The Turned progress update – Aug 14, 2023

This is a relatively short update – 25sec added on to the end. This is where the heroic rescue attempt begins – Thomas and Trojan break into the open to get the Turned away from Jameson, with Amelia and a few others bringing flame weapons to back them up.

Lots going on in life this past two weeks. Day job is busy, and I had a lightning-bolt idea for a woodwork project that is going to look amazing – an acanthus design, inlaid into a 24″x48″ tabletop, made of 3 different wood colors, with gold epoxy filling the lines between pieces. I’ll post a few progress photos here, but go have a look at facebook.com/villandwoodshop if you’re interested. As far as The Turned goes, I’ve been all-out on this project for 18 months, so I don’t feel too bad about backing off from it a little. I hope you understand.

The Turned will be free-to-watch in its finished form. If you’d like to support the project with a donation, please head to ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me along this crazy journey!

The Turned progress update – July 31, 2023

This update adds 1min30sec onto the rough animatic for Scene 6 – most of which is Jameson’s run thru the village to get the animal barns locked. I had particular fun with this set of shots, mostly because I did a lot of dramatic camera work here. The spinning shot is my favorite so far in the entire project. I think it captures the “oh crap they’re everywhere” mood. It also implements something I’ve been imagining since I started serious work on animating The Turned – the idea that all sound fades away until all you hear is a racing heartbeat. I have always enjoyed telling stories, but animating them is addictive. And the best part is… there’s so much good stuff yet to come. I’m excited for you guys to see it.

The Turned will be free-to-watch in its finished form. If you’d like to help support the project with a donation, you can do so over at ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me along this crazy journey!

The Turned Progress Update – July 5, 2023

This update has some weight to it – I wanted lots of wide, complex shots to set up what’s coming. Lots of those are done now, and hopefully you guys will have a solid sense of the situation. Time-wise, we’re about halfway thru Scene 6 now, closing in on that big story beat I’ve been teasing. It looks amazing in my head, so hopefully it’ll be just as strong on-screen. Watch this space.

The Turned will be free-to-watch in its finished form. If you’d like to help support the on-going work, you can donate at http://www.ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me along this crazy journey!

Progress Update on The Turned – Scene 6 begins! – June 5, 2023

Whew! It’s been a while since I started a new scene. I almost forgot how. All the dialog is charted (how many frames in does Jameson say the “aah” part of “barn doors”?) and I got the shots planned out for the first half or so.

This scene is one that I have a lot of mental imagery for. One of the big story beats happens here, and I’m excited to get my vision out into the world. I think you guys will like it.

The finished version of The Turned will be free-to-watch. If you think it’s worth supporting with a donation, you can do so over at ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me along this crazy journey!

The Turned Progress Update – Scene 5 Rough Animatic Complete! May 22, 2023

Whew. Took me long enough to hammer this one out, but here it is. Animation, voices, noise, and music, all roughed out for the scene. 5 months on this one – which means you can see a handful of things that were sketchy near the beginning, but improved greatly by the end. Watch Grunnel run as he approaches the gate (“Where do you want me?”), as compared to Thomas and some of the other defenders near the end. Big difference. But that’s one of the reasons I jumped in the way I did – building the animatics is giving me a mountain of practice.

So, yeah. The Believers attacked our hero’s home village, and while they didn’t burn it to the ground or anything, they really didn’t have to. They succeeded in cutting a bunch of holes in the fences, and took a bunch of the armored defenders out of action. The Turned will absolutely get into the village thru the night. This is why there were so many backup plans – a few buildings with upper levels, featuring stairs that can be pulled up to keep The Turned from reaching the living. They won’t hammer their fists against things, they won’t break all that much – they’ll just reach up for the humans until the sun comes up and chases them all back to the forest.

Big thanks to all my voice actors – they did magnificent, with very little reference to look at, and their best work is yet to come. Also big thanks to my guitarist friends who provided the voices of the undead.

The Turned will be free-to-watch in its finished form. If you think it’s worth supporting with a donation, you can do so at ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me along this crazy journey!

