…Is there anything in particular that people really want to know about when making a short film?

If you do have any questions please post them in the comments below and hopefully I can either answer them with either a quick response or it could also inspire a new post to discuss the issue in greater depth.

The Pigeon designs for ‘Bird Food’ were always going to be difficult.

We wanted to create something that stood out as being original, but as there have been so many animated version of our feathered friends it was always going to be a challenge.

The first thing that you should always look at when designing a character that is based on an existing creature is to research how it is in the real form.

By studying the mechanics and its mannerisms you will be able to get a better understanding of how it works and what are the most important things that define it.

Once all of this information is taken on board and preliminary sketches are made then it’s time to look at the script again and see if it can be improved by any of your discoveries.

Here are some exploratory designs Andrew Crotty did…

As I mentioned in the previous post about the process of designing The Man, these pigeon designs changed just as much. Nicky Phelan and I went through a good few pages just scribbling every different type of shape we could think of that still made it look like an actual pigeon.

Their colours and marking, especially around their necks, make them easily distinguishable as pigeons. The other major thing that you always associate with pigeons is their necks. This gives them their characteristic walk which looks increasingly amusing the more you watch them, especially when they start moving a little faster. But what would happen if we removed their necks from the designs? Would they still look like pigeons?

With the man being rectangular we wanted the other characters to follow this type of shape association. Circular shapes are soft and pleasing to the eye. They are generally regarded as a safe shape as they have no points to hurt yourself on.

Pixar’s UP was a very good example of the use of shape association in its design, and this was explained in a ‘making of’ presentation at Gnomon School of Visual Effect in Hollywood…

Keeping this in mind you may ask why would we choose this round shape for the pigeons since they are “the villains” of the piece?  Well there are a few very good reasons for this…

1. Aesthetically they are adorable and like true predators they use their cute demeanour as an advantage to lure in their prey so they will get the food they long for.
2. They have gotten so fat after eating so much they basically have no neck anymore.
3. I had never seen a pigeon design like this and thought it was wonderful!

So here is what the final design looks like…

…you can see what I mean by cute!

So with these final designs of our doughball pigeons I went back to the script and looked at how the characters’ movement is described.

After reading through it again I realised I could remove the use of flight from the pigeons and that this would make it even funnier. They are too big to fly so they simply waddle around like water balloons on toothpicks!

‘Bird Food’ was always meant to be an animator’s delight with the key being movement and emotion. With these funny possibilities for movement of the pigeons I really think it will be a joy to animate and we all can’t wait to start making them move!

As we start the New Year we have really turned up the pressure on the production and you will be seeing a lot more “making of…” posts, so please stay tuned and keep your comments coming because your support is greatly appreciated and inspiring.

PS – Oh and finally, don’t they also fit nicely into a logo…?

Apologies for the lack of making-of posts recently but as you will read we have been very busy and lots of things have been checked off our extensive to-do list…

In the last post we saw how the Man’s design was being redesigned for the better by Nicky Phelan. Well now we can reveal the final version of the man!

Here he is in lovely 2D…

Oh but wait that’s not all!

You also have the privilege to be the first to see him in glorious 3D!

Massive thanks have to go to Eoin Kavanagh for the modelling, and Rahul Mishra for the fantastic rig.

As you can see we really stuck to the gorgeous 2D design while modelling, and as it moves onto texturing we will still be keeping this 2D feel. The textures will be flat like the 2D image and we will be doing some shading and compositing tricks to try and also keep the line quality.

Andrew Hamilton is currently doing the textures for the Man so I will be hopefully posting images of that soon. Design of the pigeons will also  follow very shortly with new posters.

In other news…

We have received all of the fantastic storyboards from Andy Kelly and I have finalised editing  them. The boards that Andy did are truly amazing and I will have to do a post about them in the future.

So now I need to send that finished animatic to the Irish Film Board for approval this week and hopefully we can crack on with animation before Christmas!

PROGRESS  IS  GOOD!!!

Just like a script is never complete on the first draft, the same goes for the character designs. To get to the final version you will always do designs and redesigns until you are happy with them.

