Spooky Doll Kids Storyboards

Here are the first 10 pages of Spooky Doll Kids, the "What's Eating Brownie?" story. I'll do up a couple of other stories soon, one I've written called "Unravelly" and maybe another that I have a general story idea for, that might be called something like "The Caterpillar Competition". But for now, here's revisiting the original story I did in 2004. The whole film can be watched at the end of the 10 pages. Just scroll right down. Enjoy!

Mother's Day 10.05.09

Mum's are great
they make cake
And of course they do
do greater things too
Like work and buy
houses into the sky
How much they give us
with such loving fuss
Happy warm fuzzies
to all of the mummies
Most of all to my own mum
the special and bestest one

My mum came over in time for Mother's day, and stayed a week here in Melbourne! I hope all the mum's I know, had a fantastic, lovely, fine blue sky day. I had an awesome weekend and week having my mum over here, showing her around and spending time with her. I haven't seen her in 8 months. She's also got a slight fear of travelling alone, so this was a first for her coming over alone. And she managed to get around on her own via tram/train and bus while I was working during the week, and saw more shopping places that I've managed to find already! The public transport aint particularly conveniant from where our apartment is as we're quite South of the all the hubbub and city, so that we could be closer to work. So as well as loving her being over, I'm so very proud of my mum.

Sketches to distract airplane time

While on the plane, after playing all the brain training games for the day and with nothing else to keep my mind off, being scarily in the air for another 3 more hours, I drew each of my characters...I haven't revisited Merle mouse for awhile, I'm not sure how their (Merle and Gigi) story ends yet...

Youtube viewers!

WOAH!

ok, so I released Spooky Doll Kids in time for Halloween, and expected to get some new people seeing my film, you know, a few hundred....
Just then on last check 3,111 hits!!!!
that's right, over 3000 viewers!!!! just over a night and barely two days!

Spooky Fests and Screenings

Here's the list over the past 2 years. Every time I recieved an official phonecall or an official email, the latest one was just as exciting as the first. And I was truly sorry i could not be at each screening sitting in the audience, listening to their 'oh how cute!' and laughs and claps.

Festival Official Selections and Screenings:
California International Animation Festival (Shocker Fest Oct2006, USA)
Boulder Asian Film Festival (Sep 2006, Colorado USA)
Salento International Festival (Nov2006, Italy)
Rooftoop Films NY Summer Series (July 2006, Brooklyn USA)
Shortcuts Film Festival St Kilda (27Sep 2006)
Fitzroy Shorts Melbourne (Mar 2006) 3rd place Punter's Choice Award
Monster Exhibition, WA Perth Museum (02 June 2006)
Equinox Film Festival (2006 Melbourne)
San Diego International Children's Film Festival (2005, USA)
Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) (2005)
SPLIF 2004 (part of Revelation Film Festival (2004)
Downunder Film Festival 2004 (Norther Territory)
Australian Effects and Animation Festival (2005, Sydney)
Best of the Rest Tropfest (2004, Sydney & Melbourne)
WASA 2004 (West Australian Screen Awards) nom best animation,
2nd place Audience choice Awards
Fremantle Outdoor Film Festival (2004)

Spooky Doll Kids now showing!

Spooky - This is a test

A Maquette (cheap and nasty white plasticine model) of Taboo. The other critter was an early stage of the head sister cult mouse, (who Hugh named Sister Bubonica) seen minus ears and cloak.

One of the first things I did while the sets were still being built, was test the camera, that was kindly loaned by the FTI Equipment and Facilities. I also had to see if animating on two's would look okay (I started out keen to animate on 0ne's), and what i could getaway to make things flying in the air. The button eye is actually attached to an unwinded paperclip i stuck into the foam, facing away from the camera.



And this is also a first test to stream my video while I prepare 'Spooky Doll Kids' for show. Wow it works!!!

Spookys filmed. 2. Shot Specifics

Some more behind the scenes annecdotes on specific shots.
You might want to check this out after you see the short film so as to not spoil the illusion. I will have it up here by Tues 31st Oct. Halloween! Wooh!


