White Feather

Audio Recording

2011-11-02T22:49:00.002-08:00

Hey guys, been a little too quiet around these parts as of late. Things are gearing up again though as we begin the arduous process of recording and getting all the audio ready for animation. After spending a couple days working on getting everything ready (studio built, files cleared, computers readied) we finally began recording today!!

Using the space at hand, we set up the studio in my brother's room. He's at college so won't care... Although Caleb seems to be having some misgivings about this whole recording process.

Caleb recording the voice for George - using a flashlight because the computer screen was too dark, or something.

Getting into character.


Directing from the other side of the curtain, trying to figure out what I was stuck with such crazy actors.

And that wraps up day 1 of recording! Hopefully we'll have more updates for you soon.

Set Updates - Stage 2 finished on Fort Harrison Exterior

2011-04-21T18:48:00.005-08:00

Hey! Beth here again. I've been working on the Fort Harrison exterior set today. I've fixed the textures on the roof and barn doors to look less uniform, add front doors to the fort, and fixed the cannons. I still have lots of little props to add (flowers, abandoned toys, etc.) Here is the last picture I posted:

And here is the last two months of work on it:

Of Flowers and Toys

2011-04-19T12:24:00.005-08:00

Hello there! Beth here again to give you an update of what I've been doing today. I just spent 2 hours making little props that I will put around the various sets. You will probably never see them up close, but they will be there. I made these using several photographs as textures(as always). The centers of the flowers below, however, are made entirely by hand.

Set Updates - Captain's Quarters set finished

2011-04-13T11:37:00.004-08:00

Hey! Beth here again. I've just finished putting in all of the props for the Captain's Quarters (Fort Harrison Interior) set. I've also put in some preliminary lighting. Let me know what you think! :)

I'm Back!

2011-04-12T17:54:00.004-08:00

Hey guys! Beth here again. Sorry for being gone so long, I was busy working on a few shots for "The Carpenter's Return"

That was my first paid CGI-related job! I made the whole set in 50+ hours. Anyways, I'm back to work and slowly picking up speed again. I've made the frame for a bunk-bed in the Captain's Quarters (Fort Harrison interior). I've also made some silverware for the Cabin Interior set.
Yesterday, I had a bit of fun with my colonial costume and the Captain's desk. As the characters in the movie are all going to be lego characters, it wouldn't make sense to have a photo of a real person on the desk, so the picture below has nothing to do with the movie. I just thought it made a nice still life.

Set Updates - Misc. prop work and Lighting

2011-03-10T18:57:00.010-09:00

Hey! Beth here again. Today I got some prop work done. I made pegs for the rifle in the inside of the cabin, I made a flour bag (two actually), I made a ladder for the cabin, and I got temporary lighting done for the inside of the Fort Harrison set (aka Captain's Quarters). I haven't done much technical explanations yet, so I thought I'd try it this time.

I think I've got a pretty good plan for interior lighting (without actual lamps). Each grey ball is showing off a different light. I have three different lights here, a "shadow color" light, an "outside" light, and a "fake ambient occlusion" light.

The shadow color light is a simple point light (like a hanging lightbulb). It only gives diffuse light (instead of both diffuse and specular). The color is a dark grayish-blue. This gives the feel of light bouncing off of the walls. This lamp doesn't give any shadows, just dim light.

The "outside" light is a spotlight. It is used to show light streaming through windows and doors. As you can see in the picture, the color is slightly yellowy white, at a very bright setting. Both diffuse and specular lighting are used (you can see the brighter spot on the grey ball). Depending on the scene, sometimes it's easier to use one wide-angle light, and sometimes it's easier to use multiple tight-angle lights. For this set I'm using two spotlights, one for the window, and one for the door (you can't see the light from the door in this picture).

The "fake ambient occlusion" light is to give soft, fuzzy shadows on the floor. The way I make it is to use a spotlight again, only this time using a very dark color for the light itself (to give mostly just shadows). I also have to mess around with lots of settings to get the really soft shadows.

