The white rabbit finishes an animatic
The white rabbit finishes an animatic
issue #32 And Miyazaki has opinions
This newsletter is for those craving art talks, curious behind-the-sceners, daily life philosophers, and the bored. Every two weeks!
✦ Updates
Sorry for the belated issue! I had to finish the storyboard for my project and an animatic in the past 3 weeks. Back on schedule!
art
"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"
Since the past weeks I have not drawn anything besides storyboard panels, I want to briefly talk about the specifics of that.
In my boarding process, I first do a thumbnail that is barely a stick figure, to then draw a cleaner drawing over it that is not exactly clean, it’s a clearer sketch. I noticed in myself that the speed at which those cleaner-but-not-too-clean sketches have to be made I aquired certain drawing habits different from when I make an illustration. When I illustrate, while my sketch remains loose and barely readable, I try to clean the linework with a certain flow to it, following intuitive muscle memory movements. That happens in a somewhat slower rythm, except I need a big energetic line. For the board clean up’s, however, I developed a tendency to do brisk, fast and cut-off lines, because physically that feels faster and therefore makes me feel like I am drawing faster. But I noticed, also from feedback from my mentor, that doing those board sketches in bigger, slower, flowier lines would benefit the general appeal of the drawing while probably not being actually slower. Drawing slow but accurately probably takes as many seconds as fast drawing with many corrections and adjustments. I will try keeping that more prominently in mind when doing my next board, in the hopes that drawing in a slower rythm might also feel less stressful while still being fast.
project | SONHOS
A lot of work is a lot
Last issue I mentioned I started thumbnailing the storyboard for the short film - in the meantime I am writing this late because I finished the rough pass and panic-made a basic sound scape for the animatic I frenetically edited. Sucess!!
With this, the first major part of the project is complete. The end was rushed, but I am very pleased with the result. It’s pretty much how I envisioned it, and obviously way too long and ambitious. The animatic has 10 minutes. No way in the world can I animate this in like, 4 months, so either cuts will be made or animation compromised. I want neither, so I will try to gather some friends to help me out in the production process. I will have many more things to share, like environments, layouts, maybe 3D models, a color script, etc. All this will come in around a month - after I take a break. This final rushed phase reminded me how exhausting storyboarding can be, although rewarding, but also how weird the expectation of working 8 hours a day is, to me. Like really, that’s so much fucking time. 8 Hours. My average daily was 4h, 5 or 6 on good days, and that was enough for me to get tired of it after 2 weeks. Some people still think our generation is spoiled for wanting to work less, but I will stand to my opinion.
I can’t share the whole animatic here, but here are some frames for a general mood and also the concept art for the vehicles featured!
not Art
Miyazaki’s thoughts
I have been intermittedly reading Miyazakis “Turning Point”, which is the second book of a collection of interviews and talks Hayao Miyazaki gave along his career. There are many useful things in there for creatives, specifics and generals, but what I want to highlight is how thoughtful he is. He has many strong and philosophical opinions, and it doesn’t matter what those are, what I find impressive is the deep and well-considered answers he gives to some of the questions from the interviewers. And that makes sense! How could someone who makes such impactful movies be otherwise? Is it possible to make movies that influence a whole generation without being deeply thoughtful? And it just made me realize how important it is to just be still and think about something abstract in relation to creating meaningful art. All this might seem obvious, but in the past years my struggles with instant gratification and short attention span have resulted in less deep and philosophical parts. Now Miyazaki not only inspired me to create, but also to sit still and think.
✦ Short Story
part 3
Tender
But I don’t continue rowing. I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to work together with Tender right now, even knowing I should. He knows I’m a child sometimes. So he continues rowing alone. It’s starting to get dark. I’ve never seen Tender being a child - maybe he locks it away. Or it sank with the ship.
“It’s just hard to believe you because you said you wish you weren’t on the ship anymore. That you wanted home.”
________
“…you think I would put you on a tiny boat in shark territory so I could go home?”
He’s right. The clump vanishes and I continue rowing with him. When it’s truly dark we observe the stars for guidance. Tender knows how to actually navigate through them, I just look for signs of the gods. But they are silent today.
What isn’t silent is the ocean - it’s singing. I ask myself, if the festive ship had sunk and we we’re hearing their ghosts. (Not yet). But then we see a head emerge not far away.
“It’s a siren” states Tender. I knew that, but he likes to explain things. The siren comes closer.
“They’re singing for us. Like we’re out here on purpose, watching the stars for their beauty.” That, I didn’t know. But the stars really are beautiful, so they aren’t totally wrong. I don't like that Tender sounds bothered.
Where's land? I ask one of the singing heads. It stops singing, looks around for a second, then points. We both follow the direction pointed in with our gaze. When we look back the heads are gone and the singing is carried away by the waves.
Thank you for reading, see you in 2 weeks! ✦
