More Depressing By The Second.

I figure that over half way into production time is just as good as time as any to make pretty major changes to my film. Got bored animating a camera pan shot, so decided on another character piece. Will no doubt regret the decision when I'm running out of time.

The shot is rapidly becoming more depressing by the second. I needed to create a 'mum' character for a later shot so figured I would get it out the way. Ended up putting her in this scene too when she reads her son's 'Missing in action' letter. Full emotional breakdown ensues.

Fun fact for anybody reading this. The character will only ever be seen from behind. The Morpheus rig comes with a moustache as default. I kept it on. It makes animating this scene slightly less depressing.

Oh hey, Baby

Having got the majority of the techy stuff out of the way, I'm now onto the Character stuff. Spent many, many hours trying to get the little bugger to render properly, but am now in the blocking stage. I almost don't have the heart to animate his death later in the film.

Actually took the picture using my phone. He's not supposed to be that blue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68ugkg9RePc

The Passenger

The Passenger – Chris Jones

I had seen some early work in progress animations on this project back in 2001 while on another course and had completely forgotten about it. Skip forward 11 years and I saw the finished thing for the first time a few months ago. (Albeit 6 years after it was completed) But sweet mother of Jesus…. This thing is a true masterpiece and it’s done by one person?!?!

  The film itself is amazing for several reasons. Both the artistic/story side of the film and the technical implications required to produce something like this make my brain melt. Artistically, it has a stunningly moody tone throughout with a load of suspense building. I tend not to get sucked into films so much these days, mainly thanks to my techy brain not being able to turn off. I need to watch the switch between forward and inverse kinematics on a characters hand as it touches something, rather than watching movements as a whole. But this thing gripped me. 7 minutes after starting, I finally remembered to breathe... It’s got all the ingredients to make an awesome animation. And these aren’t supermarket own brand ingredients, these are home grown, free range, top notch ingredients. It was all chucked into the digital mixing bowl and cooked for 8 years by master chef Chris Jones. But enough with the cooking analogy…  It’s got a perfect balance of suspense and humour to make the 7 minutes thoroughly enjoyable; all of which has been pulled off using beautiful animation. This takes me onto the techy stuff. This guy has done this alone. The whole thing… Concept, modelling, rigging, animating, lighting, rendering, compositing and all the other ‘ing-s’ involved in making a film. Yes, it’s taken him 8 years, but it’s still unbelievable. 





Watching films like this, especially while I’m in the process of making a film, singlehandedly myself, puts me in a difficult position. It has created a fine line between inspirational and horribly crushing. Given all the time in the world and a cook book full of food analogies that Delia Smith would be proud of, I’m not sure if I could create something like The Passenger. Ultimately though, it must be inspiring. I want to do what Chris Jones did.

Ultimate Image

Having no real idea what was required for the Ultimate Image brief, I have pretty much summarized my film in an image, and then tried to make it a little bit more...ultimate...

have somewhat neglected the blog recently, but now that production is happening, I hope I can post some more progress. 

Head in the clouds

New favourite piece of software: Vue.

Have been fighting with Maya's liquid containers trying to get clouds that looked half decent, all with very little success. I remembered using Vue during a volunteer project I work on a few years ago so figured it was worth a go. Render times are still a bit steep when working in 1920 x 1080, but I should be able to get it down a bit.

Crashed Spitfire

Here's a WIP for the first shot of the film with the crashed spitfire. Hopefully with some fancy rendering and some post effect smoke/fire it will look better! Something therapeutic about ripping apart a model you spent ages on.