Moving Forward

I've talked some smack about moving onto the animatic but after some discussion we've decided to put that aside for a bit. We've also shelved, for a little while at least, the idea of doing detailed styleframes for our shots.

Below are two super-rough styleframes that we did, one apiece, earlier this week.


While there are some similarities, (both have bridges, that being the main one) the two frames are pretty different in a lot of ways. Seeing these two frames side-by-side like this could've led to a knock-down, drag-out conversation about art direction and intent but we decided to avoid that talk and just focus on a scene.

We're picking the first scene, and why the hell not? For that scene, and for the next couple scenes, we're really gonna need some bird models. Therefore we're in bird concept mode.

It's tricky, this concept art thing. I've been sketching away and getting lots of crap. Hopefully some gold will shine through eventually. From there it's the simple matter of modeling and rigging. Yeah, those will only take an hour or two each. Then, after another hour or two, the whole film will be done.

Heh.

100th Post!!!

W00t.

I didn't get a great deal of time to work on the animatic but I was able to get started. Here's a still from the first scene, not a rendered shot, just a screengrab of the Maya windows.

(The top shot is a split of the scene and perspective cameras and the bottom is a close-up of the little birdies. They've a long way to go before they reach co-star status.)

As I work on the shots for the animatic, I think I'm going to do a little more lighting than I'd originally planned on. I think it'll help in the sense that it'll give us a better idea of the levels of modeling & shading required on our geometry, plus it'll start to give these shots a little bit of emotion, which is never a bad thing.

That means the animatic will go a tad bit more slowly than it might otherwise, but ideally some of the lighting choices will then transfer over to the final shots, saving time on the backend. Or something like that.

Cheers.

I Am Taking Too Long...

...to finish the clocktower.

Nevertheless, here are a couple more WIP's.




I'm just trying to streamline it a bit and have it make a bit more sense. More of the pipes are actually connecting to tanks and boilers and whatnot and the smokestacks all connect to something that, in some world, might conceivably create smoke.

The uber-basic peaked roof is a stand-in. That's what I've got to sort out next. After that, the train chassis gets a 2nd pass. Then I'm moving on to a building or something else in the scene. Frankly, I need to kick my arse in gear and put this sucker to rest.

So, this is the deal. I'm loving the occlusion renders and the more time I work on just the model, the more I like it and want to tweak it out in dozens of different ways.

Oh, and one thing RE the two frames above, they show a slight difference in how the back of the clock mechanism is treated. In the top one, the clockworks are fully exposed. In the lower one, I've built a back plane for the clockworks. My thought behind that was that it might mellow out the complexity somewhat and allow the clock faces to read as coherent shapes. I don't know if it works at all.



But I get a little bit worried when I throw it into the scene. I've got to take into account that the level of detail on it vs. the rest of the buildings is huge, but sometimes I wonder if it doesn't fit.

In the last three frames I threw on textures that were already in the scene, but that are by no means final textures. I guess that helps a little bit. Still, the whole structure is so spindly and intricate and....just plain odd. Of course, it's supposed to be odd. It's a different object than all of the others in the shot. But there's a line between being different and being part of a different world. I'm afraid that I'm really close to that line.

One last note is that the camera move may need to change a bit. The last frame is not from the active camera and it's really the only one that lets us see the tower.

Hmm. A lot of second guessing, a lot of thinking that sometimes your babies are monkeys. I'll explain what that means a little later.

City Building 3

This is a rough shot with the two new buildings in place.. No lighting to speak of, and as you can see some of the placement is far from perfect. At this stage we are just replacing our Lego buildings with the actual models to refine things and get them into the scene to see how they are working out. The previews that follow are for the building in the far left.





This one is behind the clocktower for a large portion of the shot, But the camera comes very close so it will need a big chunk of time before it is completed. Right now it is still at the earliest stages. Obviously since no work has been done on lighting or texturing, these still look very low rent...But not to worry the detail (and beauty) will come with time..

Finally, a post of this model in a bit more detail:

City Building 2

Here are some renderings of the nearly finished building model.

This represents the second or third-from-highest level of detail we will be modeling into the foreground buildings of our city scene. Models with this level of detail will be used for medium shots.

Once this model is brought into the main scene, some additional steps will be taken to integrate it into the scene itself, such as power lines, dirt buildup around the building's base, and a few outlying props to really sell it.

In the case of this building, such props would include barrels under and around the water collection system, and a specialized dolly to move the barrels. Final details will include some of the power lines and pavement details as well. With additional refinement to be done as needed.

As will be the case with most of these buildings, many of the final steps will be handled based on the building's position in the scene with respect to the camera's view & other buildings in the scene.

For now now no additional detail has been added to the rooftop, as I am not sure if it will ever be seen in the shot. The roof extension which has been added to this model really exists to carry our European / Mediterranean art direction throughout the model, and to increase the interest of the building's profile.

