Ainya sleeping

And here is the shot coloured. Tomorrow I will finish up the background for this shot with some overlapping grass, and also try to come up with a design for the dagger which I seem to forget about constantly, even though its grand importance to the film... I will also see to it that I'll start drawing more of the flashback sequence pen sketches.

Here's the shot of the faungirl sleeping. The head movement looks a bit rushed when she breathes out, but then I don't think the shot needs more than this. It will be shorter in the trailer too. Time to colour it. I'll do my best to get it all done today so I can then focus on the flashback sequences.

Finding

Here it is, coloured and all done.

I've never posted a process screenshot before so here's a frame from the finding shot. Drawing the shadow lines proved to take longer in this shot than in any of the other ones, but now the colouring is about half way through, so it should be fine. It doesn't look very organized, but I can find myself in this.

Here's the current shot of the troll finding the footprints next to the tombstone. This shot really brought out the non-animator side of me (which I suppose is more than half). I messed up the first head turn and now to fix it I'll have to fix all the following frames. For now I don't consider this a priority, so I won't be doing that until I've completed the more important things. It used to be a lot worse though, but after help from Denise I got some details tidied up that at least made the movement smoother, even if there are still structure and volume issues.

(I always advise to put the quality on best and watch full screen so the lines will be clear)

Also I coloured the determination shot.

Next I will be adding the shadow lines on the finding shot so then I can take it to Photoshop for colouring. Hopefully I'll have this shot done by today! Then I just have the faun girl's breathing cycle to animate and colour and finally the rest of the pen sketches for the flashback sequences. Still, I cannot forget that I need to leave a few days for compositing, so I won't be laying back comfortably just yet!

On another note, my friend made a title design that I'm pleased with, so this is the final thing!

For something different, a friend of mine is arranging a font for the title of my film. These are the two first tests. As we both came to agree, the first one is a bit Tolkien like, although very lovely. I decided to go with the second one which has a nice runic feel to it.

Because about a month ago or so I found an animated short titled The troll, the faun and the tree (very upsetting indeed, but at least it is very different from my film and my first concepts were done before that short was uploaded on youtube) I decided to change the title of my film to either 'The Troll's Dagger' or simply 'Dagger'. After some thought I decided that a one word title would not be fitting for a fantasy piece so I'm going with the first idea.
I'm currently working on the animation of the profile shot by the tombstone which is proving to be more troublesome than I thought. After that I have left the breathing cycle of the faungirl.

I think I can call these finished for now. The second one serves for both the reaction shot as for the determined shot, latter one being the right hand side in which the camera follows the troll as he stands up. On those backgrounds I thought that making the trees less saturated would make the troll stand out more, also considering that there are no trees right behind him as seen on the profile wide shot of the tombstone. They will also be blurred out slightly.

I'm almost done with the determination shot, of when the troll gets up into the shot after spotting the footprints. I'll need to slow the animation down a bit, by either extending the time of a couple of frames or adding a couple more inbetweens and also cushion it up a bit more in the end.

(Recommended to watch fullscreen in either 720 or 1080hd quality so the lines will be clear)

This is the footprints shot. It'll be quick to finish. After it I'll just have to paint a background which is shared by two different shots. Hopefully it'll be quick to finish as well.

Another one.

I'll see if I go back to animating tomorrow. I'm sure that after a talk with Neil and Peter I'll get into it again!

Ok this one is almost finished. I marked the spot where the faun girl will be sleeping for the animation, and there's the dagger left to draw in the bag. Once I have those in the shot I can finish it up with some grass overlapping the girl and the bag.

I seem to have new backgrounds appearing on the list! Gah! Here's the basic layout and colours for the shot when the troll is kneeling by the tomb right before he notices the footprints.

It feels like there's more and more work coming up as I do more things. I had a week wasted because I was ill and now I'm trying to get back on track. Since before this Easter break I started animating the close-up shot of the troll's determined look after seeing the footprints... about 6 times! I'm finding it difficult to pull that one off decently as I'm finding it hard to put it aside and try a different shot for now, so I'm basically putting my energy on the backgrounds right now.

Finished. Only thing left is to animate a vine which the troll grabs onto when he's climbing down the Mother Tree.
I really don't like this background... also it was the first one I started and I notice an obvious difference of quality and style when comparing to the more recent backgrounds. Nothing I can do at this point.

Entrance of the troll's house background.