I've been roughing out some quick pose sketches, of how Rossini would hold himself on stage. I've stayed away from any straight up, verticle lines, and kept a sweeping curve in his poses. I intend to always have him lean in one direction or the other, and range from forming a steep curve, to even s shapes with his poses. Why? Well first off, straight poses look flat, not very appealing, and just downright dull. Even a subtle curve can add that little bit of extra spark, not to mention weight, and even reveal a characters power center. After all, Rossini has a very high power center, it's only right he would be lifting it upwards all the time.
More to come on Rossini's shape language soon, right now, I'm off to go see The Artist.
Woah man. This stuff is gold. My blinks in my animation in the past have been, to be honest, pretty lame. Just as a sort of after thought. But this, this movie delves into the fine details of blinking. even offsetting each eye , favouring in direction with the eye shapes, subtle brow movement the works. Definitely adding some of this stuff into my next assignment.
Everyone needs a refresher course from time to time. I stumbled on this over at Kristian's blog.
Some great use of the ol' Malcolm rig there, really showing that I had yet to push it to it's full potential. It's so bouncy! And Stretchy! Definitely something I want to explore in this current assignment. Also, a great sum up of all the basic principles. Very fun viewing.
Working from Kristian's profile for the director character in our short, I drew up a possible design.
We decided the director would be a mix of Rickey Gervais, and Harry Weinstein, in both shape and character. He's intelligent, and good at his, and boy does he know it. We figured giving the voice actor as clear a picture of his character, both personality, motive, and looks, would result in a better performance.
So not only am I animating a mime in this module, but i'm also learning a new software package, Maya. Now, I've never used Maya, and neither has my group buddy Kristian. We plan to work with each other on our final project, and as I come from a Softimage background, and him from a 3DS Max background, we decided it would be best if we met in the middle with Maya. It's quite daunting. Maya is one hell of a program. ANd after using nothing but Softimage for the last 4 and a half years, might be hard to break old habbits. Still, Group member Scott is a seasoned Maya user, he's helping us out. I tinkered a little with the rig Scott is setting up for this project...
Thankfully, the Morpheus rig has a lot of similarities to the Malcolm rig I'm used too. I posed this today, just to test, and learn my way about Maya's interface a bit. So far so good...
Not fully satisfied with where I left Rossini's design and character, i pushed onwards.
I decided to go for more of a classic mime feel. Gone is the hat, the waistcoat, flower etc. This way, his design is more in keeping with the other two mimes.
The finished lineup. Scott was happy with how his character looked, Tony, on the right. However Kristian had different thoughts for his character. I thought of him having more Bavarian roots, but Kristian saw him as an Argentinian. And so, working from Kristians' description, I re designed him. As we speak, Scott is playing with the Morpheus rig in Maya, and recreating these guys in 3D, ready to animate with.
In order to fully get a grip of Alejandro's character, I began researching some possible influences.
John Cleese - Ministry of Silly Walks
The way Cleese stays so upfront and straight faced, even in the most absurd conditions, is a trait i want to capture in Alejandro. Sure he's passionate about his work, but he's a pro. He stays in complete control... Most of the time...
Bruno Tonioli
Alejandro communicates with his hands and face. Although not as flamboyantly as Bruno, Bruno's energy is definitely on the right track. Alejandro would be a little bit more refined, more reserved.
Victor Meldrew
When pushed, Alejandro can lose his composure. The way Meldrew becomes angry with everything around him, and just starts hating on everything, is where i want to take Alejandro's outbursts. He's so reserved, so having such an extreme outburst will work to great comic effect.
Marcel Marceau
Alejandro's idol. He, and me as an animator, have, and will, learn a lot about mime by studying his performances.
After the brainstorming session i mentioned last post, we came up with a completely new scenario. This time, the film still takes place from the point of view of the director, but instead of acting out a western, the director is just looking for competent mime artists for his new show.
Still in three segments, with three mime characters, a theatrical character, a cocky character, and a blissfully ignorant, foreign character. My responsibility is the theatrical character.
Below is my initial read through of the theatrical character's segment.
If we add all three character segments together, the full script reads something like this:
Opening Scene
Camera focuses in on a poster advertising the open auditions being held today for a new play.
Cuts to first mime on stage. Alfonso stands on stage waving with an intense look and a big smile on his face.
Director – “Do the box please”
Alfonso starts miming that he is pulling a rope.
Director – “What are you doing?”
Alfonso is still doing the rope.
Director – “I want to see the box!!”
