Hope everyone’s been having an excellent start to the new year!  Despite the recent radio silence, the team here have all been hard at work through the holidays. A slow down in updates is usually a good sign that we’re just deep in the animation mines, focused on the work at hand. Josh and I are currently in the studio every day, working full time on St Oran as we push toward the finish line.

The end of the shoot is definitely coming into view now, and it’s a wonderful feeling to look up at our wall of storyboards and see so many completed shots circled in orange. That color will always be associated with satisfaction and momentum for me, as I’ve used the same shade of highlighter to mark progress on nearly all my films. We all have our small rituals, it’s funny the ones that stick with us.

These last few months of shooting have been very productive, we’ve really got into our stride now. We know the rig, have streamlined the techniques, and solved a lot of the technical challenges, which means we can get a shot knocked out with a lot less head scratching or trips to the hardware store.

It’s been proper winter weather, but the blizzards and freezing winds make it all the easier to stay focused in our cozy animation cave. When there’s beautiful weather outside, it definitely becomes a lot harder to lock yourself away in a dark room! Only downside is that everyone on the team has taken a turn at being knocked out by the plague at some point, which can really pull the rug out from under the best planned schedule.

These last few months have also brought us our first few studio visits from backers! It’s always wonderful to meet our supporters in person, and be able to share what we’ve been working on. It’s nice to see the project through fresh eyes, as we’re so close to the work now that it’s easy to forget what it looks like from the outside.

It’s been fun tackling a few new animation challenges lately, we flipped our motion control camera track from horizontal to vertical, allowing us to do new camera moves (pushing in/out of scenes) for the the first time. This had always been the plan, but it’s nice to go from ‘theoretically possible’ to actual practice without too many hiccups. Big shout out to Brett Knott as always, for his work in helping design and construct such a sturdy rig!

Our characters have also said their first words! There are only a couple of short moments of lipsynch in the film, as it is told in voice over, but it is truly magical to see these characters we’ve been working with for so long say their lines. Dialog is very time consuming in animation, so I’ve always steered clear of it, but would love to do more in future projects. Josh has been a true wizard at lip synch, I’ve been learning a lot from watching him at work.

Well, that’s all for now. Back in the studio tomorrow, shooting a scene set in present day Iona for the first time!