Update

Just an update on the progress of Pepperland.

We are very close to being finished. Currently, 3 extremely talented sound designers from the USC Sound dept. have been busting their asses on the sound design. We are looking to do our final mix by the end of October. A huge thanks to Bethany Sparks, Gentry Smith and Amber Beard.

Also, I can't even begin were to explain where the breakdown occurred in tracking down the rights to use the Misfits song, Where Eagles Dare. Fortunately, one of the strongest composers I have ever met stepped in and said he would compose an original score that would far exceed anything the Misfits could produce. Thanks Igor Nemirovsky!

Title/credits design

The film is almost complete at this point and I have been working on the credits and title designs while sound design gets underway. This is a section from the credits.

This section of credits includes the skaters that are featured in the film: Paul McElroy, Tyler Tufty, Brian Tucci, Sam Wientzen, Bobby Worrest, Alex Henson, Greg Harris, Ronald Flores, Billy Roper and Dave Coyne.

Also, this section includes the Cinematographers that shot the skating footage: Mark Nicoles, Chris Brown and Andrew Kline. The B-roll Cinematographers: Ryan Lovelace, Robert Lovelace and James Harpold.

I am very happy with the look of the title/credits design but the painting effect takes a while to reveal information. I have sped up the animation for each slate but the credits will still run about a full minute when finished. This has been a hard pill to swallow seeing as the film itself is only about 7 minutes long. My concern is that the credits will feel long. But I believe I have come up with a solution to this problem so I'm not too concerned about it at this point.

paul_lane

This shot was rotoed by another Roski student from USC by the name of Andrew Emmons. He brought a welcomed change of style to the film.

sam_can

As of right now, I estimate the rotoscoped sections of Pepperland to consist of over 3000 individually painted images. When the film was in it's early stages I was still experimenting with the look so the rotoscope process took considerably more time. As I began streamlining my workflow, I was able to complete a much greater volume of work in each sitting. But after about a year I began slowing down again due to the physical toll my body was taking from rotoscoping so many hours each and every day.

In January of 08 I decided to enlist some help in order to stay on schedule. I decided to recruit from the University of Southern California's Roski School of Fine Arts. Aside from staying on schedule, I was also interested in seeing what someone else would come up with if given a thorough explanation of how the process works, a limited amount of coaching and access to a wide variety of visual references.

ripo

Meggs

haha

The following shot was completely by an excellent artist named Clover. This is the second shot she has completed for the film and is currently working on a third. I wish I had found her sooner. You may find a link to her personal site in the sidebar section of this blog entitled, Links.

Pepperland trailer

I think I might just go with this section of the film for the trailer for Pepperland. It would be nice to cut a really nice one but there are other areas of the film that need my attention.

2shot_sam

I finished this shot some time ago but I don't believe I ever added it to the blog. I wasn't sure which frame to load up from this shot since I did a number of interesting things with the rotoscoping.


You can see that I played with the shapes within the rotoscoping to accentuate the momentum of the skater. Also, towards the end, I decided to throw the Washington DC flag on the underside of his board in red. Subtle, but that's what I wanted.

MUTO by BLU

This is a great graf film. The interactions between the paintings and actual objects is great. Sound was really well done too.

skull head

This is a video of some pretty good stencil work I came across on youtube. It's worth taking a look at. Skull Head is pretty bad ass and the video includes a lot of his work. Plus the Adam Sandler song... you just can't go wrong with that.

drips

I spent a considerable amount of time testing how paint actually moves when sprayed in excess for a particular shot in the film. Although I had never really paid much attention to the paths drips decided to travel, I assumed that drips would always go straight down.

But, that is definitely not always the case. Drips have a mind of their own. They travel in almost any direction they want.

down time

Since I am waiting for a new computer to arrive I decided to do some painting. Tracking down music rights just wasn't filling the time.

paul_og12

This was the last shot I worked on before the old machine gave up on me. It shows the overlap transitions that I mentioned in the post directly below. I began to work this type of transitioning in at other points of the film as well. But until the new machine arrives I am restricted to tracking down music rights.

This shot took approximately 2 months to complete and consists of over 450 hand drawn images.

brian tucci and chris hall

There is a section of the film where Paul is talking about the OG guys that had a big impact on the scene in D.C. I added this shot to help put a face with the name.

Working on this shot also gave me a great idea on how to blend interview and skating sections. After some experimenting, I came up with a solid method of overlapping shots that really helps the flow of the film. I'll post examples soon.