City Building

This is a concept skematic Barry worked up to describe the structure of the city buildings in more detail:These screens show the 3D model in its current state; I hope to be finishing it up soon. After our discussions concerning some new additions to the buildings I will be adding just a touch more detail, in terms of power lines, and a support structure for the drainpipe and water tank. As a final touch I will put a few crates inside the exposed space in the second level, as well as adding an internal staircase from level 2 to 3.




This is a quick render of a building I am working on for the city space.

Been Doing Some Modeling

I've walked away from the camera, for the time being. Instead I've been working on the clocktower, which is the central feature of the plaza we see in the first shot.



The first two stills are from the active camera view, the third is more of a "money shot" to show off some of the upper parts of the tower. It's still far, far from being finished. I had a couple of concept drawings to work off of, but they were unspecific for some of the features so I spent a fair amount of time trying this & that out as I modeled.

The obvious question is, do the gears work? Uh, yeah, they'll move and all but they won't really "work," so to speak. No gear will actually be driving anything else but they'll all move as if they have real purposes. That's the plan for now, at least.

Tired. Goin' to bed now. More screens in a day or two.

2 Screens

Getting some work done over the long weekend, blocking in some of the background buildings and finding - then filling - holes in our modeling reference.

Every once in a while I'll fire off a render and have the wrong window active. I did that twice today and I liked the renders enough that I saved them.



There's something about the rendering style that I like in these shots. Granted, neither is anything at all close to how we're finishing the shots but I guess that's why I'm posting them now. If I don't, they'll never see the light of day.

I'll update within a day or two with notes on what's going on in these shots.

Updated Frames

The relevant scene has already been bumped to a previous page so instead of editing that post, the new frames are going here. Plus, the formatting of these is different, so they'd look out of place.
This is our establishing shot of the girl, locating her in the city. It's also the leading candidate for the first shot we start working on.

The camera move, from overhead, is the fabulous Golden Spiral. It sweeps through a city street or two, through a courtyard, into a building interior and then back outside, landing on the girl in the moment before her necklace is snatched.

And That's It

That be the storyboard, as it stands now.

It's been pointed out to me that the frames, as posted, are in a sort of double-reverse order. I've posted them in a rough breakdown of scenes, with several shots in each scene. The way the posts are ordered is such that the first frame in the oldest post is the first shot in the film, and the last frame in the newest post is the last shot in the film. That makes sense, but it doesn't exactly read that way when you look at the posts.

Oh well. I'm not going to edit every single post and reorder the frames. Sorry Charlie.

It's already been mentioned that the film now is more of a trailer than a true narrative and I think the frames reflect that. Nevertheless, I imagine that scenes will change, the order may shuffle, etc. as we move forward. Hopefully they won't change much, as neither of us want to start over from anything approaching scratch.

Next steps are to pick a scene and start making stuff. The first scene will be a big test for us and will reveal all sorts of very practical considerations that we're looking forward to solving.

Out Of The Tower, Up To The Nest

The girl finds a way out of the industrial dungeon, a window. Likely the bird will lead her through the window. She looks up, tracking the bird.


Now through the window, the girl's climbing up an access ladder - high, high above the city.


A nice wide shot shows us the apex of the tower, a crazy clockwork confabulation of pipes, gears and scary architecture.


And at the very top, inside a nest of springs, wires and tiny gears, lies the girl's necklace.


Some sort of emotional shot of the girl's face.

Behind The Scenes

Through the trapdoor and down a ladder, into the industrial heart of the building.


The girl wanders through the cogs, steam engines, etc. that power the tin toy world she's just escaped from.


She passes gauges, pressure valves, huge machinery and the like. Perhaps we see things suggestive of the bird/her necklace, reminding us of why she's on this journey in the first place.


One of James' finest concept drawings illustrates yet another menacing character she encounters. In comparison to the previous figure, in the forest, this one is less anthropomorphic and more mechanical.


An optional scene, one we both like, but one we realize will be one heck of a technical challenge. The girl, perhaps spooked by the steam monster, falls into a tank of glowing liquid. This shot gives us hair, fluids, refraction and cloth under water to wrestle with. Even if we solve this scene, each frame will take a year to render on our current machines.

Across The River

This is where we reveal our video gaming roots. If this sequence doesn't betray a love of Mario, I don't know what does.


Spooked by the guard, the girl makes her escape.


Her escape is into a stream, bordering the mecha-forest. She leaps into the middle of it, landing on a clockwork lily pad and Super Mario-ing across it. Mecha-frogs ribbit at her and scurry out of the way.


Very basic concept drawing for the lily pad.


On the other side of the stream, the girl finds a trapdoor in the ground. She opens it up and drops down inside.

And Into The MechaForest

The girl sails through the mouth...fade to black.

Open on the girl in the middle of a tin toy/clockwork forest. Trees whirl and click, mechanical deer poke their noses in the steel wool grass and oddly shaped guards patrol the perimeter, sliding back and forth in their slots like the guys from those old tabletop hockey games.

First she's amazed, caught up in this odd little playground of painted metal, then frightened by the guards...