Making Of - Ghost Girl
Introduction
Today’s blog will be about the development of the “Ghost Girl“ short film. I’d like to go over some points about the development of this short. Also, there’s some fun screenshots attached that can give a little more information into the process. Also, the intention is to have these “Making Of…” blogs be a long running series, so there will be some changes here and there until I find a format that works.
Let’s get started
Q&A
What software was used to animate the short?
For “Moment Of My Time” shorts, these are the programs used:
For storyboarding - Procreate
For asset creation - Adobe Illustrator
For animation + compositing - Toonboom Harmony Premium
For compositing + special fx - Adobe After Effects
For editing + sound design - Adobe Premiere
Why was this film made?
I wanted this short to fill my Halloween slot, but I’ve had this as an idea for months. The joke of the short - where the character pushes the ghost back into the TV, was taken from One Piece. I’ve loved that joke since I saw it years ago, and thought it’d be a fun homage to a piece of media that I love (I’ll talk about my love of One Piece in another blog). These shorts are kind of a carthatic way for me to express small ideas that get stuck in my head for long enough (brain worms, like ear worms but more cerebral).
When was the film made?
This is a very technical question that depends on how you define when a production starts. If by start, you mean when did the idea work its way into my head? That would be sometime last year. If by start you mean when I started to animate it, that would be around the end of September.
I count the start of productions when I add it to my line-up, so I would say production started on this around the end of August. Animation started and finished around the last week of September. This is actually one of the shorts with a more rapid turnaround. Usually it takes months for a short to be developed and then premiered, but due to a lot of planning and work, I’ve gotten production time for this short to about a month, or somewhere around 50 work hours.
What was new when making the film?
So this is the first short to use my V4 puppets from Toonboom Harmony. This version of the puppets were designed to be more light, aesthetically pleasing and contain several large QOL (quality of life) updates. I had finished this update way back in the beginning of spring of this year so I was very eager to see how it would perform, and I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Animation for the puppet was more quick, and I was able to focus more on the overall look with the extra time I was able to save.
What would I do differently?
I messed up the scene setup of this short. In the screenshots below there is an image of the node view that doesn’t look too bad, but it made compositing a nightmare for me. Things were messing up all over the place. It was so bad it inspired me to make a scene setup template (which I will also talk about in a future blog). This was a short that had some luxuries, but the setup really held it back from becoming something I could have made without rushing and the frustration that comes with that.
Am I happy with the way the film came out?
Yes! Aside from some backend issues with setting up the scene that kind of went haywire, I like how the short came out. Working with puppets always has limitations and eventually I’ll be able to better plan shorts to maximize the best aspects of hand animation and puppet animation, but I was able to do everything I had planned to do with this short. From compositing doing the bulk of compositing in Toonboom to finally deploying the V4 Puppets. I was also happy to have incorporated a secondary puppet character in a short. That’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and this was a big first step into achieving a more full and rich experience for future shorts.
Behind The Scenes
Now I’d like to share some BTS screenshots of production. I’ve tried to show all of the art from the production stage, but I haven’t included anything from earlier stages (writing, SEO, etc.) in an effort to keep this blog more on the brief side. Plus I’ll eventually do blogs dedicated to that stuff so it’ll be easier to find on the site.
Archived below are some stuff from these phases of the short:
Character Design
Storyboard
Asset Creation
Scene Setup
Animation
Editing
Exorcise The Ghost Girl
That wraps up this blog! I hope you found some insight into my process of making it. I enjoyed documenting the process a lot. The goal is to do something like this for new, and perhaps even older shorts. As fun as watching a short is, it can also be really cool to see what goes into making it.
Also, if there are any questions you’d like to see in future blogs, please leave a comment! I’m always looking for new ways to make things better, and constructive criticism is welcome.
That’s all for now!
-Until next time-
👻