Big O Project: Project will continue

Well its been a while since I posted here. Finals are this week and so i won't be getting much done with this project. At any rate after finals comes vacation and i plan to knock down some of the project during this break. Err i hope everyone is still working on their portion of the project! More importantly:

The way i see it morale for this project seems to have dropped. After all it has been a few months already after we started and not even all of the storyboards are completed. Also though some storyboards were completed and turned in it does not *seem* as though I have done anything with them. Speaking of which aside from the opening theme no one has seen any of my work as of yet. So hopefully when i release the trailer (which will show about the first 30 seconds of the episode) morale will become higher and we may even get some more people interested in working on the episode.

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

Hi, sorry I've sorta disappeared for a while x.x
I guess I've been lazy/dis-interested in updating any of my internet accounts lately, but I HAVE been working a bit on the backgrounds, I just don't think they're that great because I get blocked everytime I work on it. Adding detail is difficult. Finals are over and this week is the first week of my winter vacation (aside from work).

This is my progress so far, unfortunately it's not much right now
The bricks are a pain I eventually went to a second background, but I have only drawn the people in it so far (and with a light pencil, so I had to darken one of them on the comp). I need to get started on a third one maybe. There's probably not enough there right now to judge it, but if you have any tips or critiques that might help, let me know.

These are photographed, not scanned.

I took out the bird because I remembered that animals are rare in this world. The lamp post design is like in the comics, at least one issue I think, I was looking for a double-light type post.


This needs to be fixed a bit because she looks like she's moving. The homeless man wasn't showing up well, so I selected him and darkened it, so it looks like I pasted him there.
Sorry for the tags!

Those look great!! Hmm so far as i can see the pics are turning out great. If I may offer a tip it would be not to underestimate your work and how good it looks. The lamp post leaves me speechless! (*admires artist*) At any rate the pictures look great. Please continue working on them ^^ .

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

Well its been quite a while since I last updated:

It would seem at this time that most people who were interested in this project have gone. That’s kind of sad. What’s worse though is that no matter how many hours I keep spending working on the episode it doesn't seem to make any progress >< . Its even worse than the introduction I did a while back. Currently even one frame of animation is taking a couple of hours to complete (I never noticed but there is Soooooo much detail in a normal big o episode its mind boggling!) At any rate there may be a ray of sunshine yet because really completing one frame enables me to do all sorts of things which could add lots of thousandths of a second (or hundredths of a second if I’m lucky ^^) to the animation length. To those of you wondering I believe (although am not certain) within a month the trailer should be ready to be viewed. It should be a whopping 45-49 seconds of the episode!!

To the Production team,

In case some of you have been wondering what I have been doing here is some of the stuff I need to think about when doing the animation of the episode. Some of it gets a bit technical so feel free to not read if your not interested.

First and foremost before any work even begins a "vision" if you will must be made of what I more or less want in the sequence. Just a basic vision more like ideas is what I start out with. After I see what I want in my mind its time to come to reality and start thinking about what I need to make it happen. For this particular sequence I was only able to conjure up how two shots (not even 10 seconds in total length) would look and so help was needed from some of the artist who are helping with the project.

Basically this first 45-49 seconds can be broken up into a sequence of around 20 shots. Each shot contains or will contain pictures which overview paradigm. Within each shot there are about two or three layers. Usually the first layer consists of the main focal building (the one I want the viewer to keep focus on). This building has lots of detail and even though it is only one (possibly two) buildings it takes a long time to make sure it looks right. Of course though there are many more objects in a shot than just the main building.

The second layer (underneath the first layer) contains secondary buildings. These buildings are the ones with less detail and are the ones off to the side and behind of the main building. These types of buildings add to the environment of the main building. Though these buildings have less detail there are lots lots more of them (since it is a city) thus even though they don't take as long as a focal building (generally at least) there numbers makes completing this layer take longer. Yet only having buildings looks kind of funny.

Thus the third layer (placed under the second layer) contains many most or all of the other kinds of detail. This layer usually consist of the background lighting, how the sky looks, or more of a solid color in order to emphasize another layer. Generally (at least so far) there are only three layers, however another layer may (and most likely will) be added (above the first layer) so that special lighting effects (especially the kind of lighting in front of the main building) and other details (such as cars and people) can be added in.

