AEsop's Council of Mice

[SpaceToast]

This is my latest short, AEsop's Council of Mice. Bill Plympton's "Guard Dog" beat me at the Woods Hole Film Festival this summer, but I guess I can live with that. I had won Woods Hole last year, with "Marboxian," and was obviously hoping for a repeat performance. Now that I'm finally into my new place (though still living out of boxes), I need to get the DVD together and get this one out to more festivals.

 

Go watch it! I don't think it's bad.

 

 

ART STUFF:

 

The severely crunched color palette was ripped shamelessly from "Avalon," a live-action/CGI film from the director of "Ghost in the Shell." Crunching your color palette, as that film and its later-born cousin "The Matrix" both realized, is also a good way to cover your special effects -- and I'm working legal, alone, and on the cheap here.

 

A bit of advice here: Get an editor. He doesn't know what shot took the longest. He doesn't know what you expected to look cool. He doesn't know what you were thinking would happen with x footage, and he's not going to pretend it did when it didn't. If you spend the requisite man weeks required to animate a multishot film, for god sakes, get a fresh pair of eyes to help you in putting it together at the end. Rama Rodriguez (who is a heck of an animator in his own right, in Flash, and once re-edited "Fist of the North Star" into "Christ: The Return!" -- you'd have to see it) did an amazing job getting the timing and pace to work, as best my footage allowed. I'm serious: Ask for help.

 

 

TECH STUFF:

 

I shot/photographed the backgrounds in DV, then recolored, cleaned and painted alpha channels where needed in Photoshop. Editing and compositing in Final Cut Express, on a G5.

 

The hair is 10.x decal controlled hair, for two reasons. For one, I spent an hour grooming one of the mice with v11 hair, and the results were a terrible mess; I couldn't find any way to groom symmetrically, nor to shorten/lengthen more than one guide hair at a time. The second reason was that the A:M for OS-X (10.5) release rendered significantly faster than either 10.5 or 11 for Classic, and time was not a luxury I had while finishing this for Woods Hole.

 

I was never really happy with the mouse rig, but I'm never really happy with any of my rigs, and I don't believe in one-size-fits-all rigs. The legs were overly complicated, and could break in certain positions. I did all the dope sheets by hand, altering and deleting phonemes as I went, then went into the pose channels and dropped the intensity way down on all but the most noticeable phonemes. (I figured the audience is mostly watching how the mouth opens and closes, and that was all done by hand.) The spine was curled using a horrible smartskin system where forward/backward/side/side were all controlled by rotating one bone floating over his back -- I say horrible because it was impossible to crossfade actions, it turned out, without the spine freaking out. The ears are a great demo of the dynamic constraint, but it's not noticeable on many shots -- seriously love this feature though. Also, the geometry bones in the tail are all rigged to a set of control bones using a lagged constriant, so that the first segment of the tail is one frame behind, the second two frames, the third, three, and so on; I really liked how this feature worked too.

 

 

 

At any rate, hope you like it.

[starwarsguy]

Grt mouse models! Good story, too! Keep it up!

[nimblepix]

Matthew,

 

Beautiful work!

 

I love the pace and restraint.

Great job on the palette.

Wonderful voice acting!

There are so many things to appreciate!

 

Beautiful!

 

Thanks for making this film.

[modernhorse]

Heya SpaceToast -

First of all I really enjoyed your film. As a fan of your film 'Marboxian' I looked forward to seeing what you would do next and you certainly didn't disappoint.

 

The look of the film is extremely well done. I know nothing of what you mean by crunching your color pallete but I think the use of color is great. Modeling and animation are spot on.

 

I also appreciate the fact that you used voice talent. It really beefs up the level of quality in the film ! Good performances.

 

*NOTE* Spoiler alert !!

I do have one question regarding the story. When I watched it the first time I felt like it didn't end, as if it was an ending 'to be continued'. Then I watched it a week later (or so) and I felt that the ending was more of an ending, but that it was an ending that wasn't tidy. In that no one steps forward to volunteer and they would be stuck in their circumstance, much like in real life at times. Am I on the mark here?

 

Anyhow, I feel you've made a sucessful film in that you've pleased the eye and have made something thought provoking. Congratulations !!

 

Doug