The starting point of designing the character is always to read the script. This will give you all of the clues you need to start going about creating a character. The design needs to match the descriptions of the character in the script but also take note of the actions they are doing, as it will inform you how they will need to move etc.

The main character of “Bird Food” is described in the script as:

“A BUSINESS MAN with his sleeves rolled up and his briefcase in hand, walks along a path under trees whistling with the birds. He is a tall, skinny man in his early thirties with 50’s styled brown hair. His tie is slightly undone and he walks with a swagger, happy to be in the sun.”

These lines give us a lot of information about how the character looks and also it starts to give an idea on how the character will move.

Once the script was completed I gave it to several artists to explore possible designs.

I wanted this short to have a real 2D feel to it even though it will be made in 3D. One of the designers I looked at for reference of possible styles was Nate Wragg. I loved his graphic style but as our designs progressed they went away from this stylised look into something more “life-like”.

Here are examples of the design work from Derek Horan, Andrew Crotty and myself.

Derek Horan Designs

Andrew Crotty Designs

Andrew Crotty Designs

Andrew Crotty Pose Designs

Andrew Crotty Expressions Design

Richard Keane Design

At this point we were very happy with the design of the man and submitted this in our pitch to the  Irish Film Board.

An important thing to remember when designing characters for any project is that they need to work together. In this short we needed the man’s designs to fit in with the pigeons. This was thought about from the start but after reviewing the pigeon designs we just felt that we were going over old ground with the pigeons and we wanted to come up with a new style and design that people hadn’t seen before. This meant we had to go back to the start with the designs of the man.

I asked Nicky Phelan to have a look at the designs and he went through them again. We decided to go back to the graphic style that I wanted from the start and design the characters using simple geometric shapes. The man would be a rectangle and the Pigeons would be circles.

Here are some of the exploration work that Nicky did.

Nicky Phelan Design Explorations

Nicky Phelan Design Explorations

At this point we were definitely onto something and we went back and explored the pigeons again. Once we locked down the pigeon designs (I will do a post on this at a later date) we knew exactly what was required to do to finalise the design of the man…

…and this is where I leave you with an Adam West’s Batman style ending.

So stay tuned to find out how the final design of the Man turned out!

Remember to also check us out on Facebook and like the page for further updates and exclusive pics.

Texture Artists are essentially individuals that paint using software like Photoshop to create textures. Texturing is the process of painting colour and depth onto digitally-generated 3D models’ skin or surface.

Textures are usually 2D images called maps overlaid onto a polygon mesh. The Texture Artist receives work on a 3D polygon model created by a modeler.

To give you an idea of where texturing lies within the process, here is an example of part of our  pipeline:

The Art Director must approve each stage in the pipeline before it moves on to the next.

Working on a team
Texture artists work closely with the team around them, from the Art Director to the Lighters. From the image above you can see how a texture artist is right in the middle of the process.Sometimes the modeler might need to tell you something specific about the model that will help your process. Usually you will have a conversation or  notes from the Art Director before you start texturing an object to give yourself a good understanding of what they want.

Texturing in Brown Bag Films has always played a key role in helping to define the look and style of each show i.e; on Noddy we went for a realistic miniature look:

With Olivia we went in the opposite direction for a painterly look with highlights and shadows all painted in:

The Octonauts  has a smooth, stylized illustrative look:

Doc Mc Stuffins is taking yet another unique direction again:

This is a grayscale render, which is what the Modeler gives to the Art Director to get approval. Once it is  approved it is given to the Texture Artist to start work. This example is Noddy’s car:

Before a texture artist can work on a file the model needs to have UV coordinates added to the polygon surface. This process is known as “UV mapping”.

What is UV mapping?

This is a process of taking a 3D model and laying the surface of the object out flat. Imagine taking an orange and unpeeling the orange skin, then spreading it out on a flat surface to paint on it. “U” and “V” are used to describe the 2D mesh because “X”, “Y” and “Z” are already used to describe 3D space. After unpeeling the surface of our object and laying it out flat we use it to create an image called a UV template. Like this:

You can see this is our vehicle laid out flat and divided up into pieces on a flat 2D image. We are now ready to move on to texturing!

