The main focus of this project is to tell a story. That’s all. Simply as it might sound, it’s the hardest part in any movie project. The story has to work in many levels, it has to be clear, interesting, expressive, surprising, shocking, and leave the viewer satisfied. So we pulled out a first draft of the animatic and screened it a few times to our friends and they liked it. And we watched it over and over and even when we liked it as well, a strange feeling was showing up. What was it ? Something I could not tell at first glance.

These last months I ran into several talented people who kindly gave me valuable feedback and helped me understand what was WRONG about the animatic.

First I met Juan Carlos Camardella, director of Piscis a cool short movie I could watch at B-Conf last year. He gave me some thoughtful comments that made me think a lot. He asked me about what were my intentions with the story, and commented that the characters didn’t show their emotions thru physical acting. I thought “sure, it’s just a storyboard, not real animation” but later I thought “hum, something is wrong here” maybe I was too concerned about the look of the movie rather than the characters there.

Then I was invited to 3DWire in Segovia, Spain, where I met once again with my friend Daniel Martinez Lara. Talking with Daniel is always inspiring and revealing and this was no exception. He always stresses the importance of visual storytelling, and we watched a couple of short movies and discussed a bit about their highs and lows. Some were really great visually though weak about characters motivations. This put me back to think about my own stuff.

I also had the chance to meet Tim Leborgne and Michelle Nardone from this amazing school in Denmark called Animation Workshop. Michelle was also a great source of enlightenment. We talked about how much of the characters animation should be included in the animatic. So far my animatic had little acting, all stress was in camera motion, lighting mood and staging. In a word, she told me this is a variable thing, sometimes you have to put everything there sometimes you don’t. Those parts that are really a clue to understand the story, for instance a funny gag, or a very dramatic moment, have to be there.

Later I met Ignacio Ferreras, an amazing animator and storyboard artist who gave a masterclass about storyboarding I really enjoyed, and was kind enough to chat with me afterwards. His concepts were really inspiring as well. We talked a lot about typical production problems, and how often information is lost between the director and the rest of the team. He has the highest esteem for Miyazaki’s work (who hasn’t ?) and showed me some storyboards from his (Miyazaki’s) movies. Lots of animation there ! but again, main focus was on specific parts that make the story work, specially to give the intended sense of subjective time.

Then I watched lots of great movies including “The Adventures of Jasper Morello” which has several points in common with Mercator.

So, after all these mind blowing meetings my brain was boiling with ideas and things to try. Will the story change after all this ? Not really. The main story remains unchanged, but the way the story is  told will change. Not completely, but enough to make my previous animatic obsolete and boring to my eyes. So I’m back to the drawing board, working on these changes.

There are also other things I rather keep secret for a while regarding this project that made me be harder about the story, so, now it’s time to draw again, and be patient. Time to rebuild, redesign, rethink, so for a bit longer there will be no 3D here.

But hey, there is plenty of it around the world already isn’t there ?

I wanted to create a regular DVD with menus to be able to quickly screen the animatic to other people without the fuzz of codecs and video players in different OSs. Since I only use Linux, and I’m rather ignorant about DVD authoring I started googling and found out a couple DVD authoring applications available.

I tried Q-DVD Author and Devede. Devede is quick and easy application but unfortunately the version I tried crashed consistently every time in one of the final steps of DVD creation in my rather old Ubuntu Gutsy. Q-DVD Author in the other hand worked perfectly in my system and after a few tries everything went fine.
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Wow, it did take me a lot of time to finish this 2D animatic. As you probably know, a 2D animatic is just like an animated storyboard. Here we assign time to the different shots, and give hints about camera motion, and character staging/blocking. Here is where we work on cinematographic flow and rhythm. So, it is indeed a very important step and… this is the first time in the project where Blender shows up !

That’s right, we use Blender’s Sequence Editor to create the 2D animatic. We loaded all plates from the storyboard and then started editing. Manuel did a wonderful first version of it and from there I kept on.
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Some of you asked me to show more drawings.

Color drawings are great to clearly depict the mood and lighting I want for each scene. Since I’m not doing this movie alone, and an image worths a thousand words, a clear lighting concept is the best tool for other light and compositing artists working in the team.

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Among the many things this movie is about, it’s about Poetry. Inspiration and what drives the making of a movie is something that is usually forgotten in the chaos and stress of production so it’s time to rescue them from oblivion. You might think, “hey, what does this have to do with 3D animation ?”… well, that’s a good question.

One of the strongest inspirations for this movie comes from Edgar Poe’s works and consequently from Charles Baudelaire. Both lived in the XIX century and had very tumultuous lives, driven by passion and madness. Along the movie you will find several references to both authors, particularly to Poe’s “Arthur Gordon Pym” one of my favorites readings of all times. Our movie like Poe’s novel, is about adventures in the Sea in a time where the most mysterious and unknown areas of the planet were the Poles.

Now let’s share a bit of Poe and Baudelaire…
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When I was a teenager I used to draw comic strips using ink and paper, spent long hours usually at night drawing like maniac, and ending up with my fingers aching and ink stained. Now life is so much easier

In order to plan the movie, have a feeling about how it should look, and even to determine more or less precisely how long the movie will be, we have to do a storyboard. And storyboarding is just like doing comic strips so I had an incredible feeling of deja vu these last weeks.
I started drawing the more important situations of the story (I can’t tell you too much about it right now) both in my bloc and then scanning them, or straight in the tablet. Sometimes a bloc is far superior to anything electronic, for instance if you are traveling in a bus, or if you are biking and suddenly spot something worth drawing. After the sketches are more or less clear and clean, I added colour trying to be as accurate as possible about the lighting and mood required for the specific shots. This is great fun, because after a while you start seeing a sketched version of your movie in a bunch of JPGs… Besides you don’t really need to have “print quality” drawings, only a few quick strokes and some color and that’s all required !
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