Poetry in motion Friday, 26 February 2010
Posted by Helen in News.Tags: animation, books, video
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The Carry a Poem reading campaign has been in full flow here in Edinburgh this month. Locals have had a chance to get hold of the free book, attend numerous adventurous events, see poems and poets on stage, on plants, on landmarks and even on sports shirts.
If you’re not in Edinburgh, or have missed the excitement, there’s still time to read the Carry a Poem book online (it’ll be available until the end of February) or take part by answering the question “how do you carry yours?“. Or, for BookCrossers, there’s a Carry a Poem bookring – sign up now.
Oh, and take a look at the animated trailer that Binary Fable produced for the campaign. If you’d like to know more about how it was made, I’ve been blogging about the production process.
Viral explosion Friday, 8 January 2010
Posted by Helen in News.Tags: animation, books, video
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A sneak preview of the Carry a Poem animation has exploded onto screens in Edinburgh and online. How do you carry yours? Visit www.carryapoem.com to tell your story and join the campaign.
The full story Friday, 28 August 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.Tags: video
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Welcome to The Lost Book, an animated web series following the adventures of investigative journalist Aileen and her dog Watson as they solve the crime of a stolen book.
The six-part story was written by visitors to this website between January and July 2009. Anyone at all, of any age, anywhere in the world could join the writing team.
To find our more about how people took part, take a look at the Get Involved! page. For more about the characters, take a look at Cast and Story or read Watson the dog’s blog posts in Follow Your Nose. Or, to find out about the production of The Lost Book and the people involved, try the “Making of…” posts or our series of One Minute Interviews.
The final installment Friday, 24 July 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.Tags: animation, prize draw, story, video
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Hello and welcome to The Lost Book! (Welcome back to the regulars – we made it!) We’ve just launched the sixth and final episode – watch it now:
As you know, the story of The Lost Book was written entirely by you, the audience. Congratulations! You all deserve a round of applause. This was an amazing piece of teamwork – thanks, everyone, for taking part and working together.
Episode 6 – animation rough Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Making of....Tags: animation, Music, soundtrack, video
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The animation rough for episode 6 is finished and handed over to sound designer Stephen and composer Alexis. Three cheers!
The rough still has our scratch track for the voices – we don’t record Cora and Sean until Sunday. The timings of all the action are finalised – although, we do still have quite a lot of finishing off to do: all the 2D graphics/animation (pub sign, newspapers/magazines, text message), the character movement in the Sheep Heid Inn and some of the smaller movements in the cleaning/dominoes shot and the Watson laser beams shot.
By the way, we’re using the Aileen character model for Aileen’s mum at the moment. The fully-rendered version will be an older version of Aileen, with grey hair and different clothes.
Aileen learns kung fu Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: animation, video
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I grabbed the “Aileen training to be in Invisible Inc.” shot, because I knew it would be entertaining to work on. I used the mostly-but-not-entirely spurious justification that I am Binary Fable’s martial arts expert.
(Judo classes. Aged five.)
Then I spent a lot of time on YouTube. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, YouTube is a brilliant source of reference video, particularly for anything that would be too exhausting to act out myself. Here are a few screen captures from the resulting routine:
(It was great fun to animate!)
Episode 6 – animatic Saturday, 11 July 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: animation, composer, script, story, storyboard, video
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We’ve got a draft script, a set of storyboards, and an animatic so you can start to see how episode 6 will work.
First up, congratulations (and thanks!) to the people whose story ideas made it into the episode: Meg, for Kyle and Aileen’s date and for Aileen’s article; IndiaJones and Lulu for Watson’s evidence-gathering; Bookaddictus for Beryl’s arrest; Tom for Aileen joining Invisible Inc.; and Headlong for Aileen’s Mum getting released.
The animatic is very rough: storyboard sketches put together with a scratch track (a recording of the script as read by Adam and me). What it does for us is allows us to plan the timings of each sequence. This is a much slower episode than episode 5: although a lot of stories are included, they’re being recollected calmly. It takes the pace down from the frenetic activity of the rescue scene, so that we’re ready to leave the characters at the end.