Each layer approximately takes 1-2 hours. The episode is playing at 30 frames a second which is rather fast but it makes the animation look better. This frame rate will actually surpass the frame rate at which the normal episodes play at so I am hoping the animation will look extremely smooth. However because the frame rate is so fast the amount of frames that need animation greatly increases. Currently at 11.9 seconds there are 358 frames. Each frame completed is about .05 or .06 seconds added to the length (hey ill take gains where I can get them). Generally designing the first few frames of a shot is what takes the longest. After that subsequent frames are usually just modifications to the first frame which are done easily most of the time (this will stand true for the rest of the episode as well). Of course without good artist to draw good buildings, lights, skies, etc so I know how things are suppose to look the whole process is greatly extended in the amount of time it takes to complete the frame (s).

So far I have about 5 shots for the first 45-49 seconds. (This is about 15 short of what I need.) Certainly I could make this whole sequence of shots just a montage of my own artwork of shots of other episodes, but what would be the fun in that? Thus I asked some of the artist in the production group for shots of the city. Currently of the 5 shots 3 are from Lost_Cyborg and the other two are from other episodes. Also Nightingale has contributed some shots, however I since I am not adding new shots at the moment ( I must finish with other shots first) her shots have not been added yet. Obviously I would want more fan art shots from other artists than my own artwork however if I am unable to acquire such works then I won't have a choice but to use my own fan art of stills and such from other episodes.

Hmm aside from all that other smaller things I must do: Coloring! (actually coloring is quite the strenuous task since it is very very easy to miss color something), making mini "trials" of what I am animating to make sure it looks ok, showing another person the mini trials to make sure the person thinks it looks ok, and then viewing the same 10 or so seconds of animation about 100 times again to make sure the animation is ok and also to make sure I didn't make any mistakes in design or coloring of the animation.

Its all not that bad though since I do enjoy the whole process and especially being able to animate and see the greatness of a finished animation.

For those of you still working on the project, thanks! and to the slackers, get it together . Also if anyone would like to join in the Production Team please send me a pm or post in this thread.


Thanks for your time,
Ace378

Well then as far as the trailer is concerned I have now completed the first 7.3 seconds of animation (about 8.5 hours of work). The trailer currently is at 16 seconds of mixed storyboard and animation. Some input would be nice as to how it looks so far (even though you may not think that a couple of seconds is worth looking at since it takes so long to animate even one second any input would be great). Things to note in the unfinished trailer:

The sky in the first sequence with the broken clocktower is pretty simple and it is not completed yet. I just made the sky that color so that it wouldn't be white.

There are still storyboards in the trailer. Although it will take some time these will be converted into animated frames with the same colorset of the other shots.
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Things i would like commented on are

How the general color scheme is so far.
If the animation looks choppy.
If the animation is too fast or too slow for you to notice whats going on.(i have already slowed things down some but since i am continually working on the project i lack the perspective to see how fast it really is and working frame by frame doesn't help either)

Something else to look at is whether or not the last sequence of storyboards is in a good order. Right now it is a panning shot of a big dome with buildings in black and some sky and water then a still shot of a couple of buildings and domes to give a general perspective on how tall domes are then finally is another still shot of the same thing almost but more zoomed and to a local level. Before i start actually animating those shots i need input on how they look and if anything should be changed about them.

If you are a member of the production team please contact me asap so that i may send you the file. Currently the opportunity to see the unfinished trailer is only extended to members of the production team however is nobody gives any input i suppose my only option will be to get input from the community.

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

Hi, Ace, thanks for the e-mail. I have been making slow,but steady progress on my backgrounds, but I always forget about checking up on here ^^;

I'd like to view the trailer =D
But I don't see a link anywhere =O

P.S. Classes started this week, and I hate doing my classwork xD I want to finish up one of my backgrounds this weekend (after class work) and send it to you. That's my goal!

Hi Ace378.

If possible I would also like to see the trailer too. I know I have been extremley slow at getting the stroy boards done. My husband and I just moved from Oregon to Austin Texas and alot of thigns are still packed up, things for me have calmed down alot so I have plently of time to work on the this project more if you would still like me too.

Thank you,

-Beth

Yea sure no problem (already sent you a pm beth). One thing to keep in mind is that it is uncompleted and kind of short (well ok it is really short) but it is a look in the same direction that the episode will be heading in so analyzing it will help to make sure everything is going good.

So far I have gotten a thumbs up so to speak from most who have seen the unfinished trailer. As a result I will continue to animate and finish this trailer once and for all. If any member of the production team has anything bad to say about the trailer so far this is the last chance I suppose because once I start pouring in hours to animate the rest I don't think there will be much room for change .

