Monthly Update: May 2022
And here we are, at long last. After almost 3 and a half year of planning and work, the first Forlorn short film is finally complete. At this very moment the film is in the very capable hands of one Toft Willingham, who is creating one last piece of score to bring it all home. By this time next month, the entire story should be available for all to see!
But as I’ve said many times before, this is only the beginning. While the music is being written, I am currently working on creating the edit for the stitched together version. This presents its own series of challenges. Due to the episodic format, I was able to be a little more slow paced and atmospheric with the edit, giving things more time to breath. But that changes when it becomes one long 10 minute plus film, and certain scenes and moments I feel are better if they move just a little bit more spryly. This is mostly concentrated to the first half of the film, because once the action kicks in the pacing doesn’t need to be much faster than it already is. Once the edit is finished, I’ll have to rework the sound and then I’ll need to kick it off to music once more. I have no idea when that might be done by, and it’s a bit of a low priority for me at the moment due to the fact that…
I’m moving to Vancouver! The timing of everything worked out in such a way that the moment I finished production on this project that an interesting new life opportunity came a knockin’. For those interested in the details, my wife is a layout artist at Disney Feature Animation, and they’re currently opening a second studio up in Vancouver. The folks up there decided she’d be perfect for supervising the layout department at said new studio, and, well, there we are. After having spent the last ten years living in Los Angeles, I think I’m ready for a change of scenery. I will miss a lot of things about this city, though. The community of artists and filmmakers is truly wonderful, and I hope I’m able to find an equally passionate and talented group of people up in Canada. Based on what I saw when I went to visit, though, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble. The move isn’t scheduled to happen until the middle of the summer, so I still have plenty of time to wrap everything up in a nice bow beforehand.
In addition to the whole moving thing, it was fortuitous that I finished Forlorn when I did because all of the sudden so much is happening! Screenings, wrap parties, museum events, weddings, fairs, the list goes on. Life is finally starting to pick up again after 2 years of relative calm, so to speak. I suspect I truly won’t get a chance to dig my heels in and start work on something large scale until after my move, at this point. But, I do anticipate being able to chip away at my various ideas.
Now that Forlorn is wrapped, I have a number of new and exciting things I want to work on. The first is a very brief short film based on a funny idea I had a while back, codename: Gold Rush. The aim is to make it under a minute, and to try and realize as many pieces as I can just using Unreal Engine 5. I’m hoping to expand my horizons once again after being confined by one project for so long. The biggest thing I want to explore is utilizing metahuman and the in engine control rig. One thing I hope to explore is being able to use metahuman as a sort of jumping off point for character rigs. By creating a character using the creator tool, I want to see how far I can push the design to something a little less grounded and photorealistic. I personally don’t care for completely realistic humans as an art style, and I want to take a character and warp it to make it both highly detailed, but also cartoonishly appealing. Think of something along the lines of a recent Final Fantasy title. If I’m able to achieve that, it will help significantly with future project. If not, I’ll either have to embrace metahuman as is, or continue making stylized characters by scratch. In addition to that, I want to run the animation pipeline through its paces, and try and animate entirely within Unreal. I’d even like to see if I can use motion capture a bit as a base, and animate movement on top of it. For Forlorn I didn’t use motion capture in any way, and while I prefer hand keyed animation, I’m interested in seeing if I can ease the time burden it takes, particularly for things like runs and the like. This short currently has a completed animatic that I was able to whip up in engine using Mixamo motion capture and some simple sets and cameras. Getting the characters right is now the next step in all that.
In addition to that project, Forlorn continues! I’ve been doing a lot of writing, both in terms of actual fiction, and in terms of refining the world bible. It’s such a blast sitting down and getting my ideas down on paper. I’ve written another short set in this world - another quick 1ish minute thing - and using what I learn from Gold Rush I hope to achieve some really cool stuff. I also have a third project cooking that I’m very excited about, and hopefully I can share more about that soon.
Even though the short is ending, I expect I’ll maintain this blog for the foreseeable future. This website may even turn into the official Midnight Scientists website in time. If you ever want to hear about what I’m working on, you can find it here! Until next month!
Alex
