Ebin & May: Something to Remember

[smudge]

Well.... This short is pretty much done. Since I'm kind of tired waiting for the music to come in (which at this rate, might be "never"), I'm going ahead and posting what I've got.

 

Ebin & May: Something to Remember

 

Boy, I learned at lot in doing this short....

[HeadlessBill]

I really enjoyed this. My only complaint is that the pacing is just a tad slow, but it's still great none-the-less.

 

Are there going to more? It seems to be a set-up for a continuing chain of stories.

 

A question though. Was the look achieved by using Toon shading or did you use decals from watercolors or a combination of both?

 

Again, it's a great piece and I really hope you do make more.

 

I hope you do get the music though.

[JTalbotski]

Christina,

 

Very well done! It's got such a nostalgic feel to it. Like the storybooks I read as a kid. I think the pacing is well suited to kids shows on TV. You've done some excellent work with A:M. How long have you been using it?

 

Jim

[Mike Lium]

Very well done! It's got such a nostalgic feel to it. Like the storybooks I read as a kid.

I agree with Jim, I liked the old style very much.

What was the music you were going to use with it ?

 

Nice

 

Mike

[smudge]

Thanks guys!

 

Are there going to more? It seems to be a set-up for a continuing chain of stories.

The story is based on the first episode of a *very* long running comic book series I've been doing for Radio Comix. It was an experiment to see if I could take my panel layouts and convert them into storyboards. To my surprise, I only had to change 2 shots, one for technical reasons, the other to avoid a 180 camera move. I doubt I'll do more. (unless a lot of other folks want me to do more... I am such a feedback whore )

 

A question though. Was the look achieved by using Toon shading or did you use decals from watercolors or a combination of both?

 

No toon shading on this one. It's all flat rendered, with hand painted watercolors for textures with the occasional cast shadow to place the characters into the enviroment. Actually worked better than I thought it would. The only thing that gives the 3Dness away is the fact that the forms of the characters stay too consistant.

 

You've done some excellent work with A:M. How long have you been using it?

Thanks! I've been working off and on (more off than on) with A:M for almost 5 years, and been animating (computer and otherwise) for almost ten. I am nowhere near the level I want to be at skill wise. I feel that I'm still a hack.

 

What was the music you were going to use with it ?

 

Van was suppose to compose some music for it, like he did for 'Yote Tail. He says he's gotten parts one and three done, but is having trouble with the middle. Van also has a nasty habbit of dropping off the face of the Earth at random intervils. And he's dropped off again. Alas, alack.... (smilie crying twin waterfalls inserted here)

 

I'm glad you all enjoyed!

[Grubber]

I have to say, that I'm impressed!

I like the textures, the models!

You are pro, I even don't know how to make such animation

[Zaryin]

This is one of the most beautiful animations I have seen in A:M. I love the style and the use of the watercolor decals. Nice work -- do it again .

[robcat2075]

What an interesting look and feel to this work! I do very much admire it. I'm uneasy about the voices, however. This is obviously a story in a fantasy setting. Great "suspension of disbelief" is required of the audience to buy into it all and the everyday, middle-america quality of the voices is working against that goal. I'm wishing for voices with more "character". No, they don't all have to have old english accents or adopt speech impediments... but something extra is needed from the voices to fuse them with the characters we are seeing. I remember Ralph Bakshi did something called "Wizzards" a long time ago (the 70's), with very flat , expressionless voices. Maybe it was a reaction to all the highly exaggerated voices that populated cartoons at the time, but when i watch it today, it adds an element of tedium to an already iffy film.

[smudge]

I'm uneasy about the voices, however.

 

Don't worry, you're not the first one to say this. My sound work sucks. I freely admit this, and it's something I'm slowly working on. After all, there was a noticeable sound quality difference between 'Yote Tailand Something To Remember. So, at least I'm getting better. But I still have a longs way to go.

 

As for the actual acting, that's what I get for shoving the mic under friends noses instead of using, ah-hum, real talent. If I had more money than the three singles sitting in my wallet, I would get better voice actors. Then they can all sit around my tiny apartment mocking my sound work too.

[Sevenar]

Smudge: Don't sell yourself short. As an artist, you know that the difference between newbie art and polished work is in the details, the little nuances that everyone hardly notices--until they aren't there. With sound, realism comes from ambient noise. Crowd sounds, wind, room acoustics, the odd dropped fork here and there...they all turn staged dialogue into a believable soundscape.

