I <3 NFTS

God, I love my new school.

I started a new blog for it with sketches and updates and stuff!

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Tophat Festivals

Just some updates as for Mr.Tophat's afterlife :]

Selected/nominated for:
- tent. Academy Awards 2008
- Holland Animation Film Festival

Also screened at/will be screened at:
- Expeditie Belcrum as preprogram for the outdoor-screening of the film Juno
- KleurenteleviZie (next month)
- Cultuurnacht Breda
- Gogbot Festival te Enschede (with .TAA selection)
- Dresden (with .TAA selection)
- Milan (with .TAA selection)
- Istanbul (with .TAA selection)
- Melbourne (with .TAA selection)


Also the poem of Tophat was read by mr. J.C. himself in London during a poetry night.
I also send Tophat off to several other festivals.

I'll keep this updated!

I really should finish my website!

Mr.Tophat Fully Online!

SHOWREEL 2008

more at:

The Blog
(that currently archives my artwork instead of my website)

TENT. Academy Awards

Well, the animation may be done (for now), but the future of it has just begun.
A day after I completed the animation, The Somewhat Queer yet Silly Mr.Tophat got scouted at my academy by director Peter Lindthout for the TENT. Academy Awards.

> READ MORE HERE <

The show is july the 17th and after that the selection will be exposed in the TENT. building in an especially designed installation. After that it will go to several (inter)national festivals. So of course I am very very happy and thankful!

The End / The Beginning

After 107 blog posts, documenting the complete process towards my graduationfilm, this blog has come to and end. I guess, I have no more to post but the animation itself.

But I decided to not do so. Not yet at least :]

Instead I have here the first 30-somewhat seconds:

If you want to see the full animation, you can send me an email :]


So far things are going really well, and I am excited to see what future this film has. Now I am off to schol to correct some final mistakes and then it's done and dusted and ready for the festivals :]

Expo wall

Well here it is:


And this is how it works:



Everytime someone passes by the wall, Mr.Tophat greets that person, by tipping his head, making his tall spire swings out and into frames.

This works cause behind the wooden panel three flatscreens are attached. In the wood Paul cutted several holes for the frames to fit on and then calculated how many pixels it all would be. We also calculated the spaces between the monitors, so that I animate the full thing, but we cut out these holes later. It works like your dual-screen: the hole between the monitors is ofcourse not there when you move your mouse from one screen to the other. But we made it there.

Underneath the little table (that I made myself - I am utterly proud, cause I fail at woodworking) is a sensor hidden, who detects people passing by. And that tells the flash animation to start playing.

Resulting in the best intro to an expo-room ever :p
Thanks Paul <3

Pre-Chassé & Expo

Slowly the end of this blog is coming in sight.
Once it has reached it's end I think I will shut this blog down and make it private instead.

Things have been amazing and upbeat in the past few weeks.
Of course there was the homerun to the end-presentation, and the presentation itself (which I thought went really bad but turned out to have gone really well). But things did not end after that. The next morning I was busy working on Tophat again, finishing the film and correcting a lot of mistakes. While drinking wine to my graduation I was animating new sequences.

Now things are rounding off. And with a BANG:

Paul Verhoeven took my idea to have Mr.Tophat spread over several photo frames with the end-exposition (28th of june to 2nd of july) and mixed it with his skills. Amazingly we are making a moving image-wall, where Mr.Tophat is indeed spread across several photoframes, and whenever a person passes by, he bends forward and tips his hat as a greeting.

I will upload a little movie of it soon and you can see it working and I'll explain more of it then.

The wall will have a little table attached to, with on it my businesscards and a little vase. The wallpaper is amazing and a donation from Jasper. It's really expensive and looks great. I think he regrets giving it away now :] Overall the whole exposition room is of high standard and mainly thanks to Jasper, with help of his girlfriend and Raimke.

I have also made a new poster, but people comment that they liked the previous poster better! guh. I shall see if I can edit that one and print it again before thursday.

And then last but not least

I HAVE FINISHED MY FILM!

It still has some mistakes here and there, but it's ready to show to the world now. This morning I tested my audio in the cinema, and it sounds good. Later other people tested the video and audio together and told me it works very well together now. Not in the least, thanks to Ruud who - though just returning from businesstrips and Annecy - I literally picked up from the station to work on the sound with me untill 1am this night.

Tomorrow from 13.30 to 17.00 is the premiere of all the graduation films in the Chassé Cinema, Breda.

My film shows second :] yay

Stills

(Quite a difference to what I showed monday -> click.)

Find the fill-up pages.

It's all rather stretched for some reason, but oh well.

...
Yes.

I am pleased.

