John Grist 3rd Year

DD Trailer

2009-11-05T05:47:00.000-08:00

Defective Detective Theatrical Teaser from john grist on Vimeo.

Hey fellows, here's the trailer for Defective Detective. Let me know if it piques your interest!

Closing the Deal

2009-10-27T05:10:00.000-07:00

We finished the animation a few days ago, and Monday gone we did the final renders. There are a few minor bits and pieces that need retouching or that were simply forgotten altogether. We also got the music back from Alex Ballenger and it's pretty good, so that's going to plan as well. Largest thing that remains is the sound mix, which Mathers is in charge of.

Also, Andrew posted a status on his facebook account claiming that 'he and his group would be finished their grad film by the end of this week', so now I guess we sort of have to. We still have to experiment a little and make an opening and closing credit sequence, but that will just be straight motion graphics.

Happy days, people.

Compositing Work

2009-09-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

Some display frames and an animated shot for your perusal.

Defective Detective Scene 313 from john grist on Vimeo.

i'll take blog for three hundred

2009-09-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I forgot to keep a blog until I re-read the course outline stating that it was going to be part of our unit mark. Since last we spoke, my team and I have overhauled the ass out of our story. Many Kudos to Louise, who had some great time saving suggestions. So we stepped up from being totally unprepared to a little bit organised. Very cool.

We also completely trashed the first act of the film, including all of the animation that we had done for it. So it turns out those 'animation tests' that I was probably going to pass off as real animation actually were just.. tests.

As of the moment, we have a rough cut of the film, with the exception of a few more shots that need fine tuning, and it seems that we're going to come in somewhere between three and four minutes. That actually seems about right, for once.

My main tasks have been my alloted character animation, developing and characterising backgrounds, colour theory and compositing. The latter two sort of go hand and hand, like Jack and Jill. Except that instead of a pail of water, they're bringing back atmosphere and style. Hohoho.

We actually had a sitdown, and spoke about what we were hoping to achieve with the compositing. Foremost, we want to push flash animation as far as we can. Second, we really want to try and make it feel like a film, rather than a cartoon. Here are some comparison slides to show what I mean. (Flash vs Comped)

I'd like to think that it adds a lot. Plus, being able to make your product look different from your competitors is an important thing. Especially with something as common as Flash.

More updates as they happen.

bbbbbback into it

2009-06-27T01:21:00.000-07:00

Live from New York,
IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT!

Had some things going on between last post and now.
We presented our work, and we scored pretty well considering our sloppy presentation.

We met with Lou once the dust from Post Production had settled, and she suggested a lovely number of things that we could change in our animatic.
Cut the fat, keep the meat. Don't swallow the gross meat. Etc.

Unfortunately, we're going to have to probably cut some animation that I have already completed. It sucks, but i'm willing to do it for a more cohesive product. GOOD NEWS is, that because it's cut, you get to see it here, live in black and white GIF format. How lovely.

Well, more than a little grainy, but at least it's running at a decent speed.

I've recut my designated act, the diner sequence, and I think it works better now. I'll have to get Lou to take another gander at some point, but I think it's quite workable. We're losing a few 'coinable jokes and phrases' as Andrew puts it, but it is a worthy sacrifice. I also divided up the shots, so everyone has a piece of the climactic pie. Link below if you're so inclined.
http://docs.google.com/View?docID=ddx7fbgt_41gnvpb8px&revision=_latest

So I've got some nice shots there, including the establishing and final shots, which are a wide shot of the diner stuck in between two miscellaneous buildings. We were thinking a Bank and a Police Station. Andrew and I really love the "LucasArts Adventure Game" feeling, so i've got it staged somewhat in that style, with a few animated loops. I think it's looking pretty good at the moment and on this occasion, the background needs to be finished before the animation keying begins.

I don't know if I shared a wide shot of the bathroom I had done previously, but I did a small amount of colour grading and am pleased with the darker, higher contrast result.

