Moho Forum

Good evening!

I'd written a film that I've been motioning to turn into a feature-length animated film geared towards a young adult audience. It is a Fantasy Comedy/Adventure titled "The Heroes of Gheldrynn".

Now, what I'm looking to do right now is recruit:
- Character Concept Artist(s)
- Background Concept Artist(s)
- Vector Artist(s) to create vectored versions of the concept art

This, for now, is for producing a crowdfunding trailer to raise funds for the film's actual production. All who participate in the production of this crowdfunding trailer will be invited to stay on as crew for the film's production once it receives funding.

Further details: https://www.stage32.com/jobs/49620/Hero ... ng-Trailer

If you're not on Stage 32 to apply through their interface, feel free to email me at george@georgerpowell.com

This, for now, is for producing a crowdfunding trailer to raise funds for the film's actual production. All who participate in the production of this crowdfunding trailer will be invited to stay on as crew for the film's production once it receives funding.

This translates to "I can't pay you." Please state "work for free" more clearly in the subject.

Hi George. I appreciate that you are someone who has worked with animators here for years, and your music is awesome! While I can't begin to wrap my head around the work for a feature length film, a short trailer project sounds interesting to me. Do you have a storyboard or animatic for the trailer? Even if the concept art isn't there yet, having an animatic would really help people to understand what the trailer project entails and to focus on the assets needed specifically for the trailer. It would also give an idea of how complex the animation will be. Interested to learn more about this project!

lwaxana wrote:Hi George. I appreciate that you are someone who has worked with animators here for years, and your music is awesome! While I can't begin to wrap my head around the work for a feature length film, a short trailer project sounds interesting to me. Do you have a storyboard or animatic for the trailer? Even if the concept art isn't there yet, having an animatic would really help people to understand what the trailer project entails and to focus on the assets needed specifically for the trailer. It would also give an idea of how complex the animation will be. Interested to learn more about this project!

You're thinking a bit too far ahead. I was seeking visual artists in order to have the concept art made so everything else can follow in suit afterwards.

My reasons for doing this as a crowdfunding trailer, and having to put myself out in the open for critics like Slowtiger, is because I don't want people to work on a feature-length film for free, because I know how it is to have 60%+ of clients want free work for an entire production. However, since I don't have 10 years to attempt to raise the funds myself to even get as far as funding a promotional trailer, I had to compromise - against my will - to at least try to find some visual artists looking to at least break into the industry that would be willing to at least do enough for a promotional trailer. It's 95% less work than a feature-length production.

Anyone who does not wish to be a part as no payment is coming up-front for this particular trailer segment has my understanding and respect of that decision.

George R Powell wrote:You're thinking a bit too far ahead. I was seeking visual artists in order to have the concept art made so everything else can follow in suit afterwards.

It isn't necessary to complete all the design work before creating a rough bubble-figure animatic with temporary audio. In fact, I would advise against it because the animatic reveals opportunities to improve scripts and designs.

The main advantage of starting your animatic as early as possible is that you can be extremely economical in doing only the design work that is needed for the trailer. For instance, you might have 20 characters in your film, but if only 5 appear in your trailer, you don't need to design all 20 to complete the trailer. Taking it further, you don't need to draw a complete turn around model sheet for a character that only appears in a three quarter view in the trailer. I have a friend doing background art for my project and the storyboard/animatic is how I know exactly which background angles I'll need for my scenes. I don't want my friend to spend time drawing backgrounds that I won't use in the immediate production.

I think the only reason you'd want to do design work that is not specific to the trailer production is if you are using that more general concept art to pitch the whole film. Obviously you are trying to make a pitch for the whole film. So the question is, are you going to pitch it with primarily model sheets and still images or primarily through the animated trailer?

Anyway, the project sounds cool! I don't have a lot of free time, but if you end up needing people for small clearly defined tasks, I'd be interested.

Certainly sounds interesting. To Lwaxana's point though, I also couldn't find any indication of the trailer length you're shooting for. Which could make a pretty big difference in how much "free" time any artist can offer up. Also, what kind of completion date do you have in mind to kick off the crowd-funding? (Obviously a lot of that probably is contingent on the help responses here.)

lwaxana wrote:The main advantage of starting your animatic as early as possible is that you can be extremely economical in doing only the design work that is needed for the trailer. For instance, you might have 20 characters in your film, but if only 5 appear in your trailer, you don't need to design all 20 to complete the trailer.

...

lwaxana wrote:So the question is, are you going to pitch it with primarily model sheets and still images or primarily through the animated trailer?

Very good points there. Some of the confusion/concern probably lies with the crowd-funding approach. These days a trailer for an existing film wants to showcase anything and everything that can get "butts in the seats." Often to a fault.

For a kickstarter-, indiegogo-, or something of the like- campaign, it's like making a pitch to many many producers without all the cash, who can add up to green-light something. First, probably for something they want to see, but also to get some kind of reward for backing. The good and bad news is that they shoulder less of the risk comparatively, until you get your full funding. It's your job to showcase how professional and well thought out your plan is, and why it's win-win for everyone and will actually come to fruition.

I'd say your first trial run at that approach is here (or anywhere you're looking for artists): in trying to gather support -- in order to gather support -- to complete a project --- to possibly get views/money/( or at least some kind of reward for backing. )

I think the more you have your game-plan decided, the better off you'll be. Are you shooting for a trailer that just looks great as a standalone, hoping people want to fund with their money to see it when it's done. (hoping that there's a large enough audience outside once it's done that you can go farther) ?

