Newsletter July 2026 - A Midsummer's Morning Newsletter
I'm also using audio software to creepify the ghost lines.
Hi,
I hope your summer is going well. My last newsletter was a few weeks late, so not much time has passed since then, but life is screaming along full speed. I'm still clinging to the fond memories of our trip to Mongolia, and wowing my coworkers with great Teams backgrounds for our video calls. On the singing front, I've been learning to sing opera with Caro Mio Ben. Here's not me singing it:
Opera singing is fun in a very technical way. It's forcing me to finally learn how to sing well in a quiet voice. I also have to sustain a vibrato through the song. That's where your pitch wiggles up and down ever so slightly. I can do it, but it's not always something I have fine control over, and it's much harder at higher pitches. Opera is different from singing rock, choir, or musical numbers, so it's keeping me out of trouble.
Not much writing this month, but I have been hard at work on my animation for Choosing Fate. I read the script aloud a few times and improved the dialog until I was happy. Now I'm going to do a test animation of the first 5 pages. First I recorded my part (narrator). Then I recorded my eldest child playing the part of Tor and the ghost. Still need to pin down my youngest child to record Anne, the other character. I updated that character from the short in order to give both kids parts to play. I'm also using audio software to creepify the ghost lines. But once that's all done, I'll arrange the audio and get the timing set.
Once the timing is set, I can start roughing out the animation. So, hopefully I'll have a short video clip to share next month. But that's the general process. Record the spoken parts and do any adjustment in the audio editor, then once the lines are set, finalize the timing of the whole thing. Then I can figure out camera angles, transitions, and the rough blocking of each shot. At that point I should have something rough but enough to tell me if I need to go back and redo any of the earlier parts.
Until next month, stay cool and share my newsletter with someone!
Todd
