Kick Starter Success!

Thanks to your support we successfully achieved funding well beyond our expectations.  As we continue to work towards completion we are excited to share updates on progress of the film as well as the festivals we will be submitting to.  We are mostly focused on the finishing touches of the film and will share updates in the future on the prizes as they are created.

The first of many film festivals we are applying to is Ottawa International Animation Festival, (http://www.animationfestival.ca/index.php), which is the largest animation film festival in North America.

For those of you in Kansas City, our Kickstarter project, among others, was featured in a recent issue of Ink magazine, (04/06/11 Vol 4, Issue 2). For those of you outside of Kansas City you can read the article here.
http://www.inkkc.com/content/online-donations-mean-money-for-artists/

We are extremely grateful for all of your support and are very excited to share our hard work with those of you who supported us and the world!

Eric, Ben, and Stephen

Scene 8: Start to Finish

  While Robo-san and Wan-chan has been an intensely collaborative process for us in every step of the way, recently things have been a little bit different as we have to work back and forth to achieve certain results in the animation.

For this shot I (Eric) did two color keys. The first was to try to establish the basic color and lighting of the shot. Plus, it made the actual painting of the background go much, much faster.

The second was after I finished the background and realized that I needed to help Ben and Stephen figure out the lighting for Wan-chan in this new environment. Lighting for 3D rendering is an art of its own and color keys can help Ben and Stephen out with the problems that they inevitably encounter in this process.


After figuring out some of the difficult lighting issues, the animation goes into After Effects for the secondary animation. In this particular scene that means moving the clouds and generally making the environment seem more alive. It's usually around this time that Ben will give me a short clip of his animation which I use as a reference for more painting, in this case, Wan-chan's jet stream.

 

Having Wan-chan's exact path in front of me means I can take it right into Photoshop and mark out specific points on a path that Wan-chan's jetstream will be following and then paint right on top of them.

I used different colored dots on different layers so I could keep the smoke from his front and back paws separate, since they start at different times.I also included some rougher lines which are meant to show where the shadows are supposed to go. After all of this I give these back to Ben so he can composite them on top of his animation in After Effects. Usually it's here that I'll figure out that my painting is off or something and then I'll take it back and make the adjustments. The result, minus sound effects, is this:

Robo-san and Wan-chan Shot_06.3 from Ben Dallman on Vimeo.

New color keys

Just wanted to share some of the recent developments. Here's a couple of really sketching and rough color keys. Both for two new environments of the short that haven't been seen in color yet. There's still a lot more to work out with these shots in terms of background but the basics are there!

Thank you!

This is a special thanks to everyone who has continued to support us through this project, especially those of you who are funding us on KickStarter! We are working harder every day to make Robo-san and Wan-chan the best we can! You can continue to follow our progress through this blog if you aren't already and we'll all be sharing more of our work as we continue onward!

Note for our non-Japanese speaking followers: Robo-san's message read's "dōmo arigatō" meaning simply, "thank you!"

Eric.

KickStarter

We have decided to open up an account on Kickstarter.com, a website that will help you get funded for projects.  So please check out this link and help us spread our film across the nation.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1222493020/animated-short-robo-san-and-wan-chan


Thanks

Robo-san and Wan-chan

     Robo-san and wan-chan is a film about a robot and his dog that go to a distant planet to play a game of frisbee. Robo-san gets the idea to throw the frisbee high into the air and wan-chan goes after it, but doesn't come back. So Robo-san must travel around this planet looking for his lost dog.Robo-san and wan-chan is a film about a robot and his dog that go to a distant planet to play a game of frisbee. Robo-san gets the idea to throw the frisbee high into the air and wan-chan goes after it, but doesn't come back. So Robo-san must travel around this planet looking for his lost dog.