Tag: production

Post author By quollism
Post date May 4, 2014
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So that idea I’ve been hoping to have, something I can turn into a short movie.. I had it. And I’m doing it.

The project is working-titled: “A Moment In The Sun”. These are the two main characters. In the script their names are Gronky and Pointy.

My production diary so far:

30 April

Came up with the nugget idea during a tea break at work and sketched down a big monster being yelled at by a smaller monster. The smaller monster is standing in the larger monster’s shadow and ranting “You’re blocking out the sun!” – this is the central idea. It is a small thing. It is perfect for a “junior” animated short.

1 May

Drawing the two characters and figuring out what they should look like.

2 May

Did a sketch of the musical soundtrack, or at least something like a musical soundtrack. Won’t use it. It’s rocking but I wanted something a bit more sedate.
Drew that nectarine dragon thing. Decided it wasn’t Gronky enough.
Successfully carried off a nifty rigging experiment, the significance of which I shall reveal in good time.

3 May

Drafted up a script. It was three pages long and really elaborate. Vowed not to produce that script because it was too elaborate. I just want to make a little film, damnit. Just a little one to begin with. Is that too much to ask for? Is it? IS IT??!?
Got sketching some more. Figured out that Pointy should look like an arrow. Also figured out that Gronky should have more of a hump.

4 May (today)

Sunday is my focussed creativity day, so it was all systems go!

Resisted the urge to model the characters. Modelled an infinite white backdrop instead. Yeah!
Wrote a simpler iteration of the previous day’s script that went for half a page. No gag at the end.
Split the script up into story beats and shoved the beats into a spreadsheet. (I believe this may be known as a “beat sheet” in the biz.) I ended up with 23 story beats, including an ending where [REDACTED]
Drew storyboards from the “beat sheet” using Krita – any given beat took anywhere between one and seven drawings to do.
Compiled a story reel in Blender with the storyboard drawings timed out.
Viewed the story reel. The ending was.. rubbish.
Rewrote the ending. The events leading up to the ending are a set-up and the ending is now a pay-off. Comedy!
Re-drew storyboards, recompiled story reel.

I ended up with about seventy storyboard drawings in the end, and timed out they add up to a movie that runs about 65 seconds (1560 frames) long. Works for me!

This is not a profound tale of profound significance through the ages. It is merely a light-hearted tale about a gentle giant and a one-eyed shadow-hating idiot.

Maybe the full working title should be “A moment in the sun between a gentle giant and a one-eyed shadow-hating bastard”. AMITSBAGGAAOESHI for short. Or in French: “Un moment au soleil entre un doux géant et un salopard borgne qui déteste les ombres.”

Tags a moment in the sun, pre-production, production, workflow

Journals

Post author By quollism
Post date February 16, 2014
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Today I started retopologising after bringing out my character’s inner stocky little dwarf with a bit of reproportioning against the character art I posted earlier. (Retopologising is the process of wrapping a lower-detail animation-ready mesh around a high-detail too-dense-for-animation mesh.) In a nutshell, I’m tracing the new low-res mesh over the top of the sculpted one by snapping to the volume of the sculpt. Included are some comparisons between the sculpted mesh and the retopoed version in progress.

Certain things I find too much of a pain in the arse to sculpt, so in some cases I resolve to “fix it in retopo” rather than try to sculpt; hands are most definitely one of those things. Hands shit me. I would rather draw hands on paper and try to build them vert by vert than attempt to sculpt the bastard things.

It feels like a bit of character is being lost in the low-detail version around the face, so I’ll keep working on the mesh over the next few days to try to shove it back in.

Tags production, the quiet one, work in progress

Journals

Post author By quollism
Post date February 10, 2014
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Lattice to the rescue! Don’t forget to save offsets as shape keys for easy and convenient god-i-hate-this-let’s-start-over-ability.

Just apply a lattice transform to the sculpt then translate those little dots hither and thither. Here I’ve stretched the nose, plumped out the cheeks and reined in the ears a bit.

Here’s the mesh with 100% of the lattice effect. Bit extreme.

This is the lattice effect with 400% strength. Included here mainly for silliness and to show Blender is still the wonderfully trusting program we know and love.

Hey, 75% percent looks much better. I can either apply that as a shape key or destructively apply it to the model. If I’m going to keep sculpting, and I am, destructively it is. Don’t forget to save!

I was sculpting Ktish but the head was coming out all.. woobly and not good. What to do? Lattice that stuff back into submission at once!

Lattice deform is the process of applying a lattice to a mesh in order to warp it into a different shape. The lattice is a grid of points; the points in their default configuration represent “start” positions, and wherever you move those points to is a “destination” position. When applied to the sculpt via a lattice modifier, mesh around any given “start” position warps towards the “destination position”, and this way you can non-destructively deform the sculpture.

It’s great for coarse form experimenting, correcting sculpt shapes that aren’t right, and any task where you want to move around a heap of polys at once (e.g. in a sculpted mesh where dynamic topology has been used) without having to hit up Edit Mode and faff around with proportional editing.

Related are Mesh Deform (instead of a square lattice you apply an arbitrary “cage” mesh over the top of something – slower to set up but arguably finer control) and the new Laplacian Deform which comes from hooks and science.

Just mentioned this technique on Twitter so I thought I’d show it as pictures too. 🙂