MiddleKid

Good Lord! Has it really been five months since I posted to this thread? I guess I have been pretty busy... Freelancing has been going very well lately and I've been learning a ton. Oh, and I got married last week. Maybe I have had other things to do. Anyway, I've been working hard on the introductory shot these last few days but today I got tired of the whole thing and decided to work on finishing Clay instead. Surprisingly, it only took me a few hours of experimenting and tweaking to get a look I was happy with. A 1500x1500 version of the image is available here for those who are interested. I used a similar render-pass scheme as laid out by the wunderkinds at Soul Cage. The layers were then composited and tweaked in Photoshop. I plan on duplicating the compositing process in AfterEffects when the time comes. Critiques anyone?

Can't Wait! I've put off upgrading this year but I'll definitely be getting the new CD when it comes out. Thanks for your generosity Will!

Sweet! Will it have all of the cool UV texturing and sprite work you've done still intact?

All of it except for the big custom brushes... I think.

Andrew, Nope, the whole eyeball, iris and all, rotate together. I've setup poses to expand and contract the iris/pupil. What "textured part" are you referring to? The only thing that's textured is the iris. --edit-- BTW, the eyeball is not built to normal human proportions. In humans, the iris/cornea takes up about 1/3 of the front surface... This one is more like 1/8th or so because of the look I wanted when re-building Clay.

Andew, Yep, the eyes are built like real eyes, with a separate cornea and iris. A wireframe would probably help you out some... but a model would be even better. So here's one of Clay's eyes! This is the absolute simplest eye I could build so it may not fit your needs exactly, but it will at least give you a good starting point. Eyeball_simple.zip

Thanks Andrew... I'm flattered! I've had lots of other people's work on my desktop over the years but I never thought mine would end up on someone else's... My ego thanks you.

Not to worry. I've got a whole website full of stuff that I plan on making public once the film is released.

Nice work Shaun! Here's what jumped out at me: The eye movement is, um... well, for lack of a better word... all over the place. The wren starts out looking down-left but never really returns there until the very end. The tone of the sound clip suggests someone who's confident and in charge, thus, a lot of of eye contact with whoever she's speaking with. The lipsync is great until "...are we ready for homework..." and then it just gets lost. Must've been getting late when you finished this one up. More expressions in the mouth shapes and facial movement in general would help this a great deal. But, as Jim mentioned, this is probably just testing your phonemes, so I'll shut up about that. Keep it up! Your work just keeps getting better and better.

A very rough WIP of Clay's cave... Not so much a cave I suppose, just a big notch in a cavern wall. There's just some very basic bump maps right now and I'll probably be adding some details to the geometry before painting the final textures.

Great character! My only crit is that the bulging forehead kinda gives him an evil-genuis or mad-scientist sort of look. Your sketch doesn't have that look to it. Love the frizzy tufts of hair though! Too funny.

Well... If Clay were to lay down on one of those pedestal-pod-cell thingies, it would be about three or four Clays wide. Nope. After seeing all of the final entries I think I would've had a good shot. Unfortunately I had to work on some paying gigs and I just ran out of time. I thought about entering the MachineFlesh challenge but this short is more important. Besides, Zach is representin' pretty well in the MF challenge. Thanks for the kind words guys! I'll be posting more ASAP.

Turns out my machine was crashing due to some bad scanner software... Hash is running great now that it's gone. So, as promised here's a WIP of Clay's world. Nothing is final at this point so any crits are welcome.

Thanks Parlo! It's cool that there are people who actually remember when I started this thing. You like me! You really like me! Anyway... My PC is still all crash-crazy so no new WIPs yet, but I started working on Clay's environment as part of the CG Talk Alienware Challenge and you can see my WIPs there for now. Of course, things have changed a bit since the Alienware thingy, so the latest scenes are going to be a little different, but the WIPs on CG Talk can still give a pretty good idea of what I'm going for. Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow to figure out what's causing my PC problems. Until next time!

Hey! Thanks Shaun! All the work I've done up until now, I've written off as "proof of concept" work. I learned a ton and I think I'm finally at a point where I can produce this film with a high level of quality. Thanks for the kind words, and I'm looking forward to seeing this thing develop too. BTW - I finally checked out the rest of your site (not just the cuckoo stuff) ... I love ultimate frisbee! I used to play in college - not anything like you do though - just casually with whoever would show up at the field. Mmmm... good memories.

