Another one? I bet this one will be as awesome as Isolation!

Thank you!

Haha, we'll see! This one is quite the challenge, but hopfully the end result can deliver! But yes, the best thing about finishing one project is that you have every reason to start a new one!

Indeed! And thank you! And I'm very glad to have you onboard to help with the sound design and such yet again!

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Update time!

Wow, it's already been a month since I first posted this log, and it does feel like progress is moving at a snails pace right now. But that's pre production for you I guess, and right now I'm mostly prepping so I'll be able to start shooting before december is over. I like to be fairly organized with these projects, so I'm taking the time to write a detailed shot list and spread sheets for all the sound effects and visual effects I'll be needing further down the line. I find it helps immensly to figure out as much stuff as possible beforehand, partly because it saves time and partly because it usually makes the end result that much better.

I've also started building a lot of the "assets" that I'll be using for most of the film. So no actual sets yet, but a lot of different items and such that will feature in more than one scene. Like I mentioned briefly in the first post, the story will follow an entourage of soldiers etc as they travel through some troll infested lands. So the first few scenes takes place as they travel, and the rest (including the battle) takes place after they've made camp. A lot of the required "assets" will therefor be wagons, carts, carriages etc, like these ones:

I'll need to buy a few more horses, and I still haven't decided on a design for the "harness" where the horses connect to the wagons, but other than that they're mostly done! The smaller ones do look a bit chunky, so their design might change if I come up with something better.

This one is supposed to be a carriage for the lord that is travelling with the entourage:

And this is supposed to be a cage for ravens (don't have any good lego birds yet though, so I'll need to buy that as well):

And here I've started working on some trees. Still need to add foliage of course. The plan is to photograph these and then create a backdrop in photoshop I can print out and use for the background in my shots:

That's pretty much it for now! Coming up I'll probably start building the first set, and hopefully be able to start shooting within a few weeks.

Cheers!

Everything looks amazing thus far. You’ve definitely set a high standard for your films with Isolation and this one looks to live right up to it. Kudos for keeping your project so neat and organized, I always start off with everything planned out and organized and it’s a hot mess before long. Can’t wait to see this when it’s done !

"THAC XVII” Entry • YouTube Channel • I voice act

Thank you! Glad you like them!

Thanks! Haha yeah, that happens to me all the time as well. Planning ahead helps minimize the risk of it happening of course, but I like to make things up as I go along as well! Sometimes my instincts and ideas when animating are much better than what I originally planned for in the shot list, so I tend to deviate from the planned stuff every now and then if inspiration strikes me.

Thank you! The carriages are miniature scale yes, but a bit sparse on space on the inside as you correctly assumed. This one, the lords carriage is just about big enough that I can fit a minifig in there, but I won't actually animate anything inside the carriage (just the lord entering and exiting basically), so I'm hoping it won't be too much of a pain to work with.

This carriage is supposed to be something more along the lines of a supplywagon, so I only made it just wide enough so I can fit the 3x4 crates inside it. I have a tendency to focus more on looks than practicality when building stuff like this, so it's not really realisticly designed in any way

Update time!

Phew, the last few weeks have been quite hectic, mostly because I was fortunate eonugh to recieve over 700 auditions for the project on the site "Casting Call Club". As you might imagine, it took A LOT of time to listen to all the auditions, reply, and of course, decide on the actual casting. I managed to do it all eventually though, but I did have to enlist the help of a friend to act as sort of a casting director (a profession I have newfound appreciation for, I might add). I'll try to record basically all the actors during call in sessions so I can direct them live, which will also take a bit of organizing. But we should start recording during the last week of January if all goes according to plan!

Principal Photography has also officially begun! I'm still writing the shot list, but the sheer amount of shots I've decided on so far has really spurred me on to really pick up the pace with the animating. Four shots are done so far, which equals to about 25 seconds (about 1.2% of my estimated length of the final film). Yeah. This will take time. I'm counting on animating for the rest of 2021, and probably the last few shots during January and February 2022. So strap yourselves in, it's gonna be a long ride

A quick taste of two finished shots (slightly edited and re framed):

And to finish things off, I ordered a bunch of lego off bricklink specifically for this project, and all the minifigs have arrived! This is the current bunch (yes, some are missing heads, those will come in a later package):

There are 52 trolls, for those of you wondering! Not quite enough for the big wide shots, so I might have to do some crowd-dupliaction-trickery for those. But for the rest of the shots these guys will do just nicely.

Coming up, I'll animate the other half of the scenes in the current set, and then start building the next one.

Cheers!

Wow, this looks great! I love the lighting, the trees, and the backdrop.

These sets look FANTASTIC! I can't wait to see how this come out!

That frame looks great! Great to hear you're making progress!

Thank you!

Glad to hear it! I'm hardly the first person to use printed backgrounds I think, but it's something I highly suggest! Makes it quicker to set up your shot, and you can have more expansive backgrounds as well!

Thanks! Yeah, slowly but surely I suppose!

Wow, thank you so much for your in depth comment! I do agree with you on most points actually. I've started to add more brown and green pieces to the ground to cover up the dark tan. I actually re shot all of the shots I'd done so far, so the lighting and background looks better now as well. I agree about the faces on the characters, and I've only used the older less detailed ones for the extras/background people. All the principal cast have heads mostly from the LotR or The Hobbit sets! I haven't heard of Classic-Castle.com, but I'll definitely look into it! Thanks again!

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Update time!

So a lot has happened since the last post. First of all, I decided to re shoot all the shots I'd done so far except one (the one in the last post). Basically I messed up the camera settings a bit, and the shots couldn't really be saved in post, so I did them all again from scratch and improved the lighting and such while I was at it. Two examples can be found below here, although without any proper reframing or such. Bonus points to whoever can guess what I used for the water!

Secondly, the big bricklink order finally arrived as well, so as soon as I was done with the cemetary set I quickly went to work with building the next set; the road the entourage will travel along. I decided on keeping the set a bit more "dark tan-ish" than the forest set to differentiate them a bit, though once again hopefully without making it look too much like a desert I've constructed it in a very modular way, so I can easily add an extra 48+ studs of road to either side depending on which way the camera is facing for any particular shot. This modularity also makes it easy to get in close to the characters once they're on the road itself, which is required for like 98% of the shots for this set. I'll also easily be able to re dress the set and replace all the landmarks for a few later shots (meant for a travelling-montage), where the entourage will be travelling through a few different environments.

That's all for now! Coming up, I'll start working on the four scenes set on different parts of this first road-set. There's mostly dialogue, which I find quicker to animate than walking etc so I'm feeling confident with churning out a bunch of shots a week if I'm dedicated enough.

Cheers!