Meghan Tuten

Animation student at University of Hertfordshire. Self-described Spooky Bitch. (Hover over numbered links to view link names.)

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Forefront: Her Lips are Mine (2019)

Her Lips are Mine is an animated short written and directed by Ken Cohen and produced by Soft Blanket Productions, posted to Crypt TV.  

Crypt TV is a Youtube channel that accepts submissions of original horror short films and posts them online, offering a great platform for independent horror creators. Usually they post live action films, but they also showcase a variety of animated shorts. Their most recent one is a 3D animated black and white short about a group of women who have parts of their face stolen and rearranged by a masked attacker. While I don’t usually like this style of 3D animation, I still find the short very atmospheric and interesting.

The existence of this film is more significant to my practice than any features of the animation itself, because it’s one of the largest platforms for horror short films online. Crypt TV currently has over 2 million followers on both Youtube and Facebook and frequently does collaborations with movie studios like Universal and Blumhouse.

There was a period where Crypt TV was posting much fewer animated shorts and I was worried about what that meant for me, since I am planning on submitting Tinsel to them once it’s fully completed. I’m happy to see that Crypt is still accepting submissions from animators.

Crypt TV (2019) HER LIPS ARE MINE | Featured Creature | Short Film. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1msEk1c0Hw (Accessed: 9 August 2019).

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Presentation slides

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Promotional video

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Progress: Week 10

All of the animation is finished and all that’s left to do of the film is some more sound design and audio mixing. ( This is a screen capture because Premiere was having issues with exporting. )

I finished all of the animation on Wednesday, as per my schedule.

I’m very proud of my ability to stay on task and finish ahead of the deadline for this project. My next week is going to be devoted to making my promotional video and working on my presentation. I’ve already written a shooting script for the video and will be filming and editing over the next two days.

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Forefront: White Snake (2019)

Premiering at the Fantasia Film Festival this month is the Chinese 3D animated film White Snake. The film, made by China’s Light Chaser Animation and directed by Amp Wong and Zhao Ji, is based on a folktale about a snake demon that can take the form of a beautiful woman, and her forbidden romance with a human man. The film draws on a number of influences from across the history of Chinese art and culture, from traditional puppetry to Wuxia movies and medieval artwork. Even though this is only Light Chaser’s second film, it’s made a huge splash in Montreal and will see a wider release in the west this autumn.

Something that I’ve always been passionate about is the idea of industry decentralization when it comes to animation. I believe that the more spread out the animation industry is, the more new talent can be uplifted and the more fresh ideas can be explored. My ultimate goal is to start my own studio back in Australia and produce my own film and TV projects. As a PG-13 rated animated feature fully produced in a country outside of America or Japan, White Snake is the kind of content that I want to give my full support to. I hope that I’ll be able to get a chance to see White Snake in cinemas and I hope that Light Chaser sees continued success both in China and the west.

Perkins, C. (2019). [FANTASIA 2019] White Snake (2019). [online] AFA: Animation For Adults. Available at: https://www.animationforadults.com/2019/07/fantasia-2019-white-snake-2019.html [Accessed 2 Aug. 2019].

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Progress Week 9

I have 10 sequences of animation left to do and by my current, updated schedule, I aim to be finished with all animation by the first of August.

I have additionally fixed a few moments that I had animated earlier, such as removing the blood splatter from Jess’ face in a few scenes, and changing the animation early on in the film so that now Jess is waving at Colin when she enters.

I haven’t added as much shading as I had initially planned to. For the scenes in the storage bay, I have chosen to add a dark blue lighting scheme to create a more dramatic atmosphere.

I’m also going to be starting my promotional video this week as well as planning my self-reflection.

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Forefront: Harley Quinn

One of the other previews to come out of comicon this year is DC’s new Harley Quinn animated web series. The show, created by Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker and Dean Lorey, will debut in October of this year and stars Kayley Cuoco in the title role.

