And Then's First Theatrical Screening

And then's first theatrical screening will be this Friday night at 5:00 at the Vancity Theater down town. It will be playing for 2 nights only so come down and see the film. It'll be part of the 48 Short films festival, which is a small festival set up by the Emily Carr grad students. Tickets can be purchased online from the Vancity website I will be there on Friday for the opening but I probably wouldn't be able to make the screening on Saturday.

Hope to see you all there!
-John

Apartment Preliminary Drawings

Older Boy Concept Art

Concept Art for the Mom Ageing

Concept Art for the Mom

Concept Art for The Boy Ageing

Concept Art for The Boy

Final Trailer

And then Film, Trailer from John Oman on Vimeo.

Concept Art Online!

Hey everyone! Well the film is pretty much finished now. Keep an eye out for it. I will be submitting it to festivals soon and it will be playing at the Emily Carr External Graduation show, 48 Short Films, at the end of the month. More details on that to follow.

For now I've got some of my concept art up on Flickr, while I develop my own personal website. You can find it here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jomanvisuals/sets/72157624013147676/

New Trailer!

Hey Everyone here is a quick trailer to give you an idea of what the film is all about.

http://vimeo.com/11064851

Sweet Final Poster Output

I haven't had much time to update I've been head over heels in production right now. 4 more days! After having several critiques on the poster it seems that those in the know recommend ditching the characters and moving the font down. Initially I was a little hesitant but after giving it a try I think it is much more graphic and enticing now. This is the poster I will print out for the show.

Animation Assisstants found!

Luckily for me a few generous 3rd year students have agreed to help me roll the film out. Thanks to Paige Quinton and Nick Blachford who will be helping with 2D colouring and 3D texturing and effects animation respectively.

Nick has already been a huge asset having textured much of the film so far. Thanks a lot guys!

Wooo Trailer!

So I have the first Draft of the trailer done today. And this will be appearing in the Emily Carr 2010 Grad exhibition catalog. Comments and critiques are welcome. It can be found on Vimeo here:

http://vimeo.com/10077395

Looking for Animation Assisstants

So far the film is for the most part (surprisingly) on schedule, however to meet the rigorous quality demands I will be needing some animation assistants.

I'm not going to lie to you guys, i can't pay you anything. However this job does not come without benefits. At the end of the day you get to attach your name to a great film, and fill out your CV/demo reel if that's something you need to do. You'll also get valuable experience and the joy of working with me!

If this is a project your interested in please contact me at my Emily Carr e-mail address joman @ ecuad.ca (no spaces)

I am looking for:
2D clean up and colouring artists,
3D people who can use XSI.

Thanks everyone for all your interest and support!

Hey all,

Here is the newest version of the poster, and most likely the final version!
Hope you enjoy it!

Revisions, Revisions

So this is the first official post on the Blog and I feel pretty good about it. I am mainly posting this so that you can follow my production process, and because the facebook response to the first draft of my promotional poster was so overwhelmingly positive. Thanks guys. So i hope you enjoy the blog. Please leave some comments and let me know what you think!

I've been working on revising scene 1 lately and really polishing it up. I think this scene will be one of the more complicated composites in the film and once I get it ironed out it will be a huge hurdle out of the way.

I am also working on a 2nd draft of my poster and I'm thinking about revising my character concepts. Once I figure out more about posting an image gallery on here I will post some render tests and concept art.

Oh here is the first draft of the poster! I'm still gonna figure out an image gallery or something but this'll do for now.

Film Info

Title: And Then

Summary:

My goal is to produce a 2-3 minute animated short using poetry, traditional drawn, two dimensional digital, and three dimensional digital media. My goal is to touch on an existential sense of awe and wonder that is felt more than understood. The film will fluctuate between the macrocosm of a particle’s journey through time and space and the microcosm of a young boy and an old woman’s relationship at different points in their lives.

Synopsis:

“And Then” is about contextualizing change. Many things change but change itself is a constant.

Project Description:

I would like to evoke more than portray. Loss is a force everyone is familiar with. Even if it is only ice cream melting before it’s time, everyone has experienced that feeling of pain. However, loss is only one way to look at change. Decomposition is crucial for new ideas to develop. Without change there would be no movement, no life. The idea of loss is in fact merely an emotionalized concept of change. Nothing is lost it just changes, and if we are not ready to accept that change we perceive it as loss. The particles which momentarily coalesce to form our bodies have been around forever and have been part of countless things before they became a part of us, and they will be part of countless things after we are no more.

Change is impossible without time, and time can be defined by the change which transpires over a given duration. However, time is an elusive concept. What is time? How is now different from then and how will tomorrow be different than today? In my research I’ve found that we know surprisingly little about time. We know that it has some relation to distance and velocity, but there is much we still don’t know and we may never know. I think the true strength of animation is its ability to abstract our perception of time and change and allow us to perceive these concepts in ways outside of our practical experience. However, without tying these theoretical concepts to an emotional anchor they are easily lost.

“I am” starts with a light bulb turning on, or is it the beginning of the universe? As the universe is being born we follow a single burning red speck as it makes its way through the cosmos. We morph to a worn but well maintained one room apartment. There is an old woman here teaching a young man how to fix a bike. Then we morph back into the particle as it coalesces with other particles into a planet. As we go back and forth between the two we watch the young man grow and the apartment decay, we watch the particle transition from one state to another as the planet it has become part of changes. The climax of the film will occur when the particle and the boy end up in the apartment as the old woman passes away. It does not end. It only changes.