Alfonso stops for a moment, thinks for a bit then nods and smiles before he goes on to mimimng the rope again, but this time he is pulling something heavy.
Cuts to second mime on stage.
Rossini sweeps onto the stage and acknowledges the director with a light bow. He puts down an imaginary bag and pulls out an assortment of imaginery tools.
Director – “Very nice, please continue”
Rossini picks up the ‘box’ he just put down and begins to flesh it out.
Director – “Fantastic! What else can you do?”
Rossini shakes his head and knods at his box as he continues to refine and polish it.
Cuts to third mime on stage.
Tony stands on the stage leaning on an invisble wall ignoring the director.
Director – “Hello? Can you mime a doooor?”
Tony looks at the director and gestures “Me? Ye i can do a door”. Tony then performs walking through a door and gives the director a thumbs up before going back into his laid back stance.
Director – “Oh! That was actually pretty good”
Cuts to first mime on stage.
Director - “Do you even understand what I’m saying? I said do the box!”
Alfonso nods and smiles, lifts one hand off the rope and pretends to be pulled to one side of the screen.
Director -“What’s wrong with this guy?”
Alfonso slowly moves back to his start-position (still pulling the rope) then he stops and pretends to wipe his forehead to show that he’s tired from the struggle with the rope.
Director - “Okay.. Now let’s see that box.”
Alfonso looks a bit confused since he obviously just did that, but he quickly puts on a smile and starts to do the rope again.
Cuts to third mime on stage
Director – “Can you also do the rope??”
Tony looks back at the director and laughs off what he just said, as if to say “of coarse i can”. Tony then performs the rope.
Director – “The rope pulls you!!”
Without hesistance Tony starts to get pulled by the rope. The director sudden improv hasnt startled him.
Director – “ Hmmm . . . Very good”
Cuts to second mime on stage
Rossini is still working on the box
Director – “Thats great thank you, yes, now please, what else can you do??”
Rossini shakes a finger at the director and begins to rotate the box onto its side.
Director – “No really, enough of the box, what else can you do!?”
Rossini shoots a glare at the director, and begins to push the box to the right. Its really heavy.
Director – “Oh for . . .”
Cuts to third mime on stage
Director - “ah ha!! Ok I’ve got it, mime a box”.
Tony will gesture to him “A box? Are you serious? That’s your big challenge, no problem”. So Tony then mimes a box.
Director - “No! A bigger box”
Tony accepts the challenge and extends his arms making the box bigger and heavier.
Director -“No! Bigger!”
Tony will give the director a sinister stare before accepting the challenge and he makes the box bigger and heavier, at this stage he is really struggling.
Director -“No bigger!”
Tony will then stop doing it, give the director a evil stare before he walks off gesturing “I aint no fool, this isn’t worth it”.
Cuts to second mime on stage
Rossini is now, what looks like polishing the box, smoothing out the corners and generally redefining it, obsessing over it.
Director – “Stop, Stop! I don’t care about the damn box!”
Rossini stops and stands stock still, glaring at the director, his eyebrow twitches at every insult and he has trouble keeping his composure.
Director – “Is this all you can do? A dumb box??”
Rossini mimes an angry outburst and without taking his eyes off the director he packs his ‘things’ and glides purposefully off the stage.
Cuts to first mime on stage
Director - “Cut!”
Alfonso raises a hand as I he got an idea and starts juggling imaginary balls.
Director - “I said cut!”
Alfonso nods and smiles and continues to juggle.
Director - “No, enough. Stop it!”
Alfonso continues, even more enthusiastic than before.
(Director turns the lights off on stage - but we can see he’s still happily juggling)
Closing Scene
The camera will focus in on the poster advertising the open auditions, but the director will stamp CANCELLED on the poster. (Run Credits)
(Thanks to Scott Ramsay for putting together the script.)
We decided to try something different, and cut between each segment a number of times. Hopefully this will keep the audience interested, as each of the three auditions unfold. It also adds the opportunity for some little, running gags to be included, and also makes the auditions appear longer than just thirty seconds. However if, this approach doesn't work, the three segments were written as whole segments, so will work kept as whole segments.
After further discusion and feedback, we tried to rework our current western idea. An issue that kept cropping up was that it wasn't clear weather our actors were acting as a nervous/clumsy/cocky character, or actually were clumsy. The characters true personality and their acted personality were in constant conflict, and consequently keept canceling each other out. HOWEVER, all is not lost. After a 45 minute brain storming session after class, we've decided to go down a whole new route, with hopefully some genuinely funny results. I'll leave our rough mind map from the session here for now, but more will follow shortly...
