"Critter Song" Page On RyanMcCulloch.com

Hey guys! There's now a page on RyanMcCulloch.com with "Critter Song" pics and stuff. Go to:
http://ryanmcculloch.com/crittersongpage.html
MOLI.com also has a featurette on me which is pretty fun. Check it out at:
http://www.moli.com/p/moli_roller/315/0

It's A Wrap!

After almost three whole months, “Critter Song” is finished! I finished the long-necked characters last night at about 3am, I think they may be the tallest characters I’ve ever done. I shot them today, the shot took much longer than I anticipated to shoot, but it looks super cool. It was so nice to sit and watch the complete film tonight (Which is about 2 minutes), what a wonderful feeling. I’ll be doing a tiny bit of post tomorrow, but there’s not much to do. Now I have to move all my stuff out of the studio. Normally, I hate packing and moving out of a place, it’s such a hassle. But I’m in such a great mood with the film being done, I’ll probably end up having a great time anyway.

Now The Bugs Are REALLY Done

I spent the whole day digitally fixing over a hundred shots of the bugs flying around. It was not as fun as it sounds. The altering for these shots was much more intricate and elaborate than the flying birds and took much much longer, even though its almost exactly the same amount of frames. Sorry there's no picture to go with this post, but I forgot to take a picture of myself sitting in my boxers at my computer looking miserable. Tomorrow I'll make the characters for the final shot which I'll hopefully shoot Thursday. It's so great to have the end in site. I'm ready to do another project!

Finally, I Animated The Bugs

I built these guys really early on in the production, but I didn't animate them until yesterday. And it turned out to be a great shot. It really stands out among the rest. Now, unfortunately, I get to spend a crap-load of time removing sticks from all the character's butts. That's never fun. Anyway, I only have one shot left and then the film is complete! As much as I've loved working on this film, I can't wait to wrap it up.

Big Chunk Completed Today

Today I animated a fairly long shot with these two fellas and I have to admit, I’m very proud. They stayed in place the entire time, they hardly caused any trouble. Not to say there wasn’t any. One problem was with the little guy in the back. His head fell off mid shot, falling about a foot (which is far for a little clay head). Luckily his guardian angel must have been around because the back side of the head hit that ground, keeping his face from smashing in. That would not have been fun. There’s nothing I hate more than getting a couple seconds into a shot and then having to start over again. The other obstacle I had to face was 5 seconds into the shot (lets not think how many frames that is), I bumped the tripod and couldn’t get it back into position. So my dad (who was helping me out today) and I decided to use a trick we developed a few years back. We just went with it as a cue to have the camera do a little sweep into the scene and it looks really great. It moves on cue with the music so it looks very intentional. This is the only time in this film where I have a moving camera, and it makes the scene look much more three-dimensional. Another happy accident blesses the project. I’m very close to completing the film, hopefully only a week away. I can’t wait to share it.

Tree Top Characters

Today I set up the scene for my bluish “lemur” characters, as you can see I shortened their arms quite a bit. I was having a really hard time attaching them to the tree trunks because the bark is very fragile, and sheds when touched, not a great surface to stick clay against. So I had to create theses elaborate clay rigs to hold them up, as you can see, the berry eating dragon from Happiness, along with the Spidercat, contributed a great deal of their bodies to help make this happen. My hope is that the two characters will really be able to keep form throughout the shooting tomorrow. We’ll see.

Another New Guy

Here's the character I made yesterday, gonna make his friend today.

Blinky Dinky

Yesterday and today I've been digitally blinking my characters. This is a task I find tedious and boring, but it's better than blinking the characters during the animation process because I've ruined many a shot by knocking a character over when trying to give him eyelids. Adding blinks to a character makes him seem so much more alive. Tomorrow I'm going to start building some new characters--Wish me luck!