is going to be much better...because I have changed the speed of the music back to being slower again (like it was in version 1). I’ve changed as a director (as you do)...and it's very interesting to look back on this. I think the idea I came up with on this short is one of my better ideas.



I can show you some stuff from how things went afterwards. A change of lighting here...(removal of the soft fuzzy look (I was really into the soft fuzzy look which was not good) and also my work suffered from some Michael Bay problem of the camera constantly moving round things.) This is my fault...at the time I believed that there was no point in having the camera still...it seemed crazy to be able to do anything with the camera and not use that ability...also, things looked quite static because there was no character animation...so I ended up swooping a lot.

I am in no way condemning Michael Bay here, a lot of people out there love Michael bay films and that is great...peope have different tastes and he does have his distinctive style, which is swooping and fast edits.

MORE DETAILS TO THE TOP

I really had to go back here again and do some more little adding and tweaking. I think worth it in the end, but does take up more time. You do get (eventually) a happier feeling though, because the details are very important.

If it's an animatic though...why bother?...well, I spose it's because it has to stand there and impress...i really want to show people all the skills i have and show them in the best possible way...and perhaps if this all fails with some of my plans, hopes and dreams (with regards to sending this to places to say "here is somthing that could be much more"...I have to have somthing to fall back on.

AND HERE IS A NEW HORIZON

I realised the horizon was looking very straight / flat...so I’ve put in some big hills. It was definitely a "stop!...stop!" moment.

IF WHILE THEY SLEPT WERE TO GO WIDESCREEN AND BLU-RAY

Here's a shot of what it would look like.

EVEN MORE DETAIL TO THE CARGO SHIP AND ALSO ROBERT McKEE HAS POPPED UP TWICE THIS WEEK IN THOUGHTS AND DIALOGUE.

Robert Mckee’s tenth commandment is #10 Thou Shalt Rewrite. Now this is the same when your designing ships and making them...you have to and I think its very important to say...to shout out “stop!”...and add more detail to the thing / redo bits of it...sometimes you have to redo the entire thing...and the fine tuning process is very important.

The other thing he famously said was to “wow them in the end”...this cropped up in a email dialogue. Again it’s a real important one to remember because it is indeed true...your audience is sat there through an entire film and the last sequences are what they are about to watch and what they are about to walk away from...I think that really clever ideas of a philosophical type are a good way to go for a ending. This reminds me a lot of the ending I did for Errans Ruber (which was actually the first scene I created for that particular animation)...a scene I created by accident as I was playing around in 3d with a new skeleton model. But the skeleton in the sand for the closing shot really worked well there.

Just find it interesting McKee cropped up twice. I've not actually read Story but I have read McKee's Ten Commandments a few times and the film Adaptation is one of my all time favourites. : O )

I’ve started to add bridges to the cargo ship...I wonder if things would have two bridges?...ah well, I think it needed those bits.

MORE DETAIL ON THE LARGE CARGO SHIP

If indeed I am going to move over into blu-ray then I need to up the detail on things. I dont have a blu-ray burner yet, but I keep thinking about it. With all this talk of festivals...they probably project in blu-ray?...mind you, people get their film put onto celluloid dont they?...dear lord!...I bet that costs a lot!

BURNOUT PROBLEMS AND SOMETHING VERY UNEXPECTED

Again I’ve hit a terrible burn out...cant seem to face anything at the moment. Extremely exhausted right here right now.

In other news...something really out of the blue / exciting has happened with While They Slept...some people from the industry...a producer Aaron Simpson, the founder of coldhardflash.com and lineboil.com really liked the animation and put it onto the Line Boil Vimeo channel...and then a wonderfully talented animator / writer / director peep from The Brothers McLeod appeared and featured it on the LineBoil site itself and his own blog...Greg seems to love the animation and has been very supportive and understands the very long battle and need / urge to make films weither it be for money or not...we do this because we need to and love to do it.

My big confession here is I’d not heard of the brothers Mcleod until the other day. I think this is maybe because I don’t watch TV much anymore...this is a real shame because their work has taken me by surprise and is quite incredible animation, very funny stuff and very imaginative stuff.

It’s not that I'm never in front of a TV...I am, every day I watch a couple of episodes of something, at the moment its Star Trek: The Next Generation.