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Hey Alcoholics,

Long time no post. I would like to apologise (sincerely, I am sorry) for the complete lack of updates on our behalf. The person responsible has been fired (joking, else I'd have to fire myself). Anyway, there is a rather good reason for the lack of posts and it is as follows:

Story didn't work.

Ok, so I'll break that down a little more. We had an idea. We got people exited with our idea. We produced a crapload of art and assets and moved as quickly as we could to get some renders to show people how cool our idea was. We came across a couple of little niggly plot holes and patched them up real quick and kept the train rolling. More holes, more dirty patch jobs etc. Anyway, we had an epic on our hands with some rather big story problems. So we went back to the script. We rewrote.

And then we went back to our (actually non existant) storyboards and we drew.

and then we animated.

And then we lit, rendered and composited.

And now I am happy to present to you SC14_SH01_giantSquidly.

That about exhausts the updates for the moment though.

Cheers

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.

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

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.           

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.

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.

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.