Animation: Take Two!

Hey, all! As promised, here's another blog about the process of animating my trailer for Soulbound. Not much has changed since last time, except I am getting much faster, which is a relief. I'm understanding some of the shortcuts that I wish I had known in the past, and will blog about those next time.

I've also made a lot more progress on this trailer than I've made before on others. I've animated about a minute of key frames, and have only about 37 seconds of key frames left to do. The good thing is that the last section of frames will be a bunch of small scenes flashing in and out to create a sense of drama. The bad thing, however, is that the first minute or so had text (not a lot, mind you, only about 10 slides of text lasting a total of maybe 20 seconds), and the last 37 seconds has almost NO text at all. This means that there will be more animation in the second part than the first, which I think is good, personally. It will just take longer to finish.

Now, something came up while I was working on this, and I was thinking it through as I sketched out some key frames for a scene today. I thought, If I don't do this right, it will look too much like anime, and I will lose a lot of readers. For some reason (and I understand that reason--bad fanfiction, primarily), anime has gotten a bad rap. I'm really hoping that my trailer, while animated, will be far enough from the anime genre that it won't look like a bad fanfiction. 'Cause, you know, it's not.

Ignoring the fact that there's no shading, this is the style I've decided to go with (and this is a clip from one of the shorter scenes). I can see how this style might pose a problem, but again, I'm hoping that the shading and the style of the rest of the film will keep from losing interest. Soulbound is a hardcore Epic Fantasy, and to be honest, I don't see much of the anime genre in it. The problem is that my art skills emerged mainly during my obsession with Sailor Moon, Digimon, Pokemon, Gundam Wing, and other shows of the 90s and early 2000s. This means my style is heavily influenced by what I watched as a child, and what I practiced drawing most.

In the end, I suppose only time will tell what happens as far as the trailer goes. I want to prove that Soulbound can make it with the best of the Epic Fantasy genre, and I'm not willing to give up until I do.

Here's another example of some of my animation:

Keep in mind that this is the first stage--a lot of detail is missing, and I haven't added color yet. My "early" key frames are even worse, and I'm too embarrassed to show you what they look like. Just know that scribbly circles and some random, uneven lines are involved. Sometimes eyes and mouths make it in, if that's the focal point of the scene. Overall, though, I am making some great progress and cannot wait to show you more!

In addition to the animation, I'm planning to attend (or at least try) and host a table at the Denver Comic Con. My goal is to have copies of Soulbound, my Middle Grade novel, Frendyl Krune and the Blood of the Sun, two short comic books (that will likely be put into a single volume for printing reasons), the trailer, and 15-20 hand-painted limited edition Eti resin statues. For those who don't know, this is Eti:

He's an ekra, a species of necromancers that live alongside the amuli in the Soulbound world. He's pretty neat, and I think he'd make a bad-ass statue. Depending on interest, I might make more of him to sell online via special order, but the first 20 or so models (numbered, signed, and painted by yours truly) will only be available at the Denver Comic Con. I'll keep you updated about that project, too. In the meantime, write on!

Animation: Take One!

You might recall me mentioning in my last post that I have started animating the trailer for my book, Soulbound, and I hope (sincerely) that it's done by Feb 10th so that it's ready for the ARC blog tour. Of course, trying to animate a minute-forty-second trailer in less than a month....weeeeell, since I have no prior animation experience, I'm finding it to be a delightful challenge.

As promised, this blog is the first of many detailing my adventure in teaching myself animation and going through the trials and tribulations of creating a smoothly animated trailer. First lesson:

MUSIC

The first time I tried making an animation some three years ago, I got the key frames done and was making some massive progress, but I stopped when my computer crashed. A few months later, I began again, but there seemed to be less organization and less fire, and the project eventually vanished from the back burner altogether. What was missing? I asked myself as I began this newest trailer. What had I missed out on last time, and why couldn't I seem to get things right?

Then a friend of mine, Mallory Rock of Mallory Rock Art, suggested I check out this Website called Audiojungle. And as I skimmed their collections, pulling up a few random songs that piqued my interest, I began to connect a little more with the idea of choosing the music first. Then, I found the song. The moment it started, I could see what I wanted to animate, how I wanted to time it, and how the music would impact the story I wanted to tell through my trailer.

