Gruffleglenn and its History

I may have mentioned at some time that this film started off inside a single room. There was no exterior. At some point along the line we decided to include a window and a few shots outside the window in order to make the film seem bigger. Outside the window was to look something like this.

Outside Als Window

Then, later on we decided to have a shot of the city, that's purpose was to show the passage of time and act as a bit of an establishing shot. Which was going to look a bit like this.

Original concept for the City of Gruffleglenn

And after a bit of revision, like this.

Updated concept for the City of Overhang

Next, we wanted to show some of the town and surrounding land. Just to make this feel a bit like a living breathing town so we decided on having a map of the kingdom in there at some point. This is not the original map, it went through a couple of revisions by its self, but this is pretty well a final one.

Map of the Kingdom of Overhang

Then it was someones smart idea to actually start on the map, zoom into the city and then into Als window.

This was a bit of an effort, but we ended up doing it nonetheless (although it's not quite finished yet). So we basically start on the map, push into Gruffleglenn, at some point going through a layer of clouds and emerging onto the farmland in the outskirts of town, then into the city itself to witness the sunrise over the ocean. Very epic and dramatic.

Journey through the clouds

The Farmland sans lighting or clouds

Then we wanted to show a bit more of the city (and also reuse the original outside the window bit because we kind of liked it), so we have a couple of shots that show different areas of the city also. Like the Dirty Carpets Inn, the markets and hightown, where Al lives. (this is the heavily WIP section)

The Dirty Carpets Inn

The Market

Gruffleglenn Hightown

And that is how the city of Gruffleglenn came to be. The official story taken from local lore actually goes something like:

McGruffle, the caber toss champion from Othercity gets lost on the way to a tournament and stumbles upon the most beautiful bay he has ever seen. Hypnotized from its beauty and approaching death from starvation, he curses the gods, who cause an avalanche, destroying the bay, leaving only nasty cliff faces. Many years later, Duke Yung I is passing though and decides to set up camp for the night. He never left and Gruffleglenn just sort of grew from there. As for McGruffle, many say that the deathly skinny hermit that can be seen on occasion bears a striking resemblance, and is rather good at caber tossing.

New (and final) Characters, I swear

Ok, so those of you who follow our facebook page may have seen these guys already, but there was very little information other than the pictures there. so without further ado...

As you can see, there are three characters in the above picture. Meat, Spud and Grimy Grimm(wald). Whilst they are not major characters, we've sort of fallen in love with them and the time may come for them to have a movie on their own.

And their blurb, straight from the Gruffleglenn Bi-Decade-ly Census:

Meat
The younger brother of Spud. He's a bit clumsy, but what he lacks in grace can easily be made up for by his stupidity. He works for the Gruffleglenn City Watch, and is responsible for a great many cock-ups on thier part. Owns a pet cockatrice which he feeds scraps taken from other peoples dinner tables.


Spud
Is a thug. He stands over 2 metres tall. Possibly has mixed giant heritage. He and his brother Meat both work for the Gruffleglenn City Watch where their main responsibilities are drinking, gambling and beating people up. Some have remarked on his features bearing a similarity to Gruff, never to his face though.


Grimy Grimm (Grimwald)
Though officially listed as an undertaker in the Gruffleglenn Bi-Decade-ly Census, he does not maintain a shopfront, nor has he for the past thirty censi. In fact he is remarkably difficult to find. It is said that one does not find Grimy Grimm, Grimy Grimm finds one.

And some concept art and an accidental render that turned out pretty cool (the silhouette).

We were rather happy with the concept art for Grimy Grimm, and I think that the models similarity reflects that. The main differences being a slightly bigger head and a Sporran, rather than a pouch.

The concept of the thug we found rather cool, but ultimately too disgusting. We wanted the thugs to be a bit silly, not to upstage the main villain Gruff McDuff.

So, if we take this slightly older image (below) and add it to the newer one (the first image from the post) we come up with a grand total of 8 characters. Namely: Alky Al, Pidgy, Squidly, Laurence, Gruff, Meat, Spud and Grimy Grim(wald).

When we add to this the amount of different sets: Als Laboratory/Room, the Stables, the Dirty Carpets Inn and the city of Gruffleglenn (which actually is rather massively humongous) we end up with something extremely epic.

Our goal at the start was 1 character, 1 set, no fancy FX or flowing cloth, 2-3 minutes in length. Ummmmm. I guess we're just suckers for punishment.

Anyway, more on the sets next time.

Pidgy Rigging Video

It's been a long time between posts due to things not being quite mature enough to show, but we will have a couple of posts over the next couple of days. To start off with, here is a video showing the progress on the rig for Pidgy.

Pidgy WIP Demo from Courtenay Cooper on Vimeo.

