Week 50

Matchmoving with Leigh Russel

working with autodesk match mover, the week was used to give a basic overview on match moving, we also learned some about HDRI and lighting without lights.

The assignment for the week was to track a small piece of footage and then add a character. For the character I decided to use the rubber chicken I did in the spring so I added a quick rig so that I would be able to animate it just a little bit, and with this awesome result - who needs animators;)

- what is lurking in the hospital basement? a slightly deranged rubber chicken,

if you ever meet him - RUN! as if you life depends on it -

- a screen shot from one of the smaller assignments in match mover -

Trailer Project

- the final result of the trailer project -

- not really a part of the trailer project, but I decided to do a little turn around of my character -

Week 47-49

Light, render and composit with Max Böhm

So the final three weeks of the trailer project. The first two weeks we worked closed together with the animators. Attending dailies and basically acting as directors, while at the same time fixing our rigs when they broke down or making small adjustments to them when needed.

While the animators worked on bringing our characters to life we started finishing up the final textures, matte paintings and what ever still needed to be done.

As the different shots where finished we could get started lighting them, and get started on rendering, on this project we had access to a renderfarm, it worked quite nicely and it definitely made life easier for us.

Just after finishing the trailer, early Friday morning, watching the final result for the first time - it was already obvious to us that there where things that could have been better, but as Max said you will never reach a 100% on any given project and we where out of time.

Still I'm really pleased with the final result - it turned out great.

some work in progres

just some random stuff from the trailer project - it should all be over very soon, and it is looking good. The animators have now done their part and so we "only" need to light, render and composit everything - no biggy....

- we needed a picture for the bedroom scene so here they are; the nipple twisting gals -

- a watercolor sketch I did that is used as a mattePainting -

- some test renders done while lighting the scenes -

- the title that is used in the end of the "movie", since it is supposed

to be an action trailer the style of thefont needed to reflect that -

Week 44-46

Rigging with Nico Sangrajka

Almost three weeks of rigging. It started out fine, and I felt like all was going well, as more and more where added to the rig I slowly felt I like I lost sight of what I was doing and why.

2½ week weren't really enough and I could easily have spent more time adjusting the rig, painting better skin weights and adding even more blend shapes, giving the animators a wider range of possible expressions.

- a couple of screen shots of the rig -

1.& 2. of November

Film Analysis with Stig Kulset

We where treated to a couple of different films starting out with "Blue Velvet" followed by "The Piano", "The New World" and finally first episode of "The Singing Detective".

This was all films I had never seen before and it is always nice getting new experiences, I especially liked "Blue Velvet", the best out of the four. By showing us "The New World" Stig was playing a mean trick on us - that movie is simply awful, the worst part about it was that he knew this - and still made us endure almost 2½ hours of movie hell.

But all things aside it was actually quite nice with a little break from the trailer project.

Week 43

Environment modelling with Jericho Green

This week we started modelling the final props, settings and environment - replacing all the blocks with the finished and much more detailed models, getting even closer to how everything should look in the end.

We also looked at what had to be done in 3D due to paralax, and what could be done in 2D - like mattepaintings.

I spent a lot of my time this week on one asset, the car that I've modelled and UV'ed - I would have liked it to be even better but my modelling skills are still improving and I didn't have more time since we had to move on to other stuff - so maybe I'll refine the model later. For now this will have to do - and since we do not see that much of the car in close up I think it'll be just fine...

The car is modelled after a VW beetle, since all the characters are insects.

- a screenshot of the car i did-

Week 39-41

Modelling and Texturing with James Stone

We modelled our characters, UVed them and textured them. From the beginning the idea was that we also should model all of our props as well - this turned out to be too much, but we managed to make some of them, the rest will have to wait for later.

My character is Jules, the Austrian guy from the movie - we couldn't really figure him out in the design process so he is bit of a mixture of a ladybug and a wood louse. I've tried to make this character my own, even though I didn't do the final design - and I'm quite pleased with the final result.

- some screen shots of Jules -

- another concept done in Illustrator -

- a quick concept/environment design I did in Illustrator for the trailer project -

Week 37-38

3D animatic with Cyrille Caron

Here we start to take our 2D animatic into 3D, trying to figure out how to best frame every single shot. Deciding on what camera angle, focal length etc. we want to use. All of this is done using very simple build characters and sets, since the focus at this stage isn't on great animation or beautiful light settings and so on, but more on the actual layout. I think we went through three or four versions on the animatic, small changes that had to be made from one to the other; here you can see the first and the final version, even though we have already talked about some minor changes that might need to be made, things like tweaking the timing of the sound etc.

At this stage all the wünderfull animation was done by the CGA part of the group, later when the proxy models have been replaced with the finished 3D models - the animators will help us out and hopefully make some awesome animation - making this great trailer complete.

- The final version -

- A background Image I did for the final shot, digital paint and collage done in Photoshop -

- first version of our 3D animatic -

- a couple of screen shots of the character, Catherine that I "modelled" for the animatic -

- Some screen shots from the first version of the 3D animatic -