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

Well I need some input at the moment. There is one shot in the introduction sequence that has buildings and a dome by the water. The buildings and the dome turned out nice but for the water im just about lost as to how to color it. Just to test out the scene i have the water a solid color but I obviously can't keep it like that. I may be able to make the water a gradient but if I do should I make it a linear gradient or a radial gradient?

If I make it a linear gradient then what should the two colors be? ( Also there is not much room so unless i can fix it a linear gradient may produce a thick line between the two colors though i may be able to fix this issue.)

If i make it a radial gradient then what should the two colors be? ( Also note that if it is a radial gradient i must have a light source coming from somewhere and that light source will reflect upon the other buildings in the shot.)

Lets see the shot is semi at night but more so somewhere between noon to night at the moment. Any good ideas for the color and gradient? if so please post the color you are thinking about in hexadecimal format so I can work with it quickly. And more likely than not there is going to be a gradient of some kind so don't just think of one color think of two.

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

I would suggest the radial gradient and the other two colors so probably be a lighter blue and then a darker one like Navy Blue this way the ocean doesn't look like a flat one color. As for the light I think it should come from this might sound weird so I am going to try to explain, if we were standing in the ocean looking at the domes the sun should be behind the person looking at the domes so that the light will reflect onto the domes and the water this way it could help make the ocean/water look more real and it could also help mask the colors differences in the water.

Here I tried to sketch out what I tried to write, I hope this helps. I am not laways good at explain with words.




-Beth

I see your reasoning for the radial gradient. However im afraid that since the shot is kind of a mix between sunset and night there won't be that much sunlight. Even so the shot contains the shadow of the buildings within the water since the buildings are in front of the dome the shadow is being cast by the dome. thus the light is coming from the dome. however thats not to say that there can't be a radial gradient it would just be coming from the dome instead of from the ocean. Actually I worked for about another 30 minutes on the picture i had and found a really nice linear gradient. Using some tricks I was able to get the linear gradient to not have any one visible line defining one color from another so it worked out pretty good. Although i am not done with the shot so I will try both what you have said Beth and then a radial gradient coming from the dome. Thanks for the input.
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Ok now we all know that at the start of every episode of big-o they have the title of the episode appear and the act number. Well we know the title of this episode is going to be Walking Together Down The Yellow Brick Road. But what should i put as the act number? Right now just to see how things (like the fading in, etc) would work I have it as follows
"Lost Act:01
Walking Together Down The Yellow Brick Road"
However I don't suppose i will keep it like that so then what should the act number be or what should it say?

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

Maybe: Act 00
Or the infinity symbol? This was it has no distinct placing in the original story, but still a number to "match". ^^;

The infinity symbol sounds pretty fun. I sort of always thought that this story was sort of set between Act 13 and 14 so maybe Act 13 1/2? But that may look too long and I think if we did it as Act 27 it may look more confusing. I would go with infinity one then becasue all of us will never let Big O go on without being rembered! ^_^"""

-Beth

Alrighty the infinity symbol sounds great. I will go ahead and make the changes needed. As far as the production everything is going along great. Granted I have been doing a lot more 'research' into different anime techniques and styles than animating (been watching a lot of anime in other words ) but I will begin animating soon enough.

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

Been putting in a lot of time recently. I am working on the fourth scene and I need some more input. All I need is for some team members to analyze which of two color schemes they would prefer for the domes contained in the shots and whether or not the shots can come of as pass-able. In terms of color there have been some major changes made since the last preview of the trailor I was showing (There has also been some content changes and more minor changes encompassing things from speed of the scenes to waves for the water). Please pm me and I will send you the two pics, however since the 4th scene is not yet finished I will not be releasing a new version of the trailer to the team at the moment.

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

Its been a while.

Alrighty then this weekend I have put in some time and there is good news and some bad news. The good news is that I am almost finished with the scene I was working on and I will finish it today or early tomorrow morning and then e-mail the new trailer which contains a new scene and a new storyboard scene added to it to any member of the team that wants to see it. More good news is that after this scene is completed there are only two-5 more shots before the trailer is completed then finishing touches and it can be released. The bad news is that this scene alone has taken about 3-5 hours longer than was expected (it should have taken about 2-3 hours). In short at this rate creating a full episode might take longer than even initially thought. However since this sequence is an outdoors sequence it may be that that is the reason why it is taking longer than expected. When we actually start with the indoor shots we will be focusing more on character detail and naturally since we are indoors there will be more shots with the same background since there is limited space in one room. For example in a talking sequence between Roger and Dorothy we might have them looking at each other and then switch the camera from Roger to Dorothy. In essence only very little would change in terms of the background when we switch between the characters. Anyways at least thats what I am hoping for. At any rate production members give me a shoutout (through pm or e-mail etc) just so I can make sure you want to see what the new scenes look like.

