8. MORE BUILDINGS

After modeling the building, the next challenge was to texture it. Again, I could use the resources at Textures.com to find the materials that I felt would contribute to the visual sensibility that I was chasing.

All that said, I didn't really know what visual sensibility I was going for; instead this "sensibility" developed as I developed the details of this scene, and then the rest of the visual assets for "The Music of Erich Zann." I am sure that a professional would probably be able to show a color pallets, and other pre-visualization illustrations that she was going for. However, I don't have the talent of traditional illustration, so I avoided steps like this. Instead, I simply collected reference images from Internet searches, and utilized those as rough guides as to what I was going for.

So how did I decide to texture buildings, then? Well, I figured that I would decide on materials for the buildings, like stucco, or brick, or other features, and then take it from there. Then I would look for a nice tiled brick, wood, or stucco texture that fit the image in my head. If it was necessary, then I would alter the colors of those textures.

The next step was getting a bump map together for these textures. Sometimes, for textures like stucco types, I would merely take the original texture and simple desaturate it. That would give me a nice "poor man's" bump map that worked well enough, I felt.

However, for brick textures, I would have to actually go in there, and paint my own bump map. This was a much more tedious process. This usually entailed tracing out each individual brick in the image, and then making them darker (or lighter, I forget which) in their own image layer; then I would inverse select those bricks, and thus we get the deeper grout on a lighter layer.

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7. BUILDING BUILDINGS

After making a central idea for the blocking of the exterior scene, I could now get to work in filling in the details. The first tasks that I laid out for myself were the buildings. Again, I used internet resources to find sample architecture that I would try to utilize. Textures.com is a nice resource that I've used for years now.

There are a couple of key reason that I return to Textures.com. The first is that they library is so extensive. With some patience, I can find so many examples of different building styles. Sure enough, I found several buildings that I wanted to use for "The Music of Erich Zann."

The other reason that I like Textures.com is that their photos of buildings are typically adjusted or initially shot as though we are looking at a cross section of the building. This helps amateurs like me simply trace over the photo, and bring the building to life.

When modeling buildings, I only use a few tools, like inserting a line loop, or extruding faces. Every now and again I will use a bridge tool, or the tool to fill in a hole. At the end, I will try to smooth the whole model, but this requires me to insert lines at the edges; otherwise when I smooth, the model looses shape and becomes more organic in nature. This isn't what I was looking for... yet.

  

  

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6. BLOCKING OUT THE EXTERIOR SET

During the summer of 2015, my creative juices were feeling like they were atrophied, and I was looking for a new project to begin. There were several avenues I could have chosen, and in fact, I wanted to begin a different animation, but I ended up starting "The Music of Erich Zann." I can't even really explain why I chose this over the other projects that I want to complete, except to say that this Lovecraft work has been sitting on my shelf for too long, I felt. So I started.

Since the layout of the animation was determined on those old papers for so long, I decided to start with the sets. I also feel more confident as a hard-body modeler, rather than as a character modeler. In fact, at this stage, I had no idea where I would go with the characters, so I decided to start on something that I did have an idea about.

There are only two establishing shots in the short story that are exterior scenes. Looking back, and later in the development, I questioned this early set, and whether I would even include this exterior scene. But I really wanted to create a nice exterior, so...

It seemed to me that the original Lovecraft story is set in New Orleans, or something like that. With that in mind, I probably should have researched some New Orleans locales, and architecture, but I don't think that I ever did. Instead I went for New Orleans' influences, European cityscapes, like French and Italian cities and towns. I did Google searches of streets in different cities, and went to work.

I think the first thing I did was try to block out the scene. I did this so that I would then know what I really needed to model in detail to flesh out the set.

Looking back at this, it is clear that this was an ambitious plan, but that it would have been better served if I had first created a detailed screenplay, and/or storyboard that would illustrate what I would need to model for the scene. Many of the initial buildings planned here did not get made, and even fewer that were made actually get seen in the final piece.

  
(I didn't end up building the large cathedral and square, and I changed some of the buildings.)

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5. OTHER PEOPLE'S STORIES

Some people ask me why I take old stories, instead of writing my own stories. Indeed, each of my previous animations were taken from other people's stories: Bukowski, Akutagawa, or a friend, Otsuki Yoshiko. There are a few reasons for this.

For one thing, it is a lot easier to start from a story that is already written. In this case, I know that H.P. Lovecraft is a much better writer than I am, so I know that this story works. This gives me the structure and plot points already, and I can go from there to develop my own visual language for the work. The

Another reason to utilize old stories is that it means that a large part of the production process is already solved. I think it is hard to write a story (I'm not sure that I have this talent), and even harder to write a good story. Creating an animated short all by myself is already hard enough. Typically, there are many people working on a short animation. In my case, the many people include writers from all over the world. What I'm really saying is that I look for ways to made the process easier, and if there are pre-made solutions, then I will utilize them. (This will be more apparent as I describe more aspects of the production process for "The Music of Erich Zann.")

