May 19 2005
Whew, it’s done! Now That Takes The Biscuit (NTTTB in short) is finally done! 5 weeks is truly not a long time produce a film, but somehow I’ve managed to get something out that’s (hopefully) somewhat viewable.
There’s lots and lots of things I’d have liked to improve or add, but deadlines are deadlines and at least I finished on time. Thanks to my brother Christopher’s skills on the piano, it even has a nice soundtrack that suits the plot!
The film will be premiering along with my classmate’s films next Thursday evening at the “Pulp Mansion” in Berlin, if anyone’s in town and cares to come by that would be great!
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May 2 2005
Lots of updates! For one, the short film I’m working on has finally been named: “Now That Takes The Biscuit”. A name that reflects the story in more than one way!
Here’s just a little teaser:
The production is progressing nicely, with all that’s left to do is the animation. For that I have a few more weeks, so I’ll hopefully be finished by May 20th. Both characters are rather aged and stiff, so fortunately there won’t be a lot of bouncy, hi-speed animation work for me to do. Just two old fellows sitting on a bench waiting for their train to arrive…
The character rigs on the other hand were giving me a lot of trouble, especially in areas of fine detail such as the hands and fingers. At one point I was so fed up with Final Rig that I decided to start all over with Animan, another free character rigging system. While that one isn’t perfect either, it works pretty well now. And after all, it’s free!
Now that everything else is running, I’m still not too thrilled: It seems that any time I just want to animate something, some random part will break and I’ll have to go into the character model and fix it! Hugely annoying! And not a very creative workflow at all.
April 17 2005
The pre-production work on the project I had to squash in between Sleeping Dragon is coming along nicely. This short film is tentatively named “Tea Time”, but that’s bound to change before the film is completed.
So far, the story is finished, the storyboards are almost there and even the characters are mostly done.
And here they are:
Beautiful, the two of ‘em. Rupert and Edward, old blokes as English as they get. I tried to get as much character into them as possible without getting too cartoony, and it’ll be more clear when they’re animated.
It’s nice that I can benefit from all the research and development done on Sleeping Dragon. Although the look will differ slightly from Sleeping Dragon, many elements and especially shaders can will be re-used in this projects. I also intend to once again use 3delight for rendering the characters. The backgrounds will be a mixture of 3D renders and 2D paintings, with the focus clearly on the painting.
Next I’ll be working on the scenery, an old railroad station were the two of them will have their little quarrel. I’ve already tried several different settings, but alas none of them suited the story all that well.
The solution: A surrounding park with lots and lots of CG trees! So I’ll be looking for ways to render a ridiculous amount of trees… as quickly as I can! After all, there’s only a few weeks left ’til the deadline.
April 6 2005
First of all: Yes, I’m still alive!
Over the past couple of weeks there’ve been quite a few changes, many of which have kept me from posting updates on my Production Log.
- Let me begin by pointing out the obvious: minning.de has had a complete makeover. The new style looks fresher and more original than the last design. Some pages aren’t 100% done yet, but that shouldn’t stop me from switching the layout now. The missing content and pages will be gradually updated in the coming days/weeks.
- A more unfortunate update: I’ll be working less on Sleeping Dragon in the foreseeable future: The stroke-renderer I’m developing will be the topic of my upcoming student thesis. Meaning that certain scenes must be completed soon, mostly to show off the pretty images it produces. Other than that, I’m too occupied with other work at the moment, because…
- … I need to produce another short film! Uni is giving us 8 weeks to create a film based on the terribly interesting theme of “waiting”. Unfortunately there’s no way I could bend Sleeping Dragon to somehow be relevant to this theme, and 8 weeks aren’t enough time anyway. Now I have another cute story layed out and will post updates here, just like I’ve done for Sleeping Dragon.