Thanks for your time,
Ace378
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Well it seems to be another one of those good news bad news scenarios:
The good news is after taking a look at what storyboards I have for this trailer I’ve been working on the next scene should only take about 30min-1hour to finish. So I will be working on that scene before I hand out the unfinished trailer to members.
The bad news is that the unfinished trailer won't be ready as soon as I thought since I am going to complete the next scene as well. However like I said the workload for this next scene shouldn't be to bad so I should still be able to show what I have by today (Sunday 4/2/06).

Alrighty trailer update is now complete. A side note if you will: The last scene has had notes added to it to show where it is going. However the scene has been extended a bit so that you all would be able to read the notes. In reality the scene will not be quite so long but it will follow the notes. After that scene there are only 2-3 more scenes left then it will finally be completed! woot!! Sure feels like its completion is closing in pretty fast so maybe I will spend some more time on it and get it completed so then we can move on to the rest of the episode!
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(Think I may have spoken to fast )

Well its been a while since the last update and I think it will be a while yet before the next update. Simply put production has been halted. Lots of reasons but most important is that this is the first summer I have had off (as in only 1 class this summer as opposed to 3-4 and no need for a summer job~yet) in 4-5 years and I really haven't been doing much of anything. To that extent I have also not been working on this project. For those of you who helped with this project I am sorry but your talents will have to wait a bit longer before they are put to the animation table. It is almost the 1 year anniversary of this project and as such at this time I am disassembling the production team. When production continues a new team will be assembled (of course all previous members are encouraged to come back to the team). This way I will be able to tell who wishes to be involved with the project and who does not and will hopefully encourage new members to join as well (Take note everyone who has worked on this project thus far will still be listed in the credits even if you so choose not to return to the production team).

I will still check the forums and if anybody new wishes to help when the production continues please just pm me or write a post in this forum. I estimate that my laziness ( ) will stop around mid-late summer. Until such time that "Production Continues" is in the title of this thread all pending jobs are to be suspended (well officially at least: if you want to work on the project I won't stop you however I will most likely not take any work until production continues.) Although all this has been said and done its not as though the project will remain halted forever. With that in mind look forward to when production continues and we will have this episode animated yet!!

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

(wow not a double or triple but a 5th post I hope this isn't bad luck or anything! So far for me its been a great summer. Having had no break for 4 years really took its toll but now it feels like I have too much time and im bored of my daily routine more or less.)

That being said without a moment to spare I am proud to announce that Production of the Big O Project will now continue!!!

So then first things first: if we are going to produce this episode were going to need a production team. Well then how do you know if you qualify to be in the production team? Its pretty simple: if you like Big O and are a member of the Paradigm-City forums then you qualify! Now then how does one go about joining the production team? Simple again: all you need to do is make a post in this thread saying you would like to join. Its not necessary to have any kind of special talent but if you do have a special talent you would like to put to good use on the team then please say so when you make your post.

Example Post:
"Hi there! Been keeping up with the project and was sad to see it halted. At any rate I would definitely like to be a part of this project! I do have something of talent in animation if that can be of any use."

This is a pretty big project so all kinds of talents are useful from writing talents to drawing talents to sound effects talents etc but understand that talent isn't just defined as the talents just listed. If you have seen Big O enough to be able to judge how a scene should look thats also a talent that would be useful to the Production Team. In short if your interested in this project then join, we can use all the help we can get.
If you have any questions please feel free to pm me. I look forward to working on this project again!

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

(A note to former members of the Production Team I once again thank you for all of your hard work and look forward to possibly working with you again)

Glad to hear we'll be starting again.

Of course count me in.

I am glad to see you back on the team R.Smith! Now then has all interest in this project dropped or something? We still need lots more people to join in the production team! A production team of two, while capable, isn't very productive. For this reason we would like as many members as possible to help with this project. Even if this project is started again without help from a productive production team it certainly will not move rapidly. So even if your a little bit interested then join and be able to help out with the project.

Thanks for your time,
Ace378