Legend of the Sleeping Bear Dunes

Aanii! Welcome to the Legend of the Sleeping Bear Dunes.  

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I’m graduated!

Quick update here. The film isn’t quite done yet, but I’ve graduated now so I don’t have access to the same equipment as before. This means that, while I can still finish the film, it will be a little bit slower progress from here on out unfortunately. I’m sad about it, but it will still be finished!

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Simple backgrounds are a godsend. 

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Almost every shot in my film is a sad one. That makes for tough times.

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Finishing a few backgrounds. There’s so many of them! These are a mix of water color and a few digital fixes.

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I’m finally animating a character that’s not a bear!

Plot twist: it’s a bird.

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Here’s a rough animation from a ways into the movie. This is one of the sad scenes. 

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Got a design for the Mama Bear!  I’m really liking it. 

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I found some sketches on an old thumb drive from a few years ago. They still hold up!

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I visted the tribal headquarters today. They gave me the translation of the narration of my film. That means that, one way or another, it WILL be narrated in Anishinaabemowin!

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Some shapes of bears for the main characters. I still haven’t totally settled on their designs... Getting on that. 

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A little sketch of a fox. Half digital and half plain old pencil.

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Still doing layouts. Stilllll. Doin’ em. EEeeeeeehhhh. Trying to figure out where each individual tree in the forest goes at each angle is the most boring thing in the world. Fake it ‘til you make it I guess. 

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Some sketches and notes on the side characters of the story. Each of them shows up very little, but all of the are pretty important to the story. 

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Trying to figure out the difference between cubs and adults. It’s harder than I first thought it would be.

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I was looking through some old sketchbooks and found this. I still love drawing bears, but I feel like that might change after months of anomating. Hope not.

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Some character designs of a fox and a common tern in my film. They’re manifestations of Gitche Manitou (Great Spirit), or just Manitous (Spirits) in general. 

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Working on some board clean-up/layout, so that if I do get some more animators (which that’s the plan), they’ll know what’s going on in each scene and where to move the characters. I hope to do all of the keys, and get some help with in-betweens.