After today's feedback, it's decided we'll run with the western idea. Siobhan commented on how it was the easiest to read from our initial animatic. Class mates only commented on how it looked the most fun. Things to be going on with:
- We need to make sure it is completely apparent that all mimes are auditioning for the same role, but bringing each of their personalities to the role, so all the acts will be different somehow. We don't want to just portray a western character with these guys, but a struggling mime artists with his own personality, trying to portray a western character.
- Siobhan liked the idea of the Mimes walking straight on stage in character, not introducing themselves first. She also suggested having the mimes fall back into their normal personalities to hear the directors feedback, and react accordingly
.- We need to starry inking about how this film will work as a whole piece, not just 3 segments stuck together. One idea we have floating around is to present the three auditions as audition tapes, from the point of view of a camera the director is holding. The auditions can then cut between each other, or run seamlessly, depending on the scenario. (eg, the clumsy actor could knock the camera, having it fall on it's side, the black out. The camera will the turn back on and refocus on the next mime. I think this will give us some really fun opportunity to play with editing and continuity.)
- Perhaps the best way to time this film out is to physically act it out. I think a visit to the sound stage is required in the very near future.
- Voice work! Siobhan thinks it would be. Good idea to record our sound with the voice actor earlier rather than later. I think we'll just build a bare bones script, and ask the actor to add lib around it. Apparently he's good at that. This way we'll be able to add a lot of little reactions to our animation, which will hopefully make the acting a lot more natural and add libbed, rather than completely staged.
- Character profiles. A much more in depth profile for each character is required. Only then can we truly understand how each character will react in each scenario. I'll get on to that immediately.
Regardless of which narrative path we end up taking, the group decided the auditions would take place in an old, draughty theatre. I started exploring.
I started by exploring a number of ideas, Kristian suggested an office, so that was my first pot of call. I then moved on to a front room, like a really low key, slightly dodgy audition, perhaps for a mate. Then I moved on to the stage idea. It just seemed to work better. After all, actors, stage, makes sense.
I moved on to exploring various angles and prop layouts for the scene. More work is needed, but I think I've got a sense of where to take the stage now. Kristian is also working on the stage design. Tomorrow we'll compare and decide to where to go from here.
The first rough Animatics. Tomorrow, only one scenario will be picked and carried forward.
Western
Acting cool, he enters with an exaggerated cowboy strut, pushing both doors violently aside. As he steps over the threshold, he glances around from under his hat, chewing on a toothpick, only to have the swinging doors swing back and push him off balance, he tumbles forward, and saves himself by hanging onto the bar.
Dusting himself down after his dramatic entrance, he plays it cool again, gesturing to the barman with a pointed finger, he tips his hat. He places his arm on the bar, palm open as he waits for his drink to slide into it. He misses. A smash can be heard, and after a second or two delay, he looks about confused, to the other end of the bar, as if the glass has just shot off the end.
He tries to order another drink, but is distracted by the woman’s entrance. He lifts off his hat, licks his palm and smooths down his hair. He then leans nonchalantly against the bar, attempting to look cool, only to slip off as his gaze follows her.
He hastily pulls himself up against the bar. As he puts his hat back on, he stops suddenly, she's looking right at him! He leans carefully against the bar, winks and gestures a hello with his hand at her.
He spots the approaching man, with a start, he jumps back, and begins fumbling with his belt looking for his pistol.
He pulls the pistol sharply from its holster, and begins to spin it on his trigger finger, only to drop it. He fumbles to try and save it from falling, only to have it go off. He crouches and hides his face, as a bullet ricochets about the bar. He finally looks up, only to see quite a mess, and some angry patrons. He sidles to the left, and quickly runs off screen.
SuperHero
He 'action rolls' onto the screen, and lands in a crouched pose, his face hidden behind his forearm, as if he were holding his cape. He scans the scene, with darting, shifty eyes, before settling slightly.
A baby is falling from a bypass above our hero.
In one swift, over dramatic motion, the hero scoops up the baby just in the nick of time. He bundles the baby safely into his cape.
His head snaps up suddenly from looking at the baby in his arms, he darts on his toes a little as he scans from left to right, then he looks up, and strikes an over the top pose of realization.
Never one to play the coward, our hero braces himself, and looks directly at the meteor with a steely gaze.
Without taking his eyes of the approaching meteor, he gently sets the baby down, and slides it out of the way with his toe.
