Now that I have the storyboard and shadow puppet animations completed for the Circles music video I just need to record the demo and then myself and my brother can start shooting the various scenes.

The animal shadow animations (Conger Eel and Japanese Spider Crab) worked out better than I thought. Although getting the eel movements to look correct was tricky (they seems to moves or ripple like a sine-wave) the blur and transparency settings in Anime Studio really helped to create realistic looking shadows. There’s about five different set camera angles aswell as six or so one-off shots. This is something I wish I’d done with the Enter the Dragon (music video) storyboard as in hindsight it could prove a nightmare to shoot. I may yet go back and re-do some of it’s scenes.
“The animal shadow animations worked out better than I thought.”
For the lighting on the Circles video I did an bunch of tests using various ISO and light configurations and settled on using a single Godox 500 LED with a Tungsten White Balance preset on the Nikon camera which created a nice saturated blue-tinted vibe. I was also able to bring the ISO down quite low as the video brief requires a very dark/high contrast look. The Anglerfish mask in the above image will be worn by a friend for one of the one-off shots. I have a 12watt 360 degree bulb I’ll afix to a wire in front of the mask that should work as a fill light to illuminate his facial expressions. Elsewhere’s, with regards the Acoustic song work, it was great to get each of the seven songs fully notated before the end of the year. Having notation for each song is handy for fine-tuning it’s performance as I can then pencil in articulations, expressions and dynamics which in turn makes the song more consistent each time its played. I’m now working on the last three songs (to make it a ten song/hour long set list) aswell as starting on five b-side loop-based tracks.