Yep, there's one other character who's basically a heftier version of Clay... haven't figured out a good name for him though. As soon as I'm happy with Clay I'll make the number two guy. Oh... and there's a few hundred Clay look-a-likes but they'll only be seen from a distance, and only for a few seconds, so they'll probably be done in post. There are two main locations: Clay's "cave" that he lives in and what he sees of his surrounding environment after he gets out of his cave. For the most part, his environment will be shrouded in fog. The grand finale will remove the fog and expose his entire world... I've got some WIPs of the environments... as soon as I can figure out why my machine is crashing (just got a "dumping physical memory" screen... eesh) I'll do some quick renders and post them. Later,

Well, since everyone seems to be starting a thread for their own short films, I might as well throw my hat in the ring. I don't have much that's ready to post just yet, so instead, here's a poster I made back in 2000 when I first came up with the idea: And a similar poster I made a few days ago: Boy... things have come a long way! The final film is going to be about 10 minutes in length and I hope to have a trailer finished by the end of this year and the final film completed by the end of 2005.

Nice footwork! My only crit is that the antennae are kinda dead. If you watch a real ant, those antennae are always in motion. But, as you mentioned, if this guy is so small on screen, it may not be worth the time it takes to set the keyframes. Later,

Thanks for the crits guys! After looking at the pic through non-sleepy eyes this morning, I think Doug may be right about the sharp angles... Especially on the shins. I do want a semi-angular look but the creases under the kneecaps is a bit too much. The eyes are the orange-ish color so that they stand out a bit more and the character doesn't look entirely monochrome. While a swirl of color would be an interesting look, it's not exactly what I'm aiming for. Thanks for the tip though.

Just a quick update before hitting the sack... The body has been tweaked a bit and has the base bump maps applied. (still working on the color maps) Also, a new two-point + skylight, lighting rig. G'nite!

Great work here, Scandog! Only two things to crit that I can see... The sky looks proceedural and the lighting is very flat. Drop your main sun light down closer to the horizon and warm it up a bit to add some variation to the lighting. This seems to be a "remembering the good-old-days" type of image and a more sunset style lighting scheme would help bring out that mood nicely. I've only played with multisky so I don't know how to make it produce better clouds... I've always used photographs or painted my skys in Photoshop. Do whatever you like, but that sky is really the only thing that looks "CG". Oh... I guess this is three things... That is on BIG red ladybug on the rock! The rest of your color palette is fairly cool and not very saturated. That red dot just seems out of place. And on the good side: Your texturing on the wagon and the riverbed are just awesome! I was floored when you said the rocks are just a texture map. Keep it up!

Yeah, I'm definitely going to keep him pretty slender. His counterpart in the film is going to be a good bit thicker and more muscle-bound... not quite as smart though. Much of the clay-like surface can be achieved through textures as can be seen in Clay's face (though I think it's still a bit too glossy) but, IMO, there's a difference between having an object with a particular surface and an object that "feels" like it's made out of a certain material. For example, if you wanted to make, say... a chair. Making one from wood and making one from steel would dictate certain aspects of your design. Anyway, I'm going to do some tweaking this weekend and see if I can make some adjustments in the right direction. Thanks Doug! PS - not adding any ears. I kinda like ol' blockhead.

Ragtag - Thanks for the comments, I appreciate the specific critiques. Always better than a "that's great" or "that sucks" type of comment. The main reason I'm upping the realism/detail in Clay is because I've been modeling his environment (for my short film) and the environment is very rich and detailed... The old Clay just didn't look like he fit in. I can see your point with the detail work on the body. I was trying to add more detail and variety but still retain a "sculpted" look. It's a tricky balance, and I'm obviously not quite there yet. Hmm... What to do? Well, I'm really happy with the way his head's turned out so I suppose I should re-work the body to make it match better. Yep... it's on my to-do list now! Later,

I had time this weekend to get the eyes done (thanks to Zpider) and add some basic poses to the brows. This render also has the new textures. Let me know what you think! PS - The displacement map image was an accident.... but it was just to freaky not to post.

Friends don't let friends play with displacement maps....