Welcome to the very first edition of the gaierhei weekly newsletter! First of all, deep apologies to those using dark mode who are seeing an uglier version of what this newsletter is supposed to look like. The way emails are altered for dark mode varies from client to client, which means that it is exceedingly difficult to properly prepare an email to look acceptable to all viewers. In particular, Gmail's dark mode seems to invert the colors of all emails, even if they are already in a dark style, turning light text on a dark background into dark text on a light background. If this is the case, there may be an option to view this email in light mode in your email client somewhere and see this newsletter's original colors.
I will use this newsletter to share news and progress on projects that I am working on. In this particular edition, I will give an overview of all the progress I have made on my current projects so far. Subsequent editions will probably be more detailed as I will only have to report the progress I have made that week.
If all goes well, I will also post this and all future editions of the newsletter in the archive, which means they will be free and available to read for any future subscribers or non-subscribers who just want to see what I'm working on.
I have had the idea of a newsletter for a while, but only acted on it recently. This newsletter was created over the course of just a week or two using Listmonk, a self-hosted newsletter application, and SMTP2GO, a free(ish) SMTP provider. Initially, I wanted to send the emails using my own self-hosted Postfix email server, but this turned out to be both too difficult and too fiddly. I tried using Amazon SES as an SMTP provider at first, but they refused to grant my account production access and refused to give a reason why. So far, SMTP2GO hasn't given me any issues, but we will see if anything comes up down the line.
I don't really like having to rely on third parties for services such as this newsletter, but at least in the present, I think this is the most convenient and effective way to get my newsletter up and running. I am also happy to say that, as of yet, I have not spent a single cent on the creation of this newsletter, and it likely will remain that way for a while. Listmonk is free and open-source, and SMTP2GO has a pretty decent free plan.
Bear in mind this newsletter is partly just an experiment and the system I am using is bound to change after a while. I am very much a newbie in terms of configuring things on my server and working with all these different networking concepts, but I learned a lot while making this newsletter and I hope to improve my skills more as the newsletter (hopefully) expands!
I am currently working on a new short film which is mostly 2D animated with 3D and live action elements. So far, the script, storyboard, and a few 2D animated scenes are complete, with a few more 2D scenes on the way. It is set to release in early November, but there is no telling how much time I will actually have to work on it once classes start in a few days.
The main character for this film is a teenage boy. Unfortunately, I do not have the voice of a teenage boy. The thought of having to work with a voice actor for this project made me kind of uncomfortable (I don't like talking to people), so I looked into some options and eventually settled on a method using a little bit of voice acting and one of Ableton's pitch shifting methods, Complex Pro.
The Complex Pro pitch shifting method allows for the base tone of a sound to be lowered while preserving the formants of the original sound, which prevents the final voice from sounding unnatural. I found that lowering my own voice by around 7 semitones produces a believable masculine voice that I felt fit the character I was trying to portray. After applying this and a bit of EQ to bring back some of the higher frequencies, I think the final voice clips turned out decently well for someone with absolutely zero voice acting experience. However, the final clips gain a weird metallic quality that I am hoping I will find some solution for in the final film. In the future, I will probably just get over my fear of talking to people and find an actual voice actor.
I am also hoping to release a behind-the-scenes video at some point detailing exactly what changes I am making to the voice clips in Ableton, but this will probably be closer to the video's actual release date, or more likely some time after.
I used my drawing tablet rather than my mouse (as in Flower Basket) to animate this newer film, and it is also in a far more traditional 2D style. I think this is a lot easier than trying to animate everything using my broken mouse, but on the other hand, animating this way requires a lot more attention to detail as mistakes are far easier to catch. I will likely keep the animations in this film sketchy and loose both to fit the story and tone of the film and to make it easier for me to finish on schedule. Currently, I am trying to complete all of the rough animation and lineart for all of the shots before moving on to coloring.
I am using Blender for all of the animation in this film. I like Blender's grease pencil editor for its ability to alter individual strokes after they are drawn. This makes it easier to delete unnecessary guidelines and move specific parts of individual frames. Because Blender can be used for both 2D and 3D animation, the process of blending together 2D and 3D elements is also very simple. I also plan to use Blender for all video editing and compositing, which is the same process I used for Flower Basket.
So far, I think I have made significant progress on the parts of the film that are the most difficult to animate. These involve a lot of camera movement, multiple characters, and weird out of sync movement. A static shot of just one character that had multiple head turns and fairly complex movement took a few days to complete; a shot with three characters and a moving camera has taken me over a week, and it is still not done. The majority of the film is just one character with no camera movement, which makes me a bit more optimistic about the completion of this film.
3D modeling plays a big part in this film. Currently, I plan on creating all of the backgrounds and most of the props in 3D, which means I will be able to reuse them from shot to shot. This also means that animating very complex props, such as a cello (a very important prop in this film) will be made much easier. I am fairly comfortable with 3D modeling characters, but I rarely model props or backgrounds, so this will be a new experience for me. So far, I have only created the model for the cello, but I am not very happy with it and will probably remodel it at some point.
Along with the 3D models used directly in the film, I have also created 3D models to use as guidelines. For some parts of the film which are shot at a weird angle or require a lot of complicated rotation, I create rough layouts using simple boxes in 3D and then animate over top of them as a supplement to my own limited 3D intuition. I also have a rough 3D sculpture of the main character's head which I have available for reference, though I don't use it very much.
This is the aspect of the film which is the most experimental and which I am the most unsure about. I know that I want to have some real life clips in the film to amplify the sense of unease in some scenes, but I haven't really decided on where I will record those clips or what exactly they will be. Most likely, I will just use random footage on my phone that I already have, which is also what I did for the very beginning of Flower Basket.
That concludes the very first edition of the gaierhei newsletter! I forgot to advertise this newsletter on social media, so this email will be sent to basically no one. But what matters is that it's out there, right?
Emails to this address will fail to send, but if you have any questions, comments, or advice, feel free to contact me at gaierhei.art@gmail.com. This newsletter is very new, so feedback is welcome and appreciated!