H.P Lovcraft, the author of "The Music of Erich Zann."

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4. PRE-PRODUCTION NOTES

Because I had this project in my mind for years, I had already sketched out a simple screenplay for the work. In order to do this, I merely printed out the story, and annotated important elements. From there, I broke down the story into different scenes. It seemed to me, at the time, like a rudimentary screenplay. After all, my previous animation, Akutagawa's Rashomon, didn't have much more of a screenplay or storyboard. I figured that since I have the story in front of me, I wouldn't need much more detail than that. (This conception changed much later, and I did actually develop a screenplay that was much more detailed than any other that I've written or worked with before; but I'll get to that much later.)

This annotated story must have been done more than a few years ago. From there, I didn't return to the project for a long time.

(In fact, I have many such projects that are on the so-called back burner, waiting to be further developed and fleshed out.)

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3. CHOOSING "THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN"

It has been many years since I first wanted to make an animated film from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann." (My earliest notes seem to be from the year 2009.) There are several reasons for my attraction to this short story. First of all, it is H.P. Lovecraft! He is a giant of genre literature, and his stories have been loved by people all over the world for almost a hundred years. (I don't want to get too much into the details of Lovecraft's corpus, so I'll leave it at that.)

Another key reason that I wanted to animate this work is it's relation to music. I love music, and have worked in music since childhood, so the role of music in this story is also important to me.

More practical reasons that I have for feeling like this was a perfect work for me are more practical in nature. There are really only two characters in the story. That is great for an unskilled animator. (Actually, there are three characters, but I decided to not utilize the landlord character for my animation.) Another practical reason for animating this story is the limited sets that were necessary. My first animation had one set, my second animation had one and a half sets, and my third animation had two sets. This animation was either going to have three or four sets (it took me a while to to decide), so that would be an improvement from previous works.

Also, there is little to no dialogue in the story, which would force me to tell the story nearly completely visually, which I hadn't previously done on my other animations. This lack of dialogue is coupled with the fact that this is a horror story, and I liked the challenge of telling a horror story.

The last reason behind wanting to animate "The Music of Erich Zann" is that the story is short. So no matter how out-of-hand the scope would get, I would never get too far out so that it would never get complete (like dreams of a feature-length animated film might get).

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2. FROM STORY TO FINISHED MOVIE

One thing to note, right from the get-go is that this film is completed as I start to write here. I figured (perhaps wrongly) that if I had time to write such a development blog, that should have been time spent on the actual development of the film, not this blog. Further, another reason I waited until I was complete to write this is that I don't like to talk about things until they are done. This is mainly because this will lead me to talk a lot about lots of different projects, including projects that never reach completion. I don't want to be the kind of person that talks about completing a project, but doesn't actually complete the project. Thus, I will try to recall (the best I can) the process I went through over the course of the last year.

A year.

This film took a year to complete. It is definitely the longest time that I've spent on any of my animations; however, "The Music of Erich Zann" is probably my best animation to date. Perhaps to do the best work, I must spend a lot of time on it. That notion bothers me, as I typically prefer to finish things quickly, and be done with them. However, the quality of my previous animations probably speaks to the fact that none of them took longer than a couple of months to complete.

After viewing the nearly-finished product of "The Music of Erich Zann," I watched my old animations, too. They made me cringe, and I wish that I had worked more, or focused better on them, especially "Akutagawa's Rashomon." There are many things that I like about that animation, but there are so many details that I skipped in order to rush through it, and thus it looks a lot worse than I remembered.

Some people might say that I should go back and fix that project, but I haven't adequately developed the skill of revisiting and improving old projects; those projects are done, and I am moving on to make better projects in the future. In fact, the future project that I will begin soon is part of my motivation for writing all of this; I hope that I can remember the good techniques that I learned, and try to resolve the problems that still remain. That will, hopefully, make my next project even better!

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1. THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN: DEVELOPMENT BLOG

I am writing this to document what I've learned, and how I solved different problems while completing my short animation "The Music Of Erich Zann." To be sure, I am merely an amateur animator, and I don't think that I will explain anything that can't be found in many other places, by more accomplished, and more established animators. However, given my inexperience, that might actually be what I have to offer the literature on animation production: there are plenty of books and sites on how professionals address these problems. But I hope to explain how I solve these problems. Perhaps this will connect with others out there for that reason. Or perhaps people will want to read this in order to laugh at the ridiculous ways that I work. Well, In either case, I hope the reader will have fun. Here is the completed film, "The Music of Erich Zann."