The hero once again, braces himself for impact, gaze fixed on the meteor, arms raised in anticipation, he widens his stance slightly, to give himself more purchase on the ground.
As the meteor impacts with our hero, he immediately buckles under its weight. But he grits his teeth, breaths, and slowly begins to push up against it.
As he reaches his full height, still pushing against the meteor, he pauses, breaths, and suddenly, whoosh! He swings the meteor round, once, twice, three times, and sends it flying off screen.
He immediately crouches. Takes a few breaths, the hides behind his cape once more. He scans the area, and whoosh, he leaves in a dramatic flurry.
As stated, these are only rough. I mean really rough. But hopefully get the basic ideas across, enough to make a final decision tomorrow.
Here's a brief run-through of what my chosen Mime characters are to go through in each of the proposed scenes.
Western v Superhero
Western
Character – Clumsy
New guy in town enters a saloon and heads to the bar to order a drink.
How does he enter through the swinging doors?
Acting cool, he enters with an exaggerated cowboy strut, pushing both doors violently aside. As he steps over the threshold, he glances around from under his hat, chewing on a toothpick, only to have the swinging doors swing back and push him off balance, he tumbles forward, and saves himself by hanging onto the bar.
How does he order a drink?
Dusting himself down after his dramatic entrance, he plays it cool again, gesturing to the barman with a pointed finger, he tips his hat. He places his arm on the bar, palm open as he waits for his drink to slide into it. He misses. A smash can be heard, and after a second or two delay, he looks about confused, to the other end of the bar, as if the glass has just shot off the end.
A pretty girl! But she's with another man...
Does he notice her?
He tries to order another drink, but is distracted by the woman’s entrance. He lifts off his hat, licks his palm and smooths down his hair. He then leans nonchalantly against the bar, attempting to look cool, only to slip off as his gaze follows her.
Does he grab her attention?
He hastily pulls himself up against the bar. As he puts his hat back on, he stops suddenly, she's looking right at him! He leans carefully against the bar, winks and gestures a hello with his hand at her.
Her boyfriend has spotted you! Draw your pistol!
What does he do?
He spots the approaching man, with a start, he jumps back, and begins fumbling with his belt looking for his pistol.
How does he draw his gun?
He pulls the pistol sharply from its holster, and begins to spin it on his trigger finger, only to drop it. He fumbles to try and save it from falling, only to have it go off. He crouches and hides his face, as a bullet ricochets about the bar. He finally looks up, only to see quite a mess, and some angry patrons. He sidles to the left, and quickly runs off screen.
Superhero
Character – Theatrical
The superhero enters
How does he enter?
He 'action rolls' onto the screen, and lands in a crouched pose, his face hidden behind his forearm, as if he were holding his cape. He scans the scene, with darting, shifty eyes, before settling slightly.
A baby is in trouble!
Where is the baby?
The baby is falling from a bypass above our hero.
Does our hero catch the baby?
In one swift, over dramatic motion, the hero scoops up the baby just in the nick of time. He bundles the baby safely into his cape.
Danger!
Danger senses tingling!
His head snaps up suddenly from looking at the baby in his arms, he darts on his toes a little as he scans from left to right, then he looks up, and strikes an over the top pose of realization.
A Meteor!
How does he react?
Never one to play the coward, our hero braces himself, and looks directly at the meteor with a steely gaze.
What about the baby?!
Without taking his eyes of the approaching meteor, he gently sets the baby down, and slides it out of the way with his toe.
Is he ready?
The hero once again, braces himself for impact, gaze fixed on the meteor, arms raised in anticipation, he widens his stance slightly, to give himself more purchase on the ground.
Hurray! He saved us from the meteor!
Can his body handle it?
As the meteor impacts with our hero, he immediately buckles under its weight. But he grits his teeth, breaths, and slowly begins to push up against it.
What dies he do with the meteor?
As he reaches his full height, still pushing against the meteor, he pauses, breaths, and suddenly, whoosh! He swings the meteor round, once, twice, three times, and sends it flying off screen.
He did it! How does he react?
He immediately crouches. Takes a few breaths, the hides behind his cape once more. He scans the area, and whoosh, he leaves in a dramatic flurry.
More development is needed to find out who the characters really are, what makes them tick etc. But this is just something to go on to build two initial rough animatics on, so we can pick a final idea to run with.
After a short hiatus once AP2 was handed in, an over Animex, we're back in full working order. Straight in with the Acting for Animation module, and the group Mime assignment. I'm working with the great Scott Ramsay and Kristian Egge.
