First Moves

The main character isn't created yet, but it doesn't mean I can't make him move!
What you see is the character's skeleton. In animation, any character has this kind of skeleton hiden inside him. Simply move the hand of skeleton and you animate the whole arm of your character.
This is called "inverse cinematic"
Here's an example (not mine)
Biped and Character

And now my first .bip files...

Miniman Walking Happy.



Miniman trying to lift up an orange.



More to come...

The music

I said before that the movie lenghts 3:30. That's because of the music track i choose.
I have been looking for a music track that would match the best with screenplay.
So if you can get your hands on "Red route 1" from Basil Poledouris, try to guess the storyline =)

This music comes from the 90's movie, "The hunt for red october", and B. Poledouris is well known from making soundtrack for movies like "Conan the barbarian".

The balance between Render time/ Image Quality

I am not finished with modeling yet, nor texturing, but i already made lightning tests.
Dropping some object on a plane, adding quick texture sometimes, but nothing more...
Since the story occurs at evening, I want to give the scene artificial lightning ambiance, like a lamp does.

I think the table is over exposed, and i ll fix that later. The goal is to find settings for the quickest render time.

I am using Mental Ray for lightning purpose. It simulate realistic lightning. Like in the real world light bounces and its path is calculated depending of object topology, composition etc.... This tool is powerfull but you have to be patient! Realistic means a lot of calculations.
On a common computer, rendering a picture can take many hours, sometimes more than one day!
My movie will have 25 frames/seconds (PAL), and will lenght around 3:30, that's nothing more than 5250 Frames!
In a big company, i could have tons of fast computers gathered together (i.e A render farm), which could calculate the whole animation in a few minutes, but since i own only one machine, and since i cannot block the computer for ever :p, i have to make compromise between render time and image quality.

I am aiming a render time of 1-2 min per frame = 3-7 days render time!

Modeling

So now you have your refs, open your favourite 3D-software, begin the modeling and a long time later you get that^^
(NO, you don't only get an empty plane! But it seems that .gif files aren't working very well here, hehe :p Just click on the picture, please)

The good thing in modeling plenty of objects is that you can switch to another modeling when you get tired of one. So you never get bored, and you still continue working. ( ^ -^)b

I forgot to mention that having the story board done is also very helpful, because it contains the camera view of the incoming movie, so you already know which objects you have to detail or not.
This is very important to know which tasks will be the most "Time-consuming".

Rules are: The closer you see an object, the more detailled it has to be.
An object in the background is often modeled fast and detailed with texture.
But we'll see that later....

Other Refs

I am not finished yet! The more pictures i take the more inspiration I get.



Don't hesitate to turn yourself into a paperazzi.















The details that you don't pay attention to, are those that make an object looks more realistic^^

The kitchen was inspired by.... ... a KITCHEN!

So I want to start the work, first thing to do, look for

visual references.
Armed only with my fellow Optio 50L, I sneaked -i had to sneak because it looks a bit retarded to be shooting his own coffee machine with a smile)- into the house and bring back some interesting shots.

So many places to hide, when you are a small being hey?

















We ate Pancakes that day.... =)

3,2,1... Ignition!

Welcome on my blog!

It has been some months that I started making a personnal animation,
but the idea of showing the process is really new^^
I thought it would also be a good idea to explain the process to common viewers.
In this blog you can follow the step by step process of creating a short-movie.
No need to be knowing Computer Graphics or something,
"This content is viewable by any kind of audience".

Of course you won't know the exact content of the movie before it's done ;)

I was inspired by a story board exercise, which subject was:
"A small man going through the dangers of a kitchen".
I liked the idea, and when my studies ended, i decided to bring the story board to "life" :)

I drew the story board, as if the story occured in my own flat, in my own kitchen, involving objects from my day life^^
So i started modeling various objects, taken from pictures of my kitchen. Making objects you own into CG is really entertaining.

According to the story, the kitchen won't be exactly the same, but every single chair, little object you'll see in there, comes from real object.