He marched them up to the top of the hill ...

... and he marched them down again.

Well, the animatic is almost there. I thought I'd drop by and mention a word or two about war and pace (deliberate misspelling) and post a doodle from the pages of the Red Book.

From what you will have seen so far it's probably quite evident that there's a fair degree of fighting that goes on in this film. Fight choreography can sometimes dictate a rhythm that effects scenes where there is no fighting. The film features stick fighting and that again suggests certain fight disciplines which have poise and grace. This is all useful stuff when it comes to pacing the film. But it also takes a LOT of forward planning. So a large chunk of my time on this animatic has been spent getting the balance between war and peace correct. I'm not an animation director anymore, I'm a diplomat.

I have also been temp scoring the animatic which helps tremendously. The music acts as a metronome to the action and that helps in getting that all important balance right.

A word with regard to imovies (which I've resorted to using, so add that to the software list); brilliant. Haven't used it before as a rough editing tool, but it's been a tremendous help. Usually I make commercials that run at roughly 20 - 30 seconds a piece and that can all be done on the timeline in Flash. So using imovie for 10 + minutes of footage really is a relief. I can see everything I'm doing and I can cross platform over into Garageband for the score and run off DVD copies of the animatic so I can show it to other people for feedback. Great stuff.

Grimmwood and all production work is © 2006, Ian Culbard, All rights Reserved.