Oh this Brownie mirror. I really wanted the lights on it for that vanity mirror look. First it was hard to keep the lightbulbs stuck in place around the mirror, metal to metal, and I tried unsuccessfully with all types of glue, and ended up using black, double sided tape. Then Seymour helped me rig the circuit up, but the batteries wouldn't hold out enough through animation, and the scene would be significantly dim by the end of the shot. so Pierce helped me hook up a transformer, only he used the wrong voltage and despite me telling him about currents and additive voltage, he blew the light bulbs. so another day later to go get new ones. Then I had a mishap with the transformer overheating and melting, so I had to scrounge up a new transformer. Then another bulb went funny, but I shot it finally as quick as i could and there is a moment when the lights do dim, but coincidentally it coincides with the moment Brownie is shocked and jumps.


I learnt the value of backing up. In this shot, the character positions' were difficult to get to, and required the animator to strain and lean in for the duration of animating (aprox 2.5 hours). back breaking stuff. And it was the only shot where after I finished, the computer crashed! and I lost it all! and so I had to do the whole thing from scratch AGAIN....and then I lost it again!!!! through some different computer fault. of course, I hadn't backed up yet. I couldn't face animating it for the third time, and my back would've broken anyway, so I made Serena do it. And despite her saying she can't animate, she really can.


It was a real life size postcard, but of course the one Taboo holds, is a tiny card. Taboo and the others I made lifesize too, as in if they were real, so really this postcard is a cheat.

Set up for the shot when Taboo grabs a pin off the shelf. I had to make a fake hand for Taboo to grab the jar since his real arms were too stumpy and not nearly long enough.


Here's some funny detail me and Serena made up for the other jars of pins. Most of the jars were provided by my little brother Jamie (a pharmacist), and the pins I carefully hand picked from the my mother's work room (a professional seamstress, anyone need Bridal gown alterations, or any clothing alterations for that matter, she's by far the best in town). and we painted the pins accordingly to what ailment they stood for. fun!


The armature inside one of Taboo's legs broke halfway throughout shooting but he was light enough to stand up anyway. This corridor shot was the glory shot, it was the longest shot, and funniest (i thought). It was also one of the last shots I had to do, and by then it just so was that BOTH of Taboo's legs were broken, so making him walk, let alone run across the space was beyond hard. There was much posting work that Serena had to do, due to me just screwing it in the end and holding him in place and taking the shot with my fingers still in view.


Lots of people asked how I did the stomach shot. It worked out first time with what I had in theory in my mind. A painted piece of sponge, lighted from below on a glass coffee table, and old gummy glue, with big dyed plasticine Brownie parts on top.

Spookys filmed. 1. The Shooting!

Now we get to the shooting stage! starting in the chilly darkness of the Old Civic theatre.

The DOP stuff i loved doing and was what i was looking forward to the most. (photography has long been another love of mine) but i had no idea of the technical side of it. i ended up using 4 desk lamps with coloured cellophane taped to each, despite having access to Seymour (Davison)'s coloured gels. i'd spend ages getting the look perfect, taking up to three hours at the longest, to compose and light each scene. In the bg on the stage, you can see the Pierce's Medusa set.

And then me with a warm hat. might have looked goofy, but it made me feel fuzzy happy, very important. Because by this time after building everything, which took so much energy to get started for each new set, and took a good while to complete each set, the end point was still very far off. I began to animate, but i wasn't even halfway there yet. very hard when you've already been going at it 7 days a week for more than three months.


In the beginning, when i was flip flopping around with the lighting having no idea where to start, Pierce got one of his crew, Steve Cottingham, who was a pro DOP, to get me a started with the shot on the left. I told him what the scene was, and with what i had been stuffing around with for ages, in a matter of a few minutes, he lit it....and it was perfect. i suddenly realised the value of finding a worker who's good. there are people who can do the work. and then there are people who can do the work like you want. Just like here, I stepped back and looked at the scene, and for once! I didn't have to tweak anything! it was perfect first time round.


Early on, I realised how much I hate animating. I'm good at it, and I love to watch good Animation, but the actual process of animating, I was, and still am way too impatient. it's slow and not fun. So I found myself animating my shots pretty fast (Ransis and Alee was being shot at the same time and I whipped their arses).


