Week 10: Halloween

Since it is Halloween, I'm back home. There's trick or treating in my near future! However, I did get some work done.

Shot 31 is when Rose first walks into the bathroom. Originally, I only had her looking concerned. But, when I was cleaning it up, I decided to try making her a little happier. The bathroom is pretty after all. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep things this way and, if I do, I'll probably lengthen the pauses

At the end, she looks over and sees the waterfall, which reminds her why she is here.

I'm in love with shot 39. It fought me the whole way but I think it ended up looking really nice. This is when Rose falls into the stall after nearly running into multiple monsters.

I'm flying back at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. My brain might be gone but my body will definitely be in class.

Week 9: Bathroom sequence

Since I'm up at 3 am anyway, I figured it'd be fun to slap together all the rough stuff I've done to check how it looks. I need to slow a lot of spots down and there are some transitions that need improvement but it's still fun to watch.

Week 9: Rough Animation

Yesterday was a very productive day! I'm going to try to keep this pace up for the whole weekend. Wish me luck.

Here are the shots I finished yesterday. I might update this post with new things as a finish them. Or maybe I'll keep them as a surprise for later. We'll see ;)

This shot will have mermaids in the background but I decided to focus on Rose for the rough stuff.


Rose almost runs into the duwende. The way she dodges causes her to fall backwards into the stall. I'm going to add in a little bit of a bounce when I clean the shot up.


The monsters tell Rose to clean up the rainbow mess. She's given a plunger, takes a deep breath, and then walks over to the stall.


Immediately after this shot, Rose cowers from the rainbow. I'll probably add a little bit of movement to Rose but, with this shot, I wanted to figure out how to do the rainbow's movement correctly. If it's just a straight line, then it doesn't look like it's moving. Everyone I've asked so far enjoys the "snaking" rainbow more so I'll probably stick with that one.


After she cowers from the rainbow, Rose musters her courage and goes over to the rainbow. She stabs it with the plunger but it gets ripped from her hands and thrown away, never to be heard from again. Versions A and B of this shot are very close to each other. The difference is how fast the plunger spins.

I'm considering changing it so the plunger disappears with a twinkle like Team Rocket.

Week 9: References

When I made my colored shot this weekend, I put together a quick little reference for Rosalinda's colors. Everything is dull and grey in the rainy real world but the magical world is brighter/more saturated.

I also realized that I need a height chart now that I'm doing shots with multiple characters. I didn't include the mermaids since they are going to be in the water the whole time. The manananggal's legs are only there to help me figure out how big the rest of her should be. She doesn't have her legs on during my film. It'd be too hard to tell what she was otherwise.

Costume wise, the tikbalang has a loin cloth and the manananggal is wearing a t-shirt. I'm tempted to put something ironic on the shirt but that might be too much work. The pugot is wearing a hoodie because it makes me laugh.

I'm not sure what the duwende should wear though. He is a white duwende (a good/not evil one) but I don't think that effects his clothing choice. Some of the pictures that I've found give duwende pointy hats but not all of them.

Week 8: Magical Door

I'm having a hard time deciding what the magical door should look like. I know it's going to have a unisex bathroom "sign" on it.

But the door itself varies in my head. I know that I don't want it to look the same as the normal restroom doors. There is a lot of bamboo in the bathroom now. It's build into the sink and the stalls. So one idea is to make the door look like it's from a nipa hut.

But that's a really old design. Pre-Spanish colonization old. Since the tikbalang myth is linked with Spanish colonization, I've been considering doing a very Spanish door. It'd be pretty looking and clearly ill-fitting with the school's surroundings.

I like both ideas but I cringe when I think about animating them. It's not just opening and closing either. This door has a dramatic entrance and exit.

I ought to just pick something and move on but I'm mentally hung up on this door right now. Suggestions would be appreciated.

Edit: The cubicle consensus was BAMBOO.

Week 8: Female Voices

Yesterday, I recorded Rosalinda, the teacher, the mermaids, and the duwende. It was a lot of fun and not nearly as intimidating an experience as I had expected. We did quite a bit of yelping and screaming, plus a tiny bit of kung fu. The only thing I regret is not bringing a video camera with me. Syr made some amazing faces and gestures while she was in the booth and I'm sorry that I won't be able to refer to it when I animate her lines.

I'm still working on backgrounds but, if I finish them up quickly, I'm going to try doing some lip sync. Until then, enjoy this SUPER ROUGH version of the classroom scene with the teacher droning on. It won't be this loud in the final product. I was just checking to see if the words line up well with the images.

Week 7: Lola

This last week was more about people than drawing. I met with Rosalinda's voice actor (Syr Law) and found a composer (Felix). Both of them are great and I'm looking forward to working with them. Careen is going to be the teacher. It ought to be funny. I've got the ADR room is booked for Friday. Wish me luck!

When I mentioned to Syr that I named my main character after my Lola (grandmother), she asked for a recording for reference. Obviously, my character Rose won't sound like my grandmother Rose but Syr thought it'd help her understand the character more.

I thought it'd be hard to get Lola to talk but, once I had her on the phone, she told me stories for a good hour and a half. The first half our was all about Lola's sister Kun Cheng (I'm not sure if that's spelled right) and her duwende. It's much too long to post here but I enjoyed Lola's insistence that everything was true.



Ultimately, I did not send Syr any of the Kun Cheng stories since they were second hand recollections of events that didn't really effect Lola. Instead, I send Syr this clip about how my grandparents met. It's not relevant to my thesis but Lola was defensive while discussing Kun Cheng. She's more animated talking about grandpa.



Now that I've got all this taken care of, I've moved on to backgrounds for the bathroom. Once I have those, I'll start animating again. It's a little surprising how much research is needed to make the establishing shots look right. So many types of trees and waterfalls to pick from! Once I've got that figured out, though, the other bathroom backgrounds ought to be fairly easy.

Week 6: Revised Animatic

Here's my revised animatic! No audio, though. I focused on revising the visuals of the bathroom scene and, now that I know where I need jokes, I can update my script.





I need another joke for the Tikbalang when Rose bumps into him. Also, the mermaids need gossip and the duwende is going to have Popeye like mumbling. I'm not planning on having the manananggal or pugot talk.

I'd love suggestions for dialogue!

Week 6: WIP Animatic

Don't worry! My "final" animatic won't be this rough and the timing will be better.

I've been working on making the bathroom scene more exciting/funnier. I don't feel like the angles are quite as interesting the ones in the classroom but Kristina gave me a peptalk which, combined with my tiredness, convinced me that this is okay.





You can tell exactly when I stopped caring about making an understandable image and just scribbled notes for myself. It's funny. Or, at least, I think it is. It is 2 AM so I could be wrong.

Everything will be cleaner by the end of Monday. Promise!

Right now, I'm planning on ending the story the same way (Rose goes back and leaves rainbow footprints). However, earlier, I was thinking about changing it so that we end with her sitting down to talk with the mermaids. I'm waffling but I think we are going to return to the real world. That feels a little more solid to me.