When not communicating face to face, we have our own Facebook group, set up by Scott to dumb ideas and generally keep each other informed of each others progress away from class.
The assignment requires us to create a roughly 2 minute piece with three Mime characters, all auditioning to a director of sorts.
We kicked things off with a group brainstorming session. We decided to have a sort of audition for a film/show situation for our mimes, but needed to decide on a film genre. We eventually ended up with a SuperHero or Western idea. As of this moment, we are still unsure as which to go with, but hopefully tomorrow's feedback session will finalise the decision.
Anyway, next we came up with three character types for each scenario
Western
Cocky
Clumsy
Scared
Superhero
Cocky
Theatrical
Nervous
Using the tried and trusted method of picking names out of hat, we each were given a character from each scenario to go away and develop. I picked Clumsy for the Western scene, and Theatrical for the SuperHero scene.
More to follow.
Here they are:
Lip Synch
I was surprised how quickly this piece came together. It's not as exaggerated as my usual animation style, and that's why I like it. Looking back at it now, especially after working on the other two pieces for this assignment, I think I could have pushed the facial animation a little more, added more definition to the lip shapes, but perhaps that might have ruined the subdued, contained mood of the piece.
Presenter
This piece falls back into my usual, exaggerated style. I think it works to a degree. One of the main points of criticism during progress, was that too many poses were too big, that it looked 'overcrowded'. I honestly tried to tone it down, but it always seemed like some of the energy was lost in doing so. Looking back at the piece now, I think it still looks a little too busy, but maybe that adds to it's charm. This is an overconfident character, very sure of himself, perhaps a little egotistical, and the loud poses match his loud personality.
Song and Dance
I think this is the weakest of my three pieces. With rig issues, and mismanagement of time on my part, I think it looks the most unfinished. I'm still a little rough when it comes to polishing my walk cycles, which is definitely something I need to work on in the next module.
Nevertheless, this was a really fun piece to work on, and working to a set rhythm is something I really enjoyed, it both restricts, and creates opportunities to play and experiment, more so than a standard lip synch piece.
I feel I have improved this module, especially looking back at AP1's efforts, but I also understand more than ever that I have a long way to go. Polishing is still my biggest weakness. I need to find a proper routine and workflow, something like Keitn Lango demonstrates in his tutorial videos. I could work another month on these pieces, just polishing them. I think they need it. But I feel I can enter the next module better prepared to do so having made these mistakes here in this one. I'd like to think I'm on the right track. I do feel more confident about beginning a new animation now, I used to find it very daunting, but having to produce so many in a short space of time has pretty much beaten the fear out of me. I can only look on to the next module, and hope I improve even more.
Whilst working on this module, particularly the song sequence, I encountered a few rig issues. The Malcolm rig I've been using is a great rig, very expressive, I've yet to explore it's full potential, and honestly, this is the first time I've encountered problems.
Malcolm's limbs have added controllers, to allow the animator to and a little extra bend and stretch when needed, depending on the style of the scene. However, i found they would just bend and often get lift behind, sort of trail behind the rest of the arm.
Fortunately, I was able to key these rogue controllers back into place, but it's certainly an issue I'll have to look out for in the future. I'll look for a permanent fix should it happen again.
Another issue I came across was a bit of leg wobble. In the above clip, you'll notice the knees sort of, jiggle as he comes to a stop. Now, the legs are animated using an IK hierarchy, at no point were any keys set for the knees. The problem seemed unsolvable, even switching to an FK hierarchy and manually keying the knees didn't work, the knees remained locked in position, almost like they were linked to another part of the rig that I was unaware of. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a solution. Looking over the support forums set up by the rigs makers proved fruitless too, hopefully this is just a one off bug, and it won't disrupt any further work.
I love this. This is a test piece, a test piece! for Barcelona based studio, Headless Productions latest project, "I'm A Monster". Apparently the studio pride themselves in trying to revive 2D animation, and boy, if this is the quality of the stuff they're kicking out, I really hope they succeed. No news as to when we will see the finished product, but I can't wait.
In the mean time, check out their blog, it's full of some truly lovely 2D splendour!
Headlessproductions.blogspot.com
Been a while since I posted about my presenter clip. It kind of got put in the back burner for a while whilst I worked on my song and dance clip.