We use specific resolutions for texture maps for reasons to do with OpenGL performance and quality reasons, from 32×32 pixels wide, to 64×64, 128×128, 256×256, 512×512, 1024×1024, 2048×2048, 3072×3072 and 4096×4096. You can change the aspect ratio to if needed, e.g.: 1024×512 or 4096×1024, and so forth…

Photoshop is a Texture Artist’s main application. There are a variety of 3D paint packages too; Deeppaint 3D, ZBrush, Mudbox, Bodypaint 3D and Mari all have texturing capabilities.

Texture Artists use a variety of maps for specific roles. We use 6 types of maps:

Diffuse Map – which is simply colour information.

Bump Map – is a map that only uses black and white tones (grayscale) to simulate bumps and wrinkles in the surface of a model.

Specularity Map – again specularity maps only use  black and white tones (grayscale) to simulate reflective light from a surface.

Opacity Map – is a map that only uses black and white tones (grayscale) to simulate levels of opacity.
Displacement Map – is a alternative to Bump and Normal mapping. It actually affects the geometric position of the textured surface to displace it according to the grayscale value of the map.
Normal Map – whereas a bump map uses grayscale values, the normal map uses Red,Green & Blue values that correspond to the X, Y and Z coordinates of a surface normal for a more detailed version of the object without adding more polygons.

Armed with all these mapping types a Texture Artist can create a vast spectrum of looks from realistic to painterly to ultra stylized.

And here is our final textured prop that was used in Noddy. Overall this prop is using 3 texture levels: Diffuse, Bump and Specular map, all 2048×2046 pixels in size:

The amount of time it takes to texture varies massively depending on the complexity. A  character could be from 3 hours to 24 hours depending on what’s called for. A prop could take anything from 30mins to 16 hours.  Noddy’s car took about 12 hours to texture for final approval.

If you want to become a Texture Artist my best advice is to gain a thorough knowledge of  Photoshop as it will be the main application you use. Also learn a 3D paint package such as Deeppaint 3D, Mari, Bodypaint, Mudbox or Zbrush which all have texturing capabilities.

Try to understand how diffuse, specular , bump, normal and displacement maps work. You can purchase tutorials online at places like The Gnomon Workshop. Good texture sources include:
www.cgtextures.com
www.goodtextures.com
www.mayang.com/textures

Have fun and practice, practice, practice…

Then I will  spend half an hour or so in research mode, going through some of my favourite animation and art sites.  I’m always studying and learning from different people by their approach, style, use of line, composition, character design, layout etc…you can never have enough research.

A good example is if someone asks you to draw up a car. Ok, you think: four wheels, and a steering wheel. But then you think, is it a European or American model? A Ferrari or a Model T? Is it done in the style of say, an anime speed racer, or a Noddy classic car?

3D models by Derek Horan

At around 8am I will jump onto my latest 3D Max project. This is my way for a classical animator (good old reliable pencil and paper) to  try and get up to speed with the wonders and mysteries that are 3D Max. At heart I am a 2D artist in a 3D world.

Working away on little projects like this over the last few months have really helped in my understanding of the 3Dmax world,  from texturing and shading to lighting and unwrapping. It also gives me an insight into the strengths and weaknesses of 3DMax, what’s possible and what’s not. Something can look great in a 2D drawing such as a capes, furs and materials flowing from or on a character, but when it comes to rigging, texturing and animating these objects it can lead to time delays and add stress for our 3D Department.

Hover Car model © Derek Horan

Hover Car model © Derek Horan

So I’ll work merrily away on my latest project. At the moment it’s a hover car. I will get so far  and then go and seek out Eoin Kavanagh and proceed to drive him mad with a litany of questions (why? how? where? etc). Sometimes i will even let him finish his first cup of coffee before pestering him. But good mentor that he is, Eoin always answers my questions in a clear, understandable way without all the tech babble.

At 9am it’s time to start going throught the latest story outline or draft script from our current project,  Doc McStuffins. Unfortunately as it’s in production it’s still top secret (so ssshhhh!), so I will use images from The Octonauts instead, to give you a idea of how it all comes together.