We’re still discussing which library Otto is working in and what Professor Remi is doing (we snuck her story in on a magazine cover!) so there are some details that need to be finalised.
In the meantime, we’re working on the animation. We need to have all the animation finished by Wednesday morning so that we can hand a “rough” over to composer Alexis Bennett. It’s a pleasure to welcome Alexis back to the project – he wrote the music for episode 1 way back in January.
What is Beryl’s evil plan? Friday, 19 June 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.Tags: animation, story, video
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Hello and welcome to The Lost Book! (Or hello again if you’ve been here before – thanks for popping back!) We’ve just launched episode 5 – watch it now!
You can catch up with the story so far by watching all the episodes (it’ll take about seven minutes) or, for a quick catch-up, skim our introduction to the cast and story.
As you probably know, the story of The Lost Book is written entirely by you, the audience. There’s only one episode left so you need to decide how things end. First up, what’s our criminal’s motive? We know that:
• Beryl Potts hired book assassins K.B.E. to steal Sally Challenger’s expedition journal.
• The journal probably contains the secret of Professor Remi’s rejuvenation – and perhaps the location of the mysterious Ikhata.
But – why does Beryl Potts want the secret of eternal life? What’s her plan? Is it all about profit? (As Tom says, Grazp can charge higher prices if they have a monopoly.) Or, is Beryl ill and looking for a cure? (Anna’s suggestion.) Or, does she have some other goal?
We need you to tell us. Leave a comment now with your thoughts – what is Beryl’s eeeeevil plan?!
Edinburgh film festival showreel Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Posted by Helen in News.Tags: animation, film festival, video
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The Scottish Animation Group is putting together a showreel of recent animation work to impress and astound delegates at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which opens today.
Here’s the clip we’ve submitted showing all sorts of snippets from The Lost Book (in an entirely random order!). The sountrack we’ve used is the end credits music from episode 3, composed by Michael Ferguson and played by Jane Atkins, Su-a Lee and Alison Mitchell.
Many thanks to Iain Gardner and Once Were Farmers who volunteered to put together the showreel for the Scottish Animation Group. I’ll look forward to seeing everyone else’s clips during the festival.
Settling new scores Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Posted by Adam in Making of....Tags: composer, Music, scottish chamber orchestra, video
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We are rather pushed for time this week, but here’s a taster of the fabulous music Michael has written for episode five. I took the camcorder along to yesterday’s recording session where we had Jane (viola), Janet (flute) and David (cello) upping the ante and bringing the action packed score to life. It was intense – as you can see from the concentration on the faces of Liam and team in the control room. The composer’s smile says it all, though. It was a great session and we are really looking forward to getting the final mix into this episode. Well done team.
Three cheers for YouTube Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: animation, video
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Hooray for YouTube, source of reference video!
I’ve always been very dubious about leisure activities that can’t be done while eating cake. Reading, watching films, drinking coffee – yes. Abseiling – definitely no.
So, when it came to animating Lyn’s abseiling sequence, the traditional animator’s approach of studying “reference video” of myself performing the actions required didn’t appeal. At all.
Three cheers to all the people who selflessly risked their lives to abseil down things while being filmed by someone with a YouTube account – I’d never have been able to animate this shot without you!
Episode 5- animation rough Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: animation, Music, sound effects, soundtrack, video
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We’ve finished the animation rough! Hurrah! That means composer Michael and sound designer Stephen can get started, as the timings of all the action have been finalised. It’s Michael’s second episode – he also wrote the music for episode 3.
Confession time, though. The animation isn’t quite as finished as we’d like it to be. The stuff that’s missing won’t affect the sound design or music, but there’s a fair amount we need to finish off. Aileen and Professor Remi aren’t animated yet – but as they’re tied up, they’re not going to be moving much. Also, we haven’t yet animated various ropes (this episode is all about ropes – abseiling down ropes, swinging on ropes, being tied up with ropes) and there’s breaking glass still to go.