From the looks of the trailer, it seems that this show will serve as a new benchmark for action-driven adult animation. The style is much more stylised and reminiscent of Batman the Animated Series (1992-1995) as opposed to the more recent animated direct-to-dvd DC animated films, which reflects a general shift I have noticed in the industry towards adult animation taking full advantage of the medium in a way that’s more in line with the practice in animation aimed at children. (I talked more about this in my forefront post about Tuca & Bertie)

Calamia, K. (2019). Advance Review: DC Universe's HARLEY QUINN Series Premiere. [online] Newsarama. Available at: https://www.newsarama.com/46280-advance-review-dc-universe-s-harley-quinn-series-premiere.html [Accessed 27 Jul. 2019].

Warner Bros. TV (2019). HARLEY QUINN Comic-Con® 2019 Video: First-Look Preview. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knb3QjQWQaQ [Accessed 27 Jul. 2019].

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Progress: Week 8

This week I received the final music for Tinsel from my composer, Brandon Boone. This is my first go at timing the music to the animation and I think it works very well.

The rest of this week will be devoted to more animation, as well as to writing my promotional video.

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Forefront: Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal

This past week at Comic Con, Adult Swim gave a sneak preview of their new series Primal, which is going to be helmed by Hotel Transylvania and Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky. The series follows a caveman and his T-Rex companion as they navigate through a violent primordial world. This short clip showcases the same energetic and fluid approach to animation that Tartakovsky is well known for. Following the critical success of Samurai Jack’s final season, Primal marks the second collaboration between Adult Swim and Tartakovsky.

Primal. (2019). [video] Directed by G. Tartakovsky. Hollywood: Adult Swim.

Diaz, E. (2019). New Genndy Tartakovsky Series PRIMAL Coming To Adult Swim - Nerdist. [online] Nerdist. Available at: https://nerdist.com/article/genndy-tartakovsky-series-primal-adult-swim/ [Accessed 20 Jul. 2019].

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Progress: Week 7

The rest of Tinsel is just going to be finishing up colouring and cleanups. The final music will be ready next week.

In order to keep track of how much I have left to do I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet where I enter in every shot that I complete. Looking at these numbers is how I plan my work for each week.

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Forefront: The Cuphead Show

This week it was announced that Netflix will be releasing a comedy animated series based on the critically acclaimed 2D animated side-scroller video game Cuphead. Cuphead was released in 2015 and was a unique artistic achievement due to the fact that it was a video game that utilised hand-drawn, pen and paper animation in the style of early Disney and Fleischer cartoons from the 1920′s and 30′s. I’ve never played the game due to not owning any of the consoles, but I have watched playthroughs on youtube and I love the artistry of it as well as the conceit in general of imagining what a modern video game made in the 1920′s would’ve looked like. Cuphead is a unique and inventive experience and it’ll be interesting to see how it eventually translates to television, given that the fact it was a video game was it’s unique selling point.

The series will be executive produced by Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, the game’s creators, alongside Dave Wasson (Mickey Mouse Shorts) and Cosmo Segurson (Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling).

Hall, C. (2019). Cuphead is coming to Netflix as an animated series. [online] Polygon. Available at: https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/9/20687433/cuphead-show-netflix-animated-tv-series [Accessed 12 Jul. 2019].

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Progress Week 6: Experimenting with Shading and Highlights

Due to a minor health scare, I spent all Thursday night and Friday morning this week in the hospital, and since then I’ve mostly been recovering. As such, I wasn’t really able to complete as many cleanups as I had planned for myself this week. Instead, I decided to do something that takes a little less energy, and I started experimenting with shading and highlights.

Toon Boom’s shading and highlighting function is a little tricky to get your head around but once you understand how to parent the layers correctly, the method of actually adding shading is very simple. These screen captures show my experimentation with different colour values and shapes of mattes before deciding on the look that I decided to use in the video above.

My first thought was to use a cel shading look when highlighting the hair, but I decided that it didn’t fit the simplified art style.

What I ended up doing was drawing a shape around the whole frame, then filling that in with a white to transparent gradient. The picture below shows what it looked like before I decided on my final colour values. I initially wanted yellow, but I decided that it made the lighting look too much like dawn or sunset as opposed to the clear summer daylight that I wanted to convey through the overall colour of the outdoor scenes.