Are you looking for a mixture of design work and a teaser trailer to showcase more of the project in full to represent the caliber of the finished film?

Are you at this stage simply looking for concept artists? And then later come calling on the same or another batch of people to animate and finish off only the project launch phase? Only THEN to hire some of the same people to complete the film at whatever wage is set by the funding?

Lots of questions, and much of this you probably already know. And I'm not trying to get on a rant or really sound disgruntled, because I'm not. Also, to be fair I'm by no means an expert on the best way to go about this. Just a little feedback because maybe it can be beneficial.

In sum... you should share a little more of your overall production plan, because at best, it will help with interest, clarify your expectations, and weed out those who may be of no help to you. At worst, you describe something in further detail that either has no solid direction, or does not appeal to anyone you're seeking help from and you'll know sooner. In the middle, maybe you can find common ground with interested parties and you can tackle the task together.

(Again, not trying to sound condescending or derogatory in any way, and I like the concept. Good luck! )

I took the trouble to chase this down a bit further... straight cut/paste from George's website:

Medieval Fantasy, Adventure, Comedy, Drama -- Human Paladin Mellos de Madrienne, Rogue Assassin Rodney Roccoco, Elf Priest Vespaen Illid and his wife, the Mage, Piatt are the most dysfunctional of friends on a journey to seal away the Darkness they were believed to have defeated, only for their quest to take an unexpected turn that will change their lives forever.

which gives some idea of the key characters and thus the scope of character concept art required.

how far advanced is the screenplay? do you have an idea of the backgrounds (settings / cast) for the teaser?

lwaxana asked, to paraphrase, the degree to which the teaser will be animated... so I'll take that question one step further... have you decided on / do you have constraints for the animation technology for teaser and/or film? (e.g. Motion Artist with some AS drop-in might be more than adequate for a teaser that is mainly to be viewed online in order to raise funding; but you might feel the need for heavy end 3d animation software for the actual production)

My apologies. I didn't really clarify well what my plan was from an internal perspective.

The Screenplay
The screenplay was completed back in June 2014. It's 132-pages long (cut down from the original 287-page screenplay I'd written back when I entertained the idea of making it an animated series, but decided against that as a feature-length film seemed a better route for this story), and I'm only doing minor touch-ups to the dialogue.

The Gameplan (in terms of design for the trailer)
I was not aiming to create a fully-animated trailer for the campaign. Good god, no! That would be a ton of work for animators to do. There are 4 main heroes and several auxiliary characters. Instead, all I am seeking from the character concept artist is just pencil sketches of ONLY the four heroes. I will then have someone else make vector art versions based upon these sketches. A background artist will make some of the key locations from the story into general concept art (preferably with a rough digital paint job). From here, it would be nice to actually fully animate at least 4 short segments ("short" as in maybe 6-8 seconds of footage) with no voice acting, because there will be music going along this trailer.

From here, with the sketches, vector art, background art, and few animated segments, along with some thematic score that the composer will be coming up with, I'm going to voice-over a trailer pitching the film to the public, using simple animation techniques that I have practice (Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1dclkZvIFE )at within my editing software, and I will composite and edit together a trailer that will span, ideally, to about 3-5 minutes (enough to explain what the movie is, introduce the heroes with our concept art which will fade into the vector art, explain what we need, and explain what's in it for our backers).

I am also looking for (as stated in the job description) a Marketing/PR position to help promote this campaign. I have a handful of former clients who write for fantasy-fandom websites, some of which have notoriety, but the more venues the merrier when it comes to generating a buzz so the campaign won't be a total flop.

All of the real excessive work is being saved for the actual film itself when it receives its funding.

It's 132-pages long

As an animator; One of the best ways to get another animator to stop talking to you is say 'Feature length animation.'

At one minute a page, your looking at an animation that is over 2 hours long. Or 7920 seconds.

Read:
http://www.animatorisland.com/how-fast- ... u-animate/

So if you find one person who animates at 24 seconds a week, hey it's only just over 6 years.

Dale

One of my former clients, whose productions I've scored, were created and animated by just one person. Using ASP, he successfully animated two OVAs that were 45-minute runtimes a piece (90 minutes overall thusfar), and both were fully produced within 1-2 years by a single animator. The production I'm referring to is "Eve of October" by the user here Neomarz1.

Given that there is a lot of rigging animation involved in Eve of October, if one person can accomplish that in that short of time, how much could several animators accomplish (even if it will take well over a year or two to produce)? I don't expect a feature-length film to be complete within a year; in fact, I won't be surprised if the process of production lasts around 3-4 years with a small team of animators.

But I digress, as this particular part of the conversation is currently irrelevant as the film itself is not going to begin production until it is funded; this thread is currently directed toward producing a 3-5 minute crowdfunding trailer where there will be extremely minimal actual animation (I plan to only have 3 to 4 small segments of 8-second animated clips that will be storyboarded in the actual trailer; the rest will just be showing off the visual concept designs and vector art so backers will see the quality and potential of the film if it is successfully receives funding). The job listing linked in the OP is the reason for this thread.

I plan to cross the bridge of hiring paid animators for the actual film's production when we have the means to cross that bridge.

If you have a self contained 4-5 minute segment you might try pitching it as a short:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr-1XO7dIA0