Thanks for your comments on the last ‘making of’ post for Origin. Here’s a look at how we’ve moved ahead with characters and locations.
Once we had finished the 2D character concepts and were happy with the overall look and feeling, it was time to get those concepts into a structured form.
These images, from character designer Barry O’Donoghue, are the first model sheet designs of the character:
click on all images to enlarge
Using 2D model and gesture sheets is a great way to work out your characters’ head size, leg size, facial expressions etc before moving ahead into 3D. It’s important to troubleshoot these issues early on so the 3D artist doesn’t end up pushing and pulling in a 3D program which is a lot more time consuming then Photoshop or using a pencil.
I have also included the 3D models which were built by Lead 3D Artist Donnchadh Murphy once the model sheets were approved for 3D.
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Lighting & rendering has become by far the trickiest part of the process so far! The fact we are using Renderman means we are working at a technical level way beyond anything we used in the past.
Hopefully the results will be worth it & here’s a look at some of the renders that we have produced so far:
(click on images to enlarge)
College Green 001
College green 02 College Green 03
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Back in May I received word that I had been funded by the Irish Film Board to direct ‘Origin’, a concept of mine which I had submitted to their Short Shorts programme last March. Their theme this year is ‘Ireland I Love You’. Sean Smith at Souljacker is producing ’Origin’, but of course I have been drawing on the creativity and technical advice from all the artists and directors here in Brown Bag’s studio.
Brown Bag have also agreed that the project can use the production character pipeline which we have been developing here for some time, so that is a huge bonus to the project.
I thought I’d keep the blog up to date with some ‘Making Of’ posts tracking the progress of production. To start, here’s some info on the story and concept of ‘Origin’, and some concept artwork.
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I thought it would be good to bring you up to date with how the looks of the ‘23 Degrees..’ characters are going.
We had signed off on the Professor Orit model, which is the grey scale model below:
signed off Professor Orit model
So the lads started doing some initial hair tests. Hair is a really tricky thing to get right & as you can see from some of these early tests (on a previous, unfinished model), Professor Orit started to look more like Jack Black.
Early Orit Hair test 01
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Just realised I hadn’t posted any production blogs on ‘23 Degrees…’ in a while, but it’s coming along and we are aiming for an April finish.
Here are a few presentation pieces that we had to prepare recently. I thought they looked so nice, sure I’d fire them up here for anyone to have a look at!
(click to enlarge the images)
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Here’s an update with some renders from Ezequiel Mastrasso. We decided to use Renderman to render the film & it’s not easy…
Eze used the keys set up by Stephen Robinson as reference for the shots & got stuck in.
Orits study
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We have been animating away on ‘23 Degrees 5 Minutes’, so I thought it would be nice to share some of the work as it is coming together.
All of the work below is still work in progress, but if I had to wait for shots to finish before showing anything you would be waiting a long time…
Here’s a movie showing how we progress from storyboard to rough animation to final animation. The music is composed by Darren Hendley as scratch tracks which we were using to time out the animatic. I’ve left it on here to give you an idea of what some of the final music might sound like. Storyboard panels were done by Tim Spillane with animation by Geraint Wright.
Storyboard to Animation:
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Stephen Robinson, Art Director on 23 Degrees 5 Minutes, worked on the colour script for the film. This basically gives a breakdown of how colour will work in the film and helps us to plan how to tell the story emotionally. It’s a huge help to the lighters & texture artists.
I can’t show it all here as it will give away too much of the story, but I think Stephen has done a great job. Hope you like it!
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We finally have our first model ready for texturing. These are the 2D designs that we signed off on:
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When you’re setting a film in a specific time & place it’s important to do as much research as you can. While the internet proves a valuable source of reference, nothing quite takes the place of going out into the field!
So with kind permission from the good people of Renaissance Antiques on Capel Street in Dublin, Stephen O’Connor set off armed with a camera to snap away at anything interesting that caught his eye. Here are just some of the snaps which he came back with:
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