Russel_Nash

Hands up for some modelling here as well. I have put some pictures of my models on my webpage. You can find them here.

Thank you very much. I would love to make it a feature animation. While working on this image I already had an opening shot in mind. But my animation skills a quite basic. I think I will have to concentrate on improving my animation skills before I start such a big project. Making it a children's book is also a nice idea. May be I should give it a try first. But you are right Rodney. Developing the story and the characters is really fun. For the music I think I would have to ask a friend. Russel

Thanks a lot for your comments. Here is the backgroundstory: Since his early childhood Jonathan dreams to fly. Every evening his grandma told him stories of the former times, when birds of their kind still had wings to fly. Every morning he ran outside to watch the paradise birds leaving their trees and flying to the open sea. Jonathan so much wished he could join them. As soon as he was able to hold a pencil Jonathan starts drawing all different kinds of flying machines. Unfortunately he never had the chance to build one of his inventions. One day when he was out in the forest, climbing on the huge trees, he realised tiny blue spots on the bark and when he stepped on a branch which was covered all over with this blue spots the branch suddenly breaks and Jonathan managed to grab a vein in the very last second to stop him from falling to dead. Once again he wished he could fly. Later when he told his grandma from his adventure she got very excited and ask Jonathan to bring her a piece of the bark with the blue spots. Jonathan who saw the fear in his grandma’s eyes ran as fast as he could to get a piece of the bark. When he gave it to his grandma she starts to shiver and had to sit down. It took a while until she was able to speak again. Than she told Jonathan what this blue spots are. The blue spots are the first sign of a very serious illness which affects the trees. It starts quite slow, but when not stopped in early stages it will affect the whole wood and kill all the trees in it. There is only one way to save the trees. A medicine made from the Blue Moon Leaf Flower, which was quite common is the old days but now had vanished totally from the wood. There is only on person who knows where the flower can still be found. The old hermit on stone-bridge island. But there is no other way to get there than flying and we lost this ability long time ago. Now it was Jonathan’s time to get very excited. He said to his grandma that they may not be able to fly by themselves but that he could build a machine which can do. He would just need the material which he could not afford till now. Grandma agreed with Jonathan and both went to see the tree committee to give a report of what they have discovered and asked them to help build Jonathans flying machine. It didn’t take long to persuade the committee and shortly after the work on Jonathans machine started. After three weeks of hard work the airship was finally finished. Jonathan named it after the nickname of his Grandma. It referred to the time when her feathers where still black as the night and she was know through out the wood as the “Dark Lady”. The next day, when all things Jonathan would need were brought on board The Journey Begins.

Ok, the journey is over. I have just submitted my final image. Thanks to everybody who’s supported me on the way. Now here’s the final image: You can find a higher resolution here: 2048 x 871 Thanks once again. Russel

Thanks Charlie for the explanation. That was exactly the reason and the way I made it. The resolution is double the size of panavision. I never used A:M composite feature before, and deadline is really close. So I will not use it this time. But it sounds very interesting and I will take a closer look so I can use it next time. Here is a pic of the current status. Russel

I rendered all the differnet parts in final resolution of 4096 x 1742. Next step is post work. Russel

Well I think of him as a kind of parot, but may be he is a frog ith feathers and a bill. I made some minor adjustments. You can find an updated version here: Link Russel

Thanks a lot. I used the v 13.0 to render some parts of the last pic. The bark of the tree has a displacement map on it. Unfortunately I get some render artefacts (black spots) where there are 5-point patches. Is there a way to get rid of these artefacts? Russel

Thanks. I updatetd the feathers so more of his feet is ow visible. Here a WIP of the texturing status: You can click on the image to get a higher resolution. Russel

Thanks for your comments. I may work on the eyes a bit, later. Here an update for the whole character. He lost his boots. Russel

Thank you very much for your suggestion Rodger, but I think I will keep the balloon as it is. I like the “softer” look. Charlie, thanks as well for your post. Can you give some more info what bothers you about the eyes? You are right colour is a bit fancy but I like it the way it is. I roughly put together the ship and the tree house to find the final layout. Than I finished up the pic a little in Photoshop. Here it is: Russel

Thanks, This character is for the still image in the first place, but I will use him for animation after the challenge is over. There for I will make a version where the feathers are replaced by a decal. I rendered a 360° view of the airship. Here are the links: 4.8 MB 720 kb Russel

I started texturing the head of the main character. The feathers are done with a hair material and I used feather images which I painted in Photoshop as emitter. Russel

Thanks, veins may be a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion. There is no patch limit from Animation:Master (as far as I know), but my machine will slow down to much if I add more. May it would be possible to use displacement maps instead of modelling each board separate, but know it’s to late I didn’t know that feature with drag/copy the bones till now. Could you please explain a little more. I tried to do it but I didn’t work. I add one bone to the main part of the ship than attached all CPs to it. After that I dragged it onto the other models but it just disappears in the main model and nothing else happened. Russel

Thanks for your comments. Yes, compositing the elements is the only way to keep rendering time in a reasonable scale. Actually I haven’t seen "The Mummy returns". I will definitely go and rent a copy of that movie. Thanks for the info. Russel