Movie

“The Trials of One.”  By Nicolette Rene 

Greetings, I’m Nicolette Rene, Joe Morriss’s personal assistant.  I help Joe with his scheduling, give him reminders, take phone messages, and write memos.  I’m also the neutral barrier between you and his email much of the time.  I’m also writing this article, not only because I believe in his work and his storyline, but also for the rash of emails asking why you, the fan, must wait so long for his sample trailer.  This article entails the step-by-step process to help you better appreciate the effort demanded.   

**Note: The style of Joe’s animation is not what the proposed film will look like.  Animated features require teams of artists to create an appropriate visual style.   

To help me write this article, Mr. Morriss agreed to complete a scene to its entirety.  For this example, he has chosen Scene 21.   

The first step in the animation is to understand the storyboard.  The storyboard is a series of images, similar to a comic, that map out the animation in sequences by scene.  When these images are paced together and timed like a slideshow, you have what is called an animatic.  The animatic tells the animator how long the animated scene is, and how much animation is required.  Scene 21 requires Link to run through an ancient ruin, jump over a statue and slide under the door before it shuts on top of him.  This scene requires roughly 4 seconds of animation. 

The animation itself is probably the most difficult aspect.  Each drawing must be compared to the previous one in order to preserve continuity.  Without continuity a character’s face, limbs, or body, could contort oddly.  Typically, an animator would test the animation, and then pass it down the line.  Those individuals would tween the animation together and eventually clean it up.  Since Mr. Morriss has nobody to pass the work to, he must be extra cautious, and try to produce an animation accurate enough by the first or second pencil test.  A pencil test is created by photographing all the images and watching them in sequence on the computer to see if there are any abnormalities in the motion.

If the pencil test is successful, Joe can go back to the drawings and clean them up by inking them in.  Next they are scanned one-by-one at a moderately high resolution, after which, the painting process begins.  The image is broken apart, separating the line from the paper.  The paper is deleted leaving only the black line on a transparency.  From there you can add your desired colors. 

Accounting for light and shadow is also done within the program, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  Shading is performed through a process called rotoscoping.  Rotoscoping is the manual selecting of certain areas of the image and manipulating them.  In this case, Mr. Morriss lightens or darkens desired areas to give the illusion of volume.  The process is repeated over and over again for every drawing. 

Finally, this animation is composited into the 3d scene and rendered.  The final rendering with added effects is then flipped over.  Why?  Because Joe is right-handed and Link is a lefty, Joe usually acts out all scenes of animation himself before drawing them.  So when the right-handed Link is finished, he’s flipped over to make him left-handed again!  That’s why Link’s sword needs to be on his right! All things considered, the finished product is something to be revered.

Joe still has a large amount of work ahead of him.  However we both know the story is worth the effort.  I know that he will accomplish this great feat, but he asks for your continuing patience and support. 

Update - October 1, 2005

Joe has sent us a short clip of the trailer, click here to download it.  You will need RealPlayer to view this movie, but it is well worth installing it if you haven't already.