Rachel Moeggenberg's Senior Studio Progress

For the gallery setup, the images will be hung on a wall as seen above, 4 rows with 8 pictures each. Where the flashbacks start, there’ll be a gap in-between the images. The wall will also be painted to help indicate a scene change/transition.

Cualicaz

Rachel Moeggenberg

Cualicaz is a series of images that explores the nature of bonds, struggles, co-existence and acceptance. The images explore the story of two characters, the tension between the two, the origin of their strife, and how they learn to deal with an unescapable situation. Loosely inspired by an Aztec creation myth, the spectator views the images like a storybook, being allowed to think of what happens in-between each image, and what happens when it’s done.

By jumping back and forth through past and present, Cualicaz tells the tale of a girl and an alligator who are forced together by a chain. It takes place in an empty post-apocalyptic world which, through its architecture and style, hints of Aztec culture. The characters come to an impasse when they get caught on a directional sign due to the chain that forces them together. Through this incident, we are sent backwards in time and learn how the two came to be attached by this chain in the first place. At an Aztec arena, the two are forced to fight under the order of a queen. As the fight progresses, the arena crumbles, causing the queen to fall, which in turn, causes the girl and gator to be chained together as they escape. There is a backstory to every current situation, and this is theirs. As the story ends, we find these characters still at this sign, until the sign falls, still leaving them chained together. The characters learn to accept their forced bond in the end.

Cualicaz is the Nahuatl (Aztec) phrase for “she will carry it”. The story is about a girl and an alligator who are chained together. Because they are unable to break the chain that forces them together, they learn to accept it and lead each other on their path. “She will carry it” is a phrase that could be said about either character leading the other to their next destination, or carrying each other for a mutual benefit of survival. They learn to accept their fate and carry each other forward.

All images are done, Now I just need to print the last batch and frame the rest of them. THEN I’M HOME FREEEEE. YESSSSSS

Working on a batch of 10 right now. About halfway done with that batch. I’m gonna try and be done with those for tonight. Then I only have 7 left. Dueces~

Just a few complete images from the first batch of pictures. I’ve test printed 2 of them and they turned out great. I’ve got 14/32 complete. 17 left for like a week and a half. Crunch time begins like right now. Like dang I’m so stressed out about this but i’m also 100% positive I’ll be able to finish.

Nothing much to report today. Just trucking away. Almost done with the first batch of pictures. Should have them done either tonight or tomorrow. Carry on

I ordered my frames and they’ve been delivered back to my home in Cinci. I’ll be picking them up when I go home for Thanksgiving Break. I’ve fallen a bit behind in drawing. I’m trying a different approach now though, instead of doing a few each day, I’m going to try doing a lot over a longer period of time. So the images I’m working on now are only about half complete and I’m working on them all at the same time rather than one at a time.

Powering through these images. Got a tad behind on my first deadline on last Saturday but I’ll definitely have the first 14 images done on Wednesday. I’ve decided to go with an 11×14 size mostly because that’s the size of frames I could find for the cheapest. But it’ll all still work out. My only real problem now is that I have to remember to make the ppi for each image 300 instead of 72 so I can print them and still have them look good. I’m planing on printing from Meijer because they seemed to have the cheapest prices. I’ll be doing a test print from there soon to see how it turns out. If it doesn’t turn out that great, I’ll do it from McAP

Here’s a couple complete images i have so far.

Got my project approved so I’m now doing multiple images instead of an animation. This is super relieving for me so YAAAYY!! Thanks Bonnie! :)))

So that plan now is that I’m going to have 32 images, each 12×16 big. And in the gallery they’re going to be placed in 4 rows with 8 images in each row going across. I’ll be heading out this weekend to look for frames for them.

Here’s my updated and final calender for this project:

Started drawing concept art even though the switch hasn’t been approved yet. Fingers-crossed >v>;

Thinking of taking a step back from animating at the moment. This project is a lot to handle for one semester and I’m not that experienced in animating. Hoping to switch this story from an animation to concept art.

So I’ve been good at keeping with my new schedule so far, surprisingly! I have the entire first scene animated. Well, animated as well as I can right now. It’s still a bit blocky, but I’ll have to go back later and smooth it out. I don’t have it to show however because I don’t have a program on my laptop to make it a video. I’ll post it on Wednesday when I’ll have a program to put it together in.

Still not too much progress made this past week. Been trying to stick to this new schedule I’ve made for myself and things are looking to keep going in that direction. My only issue right now is downloading after effects on my laptop so i can work at home and be able to start putting the film together.

Another small issue I’m having is that I’m expected to have a prefect animation. And just for the record, it’s not going to be perfect. I’ve never been taught how to do hand-drawn cel animation before, so please bare with me. Some of the scenes are going to look a little wonky and weird or super stationary because I’m still a bit new to this. This is a learning experience for me and I’d appreciate if I wasn’t expected to turn out a perfect glorious piece of film because that’s not going to happen. Okay small rant over.

 Making my calender just a tad more detailed. Now I have actual scenes and frames in mind for what I need to animate and what I still have to do. I also just figured out how to export frames out on photoshop instead of saving them one by one, so that’ll make life so much easier. This calender’s going to be tough to pull off especially with all my other classes getting busier and busier, but i’m fairly confident that I’ll be able to pull it off.

Also, I made a business card. Hire me I’m cool.

Updated my calender

I’m trying more to get the actual animation done by December. Then I’ll color it over Winter break and next semester to polish it off. Hopefully before the BFA show in March

Slowly starting to animate scenes. I still need to redraw a few storyboard components before I put it all back into after effects to do an animatic. I’ve only just begun animating simple scenes and making sure everything’s working together. The story is all good now, it’s just getting the visuals down and beginning to animate that needs to happen next. 

Almost done refining the storyboard and also starting to color and animate things. These shots are meant to be the opening shots for the animation.

• Reworking some things with the storyboard.
• Changing flashback area to a swampy setting.
• Need to fix cinematics and camera angles.
• Scrapping some scenes to make animation a bit shorter and do-able.
• Finally have an ending that isn’t anticlimactic. Might be a tad boring but it’s much better than the chains breaking.
• Design Colosseum stadium arena after compass.
• Make sure every scene has a graphic or sound match.

Nothing more to show at this point.

Still working on fixing the story up a bit. I have all but the ending fleshed out. Then I’ll start an animatic that will hopefully be done by formal defense on tuesday