Product placement

Eliana Clemente was hired as my Storyboard Revisionist. But she is so much more.
A talented draftsperson she has been able to help out with Prop design and perhaps someday soon, colour.
In the meantime her passion for our little project has shown no bounds. I present exhibit A: A Mister King Hot Water Bottle Cozy.
 First in a long line of M. King products, I'm sure.
Like Mickey Mouse I'm sure it will be worth a fortune some day.

How to rig a character

Or how to rig a character for efficiency.

I have worked in hand drawn animation, Flash animation, and 3D animation but never really worked in Toon Boom's Harmony. That being said I've always felt that character rigs at our studio may be a bit over produced, if that makes sense. Some times characters are rigged so thoroughly they take away the necessity to actually draw. Some times the rigs don't fully consider the final look of the character or the range of motions they'll be put through.

 One of the first conversations I had with Scott Williamson, or TD Supervisor, was that I wanted a simple rig for our characters that was going to be easy to work with and very efficient. Our characters have an animated texture which glows within and a sort of charcoal, sketchy line. I wanted the texture to have little to no impact whatsoever regarding the animators and the brush line had to be easily replicable. Scott was able to deliver on both accounts as well as add some special treats which we discovered during our time together on Bubble Guppies. We're talking sliders which control pre posed character posing and expressions. buttons which control the animated textures being on or off, timing of textures, opacity of textures and a bunch of other stuff I have no idea about. 

Some of this has existed before Mr. King but to my knowledge not as efficient and simplified.

I have asked Scott to type up a more thorough list of that which he has worked to create but for now I think he's too busy creating more "simple" tools.

Craziness ensues

So as expected it's been a while since posting. Partly because  it's been more of the same and partly because it's more of the insane.
Scripts continue to pour in, as do character designs, prop designs, background designs. Storyboards have been launched, Leica's put together, actor records...recorded. It's relentless.

And I couldn't be happier!

Art at last

Wouldn't be much of a production blog if I didn't start sharing some production art work.

The backgrounds Don has been working on are spectacular!The characters that Sun Mi and Emily worked on, amazing! The props that Bora and Nick have been working on, stunning.

Such amazing talent that I'm fortunate enough to be working with.

See some samples below...

Scripts..or how to pack a punch

7 minutes.
7 minutes to tell a story.
Beginning, middle, end.
Moral/learn.
7 Minutes can be more than enough time to tell a story, if properly paced.
As with everything 'Mr. King' related, less is best would be the best approach.

The Remarkable Mr. King was created to match Genevieve's (writer/illustrator) books which had carefully told stories with beautifully, deceptively simple, illustrations. She only painted what needed to be painted, but in a unique way.
She only wrote what needed to be written, but in a storybook way.

Scripts for Mr. King are no exception to these rules. And some times, most of the times, our writers get caught up in the excitement of our characters. They write fun actions, great interactive dialogue, exciting actions. And it's both Andrew(script editor) and my responsibility to ensure we remove most of it. We skim through every line, every note, ensuring that when we're done we're left with only what's necessary to tell the story in unique way.
This is why I created the writers style guide. Obviously they all know how to write, but sometimes being literal to a three act structure, helps one focus.
A typical Mr. King story follows...

Act 1: Mr. King likes/dislikes something. He is presented with the opportunity  to act on this and has his "Big Think", which is the formation of his plan on how he thinks he should pursue his like, or deal with his dislike. This "Big Think" leads us into Act 2.

Act 2: I usually like three events to happen through Act 2. Three things that gradually grow to show our audience that this was perhaps, not the best course of action for Mr. King to take. It always results in an "Uh oh!" moment where Mr. King realizes must acknowledge his mistake and have a Thoughtful think in order to fix his error in judgement. This leads us into Act 3.

Act 3: Essentially this act is where Mr. King fixes the problems he may have caused from his Big think and shows the correct, more appropriate way of dealing with his original desire. Act 3 always ends with a special moment between our narrator and Mr.King sharing a poignant moment together, summarizing the learn in a well thought out sentence or two. Something remarkable.

7 minutes may not seem like a lot of time to incorporate all of this info. But if you think of it like 2 minutes 20 seconds per act, if written carefully, should be more than enough time to tell an entertaining Mr. King story.

And we mustn't forget about the music...

Technical difficulties...and successes

The funny thing about the studio I work for is that they are extremely creative but sometimes extremely complacent.

Our studio history has been extremely innovative whether creating a feature film, Rock and Rule, one of the first 3D tv series, Roly Poly Ollie, the first Flash broadcast series, Quads, a first Toon Boom series, 16, and countless innovations which helped bring productions such as The Backyardigans and Bubble Guppies to the high quality level which our audiences appreciate.