After completing the first half of the film, it was time to move, I re-set up everything in my home lounge room, fortunate that my parents were on holidays for a couple of months. Another
cool person i met via Pierce, was Shannon Spiers. who had a very nice dark style of photography and she helped me experiment with the mice cult scenes.
And one day there was an interesting shadow on the wall that we thought looked like a Mister fox. hmm, premonition for a future story i think....


In the thick of the animation, having to work through the continuous weeks of not being able to see the end point, the worst is after the halfway point. Having burnt out many times already, and going at it quite hard for what felt like an eternity to get this far....and then knowing there is still the whole other half to go. Finishing is still SO far away.

Sometimes having to keep going til the wee hours of the morning, so as to not leave a hot set and shot half done. After weeks of working day and night, mostly solitary, getting through the animation one long shot after another, it's a very, very, long slog. There were many times that i felt.....well that photo on the right, alone, cold and blue. "Why couldn't I just be a good daughter and listen to my parents ie choose accounting (or other good paying, secure profession) study hard graduate and work. in my case, as a science graduate, and be happy with that?"

In the last third of the shooting, Serena came here and there to do post work on my shots on computer as I finished animating them. There were strings to take out of shots where things flew, and for that paper plane shot, there were three strings to be held up. Very amusing and difficult to balance the two on a plane suspended by strings. I've actually got video footage somewhere of the difficulty of the flying shots.



Now it got easy (after all my shots were done). I felt so good that I ended up reshooting the first shot of Brownie's room due to one of the picture frames in shot that i had glued on sideways by mistake.

Spooky Pre Production stuff

omg, there are just so many pictures and so many stories, I'm not sure if i can fit it all here on a blog entry. As much as i hate condensing things that have a larger backstory, here's a selection of the things that went on before the animating filming stage.

I must give the biggest shout out to Serena, my right hand person. She was there from start to finish, excellent with the fine detail Spooky Doll Kids demanded, and mostly brilliant at times when I was freaking out or losing momentum. check out her cool rings, and her cool handiwork (bottom of this entry). In the bg there's Greg Black (what a spooky cool name) helping out where he could.

I made my own pattern for the mice's cloaks, and tailor sewed them to fit each mice as they were all different heights. the fabric was the same one I used for Taboo, except I dyed Taboo's. pure raw silk, I picked up in the bargain bin at a fabric store for only $5 or something crazy cheap. i guess the colour wasn't anything appealing for dressmaking.

I did many storyboards, and many changes, and pulled it back to not too many changes. One big change was Brownie at first was a boy, but the fabulous Hugh (screen play) suggested I change it to a girl, which made the dynamics between the three of them perfect. In the other pic, Christien helped out where he could, and Jem on the right, made Taboo's armature and other tricky bits. I sewed up the rest. painstaking and uberfiddly.

Fiddly but not as painstaking, was his facial parts, and Brownie's was quite fun. Scribble logistics was a real nightmare.

Moved from the Film and TV Institute, where the space was getting limited, over to the now demolished Old Civic Theatre building, where the Davison Brothers was set up, working on their stop-motion pilot "Medusa First Date". Big thank-you to Pierce,

for the production space, and for keeping an eye on me while I was meandering around, and he helped me make Brownie's armature and fit it with latex, which i then painted to get the final gingerbread colour right.

Working next to Pierce i got to meet many cool people I wouldn't have got to cross paths with otherwise since i have a general aversion to social events. Magnus in the hat there was one of them. very charming voice (talent) and crazy, funny entertaining guy.

Taboo's rooms was one whole span of set. this was the hardest to transport and i had to crush the top of the set which made me wince, to get it in and out of my dad's station wagon as we were shifting it.

Here's a bad photo of me (that's why i don't use camera flash) with Serena mittened up. It got damn cold at the Civic theatre. and the little amazing spooky bits she made. Oh and if you look closely, there's a green psuedo snake off the top of medusa's head that Pierce slipped to me one day. made a nice bottled ingredient for Taboo's shelf. you'll see it in the last page of the film credits.