Later Storyboards

2009-05-21T04:56:00.000-07:00

Because it would reflect far better on our marks and cohesion, we are boarding the rest of the acts. Andrew I think is doing the second, and for the most part i'll be doing the third. I'm concentrating on really good angles, because I think that it's the easiest "noir" element to overlook. Here are a couple, don't want to go ruining all the punchlines now.

A Note on Unorthodoxy

2009-05-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

We are indeed choosing to work on this film in a strange manner.
Some may call it ass-backwards. We're okay with that.

Rehashing

2009-05-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

We encountered a visualisation issue concerning the overall introduction, before we even meet our hero character. Now instead of going for an extended pan, cutting through walls and becoming a bit cross-section like, we're going for a slower method. Shots with strong perspective, slight left to right motion, and cross disolving between. Should enable us to set up the environment more as well. Here's just some rough storyboards.

Peer through keyhole, see a flower in half silhouette.
Hook-up on the other side to see the Secretary at the Reception Desk.
See some stuff from an Overshoulder of the Secretary.
Return to Secretary, focus shift to the background leading the way to the office door - Camera moves inwards.

A basic draft of the Detective Agency. Waiting room has been altered since this image.

Concept idea for the first unobscured shot of the secretary, I think the placement needs to be a little different and maybe the perspective a bit sharper. Will hand off to one of the others for invigoration.

The Bathroom makes her glorious appearance! I sketched the shot, Andrew vectored, I finished.
This one will have a little bit of extra vfx done to it I think, small electricity and lightplay due to an un-waterproofed robot being exposed to water. Hilarious.

That Jump

2009-05-05T05:23:00.000-07:00

Just done with a bit of animation. I need to do it faster and with fewer drawings.

Animation Test

2009-04-17T06:30:00.000-07:00

Guess what. We're animating. Yeah that's right.

Flickr Pool

2009-04-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

Defective Detective Flickr Pool

Just a quick link to the communal pool of work that the Team are drawing upon.

Before Easter

2009-04-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

Lost my Wacom pen in one of the animation lab.
Will need to check ASAP.
I had some scanned images of Layouts and Floor Plans, but I can't find them on my portable hard drive. It's also crawling with viruses from the uni computers. Faaaantastic.

These are some of my interpretations of the Basil character after seeing Andrew's prelimary sketch of what he wanted the character to look like.

A mixture between story/joke beats and environment concepts. Group likes colours and the sort of painterly effect. Desat good for focus drawn to the characters.
Mis en Scene is going to be pretty important, as we want the film to have a more subtle sense of humour underneath the obvious one. This film is just going to be a three to four minute series of jokes, hopefully.

These aren't mine, but I would fucking love to emulate the depth in them, as well as the colour scheme. If I get time closer to the end of the year my own project will be an exploration into elements like this.Just to show that we're all getting on board with doing things such as Storyboarding. A sequence that occurs when Robot answers the inner door to his office - through the cat door.

Compositing

2009-04-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

I did a few tests, just to see how a 2d character may be composed in a 2.5d environment.
After this example I decided that background perspective would be better off painted instead of being computed for us. Creating planes and getting them to mesh would just blow the timeline out massively.

Concept Illustration

2009-04-03T22:41:00.000-07:00

We worked out what we were doing quite early on. We're going to be doing Andrew Copeland's, "Defective Detective" script. A robot detective goes on a small adventure to solve a "crime", becomes sidetracked and doesn't really ever get anywhere. It's possible that it could be turned into a small series with a fairly enjoyable story arc.

This is a concept illustration I did after hearing about the main robot character. The design has since been majorly refined.

Roles

2009-04-03T21:51:00.000-07:00

My role in production will be a mixture of:
Producing, Compositing and Animation.
Also known as Administration and Whip Cracker. Will do In-Betweening of major characters, and full animation of mis-en-scene / minor elements.