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.

me-109

Plane number two:

Having gotten my head round Maya modelling after the spitfire, the me-109 was a slightly quicker build. It also didn't need the amount of detail as the Spitfire as it'll be in the background of most shots.

Now to look for clever ways to animate spinning propellers. after a few tests, just spinning them quickly isn't going to cut it!

Spitfire

After deciding to set the film during WW2 again, the previous props, such as the F-16, were no longer needed. This gives me the chance to make new ones. My background in CG before university was purely model making, so it's nice to finally have another go. Having not extensively modeled anything for over two years, and never modeled anything in Maya, there was a constant flow of online tutorials to get me through it. The following was done over two, pretty solid days of work.

Blueprints from Theblueprints.com. Has a huge range of almost everything.
Chopped them up and re-sized them to work from them. Ideally, cross sections
would have also been shown.

Beginning to block out shape

Possibly the hardest part of the modelling was the part connecting the wings
to the fuselage. 

After a lot of faffing around, merging verts by hand, the model was successfully mirrored. 

Almost complete model, apart from the interior which I plan to build on a
 bigger scale for any close-up shots

Wireframe - 9100 Polys

First attempt at the UV unwrap and texture. No idea how to use textures in Maya so this will need to
be revisited once i get advice on the subject

Overall, it was good fun getting back to the modelling. I plan to make a messerschmitt me-109 for some epic dogfight action. To Maya!

Grounded

So the final project is here. The initial idea for this film came from a series of stimulus. I had always intended to produce a final piece based heavily on music, and while watching the coverage of Glastonbury 2011, Coldplay’s ‘Everything’s Not Lost’ was played. The chorus of this song especially stood out to me, and thought it’d make good music to fall to (If such a scenario ever came up!)

This reminded me of to several other things I had seen recently. Primarily an amazing account of a World War Two bomber gunner that was shot from his gunner turret. He fell 12,000 feet without a parachute. He survived the fall after falling through pine trees and landing in soft snow. His account  describes the transition of thoughts as he falls. He states that after the acceptance of death, the fall was the most peaceful he had ever been, alone in his own little world, away from the war surrounding him.  

I had originality decided to give it a modern twist, however following tutorials will now take it back to the World War Two era. This also gave me a chance to get back to modeling and build a Spitfire! (To Follow Shortly)

This is the initial (Unfinished) animatic i put together over summer, so still includes the modern day items. Also, despite the inspiration from Coldplay, i decided to use a song by Barcelona, called 'Please Don't Go.'  The lyrics seemed more relevant, and after emailing them, they were happy for me to use the piece. 

Over the next few days I aim to put together a revised animatic, with slightly better timing so that i'm fully aware of the mammoth task that's ahead of me! 

Sufficiently inspired.

This evening has been spent stuffing my mind with the library of past Animation Mentor webinars. Definitely worth the look!

http://www.animationmentor.com/resources/webinars/