Moho Forum

I recently finished this:

It's a six part fully animated documentary series for TV about people who do good things for our environment.

I animated it all by myself on an insane schedule. I had about a month for each 14 minute episode and in that month I had to:

• -Collaborate on the script
  -Edit the interviews
  -Make an animatic
  -Animate the whole thing
  -Make music
  -Record sounds
  -Edit the episode
  -Mix the sound

I wouldn't recommend working this way if you value such things as "sleep" and "life"....

We were two people working on it, my partner traveled around the world recording interviews while I stayed at home animating. Fair division of labor right?
Actually, I tagged along to Stockholm and London but he went to Congo, Chile, India and Trinidad.

It may not be the best looking animation ever but given the constraints I feel pretty proud of it. It's by far the biggest project I've undertaken yet.
I tried a lot of different ways of working in order to be as efficient as possible.
In this shot there wasn't a lot of movement needed so I drew the tiger in Illustrator and Imported it into AS:

This workflow was quite a hassle so I only used it on this shot.

Whenever else there was limited motion needed I drew pieces in Paint tool SAI instead:

That background is a bitmap as well, but most of the time I made the backgrounds in AS. I made an .anme file with trees, bushes, grass, skies etc and then imported and rearranged pieces to get suitable backgrounds.

I also experimented a little bit with shooting silhouettes on video and mixing with the animation. In this shot I filmed my backlit hand and composited in:


Here's a still of a shot where I used the silhouette of my head:


In Sweden it will air on SVT2 at 14:30 on these dates:

• January 26
  February 2
  February 9
  February 16
  February 23
  March 1

It's not exactly prime time but it will be up on SVT Play as well.
It will air in Finland and Norway as well but I don't have those dates or times yet.
A recut version of the India episode will be screened at the Gothenburg Film Festival at the end of the month.

There's a website for the series (with some short clips) here: http://earthsaversfilms.com/

Wow!
That's a LOT of work and a beautiful project! I just checked the trailer and looks great, congratulations!
You should have told your friend to contact me in Chile! I would have been happy to give him a ride for my country and give him some advices and contacts.
And, of course, in my little apartment there is a couch for anyone who needs to sleep

Anyway, fantastic beautiful work, huge congratulations.

This is insane! 14 Minutes in one month? How did you survive this?

Appart from this, I think it could be a really good experience working on nearly all the parts of a production.

Very well done.

all the best from Tobias

skitoba wrote:This is insane! 14 Minutes in one month? How did you survive this?

With a lot of re-using of assets and little sleep...

By the way, I checked out your portfolio in your signature. Fantastic stuff! Your 2D animation is prety much flawless and I love your maquettes.

Can't wait to see what more you can do with Anime Studio.

Congratulation to this great work!!
Well done!
Grattis
I will check it out when it's aired in Sweden.

Congratulation well done.

That's an amazing achievement. I had a look at the clips on your website, and it's very impressive, particularly in view of your schedule. It must have been a nightmare though!

Hey Ponysmasher - great job. The stills look excellent and thanks for showing us some clips. If you need some extra graphics for one of the games - yell out. Happy to help.
Cheers...

6 episodes (x) 14 minutes each = 84 minutes. Add the trailer... Add up all the conceptual work under the time constraints without coming up for air. You were one of the two caped characters in the trailer!!

well done Ponysmasher - that's so awesome! I really like your character style, very recognisable.

Hope it's well received at the festival, I'm sure you'll get a lot of work on the back of this - just try and give yourself more breathing room next time (or at least become filthy rich in the process)

All the best!

Congratulations! Keep up the good work.

What an achievement! You are right to be proud as it looks excellent. Did you use HitFilm too?

Excellent style, story, execution, and result!
And even a game in html5!
Epic!
-G

Loved the clips PonySmasher, would really like to see the whole series too.

Fantastic work, ponysmasher! The clips are looking great. Congrats to a job well done! I'll watch the whole series as it airs on SVT and/or YLE.