Almost~

I haven't updated this blog for several days since I worked day and night (or more daynight since these merged into one thing) to finish the animation before last monday. Unfortunally I had some setbacks, so that eventually I didn't finish it just yet. But it's not much more now, then it's all done.

I do already know tho that I have graduated, and that with an average of 8 (we count to 10 where 1 is lowest, and everything below 6 is failed and everything above 8 is rare or impossible). Of course there were no less than 3 people with a 9 in our class, 2 with 8 and everyone has done so so well it's amazing. Each has done the best they can in their own specialisation and I am very proud to be one of them.

Next tuesday we have THE premiere of all animation and audio-visual graduation films and you can find the program HERE.
We have to make a poster as well and I designed this:


But I'll probably redo it.

I am currently finishing some extra animations and touching up some others. Unfortunally I can't edit everything as much or as well as I would like, but oh well.

Here are some still from what it currently looks like:

Keep movin' movin' movin'

though they're disapprovin' - keep them doggies movin' - RAWHIDE~

Another two cleanups were done today, one of them being the BIG MUMMA - the rosehedge one. When I saw it I didn't estimate it would be such a big chunk, but thinking of it now I should have seen it coming. Merel animated and cleaned it completely by herself except for Tophat's face which I did today.

We laughed at how off-model we constantly go.
Seriously, you don't want to see this frame bu frame ;p

Then Merel went on to clean the unfortunate event of Mr.Tophat's boattrip, and finished cleaning that at a high speed. Then she continued on the last animation for her: the big mirror in the shave page.

I did rendering today and also checked the projector in the viewing I am going to present the animation in this monday. The difference in quality made my heart cry a river. I tried to soothe it out, but still the beautiful image I see on the monitor does not come across on the projector. And then viewing from a DVD may be different again as well. URGH.

So tho I can't properly work in TVPaint at home I am going to give a shot and continue cleaning the barber. I only have 40 frames left and about 20 not properly inked.

Here you can see the rough cleanup and the original stickman animation under it - as you can see, it was originally ment to be longer, but due to timing in the whole it was cut tremendously.

I am drinking some "golden power" (redbull) to keep myself up and running and am secretly hoping I will finish this one tonight. Being an animator is really an unhealthy job. I mean seriously. You stress your body and mind to a breaking point for little to no money/payment. Even if you prepare yourself months before, in the end it's always panic (in the disco).

So yea, little sleep again tonight. I can't stand that I won't be able to show a completely finished and polished movie monday. guh..

Meid! Je haar danst!

zomg! dancing hair? no wai!

A quick render of how it all should be compiled together in rough form. I did almost all the pageflipping renders today and the animation renders take even less time! Like about 10 frames per minute! So time to clean some more now.

First renders

Last night I finished writing the text of Mr.Tophat. It may not be all great or proper english but you won't read it anyways. But if you do, you will get quite some easter eggs! like the REAL NAME of Mr.Tophat.

Today I finished the park and cinema scene and Merel also finished the gigantic cleanup of the rosehedge scene. I only need to draw in tophat's face in that one and it's all done after no less than 3,5 days! (which is very fast actually) Now I finally started on the barber, and Merel on the water scene. She is already halfway with that one and will likely finish it tomorrow.

Then she will do the shave scene while I continue to work on the barber. And likely we will both be done on friday with ALL the animation! Even if that seems impossible we must, cause really.. we must.

Here are some pictures of the either first and/or last frames of some of the pages with the right text next to it:

Yet the most pleasant news today is that I think I might be able to get the book actually 3D and looking good. Eric came today with the Maya file and we both editted it to the right size and worked some to make the last page bounce off. Unfortunally we weren't able to do this with the first 3 pages, but maybe I will find it out later.

We took some time making it look good, but still it was not too great. Eventually I just accepted it and we started the render of the first 150 frames. While I got other computers ready to do this the first render was already completed! 150 frames in 10 minutes in MentalRay and with shadows and everything!

As I was trying to edit the next render on the next computer I accidently deleted one of the lamps which suddenly gave a really good render. I decided to render the complete 150 frames again, and as I left I stole 2 frames from the files to show you here.


Because they turned out very dark on this computer I touched them up with Photoshop.

So far it's going good. I am praying everything will work out just as I had wanted it :]

Nom de plume 2

I made the book texture somewhat more friendly and stuff. Mind that this is just the basic texture. It has no bumpmapping, nor proper light and shadows and no background (the wooden table).

Nom de plume.

NOM NOM NOM

Some test texture I made for the book. With help of a texture from Resurgere. Not too sure if it's tooooooo realistic. I think I like it.

Now in Tricolor!