Passmore Lab climbed on as a producer!

I recently presented the Lovestruck project to my boss, he liked it and so agreed that I can treat it as a background project at work! Its great, because now I have more time and computing power to my disposal. Also, seeing that I work for a company that specializes in stereoscopic 3D..I will also be making a stereo version of the film! This obviously adds to my workload but I think its worth it. So welcome on board Passmore Lab! If you want to see what they are about please go visit their site: www.passmorelab.com

big update

The modeling of all the characters are done! Man, its taken a while but it was fun seeing that I usually don't model the characters I animate on. The more I modeled the characters, the more I found the visual style coming through and 'mature' so by the end I could take that back to the first guys and revise them. The biggest change was on Wesley's face. He lacked in appeal for a main character especially in the nose area. It was just too dopey in my opinion.





as for the new characters: this is Rebecca, the love interest:




Lastly we have a background character that will just be reading a newspaper, so ill be calling him Mr. Hamilton. As you can see, hes a slight deviation from the Wesley model:



So...whats next? Im going to skin a basic rig to the models to test if they can do what the are supposed to like arm bends and proper leg deformation when its rotated. If I find the model lacks information in those specific areas, ill update them until im happy..then comes my dreaded UV editing stage. The plan is to have the characters at least modeled, rigged and UV'd before I move on to the set and the million other things. That way I can do their textures as im doing the props and set pieces so that they can all tie into the same visual style.

Best.
Colus

Meet the violinist

Here is the violinist concept and completed model. Im still busy modeling the violin and should be done soon. Only two more characters to go..almost over that hill :) soldiering on.

Colus.

Huggems the bear complete!

I almost lost my bearings :) hehe, Hes done and im happy! He took a bit longer to complete because, like I mentioned earlier.. I was busy moving to a new place and I still have to find another decent coffee shop to go to because the one that I normally work at is now too far away to go to everyday.. very sad but hopefully ill discover some great new places.

So what i did to make him was to take Leonards body up to the neck and cleaned all the clothing lines up...



I took Leonards mouth and Wesley's brow and eyes and just tweaked the hell out of them...



then on top of all that added all the traits and refined until i got this :).






Tomorrow ill be uploading the concept for the next character...so watch this space!

All the best,
Colus

Moving things and revelations

Ive been M.I.A while moving into a new place the last week. Were still unpacking and getting the place nice and spiffy but I'm planning to be productive again by this weekend. The little forced break did me well to look at everything from a zoomed out perspective..not just on the project as a whole but also on this blog, raising questions as to what purpose it should serve. Is it purely a show and tell blog, or is it a tutorial driven blog posting how to's etc. I settled on a midway approach; while the blog would serve as a 'show and tell' throughout the various stages of production, I also want to share what solutions or shortcuts I found to solve a particular problem. Seeing that the final product needs to see the light of day in the near future (year from now or so) and not after 10 years, I have to try and cheat and find shortcuts while still keeping the production level where I want it to be.

I want to stress that although I've been in the 3D field for a few years, I'm not an expert on every aspect of 3D. I specialize in character animation and showing off that skill is the primary goal of this project. however I want to make a short film that can be entered into festivals so getting the final product perfect Ill need to do a lot of research and solve problems that I'm not used to. So whether its stupid known solutions or not, ill share them with you :)

Thanks to everyone that's popped in to the blog. I hope its a fun visit and know you're always welcome, so check back here regularly for fantastic and incredible updates :)

Best,
Colus.

Meet Huggems the bear..

I'm having fun naming these characters :) Huggems will be the third character out of five for this film so were slowly getting there. I think he will be more of a challenge than Mr.Leonard but I'm amped so lets go for it!

..so in the mean while just bear with me.. (I had to :)
Colus

Leonard model complete!

He went quicker than the Wesley model which makes me excited be to able to jump on the next character this weekend!
Watch this space!

Colus.

Meet Leonard

No exciting UV updates from Wesley you ask? well no, not yet. Ive decided to keep the UV editing stage for when Ive got all my characters modeled and ready. Besides, I'm keen to get started with new models so why not.. moving forward we must and we shall! This is Leonard, the flower vendor..he only has a very small role in this film but his talent will be needed to tell the story.. or at least help give the illusion that the setting is inhabited by other people. Because he is a background character I will use as many shortcuts as I can on him...so I will see what I can borrow from the Wesley model. Well, let me stop rambling and get started!

Colus.

Wesley's modeling stage is complete!!

What a busy few weeks..A lot of fine tuning but I'm more than happy with the result. It took longer than I expected to get to this point so I need to carry over all the shortcuts that I learned while making Wesley on the rest of the characters...Yes, there are still a few characters to be made...EEK! :) This is not what his textures or colour choices look like, I quickly slapped together a few lights and shaded him to be nicer to the eye. I'm keeping the shape simple and letting the texturing make out most of the detail like creases on his clothes etc.











Now what's left on Wesley is to layout the UV's to be able to texture him properly and then of course to rig him so that he can move and pull faces! I'm looking into a few tools to make the UV editing a faster endeavour,,

Stay tuned,
Colus

Wesley refinements

Haven't had too much time this week to work on our main man but here's what I'm planning for him..just a casual set of clothes; golf shirt, pants and shoes..plus the hair. Hes not a flashy guy but hes got some fashion sense.. Ill get all over that tomorrow.

Wesley, a work in progress #1

Well its been a busy weekend but managed to get somewhere with the model. It is somewhat different from the original but im happy with the result plus as I mentioned in the previous post I anticipated making some changes to certain features of the design. Now I have to go in and refine hes features and give him some hair and clothes!

Meet Wesley

Meet Wesley. A normal everyday man, with a good heart. Wesley is from more European origin. I tried to stay away from the western looking generic characters hence the bushy brow and quite a boastful nose :) Im generally happy with this design. I do not have the luxury of spending ample time on the character design stage so I have to move on.. However I will be making some minor feature changes to hes face and proportions of hes body. He will be doing a whole lot of physical acting in the film so he has to be able to hold up to that. Its Friday night and getting ready for a full day of working on this at my favourite coffee shop - the living room here in san diego. stay tuned.

colus

love struck begins!

This blog will follow along the creation and completion of an animated short. The working title, for a lack of a better name will be 'love struck'. I like it and maybe it will end up being the final title for the film, well see when we reach that point :) This is a solo project that I will be doing in my personal hours after work, weekends etc. I will have to get someone for music and foley but the rest will be up to me. I aim to create a film that will not only show off my animation skills (or lack thereof ;) but can compete on the world stage as a short film. I realize that I have a big undertaking on my hands but I will treat it as such..one thing at a time. I specialize in character animation and rigging, so facets like set design and art style will be somewhat more of a challenge than the rest. I do have a good artistic grasp and understanding but getting what i see in my head to translate successfully in the finished project will be another thing.

I invite you to come along with me on this long road soon to be filled with blood, sweat and tears..but finish I will and anything less than perfect is not good enough.

colus.