It might amuse you to know that the hardest thing in the episode isn’t the point where Lyn comes crashing through the window (although it’s going to take a while to get the breaking glass right). No, the hardest bit was making Lyn and Otto hug. CGI characters don’t have any physicality, so it’s hard to make them touch – if you’re not very careful they end up merging into one another. A hug where one person reaches in to touch the other’s kidneys is not good!
Back to animation. I have a rope to tame…
Episode 5 – animatic Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: animation, story, storyboard, video
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We’ve finished the storyboard sketches for episode 5 and put them together into an animatic. (An animatic is a series of still images with a voice track – often a “scratch track” recorded by the animator, but in this case it’s a rough version of the dialogue recorded by our voice actors at the weekend.)
It’s been quite a tense few days here. It’s very unusual to record the dialogue before the storyboards are finished. We usually go through lots of iterations with the sketches, and the work on the storyboards inevitably leads to changes in the draft script. This helps to make sure we’re telling the story in the best way possible. It’s important to spend plenty of time on the story process.
We were planning to record the dialogue yesterday or today. But, Cora‘s very busy this week so we ended up recording on Sunday. We didn’t have time to go through the story process properly.
So, we did what we could. We acted out the script (quicker than drawing it!). We had the actors record a few lines we weren’t sure we’d need – it’s better to get too much than too little. We sketched some of the key scenes and put together a rough animatic that included a few sketches, a scratch track, and a lot of blank screen. We were as confident as we could be that the script was going to work for us.
But, we’ve been a bit nervous this week. Storyboarding when the script can’t be changed is scary!
The good news is that everything seems to work well. The pacing of the episode is interesting: it starts slow, but is fast and frantic by the end. Take a look at the animatic to see. You’ll have to imagine the movement and the sound effects!
animation-matic Thursday, 28 May 2009
Posted by Adam in News.Tags: animation, interview, video, writing
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Here’s a fun thing for a Thursday.
The other night I was introduced to Nicola Morgan for the first time and was able to congratulate her on her new animation. Thing is, and she’d be the first to say so, Nicola is not an animator, she’s an award winning author. See, there’s this website, goes the story, where you type in the script, play around a bit and press the “make movie” button and Hey Presto. Heck, just what we’ve been waiting for! We’re about to put our feet up and watch episode five make itself!
Nicola has put the semi-automated process through its paces and produced a gem of entertainment. Check it out on her blog. And, while you are there, read the blog. It’s something anyone who wants to write will really get stuck into. Oh, and to find out how to do the animation yourself – it’s at the end of Nicola’s movie. Have fun!
It’s a Record Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Posted by Adam in Making of....Tags: Music, scottish chamber orchestra, soundtrack, video
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You’ll have noticed from the clip we put with Blair’s recent composer’s blog that we have quite a bit of fun recording the music. And that was just the setting up! So here is another set of snippets of the music actually being recorded, montaged together again to give you a flavour of the session itself.
Bookending the sequence we have Liam, the sound engineer in charge of all the kit (sitting on the other side of the very reflective glass separating the players from the control room). You’ll also see Blair conducting, Su-a pizzicato cello-ing, Janet fluting and Iain um, well, crashing – with laughter from pretty much everyone else. You might also spot the spiky-haired chap with the camera in some of the scary reflections – don’t know who he is! However, do not be deceived by the relaxed atmosphere. Everyone worked very hard and the results were again spectacular.
Thanks guys for making the recording such a success – we think the episode 4 music sounds fabulous.
Episode 4 launched! Friday, 15 May 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.Tags: animation, Poll, story, video
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Hello! Welcome to The Lost Book! (Or, welcome back! Thanks for keeping us company.) We’ve released episode 4 – watch it now!
You can catch up with the story so far by watching all the episodes (it’ll take about five minutes) or, for a quick catch-up, skim our introduction to the cast and story.
