Shot Progression Number Three

This is the third shot taken from the trailer that we'll look at (we can look at some more complex shots once the film itself is online, but that won't be for a while).




We're looking at the first section of one of the longer dance shots. A you can see I shot reference for this again. Unlike the 0166 shot, I couldn't just roto the movement because the camera is at an angle and constantly moving.

TOP RIGHT: The original reference footage, where we have worked out the basic choreography and blocking of positions.
TOP LEFT: The 3D layout, with the camera match-moved from the reference footage (for the non-technical, this is means tracking the real-life camera to duplicate it's movement in virtual space), and the character positions roughed-in.
BOTTOM LEFT: Animation - here I've fleshed out the character movements, sticking very close to the reference in the case of the moon maiden, and doing something quite different for the astronaut. You can also see that I've enhanced the camera move.
BOTTOM RIGHT: Final composite.

Shot Progression Number Two

Here's a slightly more complex shot: '0166'...



TOP RIGHT: Storyboards - very sketchy, mostly becasue I knew I would be shooting reference for hte actual dancing, so the boards here are really just a place-holder for the story reel so I can get a sense of the timing.
TOP LEFT: The actualy reference we shot of the dancer.
BOTTOM LEFT: Animation, in this case almost rotoscoped straight off the reference footage.
BOTTOM RIGHT: Final composite.

Shot Progression Number One

This is the first of a few 'progression reels' of trailer shots. First up: shot "0080"...



This is the most straight-forward type of shot  had (anti-clockwise from top right): storyboards, straight to layout, to animation, to final composite. Some of the shots I will post in future weeks went through extensive planning and choreography before getting to the layout stage.

I would normally draw thumbnails (to the non-animators, that means making small, sketchy drawings of key moments or poses) of any shot I animate to get my head around it. But since I had to draw and edit the boards anyway, I was able to skip that stage since I had already slugged out the main beats (that and I had to really push the work through if I ever wanted to finish the film!).

Character Turnarounds.

Here are some turnarounds of my characters. The idea of these is to check the models from all angles for errors. If you look closely there are some visible seams in these, which I fixed later.

Adding Colour.

Here are the character faces before and after surfacing. It's always one of my favourite moments when I see my characters with real skin for the first time. The catch is that surfacing tends to be one of the most tedious parts of the process too.

For the animation nerds (like me), the images on the right were rendered with Mental Ray, using the fast sub-surface scattering shader. The results were great, but the rendering times were a bit hefty.

The Moon Maiden Model

Here are some shots of the Moon Maiden before she was textured or rigged.

This is an early version of the Moon maiden - there are always multiple ways to interpret a design and it took me a couple of attemtps to get the model to match my drawing. You can see me experimenting with some pretty funky hair and headpiece options here too.

 The final head. I didn't have the time to troubleshoot real hair and simulation so I went for a more stylised, dread-lock' kind of thing.

 Cloth simulation, like hair suimulation, was too time consuming to consider if I ever wanted to finish the film so again everything is simple geometry.

The Astronaut Model

Here's the astronaut model without surfacing. The intention was always to keep the model simple and slightly stylised: I didn't want to get into hyper-real-super-detailed video game territory.

For those unfamiliar with 3D and how it's done, this is a neutral or 'T pose': characters are first sculpted in a stiff, rigid pose like this (sometimes with arms straight out, sometimes slightly bent), then colour is added, then we articulate the character through a whole seperate process.

The Ship

Here's the heroe's space ship:

I regret that during the film I was unable to show the ship more from the side; front-on it looks rather like a clothes-iron. Come to think of it, it looks rather like a clothes iron from this 3/4 view as well. But the story never required us to walk around the ship, and so i never made the other side, hence I'm not showing it now either.

Trailer is up!

Enjoy!

Designing The Environment

How to design a moon environment in five easy steps:

Start off with the black of space:

Add stars. Not too many now, experiment to find just the right amount:

Add moon. This step is all about careful judgement - you have to make the moon brighter than the sky, but less bright than the stars. It took me a few goes, but I got there:

Now because we're making a photo-real environment, the moon can't just be one color, it has to have craters and details and stuff. The trick is not to let yourself  get intimidated by the detail, just keep at it and you should get a result something like this:

For that final touch of photo-realism, we're going to add a lens flare (you'll need Photoshop for this):

Impressive huh? This moon-stars-and-lens-flares formula pretty much covers the backdrop for EVERY shot in the film!

You can even download my Lunar Environment Designer - a Photoshop document with all these layers included so you can practice at home. You're welcome.

Designing Characters and Props

Here are some of my design drawings, pretty typical of my design process for animated characters: just a few rough sketches until I get an idea or a look that works for me.

Since I'm making all the computer models myself, I don't need to be precise in nailing down every detail, I just need to get the gesture and style and make sure these characters can successfully share the same space. Apologies for the crappy scans.

The Spaceship: my one 'prop'. Yay!

 

You'll notice I've mostly sketched my characters together. Because the film centers around this relationship, it was essential from the start for me to capture that connection between them.

 

 

Ok, so this isn't a design sketch- its a background plan for making the models- hence the poses are stiff and there's no relationship between them. This really is just a guide for scale and proportion.

Welcome!

The idea is simple:

An astronaut falls in love with a moon maiden, executed as epic-animated-sci-fi-ballet.

Of the all the ideas floating around in my head, I chose this one because it seemed to be the most silly, ill-fitting, born-to-fail idea I could think of (and therefore just might work).

I hope you enjoy my musings on film festival successes and failures as well as bits and pieces on how I made this film: designs storyboards, in-progress animation, etc, etc.

Enjoy!