Another Late Night of Storyboarding

Ah yes...it's amazing how quickly you learn to take all-nighters when you work in animation. I remember these type of days being a chore to get through, but now those 48 hours feel exactly like a good old 24.

I was up all night storyboarding out what we here at Hammerfist Productions call....*drum roll* SEQUENCE 06. It's really nothing special, although it does involve a Panda. Currently I've been doing my storyboards by sketching it out rough on paper first and then scanning those in and cleaning up in Photoshop CS3 using a Cintiq. For those that don't know, a Cintiq is basically a tablet monitor-which means I can draw directly onto the screen. While I do love those Wacom Intuos 3's, I just can't get a good enough control. With the Cintiq I can zoom in and get a lot of detail in the frame, and easily reuse background shots by copying and pasting. I still prefer inking on paper, but this way there is far less cleanup and I don't have to worry about those little ink mess-ups.

As JJ pointed out in the last post, after putting together our first board into an animatic, we realized that there need to be some major retooling-especially in the second and third act. So.....we're hoping to get a first pass animatic by the end of the weekend.

Some more fun news! We recorded new temp audio tracks for two of the characters and are going to record David's tonight! JJ and I are finding that these new voices are adding a lot of life to these characters-far more than the temp tracks that he and I recorded a month ago. Maybe we'll put some of those on the DVD...if there is a DVD *crosses fingers*.

Well, I'd better get back to work. I was offered to be driven out to Arizona today (I'm in Los Angeles mind you) to see the Cubs play, and I am unable to because we scheduled a recording session tonight. Oh David, the things I do for you....