Lonely Episode 2 - The Package Thief

Amidst all my social media neglect I managed to complete and upload my latest project!

It was a fun project with outstanding voice actors, some amusing moments, a reasonable runtime  and project length (4.5 months of hobby time).  Almost time to move on to the next...

The Idea Log

This year I started keeping a journal of daily story prompts/ideas.  I'm about 30 days and its been a pretty good exercise to get my creative juices flowing.  Since I'm re-reading the list every day many of the ideas have been reworked and (hopefully) improved several times over while other ideas have evolved into totally different stories using various pieces from the journal.  

So far I have managed to complete 1 short draft and have outlined several other ideas.  It also gives me an excuse to post to twitter on a daily basis (social activity!) and I might try to post a weekly group on this blog.  To wit:

1. While digging up dinosaur bones a paleontologist finds the bones of a murdered man.
2. A pet cat meows every time a person in the room tells a lie.
3. 
   A shared box of valentines chocolate turns a class of second graders into rabbits.
4. A haunted storefront window becomes a viral sensation.
5. A son rides the rails searching for his hobo father. 
6. A building cleaner finds their life in danger after leaving a silly/harmless note on an employee's desk.
7. A man is obsessed with confronting an awful middle school child.

Lonely; The Package Thief (WIP 1)

As I mentioned in my last post, my first project for 2024 will be a new episode of Lonely, tentatively titled "Tough Talk and the Package Thief".  In this one the Ranger's mask gets him mistakenly identified as his apartment building's package thief.  Mild guffaws ensue.

The script was finalized early January (7 pages) and I then posted a casting call on CastingCallClub.com with 4 speaking roles; An elderly couple, a sexy widow and a man making a funeral speech.  I decided to pay 10$ per role (sunk costs for a project that will generate zero dollars) which pumped up the number of auditions and I got a good range of actors for each role with a total of 93 submissions.  Last weekend I selected the actors and now I expect to receive the lines by the end of February.

I've got a draft of my three sets and all speaking characters complete.  Hoping to have a completion date mid 2024 if I'm lucky.  More news as we go!  

2024 Goals

 Gunderson is complete and I have some thoughts on the process and the results but they fade as I look forward.  Maybe it'll come back up later but for now...What are my goals for 2024?  

• A possible transition to UE5.  I've spent several hours this week watching tutorials and this weekend I managed to setup the live link plugin and actually imported a prop, character and camera into UE5.  Next up is figuring out the take recorder and render.  The learning curve is very big (and daunting) but I've managed to decrease my confusion level at least one small notch.  

Some issues bouncing around my head this weekend:

• I have a fair amount of RL assets that I would need to get the extended licensee or replace the asset.  I can get two widely used cloth bases updated for about 25$ a piece but the RL hair assets will likely be much more expensive.  Is this the road I want to go on?

• If all the UE5 clips get exported as images, does the audio get pasted back in later? 

• Upload some assets to the RL marketplace. I have not uploaded anything since they phased out the old uploaded application.  Partly because of tech issues and partly out of spite.  Its likely time to put up some of the assets I've created for my last batch of projects.  There's lots of small props that I can put up for cheap (or free).

• Get back to writing as I didn't do much of that in 2023 (Gunderson took up all the available air).  Had some ideas, created one outline and nearly drafted one script.  Should do more of this as I think its my favorite part of the creative process.

• Lonely #2 - This is the one script I nearly completed in 2023.  And as of today the first draft is complete at 7 pages.  That's my sweet spot for projects with a completion timeline likely looking like 4-6 months depending on the route I take for VAs and whether I decide to try my hand at UE5 for some or all of the scenes.  It's got 5 scenes, 3 sets, and 5 major (more than two speaking lines) VA roles.  Character and set development is well under way.  More on this soon!

Gunderson is Complete!

 

Last Minute Changes and a Date is Set

Its pretty late in the game to be making big changes but alas...

I decided to add a voiceover from the Gunderson character.  Yes its a noir cliché but it will hopefully add a bit more clarity to the story (I test screened a complete draft for the fam and it didn't go swell).  And since Gunderson is voiced by me I can do these kinds of things at the last moment.  Hurray me....  

Also, I decided to cut the Gunderson project into three parts each about 5 minutes long.  15 minutes is a big ask (and getting bigger each passing year) from the viewer for an amateur animation project.  Five minutes is a bit more of the sweet spot and while the story wasn't written as a three parter it mostly fits the format.  This means I've been working on a set of "Previously" clips and 2 new video openings and closing credits/titles.   Its more work than you might think especially when...

My video editing software is fighting me tooth and nail to get all this work done over the last three weeks.  My computer is on its last legs (9 year old processor with a video card update in 2021.  Guess what I'm getting for Xmas this year!) and the Magix is crashing and throwing errors at me like its Donkey Kong.  I've managed to get pretty good versions of  Part 1 and Part 2 (barely...) but part 3 is just getting started.  Keep your fingers crossed.

With all that said my tentative release schedule with be:

• Part 1: Friday 12/8/23
• Part 2: Friday 12/15/23
• Part 3: Friday 12/22/23

Not long now.

One Month to Go!

I've faded on my online activity goals but I've stayed very busy on Gunderson.   I think I'm still on for a mid December release as I've shot all the scenes and am knee deep in the sound effects and music.  A couple of recent notes on this production:

Always check early in the process to make sure your characters have eyebrows.  Especially your main character who is in every freaking scene...Otherwise you might find yourself having to reshoot every freaking scene.  Alas, it's all good as I used the opportunity to export in a higher resolution and have been (and will continue to) fixing various little issues as I notice them.

MY NLE is not making me happy.  It bogged down completely with all the sound effects and video files so I had to chop the project up into three pieces and even then it's pretty laggy.  Also having a super weird issue with a train tunnel scene.  Looks fine exported out of Iclone but jutters and looks low res inside the NLE.  Different file formats, reshot the scene multiple times.  Just not sure what the problem is but I've spent too much time on it and will likely just have to live with it.

In the past adding music to my videos has been a simple and rewarding process.  On this project however there is a lot of dialog which doesn't leave a lot of space for music.  I'm playing around with options and even creating a few simple things of my own (trying to quickly learn garageband and wishing I hadn't lapsed on my FL Studio experience).

And speaking of a lot of dialog....it's probably too much dialog.  Worked pretty well in a script that I enjoyed writing but may not work on screen as well.  A lot of it is necessary in getting the story to the finish line in 15 minutes but the "show don't tell" adage is echoing in my brain as I reach the deadline.  Probably a lesson learned.  If I did the project over I think I would do it in 3 separate chapters allowing more time to tell the story visually.  Could I complete three chapters?  Eh.

The End is barreling down on me!