Earth Savers (airing in Sweden, Finland and Norway)

ponysmasher · Post by **ponysmasher** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 2:35 pm

I recently finished this:

It's a six part fully animated documentary series for TV about people who do good things for our environment.

I animated it all by myself on an insane schedule. I had about a month for each 14 minute episode and in that month I had to:

-Collaborate on the script
-Edit the interviews
-Make an animatic
-Animate the whole thing
-Make music
-Record sounds
-Edit the episode
-Mix the sound

I wouldn't recommend working this way if you value such things as "sleep" and "life"....

We were two people working on it, my partner traveled around the world recording interviews while I stayed at home animating. Fair division of labor right?

Actually, I tagged along to Stockholm and London but he went to Congo, Chile, India and Trinidad.

It may not be the best looking animation ever but given the constraints I feel pretty proud of it. It's by far the biggest project I've undertaken yet.
I tried a lot of different ways of working in order to be as efficient as possible.
In this shot there wasn't a lot of movement needed so I drew the tiger in Illustrator and Imported it into AS:

This workflow was quite a hassle so I only used it on this shot.

Whenever else there was limited motion needed I drew pieces in Paint tool SAI instead:

That background is a bitmap as well, but most of the time I made the backgrounds in AS. I made an .anme file with trees, bushes, grass, skies etc and then imported and rearranged pieces to get suitable backgrounds.

I also experimented a little bit with shooting silhouettes on video and mixing with the animation. In this shot I filmed my backlit hand and composited in:

Here's a still of a shot where I used the silhouette of my head:

In Sweden it will air on SVT2 at 14:30 on these dates:

January 26
February 2
February 9
February 16
February 23
March 1

It's not exactly prime time but it will be up on SVT Play as well.
It will air in Finland and Norway as well but I don't have those dates or times yet.
A recut version of the India episode will be screened at the Gothenburg Film Festival at the end of the month.

There's a website for the series (with some short clips) here: http://earthsaversfilms.com/

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:04 pm

Wow!
That's a LOT of work and a beautiful project! I just checked the trailer and looks great, congratulations!
You should have told your friend to contact me in Chile! I would have been happy to give him a ride for my country and give him some advices and contacts.
And, of course, in my little apartment there is a couch for anyone who needs to sleep

Anyway, fantastic beautiful work, huge congratulations.

skitoba · Post by **skitoba** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:38 pm

This is insane! 14 Minutes in one month? How did you survive this?

Appart from this, I think it could be a really good experience working on nearly all the parts of a production.

Very well done.

all the best from Tobias

ponysmasher · Post by **ponysmasher** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 5:24 pm

skitoba wrote:This is insane! 14 Minutes in one month? How did you survive this?

With a lot of re-using of assets and little sleep...

By the way, I checked out your portfolio in your signature. Fantastic stuff! Your 2D animation is prety much flawless and I love your maquettes.

Can't wait to see what more you can do with Anime Studio.

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 5:27 pm

Congratulation to this great work!!
Well done!
Grattis
I will check it out when it's aired in Sweden.

hothead · Post by **hothead** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 5:38 pm

Congratulation well done.

Barry Baker · Post by **Barry Baker** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 11:58 pm

That's an amazing achievement. I had a look at the clips on your website, and it's very impressive, particularly in view of your schedule. It must have been a nightmare though!

neon22 · Post by **neon22** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:34 am

Hey Ponysmasher - great job. The stills look excellent and thanks for showing us some clips. If you need some extra graphics for one of the games - yell out. Happy to help.
Cheers...

3deeguy · Post by **3deeguy** » Sun Jan 08, 2012 6:39 pm

6 episodes (x) 14 minutes each = 84 minutes. Add the trailer...

Add up all the conceptual work under the time constraints without coming up for air. You were one of the two caped characters in the trailer!!

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Sun Jan 08, 2012 9:52 pm

well done Ponysmasher - that's so awesome! I really like your character style, very recognisable.

Hope it's well received at the festival, I'm sure you'll get a lot of work on the back of this - just try and give yourself more breathing room next time (or at least become filthy rich in the process)

All the best!

uddhava · Post by **uddhava** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 4:33 pm

Congratulations! Keep up the good work.

AmigaMan · Post by **AmigaMan** » Wed Jan 11, 2012 11:38 pm

What an achievement! You are right to be proud as it looks excellent. Did you use HitFilm too?

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Thu Jan 12, 2012 9:49 am

Excellent style, story, execution, and result!
And even a game in html5!
Epic!
-G

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:35 am

Loved the clips PonySmasher, would really like to see the whole series too.

capricorn33 · Post by **capricorn33** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 7:00 pm

Fantastic work, ponysmasher! The clips are looking great. Congrats to a job well done!

I'll watch the whole series as it airs on SVT and/or YLE.