Pidgy is a rig I built for the short film 'The Alcoholemist'. The rig at this point is animation ready, but I still need to skin the final mesh and add in blendshapes (for the neck puff etc) and fix up the weighting on the wings. Also going to add in a few custom controls for specific shots in the film, such as a complete squash feature, and a couple of soft modification controls. I also need to add a bend, twist and lean control for the non-finger feathers. But until we're up to finalling animation in shots, this will be enough.

Alchemist Textures and Gruffs Grinder

So it's been a couple of weeks since the last post but we now have a pretty well completely textured Alchemist. The reason he is both clothed and unclothed is that he spends a bit of time prancing about in his underwear. Unfortunately there were a few issues that escaped my attention, the eyes on the unclothed Al aren't blue, and there is a few instances of the body poking through the clothing.

Alchemist Textures v2 from Matthew Scott Graham on Vimeo.

So that makes now two characters textured (Al and Squidly) once character mostly textured (Gruff) and 5 characters to go (Meat, Spud, Pidgy, Laurence and Grimm). Though at least three of them are yet to be modelled. Also here is a prop that will be used by Gruff for sharpening an axe. The bottom of it will be off screen, so there's no pedals or anything.

grinderAnim from Matthew Scott Graham on Vimeo.

There will be more props to come over the coming days.

Two new Vids

Have been a little bit lax updating the blog recently, as I've decided that the facebook page will get the short and sweet 'pretty pictures' type posts and the blog will get more in depth ones. Anyhow, two new vids which I'll explain below.

Lute Rig Demo from Courtenay Cooper on Vimeo.

This is a demo of how the Lutebox works. The Lutebox (a sort of medieval jukebox) is a somewhat magical invention that is a little anachronistic. That's OK though, as it's not a terribly serious film.

It was invented by Al one night in a drunken frenzy using techniques that he had learned from beyond the mists of time. Basically cobbled together out of some junk he had on hand, it is powered by steam or smoke turning the turbine which through a series of belts, gears and pistons enter a black box which animate a trio of armoured hands which in turn play a lute. (On a side note, I believe that lutes actually have 8 strings. I presume that four of them broke and Al never bothered replacing them.)

The Alcoholemist Title v3 from Matthew Scott Graham on Vimeo.

This is a WIP of our title sequence. The background is only a temporary stand-in. So basically what is happening is the title will fade up on the soon to be revealed background, stay for a bit then there will be a bit of a gold flash as the title melts away in dust and sparks and fade off screen.

This is acheived by using particles in Maya which hold the shape of the text and are then affected by various fields, including gravity, turbulence and a vortex. I will expand on this later when I get one that is close to final.

Gruff texturing WIP

Here is the current texturing/shading progress on the barkeep Gruff. As you can see there is a couple of issues with texture seams, particularly around the arms/shoulders. Should be fixed very soon. Still to add, spec/reflection maps for the skin, scars, tattoos and maybe some stitching and other small details.

The main concern right now is whether to keep the texturing on the characters fairly simple in order to help pull them off the background, or use other tricks to achieve the same affect whilst not having too much difference between characters and sets.

Textured in 3D-Coat and Photoshop, rendered in Renderman with a simple 3 point light setup. A lot of the shaders are using procedural bump maps which I quite like the look of too.

Map of the Kingdom of Overhang

What we have here, is a Map of the Kingdom of Overhang. I followed fairly closely to the original concept, the main differences being that it is flipped horizontally due to preference and flow into another shot and the colour grade is quite a bit different.

map concept art

The map is a matte painting which has been projected onto 3D geometry (the 3rd pic is the geometry). It is not quite finished as of yet, but is getting pretty close. In the pic to the left, the gray stuff is the land/water, the green squares are trees that have an alpha channel in the texture and the red is the labels and sun rays.

You may notice that everything is on a heavy slant, that is to help fake the 2D effect in 3D.

3d geometry for the map

We had a request for the extended version of the gruph animation test, so here it is, the deleted scene you weren't meant to see.

Gruph never wanted this shown, but after a heated discussion, 2 fist fights, alot of alcohol and an oddly placed jumping castle, we were able to convince him to release it to the internet....so naturally we did so before he regained conciousness.

facial rig is still under construction, so was left mostly un-animated
sound from mgm logo and toy story 2
animated in aprox 5-6 hours
Gruph roar animation test Deleted Scenes from Alexander 'Hewie' Hewitt on Vimeo.

Forgot the Other Side.

And the pic I forgot to upload yesterday is the other side of the room. As you may or may not be able to see, the laboratory equipment made of glass is not very visible. A mistake, but this is still a WIP so you'll just have to forgive us for that.

Gruph animation Test

Here's a quick animation test using the gruph rig. He's not finished yet, so I was just playing to see what he could do.


Gruph roar animation test from Alexander 'Hewie' Hewitt on Vimeo.

Al's room and Squidly

Here are a couple of new renders. Well actually the work is not new, but the renders havn't been posted before. The first image is of Al's room / laboratory. Is still a work in progress, with not fantastic lighting, and some textures/shaders still to be done. Rendered in Renderman.

