Stephen M. Levinson's Blog

After I came up with my character designs and was happy with the way they looked, I wrote the script. As always, things from beginning to end always change around a bit. I think that changes I made came out for the better in getting out how I really pictured Ace & Aqua to be!

So the first thing I usually do when I start writing is opening a word document that looks like an actual note pad ( I don’t know why, it just looks really cool! ). I make an outline first of what is going to happen and how the story will flow, but mostly how Ace is going to get to antarctica.

After I get the summary to my liking, I just go right into it with the dialogue and what’s happening. As you can see the summary and script are a little bit different than what happens in my final animation. After over a year’s work, things are taken out, added, changed etc.

Now after several revisions are made and when I have my story the way I like it, I make the final script. As you can see I numbered the lines and made it easy for the actors to see what they’re going to perform. I used a simple type-writer font and it looks really “legit”

CLICK TO PLAY RECORDING
After I have recorded the actors I painstakingly go through my 50+ audio files and cut every single line into audio clips- most of the times lines are cut into 2 or 3 different files so that I can possibly mix and match them. I ended up with 1,019 quicktime files. Have a listen to ace saying hi squirrel. These are just a couple cuts put together- I have about 12 hi squirrel’s alone but I put only a few in progression of the recording. As you can tell I directed Brian Ufen ( Ace ) on how I wanted it to sound more like. He was a great actor and really got the voice I was looking for! I will also talk more about the recording and how I found my actors in another post.

After all the recording was done I board it out on post-its. <a href=”http://smorgasbordproductions.com/
“>Dahveed must take credit for this part, he gave me the great idea of using post-its. Why use post it’s and not just board it out on panels first? great question Stephen! Well you see Steve, with the post it’s I have very rough drawings and this way I can actually SEE my short and how it’s coming to look. Also, if I decide to change something, or re-order something I can easily pull off the post-it, get a new one, and I don’t have to re-board the entire page. More about the boards in my next process!!

Stay Tooned!

Ace & Aqua!

More to come!
Steve