This is it, I realized. This is the song I've been waiting for, and this is what I need to start my journey and finish it. So, I bought the song. Now, some of you know that I am pretty damn poor. Broke, actually, but I decided that if I didn't have this song, the trailer would never come into being. Since I'm putting forth hours a day to make my dream a reality, I figured $19 was worth it--especially since I couldn't afford to hire anyone to animate for me!

"Well, yes," you might say, "of course music had to be involved. But c'mon. That's not what I'm reading this blog for. What else did you discover?"

SPLITTING YOUR TIMELINE

Once I had my music, I imported it into Windows Movie Maker (told you I'm poor) and snipped it down. The original track was 2:15, and that's way too long for a trailer. The song itself is amazing, so I had a hard time pulling out bits of the soundtrack to make it shorter, but I managed to make it smooth enough that no one should notice.

After clipping my music to 1:37 (far more reasonable), I began the task of breaking the track up into three blocks: Animation segments, black segments (for drama), and text segments. To do this, I created slides in CS4 (thank goodness I still have this program from high school days! It has saved my arse so many times!). One says, "ANIMATION" on a white background, another says, "TEXT," and the last one is just a black slide.

My next task was to listen to the music in bits over and over, dropping in my new slides until they were timed right. I hit dramatic pauses, strong notes, bursts, and all sorts of lovely segments until I had a great flow and could listen to the entire song without changing a thing. This took me quite some time to accomplish (about three and a half hours), so if this is your first time ever making a trailer, don't expect it to go super fast!

"That's pretty boring," you might say. "When does the action begin? I thought you were animating this thing!"

Well, I am. But we're not there yet. Almost--I promise, but there's one more thing yet to do before we start animating!

TEXT SLIDES

Ah, the text slides. The fade-in, fade-out glory of shadowed-and-highlighted movie text on a black background. Text is quite important, because it's what draws the viewer along. Sure, you can have fantastic animation and breathtaking music, but none of that matters if your viewers and potential readers can't tell who is who, what's at stake for each character, and why they should bother buying your book.

I spent a goodly amount of time working through what I wanted to say, where to say it (more adjusting timing, fades, and working with those slides I used earlier to chunk out what goes when), and tweaking the text itself over and over until it was smooth and made sense. My boyfriend helped me here a few times, which was great. NEVER underestimate the helpfulness of someone nearby, because if they haven't read your work, they'll let you know when something needs changing.

Soulbound Release Date!

Hey, all! Sorry it's been so long. Between moving to somewhere an hour from my old place, the holidays, and some unfortunate family deaths, I haven't had much time to blog or do much else. Not to mention school on top of all of that. Things have let up, though, and I have some exciting news!

After working on my novel for 12 hour shifts over the span of two days, it's done. Done-done, too, not just a little done. This is the first time that I can put it away and say, "It's the way I want it," in, oh, about seven years. And considering this has been such a long project, I am happy to announce that Soulbound will be available for purchase on April 25, 2014.

You heard right. April 25, 2014 is when it will be released! Between now than then, though, YOU have the opportunity to be involved in the ARC blog tour! Just send me an e-mail at: mcfaddenkira(at)gmail(dot)com, and I'll put your name on the list. The only thing I ask in return for this FREE ARC copy is that you write a blog about Soulbound and your thoughts on the book. If you don't have a blog, e-mail me a review, and I'll post it on mine for the blog tour!

While a lot of this is still a while away (the ARC copies won't be ready until February 15), I am still getting my groove on. I started the massive undertaking of creating a completely animated trailer for Soulbound today. Yes, animated. No, not slide-show. Animated. As in animation. Which is something I've never attempted before, but it's looking pretty darn tootin', if I do say so myself. As I go through the (tedious) process of creating this essential part of my upcoming release, I'll blog about it and post updates. Seeing as today was only the beginning, I'll wait until tomorrow before I post anything, since I doubt there would be much for me to say tonight.

I'm also hoping to have the first book of my Middle Grade series ready for the Soulbound release so that I can reveal them at the same time, but we'll see. Somehow, I think that might be too much for me to handle, even if Frendyl Krune and the Blood of the Sun is halfway done.

Do you have any projects your working on? I'm always happy to share here on my blog about something you might be doing, whether it's a book release, an art project or anything else that's rockin' the world. Take care, stay tuned, and let me know!