Ambient occlusion is a render time intensive process where the computer follows the light rays as they bounce off of objects. This makes shadows lighter sometimes, and always makes less exposed places darker. Since the Captain's Quarters set is in the same file as the Exterior Fort Harrison set, the room itself is pretty well hidden from "the outside". Thus, using the ambient occlusion for inside isn't very helpful as a brightening technique, as it simply makes hidden spots darker. Because of the neat shadow effects you get from ambient occlusion, you get the big, soft shadows under objects close to the floor (or other objects) (see below)

This light is a bit of a cheat, because it won't create the cool in-between shadows you see here ^. Instead, it just does shadows like this:

It does look different, but for just two lights, (and about two minutes worth of work) it works okay (especially when I take longer at it, these pictures are just to illustrate) The most annoying things are that the shadows on the floor aren't dark enough to balance with the shadows on the objects, and there aren't any shadows between the objects. One nice thing is that the ambient occlusion lighting often creates very "noisy" pictures. If you click on the ambient occlusion picture above, you can see the grainy noise that is there. The "fake" lighting is much smoother in that respect. Also, for this really low-poly scene, the ambient lighting takes almost exactly twice as long as the spotlight lighting.

Well, that's pretty much how I set up this lighting. I hope you could understand what I said, if you couldn't, feel free to ask a question, I'll do my best to answer. Tomorrow I'll start working on the Captain's desk. Wish me luck!

Beth

Police Chase

2011-03-08T11:51:00.000-09:00

Hey there White Feather fans, this is Seth bringing an unusual twist to our blog! I was browsing LEGO's website the other day and came across this really neat video they produced using their City set. Since we're all more or less LEGO fans in general I thought you'd enjoy this short animation, even though it's FAR from being anything like our frontier world. Hope you enjoy it - and as always, stay tuned for more updates on White Feather's production!!

White Feather with Bible

2011-03-04T14:00:00.004-09:00

Hey! Beth here again! Here is a picture that I've worked on for the past few hours. It is shot in the Inside Cabin set (which is getting along beautifully). It showcases the family Bible and the white feather. It probably won't ever be used in the animation, but I thought it was a nice still life. I worked for a long time on the lighting (soft shadows are ridiculously hard to make look good)

Set Updates: Stage 1 done for "Inside of Cabin" Set, Stage 2 for exterior sets

2011-02-22T18:49:00.006-09:00

Hey! Sorry I haven't posted in a while. "Stage 1" is done for the Cabin Interior set. (Bonus: first picture with temporary character)

As well as working on the Cabin Interior set, I've also been working on detailing the exterior sets. I think the most changed set is the Cabin Exterior set.

I still need to make the loft set, the inside of Fort Harrison, and the inside of a wigwam. Then I'll just need to add extra details to those sets, and I think I'll be pretty much finished! Of course, I'm going to add more details as long as I can get away with it. :D

~ Beth Ashton

Rendering Times and Release Dates

2011-02-16T19:31:00.003-09:00

Hey there White Feather fans, this is Seth checking in to give you our latest update with the production as a whole. Beth and I were discussing approximate release dates, and in the course of our discussion we came up with a rough estimate of rendering times. A very rough idea is that it will take 12 minutes to render each frame, basing it off the 8-10 minute render times we're getting right now with the sets 80% completed. If that is true, then with 12 minutes of render time a frame, it's going to take 360 minutes to render a second of video since we'll be running it at 29.97 fps (standard NTSC) rounding it up to 30 for calculation purposes here. That tells us that each minute will take 360 hours to render, and with a projected finish time of 15 minutes for the final film, we're expecting it to take 5,400 hours, or 225 days, or approximately 7 and a half months to render the entire video. But don't be too scared, because that would be with only one computer rendering (24/7 of course…) and I've got a couple I'll probably be using and Beth has one she'll probably be able to help with. But all in all, we've set February 16, 2012 as our current release date. Of course that is VERY approximate and I'm hoping it will be sooner, but that gives everyone a concrete date to look forward to anyway. Well, gotta run now but hope you're enjoying watching the progress!! Aren't the sets looking absolutely stunning??? Beth's doing such a great job!

Set Updates - Stage 1 completed for "Indian Village" set

2011-02-16T18:43:00.002-09:00

Hey there! Just forced myself to stop working on the Indian Village set. I think it is about at the stage of the other sets. Boy, it's hard to back off of this one! So many details can be put into this one. Well, I've finished the wigwams and the ground, textures and all. Full size still shot takes 5.25 minutes to render with 1000 trees (less then half the amount I think it'll have for the final render).

