I AM NIGHTMARE production diary #2

Every film, no matter how large or small starts with that first shot- I make my films in order so I start with Shot 0001- this first shot has always been the most difficult for me- GETTING STARTED is the most difficult thing for me- once I get started then it gets challenging and fun ^_^

So here is the first frame from the first shot of my new film "I AM NIGHTMARE"

It's nothing spectacular but its a start and you have to start somewhere- that shot is a test composite as it was the first one with this set- every time I render a new set I make sure the lighting works with the compositing/matte painting look I'm going to be using...

This is what the renders really look like-

So when a shot is animated- I use the hardware(OpenGL) render to render out a 1920x802 24fps Quicktime movie using the Pjpeg codec at %50 quality- these are proxy clips for the offline edit-

So I won't be doing any final renders until the entire film has been animated and the offline edit is locked- these proxy quicktime movies are small and the hardware renderer is very fast- takes about 2 minutes to render a heavy ten second shot-

In the past I rendered the finished shots as I slept BUT I'm changing all that- why? Because I ended up rendering a lot of shots and a lot of extra heads and tails on shots that I never used- and since power consumed = money. Doing it this way saves time and money.

Also I'm less likely to want to change/fix a shot if it has already been rendered because I know the time/money involved- So I can cut that whole process out and allow the film to remain flexible until the edit is locked-

We'd like to think out storyboards are GAWD and that the film won't change once we've planned it all out through the boards but it does change- and by doing it this way the film remains open to change until the very end.

On another note- thanks to everyone who has pre-ordered the film or donated to its production! I've been having fun drawing postcards for you all ^_^ If you got a postcard and took a photo like these awesome peoples please send it to me as I'm going to add them to the credits of the film ^_^

Glad to have you on the strange team Jacob, you madman! ^_^

OMG look at that evil logo back there! ^_^ Thanks J!Another bonus for those that have pre-ordered is that you will be shown updates and little trailers as I start animating that no one else will see- and soon I will send you a download to the films soundtrack as it is in progress- I've made 9 tracks for it so far, and my collaborator on the soundtrack has done a bunch of tracks as well.

On that note I'd like to thank my homie Dash out there who is collaborating with me on the soundtrack- I'm doing the super dramatic/epic theme type stuff and he's doing the dope ambient moody stuff. Thanks Dash!

Dash with A_BOOK
Brought to you by professional weirdo M dot Strange.