Episode 4 ends with a cliffhanger – who’s been shot? Who’s doing the shooting? (And, is their aim any good?!) Well, that’s up to you! Here at The Lost Book the story is written by you, the visitors to the website.
There are three polls in the sidebar to the right. Cast your vote to let us know what should happen:
1. Who is shooting? Is it Aileen? Or, Beryl Potts – she of the evil laugh? Or, book assassin Otto Dafé? Or, someone else we have yet to meet?
2. Who is being shot at?
3. What’s the outcome? Has someone been injured, or killed, or did the bullet miss?
(We’ve already decided that Aileen will be captured as a result of whatever has happened, so if she’s the person being shot at we can probably assume that she wasn’t killed.)
If you’ve got any theories about what’s going on, leave us a message.
‘Welcome Back…’ Thursday, 14 May 2009
Posted by blairmowat in Making of....Tags: Music, scottish chamber orchestra, soundtrack, video
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As the first composer to return to The Lost Book, I initially felt a certain amount of pressure to ‘outdo’ my previous score. How could I make it sound bigger, better and more impressive? However, that’s not really what composing for film or animation is about – it’s about being respectful to the narrative and trying to complement what’s happening on screen. That’s not to say, however, that there weren’t moments where I felt the music needed to be bold and assertive.
In regards to instrumentation for this episode, I decided to use the same instruments. I’d enjoyed working with percussion before and the flute and cello would tie in nicely with Michael’s score for the previous episode.
[Editor's note: the video shows snippets from the setting-up for Monday's recording session, with Iain Sandilands preparing various percussion instruments, Su-a Lee on her cello, Janet Larsson with her flute, and Blair practising his conducting.]
Roughed out Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: animation, Music, sound effects, video
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The animation “rough” for episode 4 is finished and handed over to composer Blair and sound designer Stephen.
This is the second episode of The Lost Book that Blair’s worked on – you’ll remember his exciting, adventurous music for episode 2. By coincidence, Blair has again got an episode where the characters travel around the world, so it’ll be good to hear what he does with it.
Blair will be working on the music today and tomorrow, ready for a recording session with players from the SCO on Monday morning.
At the same time, Stephen will be starting to get sound effects in the right place and build up the right sound atmosphere for the episode.
Meanwhile, here at Binary Fable, we’re not allowed to change the animation timings now that the rough has been issued, so we can concentrate on building the last few props and sets, making small tweaks to the animation, and getting everything looking good with texture maps and lighting. Lots to do!
Animatic number 4 Saturday, 2 May 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: animation, story, video
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Here’s the animatic for episode 4. (An animatic is simply a series of still images put together with a rough voice track. It’s a tool to allow us to plan the timings of the animation.)
We’ve got almost all the sets and props built, so most of the stills are screen shots from our computer models. This means we have been able to finalise our camera angles – we only animate things that will be on camera, so it’s important to fix their positions as soon as we can.
The one set that still needs to be designed is Grazp Pharmaceuticals HQ – we’ll have fun with that!
Next stage: animation. We need to get an animation rough (which contains all the finalised timings) to composer Blair on Wednesday. Better get to work…
Hearing Voices Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Posted by Adam in Making of....Tags: actors, cora bissett, sean biggerstaff, video
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Yesterday we were hearing voices, many different ones. Cora and Sean had to record lines in no less than seven different voices between them. They won’t mind me telling you that there were some nervous looks exchanged when we introduced the script at the start of the session. But, as we knew they would, they breezed through it with their trademark flair and vocal agility, and finished in record time – thank guys!
As always, Stephen was on top form and did well to keep up. We noticed too that a new piece of sound recording kit had appeared among his array of gadgets – lots of knobs and dials and stuff, all very impressive.
So episode 4 voices are in the can and we’ll be putting the animatic together over the next wee while so you’ll soon be able to listen to the dulcet, if not slightly chilling, tones of Beryl Potts and Otto Dafe.
The Lost Book is an animated web series where you wrote the plot.