Also, bonus today! Here are some pictures from the various sets. These are all in-complete. There are several more details I'm planning to add to all of them.

~~ Beth Ashton

Set Updates - Stage 1 completed on Fort Harrison Set

2011-02-15T19:14:00.002-09:00

Just finished stage 1 on the Exterior Fort Harrison set. I think this set has the most vertices of any of the other sets, but I'm not sure. It did take the longest to render, though; a wide angle shot took exactly (down to the second) 9.5 minutes to render a single frame. There are several things I will modify later, but I'm going to get started on the Indian village set next, I think.

Set Updates - Stage 1 completed for "River Shore" Set

2011-02-13T19:33:00.002-09:00

Hi! Just wanted to say that I just finished the river shore set in a record breaking 23 hours! (and actually, half of that time was spent sleeping and goofing off, so it was more like 6 hours or so) The set consists of several long-render features. It has a river, 75,000 reeds, 200+ trees, and 50+ raspberry bushes, each of the raspberry bushes having several hundred leaves. But inspite of all this, the render time is going to be around 6.4 minutes.

Set Updates - Stage 1 Completed for "Outside the Cabin" Set

2011-02-12T19:27:00.005-09:00

Hey! Just wanted to mention that I just finished the main stage of the first set. Later I'll come back to it and fix a few minor details, add some more trees, that sort of thing. But before I get to the fine-tuning point, I'm going to get started on some of the other sets. The next one is going to be the river shore. This one will be interesting. Water, lots of plants, etc. Should be fun!

Partial Cabin Render

2011-01-29T23:15:00.000-09:00

Just wanted to post a quick update with the latest picture Beth sent me of the cabin, so you guys could see it. Mind you I'm not going to be posting too much stuff like this because I want the movie to be a surprise, but here's a little taste of what the cabin will look like. This is the walls and window/door frames with their new textures applied. Looks pretty good, huh!

Quick Update

2011-01-16T20:46:00.000-09:00

Keeping you up to date here, I just wanted to pop in and give you the latest. Although still extremely busy, I'm finding little bits of time here and there to get things rolling again for the film. Right now I'm re-typing the script into Celtx because - unfortunately - I had a little accident with the other computer I was working on in which my hard drive crashed and I lost EVERYTHING!!! Thankfully I had printed out a copy of the script though so it's just a simple matter of typing it back in. Then I'll start working on the scenes and characters again, but it shouldn't take as long this time as I know more of what I'm doing and have more experience AND...

My other piece of news was that I've got help!! =) William and Beth Ashton have offered to help with the production process also which will really boost production time!!! Of course we're still going to be working at our own pace and I can't promise when the film will be done because we also have our own lives to maintain, but I can say I see promise of it being done sooner than later! Well, gotta run again but just thought I'd stop by and tell you the latest. It's sure been awhile... :-/

Farewell for now!

2010-05-04T21:13:00.001-08:00

Well, this will be my last post on this blog for awhile... Recently I've been working on the LEGO faces, getting all the phonemes ready for rendering; they're looking great!

Unfortunately however, our family is about to embark on a 3 - 4 week long road trip down to a camp meeting in Washington, and will be hitting house construction fairly hard upon our return. I'm not exactly sure when I'll be able to get back onto this project, but it's looking more and more like it won't be till next fall... I want to thank all my supporters who are anxiously looking forward to this film's release (almost as much as I am), and I hope you will be able to see the finished product by this time next year!!!! (hopefully before...)

Testing...

2010-04-22T10:50:00.003-08:00

Hey guys, this post is for the sole purpose of testing different feed settings on Facebook...

But for those of you who'd like to also hear about my progress, here's my latest: I haven't worked on it since my last post... :-/ This weekend will mark the end of DCDA's play I'm in though, and I'm hoping to do some more on this after that. Otherwise our family will be heading for Washington on vacation in a couple weeks, and I won't be able to do much with it for quite awhile...

More Pictures!

2010-04-07T21:53:00.002-08:00

Thought you might enjoy seeing some of the things I was working on today... First picture here is of my work space. I was messing around with backgrounds and setting up an outdoor scene, and I decided to take a quick screen shot while I was at it.

