Wednesday 2 May 2012

The Highlights of The Dark Descent


It is now the 2nd of May, and yes May is such a lovely month, however, as we travel into this lovely ‘summer’ month we approach the deadline for our final major project rapidly. There is still a lot to be done before we can declare The Dark Descent complete, yet we are hopeful that it can be done in time!

As I have said earlier, I am head of colouring, and it is with joy and relief to say that the colouring department have now expanded. Earlier, I have been doing the grey/purple block colours for the old man, but now Emily and Darrien are onboard, and Emily has more or less taken over the role as the block colourer (and she is doing a great job I must add).

I on the other hand have finally moved on to the part I’ve been looking forward to the last few months: HIGHLIGHTING!
I love being in charge of the colouring. I find it relaxing and almost therapeutic when I work my way through the empty frames one by one, and there are few things as satisfying in the world of animation as to seeing the empty frames being filled with colours and brought even more to life.
And as fun block colouring is…It gets a bit repetitive over time. Highlighting is like a breath of fresh air now. Doing the highlights is so much more fun because you are not only following the lines given to you, but you get to use that blob behind your eyes to decide where the highlights go and how they will follow in the next frame to come.
So now my face has gone from this (^_^) when colouring to this:

Darrien, Luke (2nd year) and Elliot (2nd year) will be helping me with the highlights for the old man. The original plan was that I would handle them myself, but after going over the shot list, timing my work, and discussing with Tom and Miguel we’ve realized that help is needed if we are to have a chance at finishing them all in time.

The highlights for scene 3 are almost complete (just a few simple shots left) and I’ve set the boys to help me out with scene 5, as scene 5 is my favourite scene in the film (it’s just awesome and pretty) I don’t want the highlights to be rushed because we’re running out of time.
I’ve put together a little teaser of some of the completed highlighted shots so you can see the wonders a bit of light can do to an old plain gray man.
Enjoy.