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Forefront: Albatross Soup

Albatross Soup is a very experimental, free-flowing 2D animation made by Winnie Cheung that I found mesmerising to watch. I love the use of colour, and I love the way the animation fits to the audio of all of the people talking through the riddle as they try and discover the right answer. I’m a big fan of animation that use audio as inspiration, whether that audio is a piece of music or recorded dialogue. The imagery taken from the recorded discussions and translated into animation are really what makes this short special.

Albatross Soup. (2019). [film] Directed by W. Cheung. New York City.

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Progress Week 5: Cleanup

After giving myself a weekend off to recharge after completing my roughs, this week is going to be focused on lineart and blocking in colours. I initially was going to save colouring for later, but I’ve now decided that filling in the block colours as soon as the lineart is done for each sequence feels more natural. The time I initially meant to spend on colouring I will now spend only on adding shading to the flat colours. Hopefully organising my time this way will make the process go faster.

Because of the coloured lineart style, the cleanup is going to take significantly longer than the roughs. Each day I will be completing one of the 24 individual sequences. The third image in this set shows my schedule for July, including cleanup (line & flat colour), colour (which now represents just shading) and production on my promotional video.

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Forefront: Tokyo Apocalypse

I always like to watch the shorts that are uploaded to the Gobelins youtube account for inspiration. Tokyo Apocalypse is one of a selection of shorts created by Gobelins students to commemorate the Annecy Animation Festival, for which the country in focus was Japan. All of the shorts are themed around Japan and Japanese culture. This one was my personal favourite- I love the varied and creative monster designs and I love the sense of humour. The art itself is also incredible- like with my own work this year the artists behind Tokyo Apocalypse have used a style that captures a nostalgic feeling, in this case the art resembles toy packaging and movie posters from the 70′s and 80′s. This is a very short piece, but I still found it highly enjoyable.

Tokyo Apocalypse. (2019). [film] Directed by C. Bertoux. Paris, France.

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slightly updated version for show and tell

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Progress Week 4: What I’ve done so far

Last week, I finished all of the rough animation and started on the breakdowns and detail. Most of the backgrounds are done except for a handful of them in the last couple of scenes. I’ve sent an animatic to the composer who will be doing the music and for the time being I’ve added some stock music that has the same feel of what I have discussed with the composer. The reason that sequence 10 is partially lined and coloured is I plan on recycling the running animation in some later sequences in order to save time.

Although I’d planned on doing sound design much later in the process, I’ve started to add some to the animation already. As I said in my planning folder, my schedule accounts for working on multiple steps concurrently and I was correct in predicting that I would end up doing that.

This week, I plan on finishing the breakdowns and starting to line and colour the animation. All of the backgrounds should also be done by the end of this week.

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Forefront: Away

Last week in my forefront blog I talked about Annecy and the new announcements that come out of the convention and trade fair side of it. This week I’m going to talk about one of the films that was a big hit at the Annecy film festival- it’s called Away and it was entirely produced by one person, Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis. While it’s somewhat common for short films to be entirely-self produced by one artist, it’s almost unheard of for a single person to make a feature-length animation. Zilbalodis has produced a few shorts before Away, but this will be his first feature film. The story follows a boy who is trying to find his way home after being stranded in a plane crash. The film is 3D and looks incredibly cheap in some aspects (the character motion is very stilted and the lighting is quite flat), but the inventive visuals and the direction show a clear creative vision and artistry that more than make up for the low budget. Away will be screening at multiple festivals this year and the international distribution have been acquired by CMG. Zilbalodis is already planning his next feature, which will be called Flow and will be an expanded version of his short film Aqua. 

Perkins, C. (2019). [Annecy '19] Sony's Bright Future Includes Mature Animation and International Co-Productions. [online] AFA: Animation For Adults. Available at: https://www.animationforadults.com/2019/06/annecy-19-sonys-bright-future-includes.html [Accessed 14 Jun. 2019].

Away. (2019). [film] Directed by G. Zilbalodis. Latvia.