Also, I'd like your input (you're becoming a pretty important part of this production!) on what I should have George, the father, to wear. Here is a picture from the book, which I'm basing a lot of my characters off of.

And here are two shots of my current LEGO guy.

As you can see, the first one has "socks" on, while the second one does not. Although socks would look great on a real character, I'm tending to think they look funny on a LEGO guy. Which style do you like better for my LEGO character?

Facebook

2010-04-07T14:38:00.002-08:00

White Feather is now on Facebook!!!! Visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/White-Feather-the-Movie/109482222415505?ref=mf and become a fan today!

Back to it!

2010-04-06T13:33:00.001-08:00

Well, it's back to animation! The past few weeks I haven't had ANY time to work on this project, as I have been busy with the local Christian drama association as well as studying for my GED. That being said though, I've finally been able to spend a little bit of time here and there working on backgrounds again! ;-) Right now I've got all the furniture built also, and am working on the fire... That's been fun! Not only do I have to render "particles" for the glowing flame, but I also have to add background lights to make the cabin look like a fire is flickering inside. Who knows, I might add candles also since those always give a nice touch to a cozy cabin!

But anyway, just wanted to let you know that I haven't fallen off the edge of the earth. Hopefully I'm going to have enough time to make some serious progress in the next few days, so I'd better get off now and get back to creating my homestead scene...

More Screenshots

2010-03-12T16:00:00.000-09:00

Thought you might enjoy seeing a couple screenshots of what I'm working on right now.

Here's a test render for the outdoors; I kind of like it! It still needs a lot of work to match colors etc., but I'm really happy with it!

A test render of the inside of my cabin...

Here's an inside shot of my workspace! ;-) This is an actual screenshot of my computer as I was working on the furniture.

Latest Update

2010-03-02T23:06:00.000-09:00

Sorry about the long delay between posts everyone... I've just been extremely busy lately, so I'm not having as much time for animation as I'd like... :-/ But be that as it is, I do have a couple updates I'd like to share.

First of all, I'd like to thank each one of you who contributed your thoughts on the subject of backgrounds. I've been thinking about it for the past few days (as I do everything else ;-) and I think I have a plan worked out. I tried real picture backgrounds for a couple shots, but for the forest it just wasn't working. With all the intricate detail forests posses, I was having a lot of trouble mixing my foreground (the LEGO sets) with the background. But I don't want something that looks like a 2D animation world either. You know what I'm talking about: one of those worlds where everything has distinct lines separating flamboyant colors; where trees have only 3 colors and verdant fields have one shade of green except for where there are shadows. Not very realistic looking, but it's what they had to do to keep drawing time to a minimum. On the other hand, as Nathan pointed out on my last post, I don't want to have my LEGO guy walking around on my front porch so to speak! (I've actually thought about doing that though, as a bonus feature) But for my movie, I don't want that kind of realism...

So here's what I'm planning on doing right now anyway. I'm thinking of using a program like Pencil to draw pastel looking backgrounds. Someday I might be able to use something as professional as Corel, but until I get the money for that I think Pencil will work quite nicely. I want the backgrounds to kind of fade into oblivion (not be outspokenly noticeable), while at the same time providing a boost for the foreground. So that's what I'm aiming at right now! It'll be a challenge, but I love challenges! (otherwise I wouldn't have even started this project!)

The more I've gotten into animation, the more I've realized just how much artistic ability is required in this field of media! Thankfully I didn't have to spend too much time making sure my characters looked good (no, actually I did...), because they've already been created! But even your characters take a lot of artsy effort, and then the backgrounds most people draw/paint themselves! And then of course, just as in real movie sets, it takes a good artistic eye to develop a coherent movie set that is visually pleasing.

The other thing I wanted to tell you was that we've started recording!!! I guess you could call it ADR, 'cause we're recording over the animated characters. Well, kind of. Anyway, that gives you an idea of how we're doing it! We got a couple extra parts recorded a few weeks ago, and have since recorded most of the audio with only a couple characters left to do. It's been a lot of fun, and it's exciting to finally have audio for the film! Oh, and the voice transformers have been incredible!