 

Fortunately, nearly all of the decent sound packages like SoundForge can help add those little extras, especially in digitally-faked, er, processed, room acoustics. The trick is not to overdo it.

 

For this short, you need two different ambience setups, one for the house, the other for the pub. For the house, you want to record about three minutes in a quiet room with the windows open (unless you live near a busy highway--try a park if that's the case). I don't know what kind of recording equipment you have, but it doesn't have to be fancy. The killer for most direct-to-computer sound recording is the horrendous noise that comes from the computer itself, (fans, hard drives, and whatnot.) For ambient recording you can even get away with a standard cassette recorder. If you want a little higher quality, step up to a recordable MiniDisc. They can be had for <$100 and have all sorts of nice digital features--just make sure it comes with a mic jack. A lot of the newer Sony ones don't.

 

The super-cheat for sound (and don't tell anyone I told you this ) are the new MiniDV camcorders. For less than $500, you can get a basic video unit, but the DV sound spec is the same as that for those expensive DAT recorders, true digital 16-bit stereo, sampled at 48kHz. I was once asked to videotape a Christmas Madrigal at my mother's church, but I had to leave the camera fixed. As you can guess, the video portion was rather boring--forty minutes of a choir standing there singing. However, the audio track was surprisingly good. I stripped it off the video, trimmed out the dropped forks and chair-scrapes, then ran it through SoundForge and punched up the acoustics from a bigger church (a little more echo). I gave a CD of it to Mom and told her I'd do the rest of the video work if she wanted it, but the CD was the best part. Once she let her friends listen to it, I had to burn about 20 copies... She never did ask for the video.

 

I'm just a newbie at all this too, but all the books I read on low-budget filmmaking yielded a lot of useful workarounds for amateurs. Pros, too.

 

Clear skies,

Sevenar

[Sevenar]

Oops. Forgot about the pub. For it, go to a bar that isn't very busy and record about 3-5 minutes, well away from any TV if there is one.

 

Put these ambience recordings on a separate track in the video at a low volume and see if it doesn't make it all sound more real to you.

 

Another great sound tip. If you have to do dialogue replacement, and don't have a professional quiet room with acoustic eggcrate foam all over the walls, just re-record your stuff in a walk-in closet! The hanging clothes absorb over 90% of all the normal echoes and ancillary noise, which you can then SoundForge back in if you need them.

 

Good luck!

Sevenar

[Guest mrsl13]

Yes..very good feel to it.

 

Mike C.

[Sevenar]

Two other minor corrections:

 

1) When Ebin is leaving the pub, he's walking way too slowly. I realize the pause is to punch up Valkyn's transformation, but you might want to have Ebin turn a corner to get out of the shot faster (if you want to keep the pacing/time the same) or just edit a second or two out of the shot with a video editor.

 

2) At around 1:54 in, there's a CU on Ebin's hand as he reveals the necklace to May. There's a little ambiguity to the shot because it turns out to be his left hand, and therefore crosses the 180 between the two actors in the previous shot. This one's an easy fix, though. Slightly adjust the camera angle to get any piece of Ebin's body to the up and right of the hand in the reveal, and the shot context will be complete from that background cue. Ebin's hand also appears to enter from above the frame (very briefly, in only a frame or two), yet in the previous shot he had his hand behind his back at waist level. That means the hand should enter the shot from below or from the same level, otherwise, it means he had to bring his closed hand around to the front of his body, lift it up, and then bring it back down before opening it, all in the tiny cut interval.

 

Apologies for being a nitpic--uh, constructive critic...yeah, that's it...

 

Sevenar

[Dagooos]

What a great little short!

[clamps]

smudge, this is one of the best looking shorts i've ever seen.

thanks for blazing the trail in tihs direction. i hope more people (besides me) take inspiration from your work.

 

later

 

clamps

[HeadlessBill]

So, when can we expect the next installment?

[JohnArtbox]

Smudge I dowloaded this a while ago and didn't get around to watching it.

It's a lovely little short, a few shortcomings in the pacing and sound areas which I'm sure your aware of, but I love the watercolour look.

I've gotta admire anyone who gets any short completed, and a good short even more so.

[mediaho]

I have to say, I've been really impressed with the quality of both 'Yote Tail and Ebin & May: Something to Remember. Very well done. I don't have anything to offer as far as critiques that hasn't already been covered, but I enjoyed them both very much. Can't wait to see more.