The next is a render of Squidly. He is basically Al's lab rat. He may be a baby Krakken, no-one is quite sure. If he is, what do you call a baby Krakken, a Krackling? Shaders and textures not finished yet.

Preliminary Model of Gruffleglenn

Here is some work on the city of Gruffleglenn. Still a work in progress, but you can see the basic layout of the city. In the end this is going to turn into a Matte Painting.

Facebook Page Now Live

Hello Alcoholoversics,

Just a quick post to say that the Facebook page is now live. We will still be doing the blog, but in the interest of social networking and reaching as many people as possible we will also run a Facebook Page.

The main differences between the two will be that the Facebook page will primarily just have pretty pictures and any important notifications. Whereas we will be making a bit more of an effort to have some more in depth stuff on the blog along with the pretty pictures.

Laurence the Llama

And... Laurence

Creepy Llama from Alexander 'Hewie' Hewitt on Vimeo.

Gruffleglenn Concepts

A couple more concepts for the Gruffleglenn Bay Area and the Gruffleglenn Hightown.

Renders, Lighting, Clothing and the City of Gruffleglenn

Here's some recent images and also some that I've only just gotten around to posting.

Pub and Stables Modelling 85% done

Been a little while since the last post, but here are some fresh modelling WIP videos of the 'Dirty Carpets Inn' and the 'Franciscan Stables Mushroom Top Chapter'.

Pub WIP 03 from Matthew Scott Graham on Vimeo.

Stables WIP 01 from Matthew Scott Graham on Vimeo.

Some more Animation Tests

Here is another animation test. This one will eventually turn into a finished shot.

 

Trying Out Different Renderers

So, progress has been a little slow lately but there is sure some exciting things that we will be sharing over the next couple of days. We have been playing around with different renderers (because as soon as you chuck displacement at Mental Ray, it shits it's pants. Also, everything has displacement.), and have finally settled on Renderman.

Below are two images, the first from Renderman, the second from Vray. Keep in mind that this is still a work in progress though.

Alcoholemist Squidly Animation Test 4: swimming in a bottle

An animation test featuring squidly swimming around in a bottle, before being scared by the hand of the alchemist.

all the animation was done using early calimari rigs
time taken to animate: aprox 1.5 days

we also used this test to help understand how we are to deal with the refraction of the glass, to look realistic, yet still be able to clearly make out squidly within the liquid.

As well as how we are to impliment the candle flames in a scene. we attempted to film a real candle flame, but this did not give a very clear and usable result, so instead we rendered out a single candle flame as a fluid effect in maya, put it on a card and placed it within the 3d space in nuke.           

Gruffleglenn WIP 02

More work on the matte painting for Gruffleglenn.

 

Test Animation - Apple Dumplings

An animation test featuring the alchemist asking Gruff about apple dumplings. The animation created using the calimari rig of the character. As yet we do not have a facial rig animation ready The sound is from Disneys Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Gruffleglenn WIP 01

A quick and dirty test showing the progress on the matte painting for the exterior of the Alcoholemist. There is copious amounts of texture stretching, geometry not lining up and general dodginess. In other words NOT FINAL.

Alcoholemist Animation Test 4: WalkCycle

An animation test, featuring the alchemist walking with a jar of fireflies at dusk.

Squidly Animation Tests

Some test animation of Squidly doing both a swim cycle and a bouncing cylce.

Animation/Render test 3

the latest animation test, in the same room turn arund as before. this should give a good sense of his scale in the world, and and how he and his room tie together.

Glowing

A glowing apparatus.

Texturing Progress and Gruffleglenn

Here are some texturing WIPs for the Alchemists room courtesy of Brian and his first concept for the town of Gruffleglenn.

Alcoholemist Room Lighting WIP 01

And finally the Alchemists room lighting / comping WIP. For some strange reason the last third or so of the video is black. That shall be rectified soon.

Two WIP Animations of the Alchemist.

1: the hustle, currently missing the music he dances to.

2: the alchemist picks up a bottle containing squidly, and shakes it vigorously. this is still in a WIP stage, nd has not been completely rendered.

All animation was done using early versions of the calimari rig.

Some Rigging and Animating Goodies

Some new videos up, the first is the hustle as performed by the Alchemist. The second two demonstrate the character rigs and what they are capable of. We will be using a system like qualoth or ncloth in order to simulate the clothing.

Compositing / Render Pass Pipeline

Here is a picture depicting our possible render pass pipeline.

 

They combine together in Nuke to make the 'final' image that looks something like this. (image coming Monday morning)

Pub Lighting WIP 01

A little bit more work on the pub lighting with some minor compositing. Also, the character Gruff thrown in for scale. There are no textures as of yet, just a brownish uv grid.

Lighting Tests

Here are some WIP lighting tests that we are doing. For the most part, the sets are untextured with a placeholder uv grid in place.