Now I just need to get back to drawing backgrounds... I probably won't be posting another update for awhile, as I'll be busy drawing, redrawing, etc. I want to mix the background colors with the foreground colors as much as possible, which means by the time I finish "painting" my backgrounds (which comes before my next blog post) I'll have a lot of my sets created and ready for animating. From there I'll just animate my character to match the audio, and we'll be on the go again!!!! I'm as excited to see the final product as you are, believe me! ;-)

I need your help!!!

2010-02-19T15:45:00.003-09:00

I need your help!! For those of you who have been following my posts, you know that I'm making a LEGO animation as an educational project for my schooling (that's more of an excuse though, since I REALLY am enjoying it!!!). But I've gotten myself into quite a pickle, and I need your help on getting out of it! Here's a screen shot of my homestead model so far: (don't worry, I'll be getting a face on my guy soon and do more messing with the ground; this was only a quick screenshot)

I have a lot more tweaking to do with it, but with that primitive showpiece to stare at, I'd like to know what you would rather have: A realistic looking world like the one pictured above, or one that looks more like plastic LEGOs. I really want to hear your feed-back, so please write down your thoughts as comments on here so I can decide which way to steer. For me as the animator, I like both ways and either way would be "easy" for me to do. (just to be clear, I'm only talking about my background sets; I'm still sticking with my LEGO characters) So please be honest and tell me what you think would look best in the end. Ever wanted to be part of a film production? Now's your chance!

Here's a couple screen shots from other animation films to get you started:

The inside of a Navy ship, done with a LEGO set. (from Men O' War)

A LEGO island, done again in LEGO style. (from Men O' War)

A more "realistic" looking set, which would be the other way I could create my animated world. (from Big Buck Bunny)

Let me know what you think!

Of horses and maidens...

2010-01-25T22:11:00.010-09:00

Sorry I haven't posted anything in quite awhile, but I've been doing a lot of modeling and re-modeling... As I said, this whole project is for my personal animation education, so I'm just taking it one thing at a time, and thoroughly mastering each step before heading to the next one. And I am happy to say that I'm to the point where I can easily model simple meshes pretty fast! I know I don't know all the tips and tricks; indeed, "the more I learn the less I know"! But I'm happy with the progress I've made over the past few months, so that is all that counts!

But now, turning to the little bit of progress I have made. I've learned that LEGO company is profusely swayed towards feminism! I know it sounds scary, but it's true. What do modern LEGO girls look like? Men with long hair, or sometimes not even that...
And what do period LEGO girls look like? I don't know. I guess they're only drawings on simple boring LEGO blocks... Looks nice in a picture, but start animating them and you will soon see how stiff and unnatural they become!
So with those two models staring me in the face, I had a decision to make regarding my female actors. I decided to chart new waters and create my very own model. The difficulties? I would have to create a dress that looks like plastic, yet still reproduces the feminine qualities of modesty that the dresses back in the early 1800's portrayed. And then there's the problem with walking. When a real young lady walks with a dress on, her legs move the dress back and forth allowing her to walk. How do you reproduce that if you're supposed to make it look like rigid plastic? After several attempts, I was finally able to create a simple yet good-looking dress style that still allows for free motion of the legs underneath. This will be one of the main things in this film that are truly of my own creation!!!
And then there's the horses. I loaded a picture I took of a LEGO horse (believe me, I've used real LEGOs as references throughout the entire modeling process!!!) and traced around it to make a 2d horse. I then extruded it into a 3d model; it was that simple! The tail was a little more difficult, because it had many tiny grooves in it which took me quite awhile to make, because of all the vertices I had to move around... But anyway, here's a quick screen shot of my horse right now, with only simple materials mapped to it. Don't worry, I'll have way more detail on the final product.
Other than that, I'm even now trying to figure out how to link my different models into one main file for the actual animating part, and then I'll start animating the actual film! But of course that won't be 'till after we record the audio...

First Animation

2010-01-01T15:54:00.005-09:00

Well folks, hope ya'll are doing well after the holidays! Sorry I haven't posted a blog update in awhile, but I've been using my Christmas/New Year's break to do a lot of animating. I was also kind of busy writing up a medieval story for a writing contest; you can read it here. But I've made TONS of progress since my last post, and I'm really excited to be able to share them with you!

