The look of the film (which is something I still really like about it) is completely accidental and is the result of trying to make the white of the animation paper disappear and not really knowing what I was doing. It’s amazing how little I thought through the process; I remember sitting down at my computer, having just laboriously shot all 500 or so drawings and thinking, “Oh shit.”. I really didn’t have a clue.

I ended up staying awake for 3 days to finish and was such a huge sleep deprived asshole that sometimes my friends who were there will remind me of it. Sorry boys. Anyways, here she goes:

Holy moly, what happened? Oh look, some storyboards.

I should preface that these are not totally organized in a presentable way, for example, certain boards will be used multiple times in the full film/animatic, but only appear once here. There’s a bunch of dialogue you’re missing out on too. Hopefully you get the gist of what’s happening. Stay tuned for an animatic…

Enjoy and let me know what you think in the comments!

Check the kid out! He plays the guitar and sings and he’s really quite a talented fellow. The information is on the poster, obviously.

Much to my surprise, I opened the box to find two live lobsters, writhing about. Ironic–yes–we Jews are forbidden the unkosher shelfish–but I’ve never been one to turn down a bacon cheeseburger or shrimp cocktail, much less a schmancy lobster dinner. Due to our random schedules, Morgan and I didn’t get the chance to sit down for dinner together for a day or two, and we grew quite attached to the lobster living under a pile of wet paper towels in the pyrex bowl in our fridge. We affectionately (and rather appropriately, in my opinion) named him “Mr. Lobster” and when cooking time came, it wasn’t easy to say goodbye.

Please enjoy “Eric & Morgan Eat Mr. Lobster” or, ”How I Became Vegetarian For A Brief Time”.

It might be better if you think of it as an update explaining the absence of any other updates. Truth be told, I’m busy. This film is dying to get made, but I’m still tying up some loose ends, uncompleted projects, whatnot. 

That said, new storyboard deadline: Jan 31st. I’m hoping this gives me enough time to power through this other stuff and get down to the nitty gritty, if you will. Put the nose to the grindstone. The wheels to the pavement, et al. These are gonna be some kickass boards too; let me tell you. I’m excited for you to see them. I really am.

I’ll keep you posted.

-Eric

My arm is inside the gray haired balding guy on the right:

Things you’re gonna need:

1. Photoshop CS3 or higher
2. A general proficiency with Photoshop CS3 or higher
3. A Quicktime movie that you’re dying to draw on top of
4. A pen tablet or mouse

Begin by firing up Photoshop and opening up the video file you want to roto. I’m not sure what video formats Photoshop supports, but most any quicktime .mov file should work. This much I know.

Badda-bing. Doesn’t look like much yet, but notice that little filmstrip icon in the layer window. This indicates that we have a video layer! I’m excited if you are.

The next step is to open the animation window, which is found by navigating to Window>Animation.

Holy timeline! You can scrub through and watch you video if you like, which, I think, is pretty rad. At this point, you’d do right by yourself to name your layer something appropriate like, “Video” or “Source” or something like that. I didn’t do that. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have though.

Onward! Let’s make a new video layer so we can draw over this thing. Navigate your menus to Layer>Video Layers>New Blank Video Layer.

It happened again! Another one of those layers! This is great. We’re gonna draw on this one. Twirl down that triangle to the left of the layer name in the animation window to look at its keyframe properties.

We have four properties–Altered Video, Position, Opacity, and Style–each of which is keyframeable. The altered video property holds our drawing information. If we were to scribble on our canvas we’d see a keyframe appear in the form of a small purple box.

As proof of concept, let’s move ahead in time and doodle on another frame.

Another keyframe! This is great. Now the fun part: REPEAT. Trace them frames. You can make as many video layers as you want; you can even work with regular layers to apply static effects or overlays to your whole animation.

When you’ve finished tracing and you’re ready for export, navigate to File>Export>Render Video. This brings up the render video dialogue where you’ll set up your settings for export.

I won’t go into detail here–these settings are project specific, but you could probably leave everything alone be all set. Just make sure to save the file somewhere you can find it.

Voila! Our finished product: