A Time For All Seasonings

Thanks to Cartoon Brew!

2008-11-23T09:54:00.004-06:00

I woke up this morning and checked my usual animation-related websites, and saw that Cartoon Brew linked to the film!

Since the film was completed, it's been in a few film festivals, and then it got way too expensive to continue entering "A Time for All Seasonings" into fest after fest.

Because the project was something produced out of a love for animation, it was more important to put it online for free, so anyone could enjoy it.

As for ChewBone, the animation collective that produced the film, Joe Merideth has started in on a new film project that I am very excited to be a part of. He has even started posting a few storyboard concepts on his blog. www.joesdrawings.blogspot.com

With SO MUCH animation being produced by talented artists these days, I was more excited and honored to see that Jerry noticed the film and wanted to help other animation lovers see the finished product. So THANKS AGAIN CARTOON BREW!

A Time for All Seasonings now has a WEBSITE

2008-11-19T10:05:00.009-06:00

A Time for All Seasonings is now online!

www.theshakerbrothers.com

Animation at the Portage

2007-06-22T11:10:00.000-05:00

On June 15th, ChewBone Animation hosted a private screening of works by nine Chicago animators. And what a success! We had a turn out of about 400 people and everyone was very impressed by the variety of work presented.

The films ranged from 20 seconds to 20 minutes and included CG, Stopmotion, Handdrawn, Flash and other animation techniques.

I could not have brought a show like this together without the collaboration of others such as Ben Chow, who designed every single poster at the event, Dave Facchini would found someone to print them all, Lisa Barcy who designed the programs and helped pull the show together, Dennis Scott who runs The Portage and was very generous with us first-time-festival-organizers, and of course everyone who came from as far as San Fransisco, LA and Toronto to attend this event.

A Time for All Seasonings played very well on the big screen. So now its being entered into various festivals around the country. We have had early signs of interest as well as our fair share of rejection letters. I will post soon about the NEW WEBSITE for the film, so keep clickin' back...

CLIP from the film...

2007-04-03T16:09:00.000-05:00

Here is 40 seconds from "A Time for All Seasonings". I'm still not great at getting the best quality video uploaded to the blog. But still, here is what you've all been waiting for: a small clip from the FINISHED FILM!

Director: BJ Crawford
Animation: BJ Crawford, Joe Merideth, Mike Owens
Produced at ChewBone Animation by: BJ Crawford, Joe Merideth
Music: Patrick Sinozich

A Time for All Seasonings is COMPLETE

2007-04-03T09:52:00.000-05:00

Just before midnight on April 1st, we rendered out the final version of A Time for All Seasonings. In the next couple weeks, there will be a final edit session and that will make the final wrap of the film.

Here are some pictures of the final day of production:

The director at his desk finishing the last 12 or so drawings of the film.

Dahlia sitting next to all of the final artwork from the film. This is what six minutes worth of animation looks like.

Doug came in every week and worked on mattes, scanning, painting and compositing. He's now taking a break to sketch out storyboards for is own production, "Restless".

Chang did some amazing art work for the film. He came in on the final day of production to do some last minute painting. There were some elements of the film that required a more detailed painting job beyond just filling an area with a flat color. Each frame of the curtain opening and closing on the stage had to be treated like a piece of the background art.

Tom went through every single frame of the film and made a list of any painting errors or misplaced drawings. He then went back into the project and corrected every single mistake he found. This is him viewing the final version to make sure all of his changes made it into the final cut.

more pics

2007-03-09T11:10:00.000-06:00

Victor painted the last little bit of the unfinished elements of Scene 4. He waited patiently while the final version slowly composited on my three year old computer...

Joe, the co-producer, co-animator on the project viewing the final version of the film. With absolute glee.

Maria Sangre: Painted

2007-03-01T11:43:00.000-06:00

Here is the painted version of one of the Maria Sangre scenes.

A Time For All Seasonings is getting very near to being a finished film. We have just sent a "90% DONE" version to the PLATFORM FESTIVAL in Portland. Knock on wood.

It's about time...

2007-02-08T13:25:00.000-06:00

Finally, a new post! But first of all, since the header to the blog states clearly that the film will be done Janurary 2007 I believe I have some explaining to do. All I can say is that it has been a lot of work to get all of the puzzle pieces to fit together. But I have such an amazing crew of people that come in and do clean ups and scans whenever they have a free moment, that I can say with confidence that IT'S CLOSE. The score will be recorded sometime next week and by the end of FEB there will be an "almost complete" version that can start being entered in festivals.

Here then is one of the final pts for the film. There are just 3 more scenes to tackle after this one. I wish I could post Joe Merideth's animation for the final scene of the film, but, for obvious reasons, I elected not to! This test shows you how I work on a scene, starting with the main action and moving on to the details and the follow though action. This is the bloody mary charcter in the film, Maria Sangre.

Just "filler"

2007-01-10T16:43:00.000-06:00

This post will be temporary, while I get another scene from "Seasonings" up on the blog. This is my dog DAHLIA playing with a tomato. MORE ARTWORK TO COME! (just in case you're wondering, the audio in the background is an old recording of President Ford)

Studio Tour

2006-12-19T12:13:00.000-06:00

These are various shots of ChewBone where we are finishing up on "A Time for All Seasonings". As of today there are about six scenes left to be animated. Look at the Progress Chart! The white column on the left contains the title of the scene and all of the red to the right is what has been finished in that scene. Notice that it's almost completely filled in RED...

Finally; this scene is complete!

2006-11-18T14:41:00.001-06:00

This scene is done, for the most part. I wanted to put it up as proof of progress.
Animation is getting done for the film and all of the individual scenes are coming together well.

The artists who are bringing the scenes together from a simple pencil test the completed look are doing a very good job. Thanks, guys!

BJ Crawford

FINISHED SCENE

2006-10-27T15:16:00.000-05:00

Sorry for such a long break from the blog. The film is moving forward though! There is still a bit of animation to do on the project, meanwhile there is artwork being scanned and painted and scenes are getting done at a consistant pace. YIIIPPEEEE!

Here is a finished scene(sorry for the low video quality) from A Time For All Seasonings:

There will be more to come. Keep checking back!

BJ

COLOR TEST (just for fun)

2006-10-02T14:42:00.001-05:00

First of all, thank you to Cartoon Brew for giving a
mention to "A Time For All Seasonings". The site is
a must for anyone interested what's happening out
there with animation.

Here is a fun test of what "Seasonings" would look like
if it were done entirely in COLOR. The actual animation
will be cleaned up and painted in black and white. This
is a scene later in the film when the Pepper Shaker is
forced out of the limelight by the next act: "The Lil'
Darjeelings", a dancing tea set.

Dance pencil test

2006-09-29T12:43:00.000-05:00

Here is a recent test of the Salt and Pepper duo, along with
the original dance that I used as my reference. The first video
is the animation I did for the film, and the second is from the
Music Man. In creating the scene, I decided to simplify the action and speed it up a bit.

TITLE DESIGN

2006-09-14T19:12:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple examples of title ideas for the film. The title of the film along with the credits will all appear at the front of the film. The first image was done by Ryan Kish and will be the final look for the titles in the film. All of the work he has done has added an athenticity to the over all style of the film. He has be a huge part of the project. Check out his website. You will see the same clarity and appeal in the other projects he has worked on.

www.ryanjkish.com

MORE ANIMATION

2006-08-29T17:41:00.000-05:00

Okay, here's another scene from poses to finished animation. This is a dialog scene from A TIME FOR ALL SEASONINGS. It's a silent film, so there was no track to read; it just had to be interesting mouth shapes and clear body language. In this scene Pepper grabs his umbrella back and screams something at Salt. There will be a dialog card in the film to show the audience what he is saying...

Poses: BJ CRAWFORD
Animation: JOE MERIDETH
Inbetweens: PATRICK CHENG

Observations

2006-08-17T17:09:00.002-05:00

Here are two pencil tests from A Time For All Seasonings. For the first video, I shot every drawing I did twice. The thing is, I really like animating on "twos" but if I get really lazy with the spacing, the actions become very sluggish. This is the scene where the PEPPER character shakes pepper out of his hat and sifts it onto his pedistal before he does his soft shoe dance with the SALT character. I did not include the effects because I haven't drawn them yet. So imagine that he is pushing the pepper out of his hat and sifting it through his fingers...

The shaking of the pepper looks a bit sluggish to me, That's what you get when you animate on twos and you animate without planning the spacing of your drawings...

So I went back and put some of the ease drawings onto single frames.
Now I think the action of shaking pepper from his hat feels a bit crisper and fun. This is the version I'll use for the film. Once the pepper FX are animated I will post the test...

INSPIRATION

2006-08-14T13:11:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are unfamiliar with A TIME FOR ALL SEASONINGS, these first couple sentences are for you! The film has several characters, all of whom perform on stage in a vaudeville house. The focus of the film is the dancing duo, The Shaker Brothers, performing their soft shoe number...

Basically what I wanted to show was this dancing duo whose gimmick was that they performed on stage as salt and pepper shakers. Originally I just coincieved of them just entering on stage and hopping up on their pedistals to dance their fun little dance.
That idea changed a bit a when I was inspired by a scene from TOP HAT. There is this wonderful moment in the movie where Fred Astaire sifts sand through his fingers and onto the floor and perfoms this wonderful soft shoe number for Ginger Rodgers who is staying in the room below him.

I applied this idea for salt and pepper. So now rather than just coming out on stage and dancing, they bow to the audience, they shake salt and pepper from the top of their heads and sift it through their fingers and onto their pedistals before they dance.

For me, it adds more to the scene now that they come out on stage and acctually DO something related to their character. I took a couple of suggestions from other people as well on how to approach the scene; but it really grew from the scene from TOP HAT:

Here are the original poses for the scene. Four drawings were enough for me to start visualizing and timing out the scene:

Once that was done I sized the drawings to the layout and added a few more poses. Joe Merideth took the revised poses and studied the scene from TOP HAT. He flip-framed through the scene to really understand the shaking and sifting of the salt onto the pedistal. So the poses are mine, but the entire feel of the action is all Joe. He did an amazing job of moving through all the poses I gave him.

So here is the pencil test of the scene. Poses: BJ Crawford Animation: Joe Merideth

2006-08-11T15:32:00.000-05:00

Now that ChewBone is focusing its attention on finishing "SEASONINGS" this blog will be updating you on the progress of the film.

It will be a bit of everything: development, penicl tests, process and opinion.

Before I post any work I think it would be fitting to show a film that I saw way before I ever conceived of the idea for A Time For All Seasonings. The film is Anna and Bella and I first saw it 9 years ago in an animation history course. When I look at this film now, I see things that I wish were the norm in animation and filmmaking. I can't tell you how important I feel it is to see the artist's hand in the line work. It makes it so personal. And it's fitting given the subject matter of the piece.

The story is simple and clear. So is the posing. Watching this film over and over has no doubt helped me strengthen the posing in my animation.