Tale of Shadows: The first 3 minutes of Animation

People of Earth! I have returned from the planet on the far reaches of the solar system where I go to render and edit. I return with an offering of animation; a look at the first 3+ minutes of my animated short.

Ok ok….enough of the theatrics. I am still here; still alive…I haven’t fallen off the planet. I was just rendering…which technically works out to be pretty much the same thing to animation peoples. One of the reasons for the delay was a sudden brainstorm for an intro sequence, something that would be exciting and suspenseful and add more meaning to the story.
The other delay, was deliberating over a title….Yes, this whole time I hadn’t worked out a title. I decided on “tale of shadows” but that may be subject to change.
The third delay: this has to do with just how difficult AUDIO is….Hooo weee! Audio is my brother’s area of expertise, but sadly my brother has been away on tour with a band, leaving me to audio edit and do a crap job of leveling it all off. Between rethinking my soundtrack and having to write an original score from scratch, to going through free sound resources online to find all the foley audio I needed, to painstakingly adding each sound at exactly the right mark…it was exhausting.
Also, this was my first time using Adobe Audition…it was easy to use and amazing because it gives the option for surround mixing. (which I eventually want to do..well, I will let my brother do that actually)

The intro scene is really what I think makes this flow so much better. The scene as I had it before was a bit slow and uneventful on its own, but preceeded by the frantic tone of the intro, I felt it flowed a lot better and added an air of intrigue. On top of that it also set the tone for everything in terms of the time period it is all taking place in. Also, because of this, I actually had to make another character, Mr. Blake…a British soldier complete with a musket. (Yes, this story is taking place back in the days of slavery)
I tried my best at making the shots flow in a way that made sense. At one point I had to do a few re-enders because my brother pointed out that I had broken the 180 rule of film-making in two of my shots. (this is why it helps to have a trusted second set of eyes)

Now that I have this out, I have to get cracking on the next bit. There is a lot of work to do. The story is very important and because of the dark themes, I have to work around it fairly and offer balance to an issue that can be heavy (slavery). On top of that I have to keep this all within 15 minutes. I can see where I could easily write the story as a feature film…but I would never finish it at that length on my own. I have my work cut out for me, but it will get done. I will be posting images, but as far as animation goes, this may be as much as you will see until the final cut. I don’t want to give away the story after all :p

I am thinking of maybe starting an Indiegogo campaign to get this finished. It has been a lot of work ( 3 years worth) just to get to this point and it is exhausting, especially when finances are lacking. Also, It would be nice to give my voice actors a bit o cash for their input. Speaking of which…Big shoutout to Dele Adams for doing the voice of Boris and to Natalie Thompson for doing the voice of Akoulah, you guys are awesome. I will be harassing them both again soon >:3

Without further ado, please enjoy “Tale of Shadows” while it is up.

And also follow the voice of Boris (Dele Adams) @DeleMage (He also happens to write for GeekMundo)