noah brewer

The full version I have is compressed into DV mpeg, so I'll have to paste over the higher quality animations shot by shot. This could take a couple of days...

Thanks! I was going to do it last night, but I was exhausted when I got home. I'll try to upload it tonight. Thanks!!!

Okay, I'm going to take you up on that. How do you want me to give you the full-size files?? Shall I just post them in chunks on my site? Thanks! BTW, I love your 'camera spin' quote. That was ME for about 6 months last year...!

Super Cool! Great modeling on the wrist web, too!!!

A full size, high quality movie would be tough to host, but if there are certain segments that you'd most like to see, I could post those in high quality. Just let me know which parts you would like to see. Noah

Ah yes, the glaring storyboard! There would actually be like 4 glaring storyboards, if it were not for the repitition of certain shots... As for distribution, I think AM Films is perfect for now. If I get serious about this project someday, I will tweak the video and try to pitch it to the company that already owns the rights to it. Thanks!

Thanks! Usually 4 or 5 passes. Sometimes 9 passes, if I had the time.

Yeah, the quicktime pro upgrade is a pain in the neck. However, you should be able to see most of the movie on my website with the older versions of quicktime. As for rendering, it was done with multipass in v10.5, with 30 percent motion blur. Thanks!

Thanks a lot! To be honest, my goal was to utilize animating the camera as much as possible, because the character animation portions of it took more time and energy. Although I do not consider myself to be a very good character animator, what I have learned comes not from school, but from watching a lot of animations and live-action movies, and also from great learning DVDs like Jeff Lew's.

Yeah, the violence has always bothered me a bit, but I'm more bothered by first-person shooter games, because they are more realistic. MK violence is so over the top, it's almost like Tom & Jerry, or Road Runner. As for how long it took me to make the Bubblegum Crisis video, I spent about a thousand hours (not including render time) on setting up shots, lighting, animating, modeling, texturing, compositing, and so on. You could probably add another 200 hours to this figure if you want to count the time I spent modeling my generic human model and the setup time on that, which was done prior to this beginning of this project. Still, 1000 hours isn't that long if you figure it at 40 hours of work per week, then it works out to be 25 weeks, or about 6 months. However, having the discipline to work on something without getting too sidetracked, or getting burnt out is much easier said than done. When I was feeling burnt out, or the weather was nice outside, I was probably only working 20 hours a week, which put me behind the schedule I had set for myself. As for render times, I would set the render multipass settings according to how long I was going to be away from my computer. If I was going to sleep, then I would start a 7 hour render, which would probably be between 5 to 9 passes per frame. If I was going out to run errands, then I would try to gauge it at 3 hours or less, so probably just 2 or 3 passes per frame. I would have to jot down on a list the shots that needed to be rendered, or re-rendered, in case I needed to take a long break and forgot what was ready to be rendered, and thus, not waste any render time. My storyboarding probably only took about 20 hours, since I based a lot of my shots on the original show, and because my storyboards were very crude.

Thanks again. Yes, I'm currently working at Midway on Mortal Kombat Armaggedon as a modeler. I originally applied as an animator, but like many studios, they use motion capture almost exclusively here. I think its probably less stressful than working on cinematics (or full-motion video), because with in-game models, you are restricted to the speed of the game system that you are making it for. With cinematics, there are no limitations, so there are much higher expectations. Therefore, to the viewer, you are constantly being compared with the best visual effects of Hollywood movies. Anyway, I've been an MK fan since the first game came out, so I'm pretty thrilled! -Noah

Glad to hear that you're safe!

Thanks for starting this thread, Rodney! In my delerium to try and finish this animation, I guess I forgot to tell people about it...! There are some bad transitions between shots, and shots that are unfinished, so I can't say that it's COMPLETELY finished, but at least its MOSTLY finished for now It definitely was a fun challenge, trying to figure what parts needed to be prioritized. It seemed liked an overwhelming undertaking at times, but I knew A:M was up for the task, so I could only blame my own laziness if I didn't finish it! That, and the idea of not doing what I love for the rest of my life was another motivating factor to push myself. If you have any general questions or comments, or about any shots in particular, I'd love to discuss them in this thread! Thanks for you interest! Noah

Thanks, but its not REALLY done. As for Castle of Blood, I'm taking a break from that to start a live-action movie, with 3d backgrounds. Its based on a novel, and should be pretty fun!

For lighting, I just use standard lighting techniques, such as rim lights, a key light, and a fill light. However, I do a LOT of tweaking in photoshop afterwards to make the lighting look better, like most 3D artists do. This amounts to making a copy of your render layer in photoshop, and setting it to Luminousity, so that you can accentuate the render by darkening and lightening different areas of the luminousity layer. I already have three nudes in the gallery (the floating series with all the mirrors). I'm freaked out by my own work, too

I just checked out your site again; Fantastic work! The layout of your website looks a LOT better than it did a long time ago! BTW, nice hippo... I think...

Ahh, the joy of characters! Sounds like fun.

Absolutely beautiful!! Yeah, very nice.

I'm sure we'll see SSS eventually in A:M. There's so many great features already!

Good Job! I found this thread after I saw her on your website, so it was neat to see the progression!

Thanks guys! A:M is such a delight to work in!

That was sweet! I like the saturation of your colors, and general tempo. I like how you did the lip-sync, too! I'm going out to buy some sausage right now!!

"Ohhhhhh! Its... IN the computer!" (for all you Zoolander fans) Thanks for the kudos, Jon. Your work rocks, too! Yeah, maybe I'll drop her right knee down if I revisit this peice. As for skin, I made all the textures in Photoshop. It's not too hard to do, but its not photo-real. Actually, the overall lighting is what mostly provides the sense of reality. Thanks, guys.

Wow, that looks very realistic! The only thing I would say if you do another one is that the pupils get a bit lost next to the dark eye shadow. Anyway, Congratulations!