Everything, be it a short TV spot or a TV series, always starts off with an outline, a draft or a script. So I will read through and highlight anything that has to be designed or created, such as a new character, set or prop. I’ll hopefully spot any issues before they go too far. For example, say a script has the Octonauts jumping on each others shoulders to form a human – or should I say Octonaut – ladder to escape from the belly of a whale. The Octonaut characters have big heads and no real shoulders to speak of, so I will do up a few quick sketches of options for how to solve that issue.

Then I will start in on the props,  such as a nightcap for Peso, or ideas for the kind of brick-a-brack Kwazii would have in his room.

Kwazii's room

Peso's nightcap

I will work away for a hour or two to come up with new set and layout ideas. First I’ll rough them out nice and loose, just thinking of overall shape design and flow to the set. Then when I get a few I like I work into them to define certain areas.

Then I go off in search of the Art Director for their thoughts and input. On The Octonauts this was Stephen Robinson, and on Doc McStuffins it is Bronagh O’Hanlon. The art director overseas the look and design of the project from beginning to end, from characters to the most simple props.  This is where the real strength of 2D comes into its own. For a 3D modeller to work up a simple set like this could take a day or two, whereas I can come with 3 or 4 in the space of an hour or so.

Octonauts layout ideas

Octonauts layout ideas

Octonauts layout ideas

Bronagh or Stephen and I will bounce ideas back and forth looking to see what will and won’t work. We take ideas from all the rough drawings and work into them again, drawing over them at the desk and thinking of the practicalities of how a character could move around such a set, and how it would integrate with other sets we have already. 

I’ll have a chat with some of the 3d modelers about an upcoming character or vehicle, getting their thoughts and input on my ideas. This way we solve any issues or problems before they arise, and keep everyone in the loop on the project.

After lunch i will work on some new character designs. In The Octonauts  every character is based on a real sea creature, so first I would do some research into what the real creature looks like.

Spidercrab research reference

Then I “Octofy” them to give them a much friendlier appearance and work out their size in comparison to one of the Octonauts. l’ll have fun with the designs while playing around with ideas, again keeping everything nice and loose. Once I have some I like I will chat with the art director and possibly with the director of the series.

The Octonauts Spider Crab concept design

The Octonauts Spider Crab concept design

The Octonauts - Spider Crab

On our current project, Doc McStuffins, the director is Norton Virgien, who has worked on Ren & Stimpy and The Rugrats Movie. Again we will kick back ideas and suggestions on the look of the characters, before Norton and Bronagh act as a sanity filter – I would happily give over 10 or 12 concepts, but they wisely whittle it down to 3 or 4 options.

At about 4-ish I I may need to do some quick storyboard fix-ups on an episode that’s being edited. It’s quicker to do fix-ups in house instead of contacting the storyboard artist. For this I will work with Photoshop using my Wacom tablet (having so much fun working with this!). I’ll rework some of the character poses and the shot set-ups and will email them to Norton to be dropped into the edit.

At 5.30 I will work up some references drawings for one of our storyboard artists for a new episode. No 3D models are created as yet and it’s simpler to just draw out a few quick sketches showing how the props work, the placement of the characters in the shot and a height reference for the different characters, or – in the Octonauts’ case – how a spider crab sizes up to a Gup!

Spider crab height reference

And then before I know it it’s 6pm.  The really great thing about my job is that no two days are the same, from storyboards to character design to layout, and all in the same day!

8:32am. Derek’s spotted me and comes over with 3d questions. I promise to help him once I’ve had my 1st cup of coffee.

2d Artist Derek Horan at work

8:40am. Coffee in hand I come over to help Derek out with his personal project. It’s a Hover Car and looks pretty neat. Only advice I have for him is a couple of basic geometry tweaks.

9:00am. Start of the working day and I check the emails and have a look at my work queue. At the moment I’m working on our top-secret Disney project, Doc McStuffins, as lead 3d Modeller. In general 3d modelers create the character, sets and prop models for TV shows.