Our studio created an asset management tool called 'Nelnet' which helps one upload, download, images, scripts, movies etc, which was extremely innovative for the time. Still is actually. It's really quite amazing and not unlike popular management tools such as Autodesk's Shotgun. Better in some respects.
Unfortunately, one of the buttons doesn't work the way it should. Apparently I need to undertake some sort of quest regarding sacrifice and endurance, not unlike Jason and the Argonauts, in order to have this button fixed.
Oh well, not the end of the world, thankfully. But honestly...a button?

Picking up steam and a voice!!!

So things are really picking up on Mr. King lately, which explains the lack of posts over the recent weeks. So much has been going on and it's all great! Some remarkable things to note...
We have our Mr. King voice!!!

Nissae Isen, a very experienced voice actor, has been cast for our lead role! The whole process and how it unfolded, was quite interesting.
When I was first approached by our casting director, Kim Hurdon, my original direction was to find an adult who had a raspy voice, not unlike Bobby from King of the Hill. A little lion who might be a little mischievous but also have the ability to quickly change from high aggressive energy to gentle empathy.  Kim provided a strong initial group of actors and actresses and I had some short listed for the part. None had the original vocal quality I was looking for but there were a couple I thought I could live with.
Thankfully Athena, our head of development and huge Mr. King fan, ever so gently, questioned the suggested casting choice. It forced me to acknowledge my own doubts and we cast the net again.
One individual who caught my attention was Nissae but I wasn't sure as her audition felt a little too high and a bit on the femine side for Mr. King. Kim brought her back in and with a little more direction, this pro was able to magically transform into Mr. King. Nissae has it all and I'm very happy we found her.

Not sure if Mr. King should have some curly hair or Nissae a crown and cat whiskers.

Last week speaks

Last week I heard the very first voice casting auditions for Mr. King and his friends. Obviously everyone will be quite anxious to hear Mr. King speak for the first time and will no doubt have an expectation for how he should sound. We sat with Kim Hurdon, the casting/voice director and gave her as much direction as possible. I was up front with her regarding the voice being the most cloudy for me in terms of what I think it should be. Kim managed to deliver us a wide assortment of character auditions and I was pleasantly surprised. Though we still don't have a Mr. King I think we do have a Tex, Rolo, and a strong candidate for the narrator. Some of these matched the direction I initially gave and others were unexpected but felt really good. I think starting with these few characters gives me a good anchor point on which to assess the other characters as they come in.
Should be hearing some more auditions today or tomorrow. Fingers crossed we get closer to a Mr. King.

Last week today

Last week saw us picking up a bit of steam on the design front.
Don Gauthier, my Art Director, has made great progress in setting up the expanded look for the show. Currently working on Old Jim Elk's house location he is also setting up what will be reusable elements for other locations. The idea behind this is to allow for more efficient composition of scenes with pre-made flowers, trees, grass planes, etc.
Will post an image shortly.
Work has also begun on character designs. Sun Mi Yoon has been working on transferring Genevieve Cote's rough suggestions for Chanelle the skunk, and Rollo the porcupine, into production ready characters. Sun Mi worked with me on the original Teaser and was instrumental in creating the texture fill within the characters which animates.
Emily Picket has also joined the team and has been working on the turnaround of Mr. King, along with testing the newly created character brush from Scott Williamson. Turnarounds can take a while to lock down as they are the angles which will be seen throughout the series and we need to get them just right.
 Below are the work in progress Chanelle and Rollo, along with my revision notes on the first turnaround attempt for Mr. King.

Writers Summit

Last week we held our very first Mr. King Writer's Summit.

 For those unfamiliar with this term it is the process of sitting in a room with those who will be writing on the show to discuss ideas and Premises for potential series episodes.
Andrew Sabiston, our head writer/script editor, helped pull together an amazing group of writers all of which brought great energy and enthusiasm to the room. Our original goal was to come away from the two day summit with roughly 12 script ideas. I'm happy to report that we blew that away with a whopping 21. (So over half of the series.)
 My feeling is that having the luxury of working with Andrew during the development period in flushing out the writing style for our three pilot scripts certainly helped us out.
Also, the previously mentioned Writer's Style Guide played an important roll in helping the group maintaining focus and staying on target.
We also had the pleasure of having both Genevieve Cote, the books Writer/Illustrator, in the room to help provide feedback as well as a few extra script ideas, and Stacie Goldin, our educational consultant. Stacie was valuable in providing a window into the mindset of children aged 2-5. Valuable information and guidance from topics of familiarity to language and length of sentences which our audience may or may not comprehend.

My personal goal going into the summit was to come out with scripts telling stories with familiar topics in a way which is uniquely Mr. King. So far so good!