Another Update!

Hello everyone! That wasn't TOO bad on the time-lapse, was it? (laugh) Well, our family has had a series of personal events that has slowed my progress, and now I'm going to be editing a Native American speech I filmed for a friend. So I will be tied up with other things for the next few days, unfortunately...

Now, to what I've been doing! I finally finished modeling my first LEGO man! (from there I can easily duplicate more) As I said, the whole purpose of this film is education, and now that I've built him, I could build another one in a matter of hours! That being said, it's taken me a couple weeks (months if you count from the VERY beginning) to finish this first one. I really am learning a lot! My biggest pitfall is wanting to go back and "tweak to perfection". I've watched many LEGO animations, and some of them don't look anything like LEGOs. They bank off the fact that probably no-one would take a LEGO man and hold it up to the screen. I would hold my real LEGO guy up next to the computer screen, study different parts, size them up, and then try to correct it on the computer. So I think mine's pretty accurate. Here's a screen shot of my LEGO guy. It doesn't have any materials on except his body, so that's why he's a little gray...



Another thing I've already started on is weight painting for his armatures (that's what bones are called in animation). Basically, it's just telling the computer which bones move which vertices. I've attached a couple screen shots for you to see. The first is of me painting his hand, and the second is of me starting on his face!





If anyone would like to play around with Blender also, feel free to ask me for a file of my work. You can then open it on your computer and be at a head start. Also, if anyone is interested in learning animation, just let me know and I'd be pleased to assist you. I can share what I know, and I hope to know a lot more before this year is out! ...Lord willing!

Story-boarding...

Hello everyone! Sorry this post is so late; I'm going to try and post updates more frequently from now on... This last week was pretty hectic with finding last minute history stuffers, and designing my website (see announcement below). But for now I have three exciting announcements to make:

First, I'm totally finished with the script! After days of history research, writing and re-writing, making last minute adjustments, and finalizing on names for different characters, I finally edited the last draft!

Second, I just started a website! Here's the link: whitefeathermovie.com. It should tell you everything you wanted to know about this story!

And lastly, I'm almost done with story-boarding. Instead of doing detailed story-boards (Do you know how much time that would take???), I decided to do what one guy suggested. Draw stick figures with pointy noses! Why? The answer's simple. The stick figures are fast and easy to draw, and the noses tell you in which direction your character is facing. That's really all you need! Whether you're drawing a knight standing on the bastions of his castle, or whether you're drawing a modern-day breakfast scene, stick figures are the easiest way to draw story-boards! The other day, while Mom was shopping in Fairbanks, I sat out in the car and drew. and drew. and drew! It gets quite time consuming after awhile. Now I need to start on the animatic... Oh no!