The Turned Progress Update – Rough Animatic Scene 5 – May 8, 2023

Soooo close to having this scene complete. Animation is done, and this week sound effects (!) are in place. I think I started work on this scene last December, so about 5 months of work. As I keep saying, fight scenes are hard.

But wow, after watching it in silence all that time, having sound effects in place (even as rough as they currently are) makes such a difference. Audio cues for impacts alone just make it come to life. Next step will be to build a preliminary music track for it, and get all the sound balanced.

After that… well, we can get on to the next scene. On that note, the end of Scene 6 has a powerful story moment in it, so once I get thru that, I will probably start a more serious social-media push on all this. That just means you’ll be seeing a lot more posts and noise about it, and I’ll be asking your help to spread the word.

The Turned will be free-to-watch in its completed form, so if you feel like it’s worth supporting with a donation, you can do so over at ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me along this crazy journey!

The Turned Progress Update – Rough Animatic Scene 5 – April 23, 2023

This update adds about 45 seconds onto the end of Scene 5, and it’s all the complicated fight scene stuff. This puts me at shop 107 of 117 (or so). Just need to tie up some loose ends, so next update will probably have all the animation in place. After that, there’s just background sounds and music.

I think I’ve been on this scene since January. Fight scenes are hard.

The Turned will be free-to-watch in its final form. If you think it’s worth supporting the project, you can donate over at ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me along this crazy journey!

The Turned progress update – Rough Animatic Scene 5 – April 10, 2023

This update adds about 25 seconds to the scene, and has a couple of my favorite shots yet. Most of the people attacking the village have been taken out, but the two who remain are going to cause a lot of trouble. We also get to see Amelia, the village’s drill sergeant, go absolutely berzerk.

25 seconds is actually a pretty healthy update for two weeks – these wide, complex shots take a lot of time to get the way I want them. Fight scenes are hard, and I’m taking it slow – but I’m happy with my progress. I’ve also been laying the foundation for the background noise, battle sounds, and music that will round out the scene. Can’t wait for you guys to see it.

The Turned will be free to watch, so if you want to support our work, you can do so at ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me on this crazy journey!

The Turned Progress Update – Rough Animatic Scene 5 – March 27, 2023

Greetings! Two weeks worth of work has yielded about 8 seconds of added animation. Doesn’t seem like much, but there’s a lot going on in that time, and I took it slow to get it right. It wasn’t just getting the motion graphics right, but apparently fight choreography isn’t easy. This shot had a lot of flame-weapon fire that needed to be 2d drawn, and I had to jostle the drawing planes around in the 3d space to get it to look right. Setting up the shot of Trojan finishing off his attacker was most of my time – there’s a lot going on in the background.

All that said, there’s really only so much fighting to be done in this scene, so my production pace should pick up again soon.

The Turned will be free to watch when its complete, so if you think it’s worth supporting, you can go to ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me along this crazy journey!

Progress update on The Turned – Rough Animatic Scene 5 – February 20, 2023

I may be going to a bi-weekly update schedule going forward, depending on how much I get done in a week or two. These last two weeks have been nuts at the day job, so even with two weeks of work, I’ve only got another 15 seconds or so added.

This update adds a couple fun moments, both in the animation and in the story. Animation-wise, getting the 2d flame effect for the candle wick and the rags for the bottle-bombs to behave in 3d space meant picking up a couple new techniques in Blender, so my skills took a small step forward there. And story-wise, this is the point where the fight swings back in favor of the defenders. When Daniel comes out of the gates carrying those Molotov Cocktails, the attackers are in trouble.

This marks 70 shots complete for this scene, and I estimate there will be 90-95 shots total for Scene 5. Steadily closing in.

The novella version of the story is all here – the sidebar to the right has a chapter list of all my web-published work. The animated movie will be free to watch, so if you think it’s worth a supportive donation, you can go to ko-fi.com/curvestories. Every dime is appreciated.

Thanks again for joining me along this crazy journey!