She didn't really know what to do in 3D space.

This weekend was spent putting Emily Maddison in 3D space. She now pulls out at a junction and drives down a street. Her car moves on seven independent layers and, as she turns, light is cast on the right side of her car. It's a technical marvel. Not since the "bullet time" scenes in The Matrix have people been so blown away by visual effects like these. In addition to this the individual pores on Emily's skin (not to mention her hair - which incidentally took a team of 20 artists 3 months to animate) means it takes a 2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon powered computer with 16 GB of RAM 15 minutes to render out the final scene which is just 20 seconds long; adding £600,000 to the budget on render time alone.

She didn't really know what to do.

I'm back from Annecy and working on the Francis Cooper film. We went to London a few weeks ago to record the narration which has turned out well I think.

I've now got an animatic and one scene animated. I'm working on the second now with the help of detailed diagrams labeled with numbers.

Matthew Walker, award winning animator and director, is sitting close by building his latest animated character which he will shortly begin animating for his latest animated classic.

Outside there is glorious sunshine. Perfect for playing Nerf.

Panoramic faces

If you missed it...

...you can see The Worst Thing Ever? here on iPlayer (for five more days only! UK only I think...) or bits of it here (just click Libby's tips in the drop down boxes).

BBC1 16:20 / 19.03.08

Tomorrow at twenty past four on BBC1 is The Worst Thing Ever. A Newsround special that I co-directed animation for with Emma Lazenby at Arthur Cox. Matt (over there <--) directed some animation on a BAFTA winning special last year, The Wrong Trainers. You can watch his part here. It was nominated for a BAA this year, too. Hector (remember?) won a BAA. Well done Sarah and Sally.

Also Keith Reynolds is in the official short film selection at Annecy this year. So is Matt's (over there <--) John and Karen and also Operator. And so is Sally's A-Z. And Sarah's Don't Let It All Unravel is in Panorama. Well done Sarah and Sally.

BBC1 16:20!

TITLE ON BLACK: THURSDAY

When it's masculine, Frances is spelled Francis.

most of the film has now been storyboarded. Next week some edit time has been booked to do a scratch recording of the narration and start (maybe finish?) an animatic. This will be interesting because

1. I'll find out roughly how long it will be.
2. I'll have something I can watch right the way through.

Me, Matt, and Ben drew those. Don't worry - the envelope was going to be thrown away.

Keith Reynolds wins something

Keith Reynolds has won a regional (the Welsh one) RTS Student Television Award.

Did she? She...

You know, being a kid can be pretty tough - especially if you have a giant cheeseburger for a face. Welcome to my world.

"I don't understand... how can the sink be above the washing machine?"

F: This is taking ages and is hard.
T: Cheat. Take photos you like, mash them together, and trace them.*

*I'm not going to do this.



D: I've just read it and it all seems fine to me.

Backgrounds and scripts

The script might be done. I want to do an animatic with it to see how it's working with the pace and visuals soon. Still going with the animation tests. I've not done proper backgrounds before - they're hard.