I took the 3D pirateship's job because ...it's about the coolest job in the entire project! So after Lewis has decided what type of ship he wants, he told me to model something based on images from his blog. http://lewistaylor3rdyr.blogspot.com/2009/11/pirate-ship_05.html
and this is what i come up with
we then talked about the size of the ship and the missing cannon issue...which could be a problem destorying the story! so iv suggested a design that have a huge single cannon in front. Something like this :
But then I realised while doing the inking, that we haven't really got enough camera shots...so there is no point to just colour up the storyboard to make a colour script. Instead what i did was, I looked at the story and thought in terms of the scene and camera angle what's going to be in the frame, and only coloured the key frames in the storyboard.
The directer and the art directer show us the way, and we will follow! Yarrr.... but to be critical about this...i think we need a bit more element of the supermarket. something like this..
OK,OK I KNOW it's boring. what about this then?
my point is, we have to include it! lewis! im talking to you!
From the first day I had a animation in mind that was very relevent to JB's dummy project. I saw those 3D animation ages ago, and still trying to find if they're still on youtube.
But while searching for that one, I found this! a stop motion animation, but hey, it is very relevent and could maybe help with the story development?
and this!
oh well, there are literally hundreds of good animations about Mannequins.. I will ask dean for that paticular animation i was trying to find since he've seen it as well.
In addition to the research...again...it's the environment research, the supermarket.
Paul have already done a good job showing us his research. I've got some primary research at the local sainsburys on my phone, sadlly don't know how to transfer them to here... But anyway i went on google and here is what i got
The first thing that comes to my mind when trying to define/design the environment is the sense of scale...
Then it's the cereal aisle on the spot light because that's where the event's going to happen.
Adding to the research, here is some pirate ship. I am very keen on making the style of the ship cartoony, or ish. Since the story will be based in a supermarket, the size of the ship is a key matter.
But then i quite like this toy ship, if we can find a way to make it more 'real' or 'manly'. that will be really cool...
well, since some people have already done their research on pirate, i was looking for something different. So rather than looking at this handsome man in 360 degree true 3D, i moved alone and looked at some more.
(I've already posted this on the group blog, this is just for the record....)
There are people in this world who have spent their whole life dedicated doing their job, however when time passed by the society no longer needs them anymore. It’s pretty sad…
So once upon a time, in a supermarket, 3 old pirates struggle to find their treasure. In fact, they don’t know what their treasure is anymore…in this big damn hurry world where everything moves the way too fast and too complicated for them. Still pretty sad…
One day when the 3 old pirates shipping in a shopping trolley trying to stealthily hijack a box of cereal. They got catch!!! by a supermarket employee. The commodore ordered to strike. The employee then got hit…hit…hit…then he got pissed and shout out to the old pirates:
‘All right stop this NONSENSE! ‘
Pirates shocked
Then the employee said something that deeply hurt their feelings…(I haven’t work out what yet…)
Pirates look upset. Like kids, looking downwards…how sad this sense is!
Then the employee realised he was too harsh, and said:
‘But I didn’t mean to….’ (Basically I’m sorry and cheer up.)
After 2 second of silence, one of the pirate suddenly pointing at something else in the shop. Then they carry on… here a twist of their enmotions.
This is a quick, 45 min..ish compositing test i did for JB's project. Footage was shot on my Canon XL1 DV camera in my home. I did try to create some nice sense of lighting space by cleaning up the my desktop (which i havent done for years!!). The blackish thing dummy pushing is my camera cap. I used a wire to drag it from out of frame. Did a couple of shots to match the timing i needed.
The 3D dummy wasn't my own model. JB did give me his eariler version he made for the pitch. BUT, he was using maya2010, maya700000000, and i only had maya8.5, so that didn't work out. So i googled and downloaded this basic model,came with a nice rig,from www.creativecrash.com. It was like a open source training model, so everything could use it. Plus this is just a test which means it wont be shown in the final thing so, no copyright issue is involved.
As already said in the group blog. Today's meeting with Mike and David was not as expected. But it's still good... for our story after all. I can't be more agree with them on the dummy project to be honest. It's simple: if a 3rd year animation project can be finished in 4 weeks time, then where the heck do we (all the free-lancers) get our marks from? And i think it is fair to say, after all the research i found dazzens of good 3D dummy animations on youtube. I wouldn't say our story is as good, but if JB is purely aiming for a high-res 'looking' to make our project stand out, then...it's very likely we are going to sunk, to wherever.
So, i'm quite pleased in the end both JB and our team opened up our mind for new revolutional ideas. After the meeting I showed JB this video:
It's so good, we have decided to make something JUST LIKE IT! no im joking.... but we quite like the idea with the heart, the evil female, the change of the male. We think rather than making the female dummy a...well, in the orginal idea she was pretty much just a part of the environment... so we think we can bring her personality out a lot more and change the story in definte.
Well, for the pirate project, just like Lewis Taylor our beloved director have already said on the group-blog, he is so right that I am going to quote what he said... 'Story Nuked! the meeting with Mike and Dave was interesting. They raised some good points...mainly 'Why'. We went through so many ideas, are they toys, are they mascots, do they exist within the box? Soooooo many things. We should all take a night to come up with some ideas and meet first thing tomorrow! '
And so we did. I think what's most likely going to happen is the number of charater is going to drop down to something like 2 or 3. How the story is going to change? tough.
A quick but yet formal meeting was hold today afternoon for the Pirate of the Produce Aisle project. Then as most people were the same guys for the dummy project so we also had a dummy meeting...if that counts for anything.
Anyway, we have basically comfirmed who's in the group and allocated a rough idea of who's going to do what in the future. I will be doing both teams' production manager. Which involves mainly the work for production schedule, also able to allocate future jobs for the fellow free-lancers.
The pitch didn't go through, so lucky me, I joined into other's group, yey. I really want to be involved in some live-action seqence since I am keen on camera works. Something to do with 3D elements composed with live-action backgroud would be nice to be put into my portfolio.
After the 6 film being commissioned I went to talk with JB first since I felt there's a potencial for a live-action background with his dummy project. The story is about a dummy coming to life buying stuff from ebay... Another possible film was Lewis's Pirate of the Produce Aisle. That's about a group of pirates living in a supermarket trying to get their treasure - cereals. So yeah...you get the idea, the background which is the supermarket can be live-action filmed. Talked to them both and joined both of them.
Another film I was interested was Nathen's Red Rock. I'm not sure about the storyline/narrative but the concept is amazing. Really liked it. It's about a gaint tree in the middle of a rocky deseart wasteland, it is big enough to have people housing on it. So it's the story about the affairs of the people living on the tree.
Other commissioned films are; Hitman Spray Polish Off Gnome
