Festival Circuit

Tomboy got into First Look 2009

Today I submitted it to:

Birmingham's gay/lesbian Festival
Fresno Filmworks Film Festival
Miami & Fort Lauderdale Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
Mudfest in Australia
Media That Matters Film Festival
PBIFF Student Showcase of Films

so... we'll see... what happens....

First Look DGA screening!

Tomboy made it into First Look! Tentative date is March 5, 2009!

Mix Date

My mix date is Sept 28th. Then I will be officially done. Yay!

Almost Finished!

I'm tweaking everything.. but i'm basically done with the picture. WOO!

I spent a couple weeks revised and amping up the ending. I got help coloring it and am very happy with how everything is turning out. I'll have to post some final shots soon.

Example of colored scenes...

Here's a sequence from the ending that i colored. the backgrounds are photos taken from my parent's farm in iowa.

Finished Animation...

I finished the animation, now I'm going through and cleaning up/fixing the animation from scenes that need a little work.. i also have about 40 sec. colored and most scenes have a temporary background (some i used photos, others i painted a wash, and some were created in photoshop). i haven't decided on the final technique for my backgrounds. i'll be painting over the temp. ones... so it may still have some real life elements... i'm thinking the indoor scenes will be completely painted either by hand or in photoshop and the outdoor scenes will be a hybrid of photo and paint.

here's an example.

final countdown

i have 4 seconds left to animate. i have a few scenes i need to clean up and i've been working on creating rough/temp. backgrounds. i'm on schedule to graduate, which makes me happy. now i just need to keep moving forward. woo.

scene 2

here's another rough background i did

update

it's been awhile since i wrote anything. some big things have happened since my last posted, most notably: Tom Kenny is playing the voice of the Dad, one of the counselors, and one of the kids in the beginning.

Sheila mentioned the possibility of him doing the voice weeks before it happened, but I didn't hear anything until after I recorded with Jason. Sheila said Tom was interested, so I talked with him over the phone about the project and sent the script. He was into it, so he came in (while my bro Thomas was visiting which was fun for him) and he recorded for the role. He really nailed it and was incredible to work with. Gave me a little taste of what being a real director would be like, and it was an incredible high. It was awesome having my brother there too because he's a ridiculously huge spongebob fan. he kept his fanboyness inside though until after Tom Kenny left. I tried to be as professional as possible when Tom was around cuz I didn't want to come off as a geeky fanboy and told my brother to do the same. We had lots of geeking out afterward. haha.

In other news, over break I got to teach half of my sister's 7 grade classes. So i showed the film, talked about animation, and answered their questions. (When i told the faculty about this during my review, they thought it was cool and Sheila referred to it as a Focal group screening. it was funny.)the students were excited about Tom Kenny and enjoyed the story. Each class had a question about the same thing: they were all a little unclear about the locket. I've been thinking of different ways to visualize that sequence to make it more clear.

my review today went well. i have about half the animation done and did a couple color scenes. the faculty gave me suggestions and ideas to look into to make the coloring go faster--like using toonboom instead of mirage to color. hopefully that works. i'll need to check with Trixy to see how to do it. sheila said she'll check in with one of the undergrad who using mirage a lot as well.

i also started doing washes for the background. i'll have to play with them more in photoshop, pull out some color and add details to them. but its nice having washes on some of the scenes, gives me a better idea of where i'm going with the film.

my presentation at seminar last semester went well too. again, the biggest thing people pointed out was the locket sequence, so i'll just have to find a way to be more clear about her energy going into the locket so it makes more sense.