We can’t show you any images from Doc McStuffins yet, so for example I can show you some models created by myself and our other lead modeller, Siobhan, for our show The Octonauts:

click on picture to enlarge

As you can see, we modelers don’t really deal with colour; we just get the models ready for textures, shading and rigging.

Meanwhile, in my work queue is a character for our Disney project. Derek has supplied multiple drawings of how the character looks from different angles. This gives me a lot to work with and now I just need to create the concept.

12:00. I have pretty much blocked out the whole character. I’ve created basic geometry that needs to be refined and detailed out. All our models are created from a wire mesh – here’s another example from The Octonauts:

We then apply a grey standard shader to our geometry.

4:00pm. The Disney model is really starting to come together. Eyelids, lips and cheekbones are starting to become apparent and it’s starting to resemble our 2d concept. The technique we use for modelling is called box modelling. We start off with a simple box geometry and refine and detail.

Below is the basic workflow of the model creation process. The examples I’ve used are the Gup D and Captain Barnacles’ living quarters from The Octonauts

We get a 2d concept and we create it as a greyscale 3d model.This model once created gets unwrapped and sent on to Riggers and Texture Artists. Once the Texture Artist is finished it gets sent on to the Lighters who give the model material properties, e.g. concrete, plastic, metal or glass etc.

When the lighting and rigging is complete we send it on to the animators who then create the episodes.

4:30pm Our Art Director Bronagh comes over to see how the Disney character is getting on. She requests some rendered angles of the character so she can bring them into Photoshop and paint over to make the character look closer to what she wants.

5:00pm I receive Bronagh’s changes and they really improve the characters form, so I start implementing them onto my model.

6:00pm End of day. The model is in really good shape and tomorrow should just be a day of fine-tuning. Once approved I will unwrap the model and send on to Textures and Rigging.

So that’s an average working day in the life of a modeller in Brown Bag Films! If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear them.
Keep an eye out for more ‘Day in the Life’ posts from our Riggers, Lighters, Texture Artists and more…

The short is called “Bird Food” and is about a man who plans to eat his lunch in the park ….while the local pigeons have other ideas!

It’s a jazz-like animation piece featuring slapstick physical humour with sinister undertones.

It will be done in 3D but feel very much like a classic 2D short.

I wrote and will direct the film, and it will be produced by Laura Roche. It will premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh next summer.

More updates will be posted throughout the year but until then here is the teaser poster for it…

Please friend the Bird Food Facebook page for updates and artwork throughout the year.

For the next course, we decided to do a ten week Sculpture course which was given by the talented Una Kavanagh. This has been really popular and it’s great to see the diversity of Brown Baggers doing this course;  from sound engineers to production staff as well as digital artists.

The first couple of weeks started off teaching us to sculpt a life model using only paper. Then there was  Still Life with mixed media, and on then to sculpture inspired by creative literature. The most popular - and messiest - was working in clay. Different styles are beginning to emerge from everyone, and I wanted to share some of the images from the course.

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James Stacey has been busy at work on his debut short film, ‘ORIGIN’. We’ve cut together a trailer and everyone is excited about the first screening in July at the Galway Film Fleadh!

 ’Origin’ features a young man who is on the brink of emigration, but comes to realise the spirit he’s leaving behind as he races through the streets of Dublin. Produced by Sean Smith at Souljacker, the film was scripted by Matthew Darragh and James Stacey, with an original score by Ronan O’Snodaigh of Kila. ‘Origin’ is being made under the Irish Film Board’s Short Short’s scheme.

Check it out HERE

 James gave some details on the pipeline and techniques he used on the short film:

“‘Origin’ has been produced primarily using Maya and Mental Ray while also relying heavily on its compositing pipeline. the streets of Dublin have been captured using a combination of still photographs and HD footage. This data was then brought into Maya for 3D short setup. From this, templates were output and then painted with good old fashioned Photoshop background painting. The templates were then projected back onto the 3D models and environments. The shorts were then brought into compositing with a large number of shots composited employing projecting mapping techniques”.

To check out James’s previous making of blogs, click HERE