I started to try and ease the transitions between poses. This is a character with a big attitude. Very full of himself, and this translates into his gestures and poses. However, his dialogue is very snappy, leaving not a lot of time, to fit in an awful lot of gesturing. As pointed out in earlier feedback sessions, it's looking likely that I'd have to chop out or tone down some poses.
A little bit more smoothing. Here, I tried to add a bit more breathing space between poses, however they still looked like they were fighting for screen time with each other. Just too much going on, particularly with the hands. The pauses are too static.
Okay, started adding some overlaps to the hands and shoulders to try and ease those transitions some more. I'm starting to see an improvement. Still need to work on those pauses though, they don't feel natural, almost forced. I still think some of those poses need tuning down a notch, but the overlaps and follow throughs definitely help.
After watching another tutorial from the great Keith Lango, (see previous post), I begin to fix the nagging problems with my pauses, or holds. They weren't moving holds, which lead to the somewhat robotic feel, the piece had before. After adding some eases into and out of the holds in the graph editor, the piece instantly began to loosen up, not in a 'smooshy', way, it doesn't look drifty, but almost just the right amount of drift that occurs naturally from a weighted body stopping and starting motion.
Refined the holds some more. After some more feedback, I also dialled back a few of the poses, some of the non essential poses, or even merged a couple of poses into one, to try and eliminate some of the jitters the piece still had. This was hard, as all of those big poses supported the pieces story, and I didn't want to undersell them. I think I toned it down just enough, maybe it could do with a little more...
More Keith Lango goodness. I've been using a lot of holds in my animation this module, and Keith here has just told where I've been going wrong all this time. I would usually use a bounce back, or work in overlap somehow to my holds, and often it would look too much, and I would just go without. Great stuff.
Some long overdue life drawing. Must remember to go to more sessions...
Yeah, I'm a little out of practice. Really need to tighten up my technique, get quicker, build more gestures into my drawing.
Coming from a musical family, acquiring reference for a guitar player was no problem. My dad was more than happy to oblige.
Right from the off, I wanted the strumming hand to be a point of interest, with lots of secondary motion. Not too much, as the videos show, there is still a lot of tension in the guitarists fingers, in order to effectively pluck the instruments strings. However, I do want to exaggerate it a bit. My dad's technique relies on strumming with his wrist, he's more of a technical guitarist, lots of fast, complex melodies, than a rhythm guitarist, or casual strummer. I think I'll have my guitarist strum more with his elbow, and the wrist, fingers, and most importantly his thumb, will follow through. Not too much, as the thumb will be plucking the strings.
The thumb and wrist motion will move in a sort of oscillating motion, think of the piston arm driving a train wheel. Hopefully this will create a interesting strumming pattern, exaggerated, but not so exaggerated as the not look believable.
Created by 4 students from French VFX school Supinfocom, over the course of 12 months (6 months preproduction, 6 months production.)Meet Buck has to be my favourite short of 2011. Everything from the texture painting, character animation, and even staging just oozes such fluid, yet electric energy, a kind that is rarely found in any 3D animated short, never mind a student produced film. Although produced entirely in 3D, any frame from Meet Buck could easily be mistaken for a 2D painted image.
When asked about their choice of art style, the team behind the film said, (translated from French) "When you look at art books, many things are lost in the final 3D rendering... We want to stay close to the illustrations." Of course, lighting such a strikingly graphical film had it's own set of challenges. Conventional lighting techniques often rendered much of the painted textures unreadable. In order to overcome this, some shading was painted into the characters texture, to define volume, and any other lighting, such as rim lighting, shadows etc, were rendered separately in their own passes, and finally composited together.
Diffuse, ambient, highlight, rim, and shadow passes were rendered separately, and composited together.
Of course, the animation deserves a mention too. The film is full of broken joints and smears, not unlike a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes short. The above sequence sees the main character Buck being chased by his girlfriends overprotective, game hunter, father. As Buck slips and rumbles his way to escape, he buckles and bends from one extreme position to another. Brilliant use of offsets and broken joints, coupled with added smears, which look like may have been added as a hand drawn effect, much like the rest of the films effect work, I think pull of this frantic, yet slick chase scene brilliantly.As I come to the end of the AP2 module, I'm heavily thinking about my own film project for later this year. Meet Buck has definitely got me thinking about trying something different, jumping out of my comfort zone a little. If anything, I feel I've been playing it a little save with my animation so far, time to break out and try something new and exciting...
Making of insights and images taken from French website 3DVF, translated version can be found here http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dvf.com%2Fdossier-765-1-rencontre-avec-equipe-meet-buck.html