First of all, I've finally finished modeling my first LEGO guy (tweaking till past perfection is my worst pitfall...) Here's a quick close up screen shot of him so you can see the details. As far as my knowledge goes, he looks exactly like a real LEGO guy!

Secondly, I've gotten all his materials under control. I finally figured out how to paint his clothes and face, which has been wonderful! I've also got "all" the textures under control! Of course the only texture I'm using right now is the guy's face, but I'm still happy to have it figured out! I was able to draw them up in Word and them transfer them to Gimp to key out the background. Then came the hard part of duplicating and naming a face for every frame, in this case I was able to cheat and only make 184 pictures even though the animation was longer. I'll probably be doing the faces as videos from now on, since I don't have a file renamer program on my computer. But be that as it was, after I'd done all the renaming it was very easy to tell Blender to read all the pictures as an animation sequence.

And that brings me to my third thing I've done - put together a VERY SIMPLE animation video for you to see kind of what's happening in my "real" animation world. Hope you enjoy it!

First Animation from Aspen Ridge Family Media on Vimeo.

And with that I think you're pretty much up to date as to what I've been working on! Now that the holiday break is over, I'm heading back into the grind of school so I can't promise how much animating I'll be getting done each day from here on out. As soon as I get the PC computer from our neighbor (I know, I like Macs also...), I'll be able to build the background sets; cabins, forts, forests, indian camps, beautiful valleys, etc. etc. That will be very exciting!!!!

Leg Problems...

2009-12-06T20:24:00.004-09:00

Well folks, I finished that native American DVD for our neighbors and am now back full swing into animation. Well basically, I should say... I've also been spending some time getting this blog updated, as well as working with Adam Jackson on my personal blog, which you can view here. And then there is an essay I'm trying to write...

But back to my LEGO guy. I've been terribly stumped (or maybe stumped terribly...) with his leg for some reason. Whenever I tried to make it look smooth, the whole thing went wacko! Well, my uncle finally figured it out; all it needed was an edge split modifier! Oh well; even though I've spent forever on nothing, I have still learned a few extra things along the way. So that is where I am right now; it might even be a back-up from my last post... But rigging and weight painting don't take long, so I should have this show on the road here very soon.

And yes, I'm as excited as you are to see my first animation! (laugh)

Another Update!

2009-11-24T20:45:00.005-09:00

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...

2009-11-16T17:59:00.001-09:00

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!

Pre-production...

2009-10-30T21:45:00.003-08:00

Well, I finally decided to post my first post! Since I'm wanting to put most of my time into making this film, I won't have much time to post updates very often. Right now, my life is being spread between making this film, schooling, music (learning two new instruments, and trying to keep practicing two others), and helping with odd chores around the house. It seems like there is never an end to chores; whether it's changing the oil in the truck or ATV/s, fixing leaking water lines, hanging Christmas lights (which I just finished doing), or helping fix food. There's always something to do in our house!

Now, with that said I can go on to tell you where I am with "White Feather". Right now, I am working on writing up the script, using a wonderful program called Celtx. I would highly recommend it for those doing pre-production but who don't want to pay for a program like Final Draft. Since I'm using a story that was already written, I was able to type the story up, and right now I'm going back through it making little corrections to make the film flow smoothly (film story telling is MUCH different from written story telling). I'm almost finished with this stage of production, and am VERY excited to move on!

Another thing I'm doing right now is casting people. Since animation only uses people's voices, I don't have to focus on how well they "act", but on how well they can put the most feeling and realism into their voices. So, unbeknownst to people, I'm always listening closely to their voices. I'm afraid if I get too involved in making animation films, this will become a permanent habit!... After I pick people for the various parts, then I can see how well they do in front of a microphone with everyone watching them! That's when the acting gets tough!

Please pray that the Lord will continue to lead in this production. I have seen His leading many times already; from getting copyright permission for using the story (I had NO clue about getting the written permissions, but Josh [the guy from Herald Press] has been very helpful and workable) to even getting a free computer (OK, we are going to help him install some insulation as payment...) that I need to have in order to run one of the programs for this production. I know this film will be a blessing to those who watch it, as well as leave a deep impression about some very important issues relating to our culture. I know it has the potential to do a lot of good; and the devil knows that also. I need prayer warriors who will join with me in prayer as I begin a journey on which I have never embarked before!

May God bless each one of you!