getting the cavalry in

We have enlisted some fellow animators Darren hammond & Bernice Hobson who are animation graduates from sunderland university & friends of Andrew. They will help out with parts of the day to day animation process such as line & background clean up. So far I have sent them a guideline to clean up on the reverends tale



With the live action shoot only 6days away, I am having to start to devote my energies back to producing & directing again. I am creating shotlists, call sheets & organising new locations & possibly havng to replace an actor within the week. This means having the new animators take on some of the tedious work frees up my time without completely burdening andrew.



We have put together a rough cut of the film (minus some live action scenes) so we have a rough idea of timing & what needs cutting, to accomodate our 10/11 minute finished cut. The Hermits tale is coming along well for the basic animation before tidy up & effects, here is an example:

moving to promotion

Despite being busy with animating, producing on two projects & preparing for directing the live action shoot in April, I have started to look ahead towards marketing & promotion for fracture, both digital & traditional.
I met up with Richard Thompson the design graduate who I have asked to help with posters & promotional material, after a Designers conference. Talking through Idea's I wanted to include elements of the films story & iconography such as tarot cards, graphic style, title sequence design & I wanted ot include a prop trinket I had bought for a promotional item (as well introducing it into the film). Richard picked up on the idea of havin Kal dragging Alices hand in a dark alleyway as a poster idea, I thought it was a strong image added in the idea of having tarot cards & other iconography as items or in the text of the poster. We also came to the idea of using the missing girl posters of Alice on the walls of the alleyway.

I sent a starter idea to Richard, who will refine it over the next couple of months.

To richt_biscuits@hotmail.com
From: rich white (ricardo_blanco@hotmail.co.uk)
Sent: 18 March 2011 17:15:02
To: richt_biscuits@hotmail.com

Hey dude psyched to get your design-age skills on board for promotional poster & marketing designs!
ive attached 3 instances of animated character & background tests to give you an idea of the animation styling, Ive also attached the script for the film (Fracture) for when you have a spare time to look through the story.
theres also a very quick & crappy mock up idea of a poster just to have some kind of starting point for thoughts!

I also would like to use along with the main Fracture website which will be online in a few weeks, a viral promotional website using the idea of the police investigation into the dissappearance of Alice, this would be similar to campaigns such as whysoserious.com for the dark Knight & the blair witch project. I would also like to engage street artists to draw, paint, post up & chalk fracture art around Newcastle, this would involve easily removed/ temporary art (eg chalk drawings, posters) so we would be within the limits of the law.

Photos of the production process on facebook

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=582260365&aid=569491

rev. scene breakdown

http://tinypic.com/r/xkuj69/7

animation process

we have started the animation process for fracture using the greenscreen footage we have as a guide.
As seen by the concept Art andrew had a style for the lover he wanted to try out using photoshop cs4. I have decided to use illlustrator cs4 for the reverends tale to have a graphic black & white style.

Hermit Jacks tale is using the life size armature so Andrew assisted with the face casting process, then I have been working on the latex face with paints, make-up & pencils to create a lifelike look.


The reverends tale appears to be working smoothly using a background colour layer as the foundation, copying that layer & adjusting it to be black & white & more of a inked graphical look.
The lover/ Jessicas tale didnt go as smoothly...using the photoshop method looked good but took a ridiculous amount of time (around 5 hours a frame) using brushes, layers, and the lasso, dodge & burn tools. the 2nd attempty with photoshop favoured filters to minimise the brush & lasso work, however the filters were too random & innacurate & changed wildly the colours & shadows inbetween frames. With the illustrator cs4 work going well I persuaded andrew to embrace Illustrator for the first time. Using the live trace & brush tools in illustrator, the images kept the colour profile & did not vary so wildly.

After a talk about the background animation for the Hermit, we decided to use the greenscreen footage behind the hermit in a semi-pixillated style. the armature will speak the voice over & the filtered footage & motion graphics added will comprise the final product.

festivals

- waterloo film festival
- fantaspoa festival (brazil)
- gerardmer film festival
- BIFFF (brussels)
- SOPOT film festival (poland)
- Fantasia film festival
- Leeds int'l film festival
- Winnipeg animation festival
- dead channels film festival
- titanic intl film festival (budapest)
- singapore int' animation film festival
- dead by dawn festival (edingburgh)
- Puchon int' fantastic film festival
- SITGES int' catalonian film festival (Barcelona)
- The Angel Film competition
- Super Shorts Film Festival
- Exposures: new talent in moving image
- Wood Green International Short Film Festival

updates, plans & changes

So far we have filmed 90% of the green screen animation footage for our film, we are re-shooting the 1st day of green screen filming on monday 7th as it was of a inferior quality.
after discussions with our original D.O.P. about filming shcedules and after our doctor luminal actor sally, couldnt make the shooting dates, I decided to re-arrange the live action shoot til the 31st-3rd April as we can have a fully manned sound & camera crew which would leave me with just producing, directing & animating the project (freeing me from camera work &make up). Andrew Binns, chris andrew, Simon mcgaun, Drew mastromartino, Dave reed & rachel nesbitt would be available to add to our current crew. I am hoping to persuade some photography students I know to act as stills photographer for live action.

although filming has not yet finished I am looking at styles for websites, posters & other promotional materials. the danish crime writer Jo Nesbo has an interesting website design for his bestselling novels. there is also the website for feature length animation FromInside

http://jonesbo.com

http://www.frominsidemovie.com/index.html