Hi zuijlen thanks for your interest, yeah i sort of flirted with longer movies starting with the Voyages of the Sojourner where i did it in 3 parts totalling 30 minutes, then The Bard is looking to be 45 minutes+ will all the parts completed - so sort of a dry run for the Nobbit - but the difference is with these two i did the script in parallel -so while animating part 2, i was writing the script for part 3 - which meant a gap between releases of the parts i.e. Sojourner took about 6 months to complete. For the sojourner i did all the animations and took advantage of 3d warehouse, the 3rd party content stores to fill in items i cannot do myself to streamline the time. Ricky Grove helped with the audio design on Sojourner, Goofparade did the musical score for The Bard.
so this time I am taking the approach of writing the whole script first, while working on costume and set design and then plug in the characters and their animations once i get the voice overs back
For the Nobbit, i try to use the help of various members of the community - Biggstrek and Killian is helping me write the script, Goofparade and MacWeymss helping on the music front, but for the actual animation and video editing i expect to do it myself - it appears daunting at first but if you break it down into smaller chunks it does not look as intimidating. I am looking at The Nobbit as making 15 smaller movies rather than one big one
As for actors, one of the problem is always balancing the sound from the variety of mics, voice volumes etc.. lots of help in this front as well - ricky grove has provided a lot of tips and pointers on this
and yes one of the problems with an international cast is getting everyone to be on at the same time
for this project i plan on sending the scene with the dialog to each actor and have them record
the voice overs and then when i listen to the actors individual recording i can give the feedback to adjust. Typically i would have the general instructions on the script - i.e. feeling annoyed, irritated, cheerful etc..
one suggestion was to do a rehearsal via Skype - but again schedule and time zone conflicts make this the exception rather than the norm
and finally a lot of machinima voice actors are used to this method so they are aware of the limitations and have come through in most cases
zuijlen (5/17/2010)
Looks very good!
I'm interested in this for more than one reason. I'm currently listening in the car to a BBC radio play rendition of Lord of the Ringsto help alleviatethe stress my daily commute, so I look forward to what you will come up with.
The other reason is the length of movie you indicate. I'm currently working on a full-length script, but animating such a project looks daunting. Will you do this by yourself or do you have assistants?
Let me add another question and that is the direction of voice talents if you have multiple characters. As they are geographically dispersed how do you get to the point that they interactnaturallyy (play off each other) as if they were in the same room?
