WIP: Sauna Tango

[toonsisters]

Hallo everybody,

as promised here you are a little insight into our project "Sauna Tango".

It is supposed to be a 35mm short animated movie about 4 minutes, independently financed by film foundation.

Short summary: In a art deco style steam bath several visitors become a physiological treatment by a handsome young balneotherapist.
Synchronously to a longing tango tune he wrenches the peoples arms and legs. Everybody seems to be refreshed exept the wet mop of the cleaning woman.

State of work: we started to animate with 4 Animators. Due to several reasons we are 2 Animators left and we have approx. half the way done.
These days the clean up will start by 2 artists from Berlin.


Here you are some walk cycles on youtube by MCVL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw84S9TomWI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5gR98AulT0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvhfP924p88

And here you are some background and character design.

I am the producer and director and I will let you know about our progress.

Thank you very much for any comments and helping suggestions also in our other topics.


kind regards
Vera

[ZigOtto]

wow! ... looks great!
the style (design) of the characters is a bit too "classic" to my taste, but very welldone!
I like the BG atmospere too. (the watercolor media fit perfectly with the place!)

I'm curious about your pipeline ... what's your production workflow ?
are your animating on paper, then scan and color digitally ?

anyway, I'll be looking forward eagerly to a WIP animated full scene ...!

[Prekk]

Hehe...I love the Chubby one.

Will this be a silent movie ?

[toonsisters]

@ ZIGOTTO:
On this project I was up to avoid all of the paperwork, because the artists are working all in different places. We thought, digital exchange of our work by internet would be much more easier than sending paper by post and have all the trouble you can get with converting analog to digital and changing programms all the time.
Maybe you also experienced that staying on a slow going bus is sometimes quicker and less thrilling than changing busses two or three times. At least one connection is always late or you miss it and this often takes more time in the end than staying on the slow going but arriving bus.

For this reason I searched an animation programm which has a satisfying digital drawing section as well as a clearly arranged compositing section.
We did not find one that made our dreams come true, but we chose TVPaint for its drawing qualities, which are the closest to classical paper feeling you can get at the moment, I guess.

So exept the background, which is drawn traditionaly water colour on paper by the stage designer of our local opera and theaters, we have done everything in TVPaint yet and are going to do post production as well.

Because this is our first project in TVPaint we still need help even for the simplest problems like the walk cycle problem. We are very thankful for this forum and the help of this warmhearted community for us to muddle though the using of this auspicious programm.

@PREKK:

This film will be without dialogue exept the swearing polish cleaning woman, but continously accompanied by a wonderful tango tune.

best regards
Vera

[Peter Wassink]

It sounds like it'll be a fun movie

i love the designs and the animation of the walkcycles.
Also great to see these nice Watercolor Backgrounds.

last week i watched "the making off" on the 'Lilo and Stitch' dvd
and it had a whole chapter on watercolor backgrounds... including an interview with the famous Maurice le Noble, very interesting stuff

As much as i love what TVP can do....no digital tool can really get you that same feel as the real thing does


anyway...
feel free to ask with any problem you come across....
chances are we have ideas for a solution or a workaround.
and if not... we'll just ask the TVP crew to built it into the next version

[musrami]

Wow, interesting project.
I follow you. I like the walk cycles, great animations.
It is a good beginning

[toonsisters]

Dear Community,

long time no see. ( as the jamaican guys say )

Here we have one section of the film "sauna tango" in colour just on music, sounddesign still missing.
The other three parts are still in different stadiums of postproduction.
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=V7dyRbXAb9c


I am affraid, the quality of the video is not good enough to see the mistakes we made.
Actually I want to ask you if we can improve our shadows, but the problematic details are not clear enough.
But they will on 35mm I suppose.

We hope we will be able to finish the project until end of june.
Because of the short budget, we have to finish it almost in our free time.
But somehow everyone in our project seems to have having babys right now (we have 3 production babys yet and there are 2 more to come),
so free time became pretty precious.

But, don't forsake us! We'll keep it up until the end!

Please give us feedback if you know ways to improve the quality of the video or the quality of the content,
thanks
vera

[ZigOtto]

awesome ! I can't wait to see the whole thing ...
a pity the film will not be ready for Annecy 2009 submission.
good luck Vera for the film's future, and with the babies as well !


ps: the only tiny defect I could find is the overlaping of the characters's shadows,
imo, if lighted by the same light source, the crossing part should be better
in "Darker" mode instead of "Multiplied". this little error affects only few frames,
so it's not so dramatic, and easy to fix if you decide to .

[Paul Fierlinger]

This is wonderful acting and animation -- so refreshing to see some of the good old East European trickfilm reappear on the scene -- at least that's how I see this from just your short clip (could be wrong). The acting is absurd yet not hyperactive. You seem to have the knack of knowing where to draw the line and your timing is spot on, which is exactly what is missing in so many shorts these days. Hey you Stretch and Squash idolizers, pay attention to what really works!!

[Peter Wassink]

great animation! i love it. can't wait to see the whole thing with sound effects.

from this clip i especially like the part where the tall guy is backing up to take the fat guy on his back, nice footwork.

[Elodie]

I really like your work. Chracters are fun and background pretty good. I want to see the final result =D

[toonsisters]

Thank you all very much for your enthusiasm.
This is really catching and touching.

When we watch our results and only have eyes for the mistakes we sometimes loose the feeling for the first impression.
So your feedback confirms us that we are on the right track.

to zigotto:
thanks for the suggestion.
actually we did not use a light source.
I must admit we just copied the animation layer in black, warped it on the floor in 20% opacity and adjusted it by a key framer fx.
Some "footprints" still don't match but we'll do a final polishing in the end of postproduction.
To avoid this overlapping you discoverd, I think I can just merge the shaddow levels.

Do you think we could get a better result by using a ligth fx?
And do you think a newbee like me could realize it in an acceptable amount of time?
Then please let me know which effect and which parameters I should try.

at Peter and Paul:

I am very greatful that I have met Matthias, wo first made such a wonderful character design to my story and then turned out to be one of the most talented animators I have ever met.
He will be very pleased when he reads your appreciative feedback.
So lets go back to work and finish it!
(very german, isn't it?)


Thanks a lot for this most welcome motivation,

Vera

[Paul Fierlinger]

Do you think we could get a better result by using a ligth fx?
And do you think a newbee like me could realize it in an acceptable amount of time?
Then please let me know which effect and which parameters I should try.

The way we handle this is that I just loosely paint a black spot, usually a rough oval, just like they do in the New Yorker magazine cartoons. It always works, no matter what the shape and it goes fast -- and yes, just like you, a black spot (sometimes blue-black or green-black) with adjusted transparency.

[slowtiger]

I think the lesser defined the shadow, the better it is. If I haven't been looking for it, I wouldn't even had noticed the overlap. Your solution is perfect.

I had a feeling that all movements were a wee bit slow, with not enough dynamic - but it could be deliberate, to evoke a relaxed, dream-lke atmosphere. Anyway, very nice movements, very personal, and definitely not your usual out-of-the-box animation.

[toonsisters]

I had a feeling that all movements were a wee bit slow, with not enough dynamic - but it could be deliberate, to evoke a relaxed, dream-lke atmosphere.

Yes, it is supposed to be more a choreographed dance than a physiotherapy.

Anyway, very nice movements, very personal, and definitely not your usual out-of-the-box animation.

If you refer to the animation style in my earlier films, yes. The story of "sauna tango" needs definitely more three dimensional and flowing characters and animation. I am glad that I found somebody who is able to do that.

thanks
vera