When you’re setting a film in a specific time & place it’s important to do as much research as you can. While the internet proves a valuable source of reference, nothing quite takes the place of going out into the field!
So with kind permission from the good people of Renaissance Antiques on Capel Street in Dublin, Stephen O’Connor set off armed with a camera to snap away at anything interesting that caught his eye. Here are just some of the snaps which he came back with:
Sorry there have been no ‘23 Degrees…’ posts for a while. Work commitments are crunching precious time once again, but work on the short film has been ongoing in spurts.
Here are some colour studies done by Stephen O’Connor. It’s amazing how colour can change the mood of a shot even though it’s the same object and angle.
Check out these studies of the Professor’s study:
As anyone who follows us on Twitter will know, Brown Bag Films now have a Facebook page! You can visit us at www.facebook.com/brownbagfilms.
We’ve all had a very busy summer here at the studio, so we were treated to a BBQ party at Kobra nightclub as an end-of-summer thank you. We were told that a mystery mode of transport would bring us from Smithfield square to the BBQ. Nobody had a clue what it would be until we found two Viking Splash bus/boats waiting for us in the square!
Thanks to the Irish Film Institute & the Polish Embassy in Dublin there will be a 5 day animation workshop for kids next week from July 20-24th. In this free workshop kids will learn about basic animation techniques, using music by the classical composer Fryderyk Chopin (in order to commemorate Chopin Year, 200 years since the birth of the famous composer). For the workshop, participants will be guided by expert animators and will be shown how different animation techniques work. They will also make a short film of their own, with a Chopin soundtrack.
To book a place or for more information, please contact:
Alicia McGivern, Irish Film Institute, tel (01)612 9466 amcgivern@irishfilm.ie
Nikola Sekowska, Polish Embassy in Dublin, tel (01)219 7430 dublin.culture@msz.gov.pl
The voices of your characters are hugely important, especially when you have to compress so much exposition into as little time as you have to tell the story! You want your audience to care about them and understand why other characters in the film would care about them too.
Myself & John Hurt Voice of Professor Orit
The Looney Tunes are set to return to our screens!
Being big fans of the old Warner Bros cartoon here in Brown Bag it’s great to see our favourite characters brought back to life.
New Looney Tunes line-up by Jessica Borutski
But the old, wary and cynical animator in me will wait and see what it’s like before I make any comments.
Here are a few articles on it that you can judge for yourselves…
Article on Collider.com about the new launch…
Cartoon Brew article on Character Designs
Designer Jessica Borutski’s Blog
So what do you think of the designs and approach to the format of the new shows?
Getting the character design is always a tough part of any film. We’ve been through the mill on this short already and have done quite a few versions:
This was the first design of Professor Orit that we settled on, drawn up by Derek Horan:
(click on all the images to enlarge them)
Was it just me or was Professor Orit looking a bit like this bloke? (more…)
One of the big advantages of working on a 3D show over a 2d show is that it’s easier to keep the character on model! The problem with 2D shows is that you have so many artists touching the characters at various stages that it is essential you keep them all drawing the character the same way or the model can drift and end up not looking right.
Because we had created Olivia as a 3D model, it meant that she would always look the same, although animators still have to keep her movements on model so that the things she does still feels like it is Olivia and not something another character might do. (more…)
Coming to our cinema screens in the near future are two all time classics tv series shows.
Yogi Bear and The Smurfs are getting their first full length feature adventure next year but now they are going 3D!
An animated film has never been nominated for an Art Direction Oscar!
Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Up (2009) are the only animated films ever to be nominated for Best Picture, while Waltz with Bashir (2008) is the only animated picture ever nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
However an animated film has never been up for Best Art Direction.
Now saying that, Avatar did win last year but many would not regard this as a solely animated piece as the lines are very blurred with this film. I must say though it thoroughly deserved the win for an absolutely remarkable achievement, and perhaps it will be the turning point for the animated films to be recognised. (more…)
