DAY BEFORE FILMING

I have the most amazing house mates ever. The day before filming I couldn't find a suitable male hand for my animation. My morning conversation with Allan just consisted of: "Allan, I need to take some photos of your hand pretending to be grabbing a pair of boobs." This is becoming normal where I ask them to do the most random-est things ever for my uni work.

KITTY AUDITIONS - LILO VS. STITCH

 Stitch

Lilo

I should also add both of them are actually boys but shhhhh. And the style of photography is meant to be 'authentic' - I don't know... like typical cat lover taking pictures round the house of their pet.  Nothing too perfect so the background etc adds the the 'realness'.

I basically held an X Factor audition for cats to find a suitable cat-or or cat-ress to play Kitty. Or also known as desperately trying to find someone with cats! Thankfully Facebook came in handy and my course mate offered to help me. Her sister who is a cat lover very kindly offered to pop round hers and snap away. My welcome gesture was a tin of cat food (Waitrose - lucky cat). So it's between Lilo (black) and Stitch (ginger) to battle it out. I don't think it really matters who I choose because Kitty's been reincarnated into so so many different styles - don't think a specific breed comes to mind. I know her body in my animation is a domestic style cat which in this case Stitch would be more suitable. Anyway here are a couple of snaps of Lilo and Stitch I took because not all students nab stuff of the internet. Yes I moved away from the computer. 

KITTY WITH TITTY ANIMATION - THE MAKING

 Adobe Lightroom - playing around with editing features. Simon help link the camera to the computer so I could see my images clearly too.

 Each plastic wallet represented a scene or character.

The check list!

 The set up! Before the shizzle hit the storm.

All my collage pieces - don't let it fool you.... organised mess. Oh and A LOT of hours spent collating/photocopying/scanning/cutting/cropping for the right collage pieces.

TA-DAH. 6 hours in studio = 736 images. Now sorted into 16 folders (scenes) for easy editing (who am I kidding).

The most stressful day ever. Firstly who was I kidding thinking I'd film the whole thing in 3 hours. I was being optimistic. I did all my prep work surely it would go plain sailing. No. No. No. Both camera battery's dying mid way through, general camera 'things' which meant I had to do a lot of adjustments than just click and go..... and time. Thankfully my course mate booked the studio after me and he let me stay on to finish it because of all the settings (lighting etc) it made sense to finish it then and there. I managed to blag 2 and half hours. So thank-you thank-you thank-you Darul because I was using his time (he got all his work done too). Also massive thank-you to Simon because he spent a lot of time helping me with the set-up so the background/saturation, general photography side of things were 'good' and helping me a lot because I'm a general noob with technology. There was mid panic when transferring memory cards I thought my images were 'lost'. I was so close to  tears.  Anyway I've done it. I have my images now to edit them. I was following my animatic but a few things I did change whilst filming - to aid the narrative and also for design purposes. I'm listening to Philip Glass right now. Now to edit my film! Yes lack of sleep explains my scatty-ness. Student problems. 

THE CAT BOOK

CAT BREEDS OF THE WORLD - PADDY CUTTS

Found this book from a charity shop perfect for my animation. So many CATS. 

LOST KITTY POSTER DEVELOPMENT

TEST 1 - more photos of Kitty.

TEST 2 - I add a few more descriptions to the photo.

TEST 3 - I thought I'd add a 'real' location to make it more authentic, this has the phone number tear thing at the bottom. I'm thinking if I go with this idea I'll tear a few off to make it seem genuine to the public. Mwhaha. 

TEST 4 - the phone tear info idea? Does it add more authenticity?

TEST 5 - I play around with the placement of the text so it's not all grouped together. This one is a bullet point style. 

TEST 6 - a more 'simplified' idea.

I think my handwriting is too 'feminine' I got three males to write "lost kitty" in uppercase to see if there is a difference. I might ask more guys to do this just to see. BATTLE OF THE MACHO HANDWRITING. There's something about 1 I like. He's my house mate too. How handy. 

So more development of my poster which I'm going to end up photocopying and putting them around Newcastle and photographing in situation. and hopefully of the public actually interacting with the poster. But first I need to find my own Kitty. The above images are from a cat book I've found but I want to try find my own sourced images. I'm on a cat hunt. 

HOPEFULLY THIS IS THE FINAL COMIC

3rd time lucky pleeeeeease.

I decided to make a mock up of my comic and once printed I found a few things that I've since corrected. This is hopefully the last version before I send it off to the printers. 

• The front cover type was irking me a bit I was happy with the design overall after doing a few mock ups of potential covers  but it was the actual 'type' details that I wanted to make sure were 'right'. I  managed to get my publisher friend to give me some advice and he suggested just minor aligning of things and making sure things sit in line to look 'better'. I think the cover looks much more balanced overall now.
• I've aligned all my panels higher now because they were sitting too low and looked as if they were falling down. Not good.
• A few panels I've adjusted now I've seen them in print. Like moving the Kitty hearts second to last page because it showed too much of the chest. 
• The 2013 on the back cover has also been moved to go along with the right hierarchy of text.

I should probably add the covers will be in a coloured stock and I'm thinking of using pink - which although stereotypical it translates what I'm intending = the girl friend issue. I'll be looking around for the right hue of pink. Light? Dark? Soft? Pastel.... SO MANY PINKS. 

A few of my peers across my course have also been having a look at my comic and the feedback is generally positive. And they get the story which is great or I'd be doing a bad job. I''m not quite sure why people are so surprised by the ending since the title is such a giveaway ha ha! And my class mate Ben might be doing a comic swap since were both doing comics. Fun fun fun! It's coming together... huzzah!