Por} {tals.... and more!

So I rendered that today. Obviously in HD. That is what will be seen when the portal door opens. It's a long clip, so it won't seem repetitive, and will cut down on render time later, since it is already compressed into a single video. It didn't take too long to make, and I am very happy with it.

So, as we speak I am FINALLY rendering the shot I've been working on almost non-stop for the past couple of days. It's the longest shot in my film. The shot where the Father gets pulled through the portal. Here's a still from it.

The black edge is because you are seeing it through the

young Tiger's eye/perspective.

Anyway, that looks really cool, and turned out great. I'd say its some of my personal best animation so far. At about 10 seconds long, its the longest shot in my film, and it also has some of the most movement/ action, as well as its pretty much a 6 character interaction scene, with tons of lighting and perspective. So difficulty of drawing, as well as time spent rendering is probably the longest/hardest stuff I have to do in the whole film. I love how this turned out, so by proxy, every scene after this should be pretty darn easy to do. That's what I say right now anyway. (Well, I know one shot that's gonna be a huge pain). 

Pretty much, tomorrow I will jump into animating the world through the portal. I have a pretty good idea of how I want the sky and earth to work, and it should all be pretty easy to do the backgrounds and sort it all out. Lots'a greens n purples, weee! Still, I'm a little pressed for time I think, so I'm not going to do anything leisurely till after picture-lock on the 31st of March, at least I'll try my hardest.

There's going to be a lot of cool stuff coming up soon, and I'm gonna post screen caps of all of it! 

GET EXCITED. I KNOW I AM!

Ooooh, my render's done! See y'all later!

:D

Partial Particles!

Well, I got my Particle effects software up n running. Meaning I don't have to animate EVERY DARN cloud of dust in this film, which really is a miracle, as there is a lot.

Well. That's all for now.

No picz.

Sorry, sports.

A car that drives and a snake that ... runs?

So, surprise! There is another shot of the car driving! I love moving camera shots so essentially this shot is the same 3D Maya car model, rendered with a 'Toon Shader', and the entire world around it was constructed after in After Effects. I used all of the same assets that I had made in Photoshop for the previous shot, with the inclusion of the yellow road lines now.

It was extremely difficult to transition from an above 2D, to a 3D driving shot, especially making the rain and snow particles transition in a pseudo 3D environment. It would likely have been easier to do the whole shot in Maya, but the car model is broken, so it can't actually move. Every shot of it moving, is actually a camera moving around a still model, making it 'look' like it is actually going somewhere. I am very happy how it turned out -even though it is still in progress - I need to do a few touch ups here and there, when I've got time (small things to be dealt with after the bulk of the rest of the film is animated n finished). However, I think I'm finally done with this bloody 3D car model. It's really been a pain in the bum, and now I can start moving on to 2D character animation and effects.

Panning Over the Car from Ezra Edmond on Vimeo.

(P.s. In the final film, after the camera zooms into the car, it will fade into the next scene, right now, the continued animation after the camera passes through the car window is just material waiting to be cut).

SO. A RUNNING SNAKE.

Here's a gif. As with the other, right click --> save as and then drag it into your browser or ... gif player (do those exist) to play it properly. I guess this is technically the first piece of finished character animation. It's a snake, as part of the group of ghostly animals that chase Tiger and Panther towards the climax of the film. In the next coming days, you will see the other spectral animals, as well as final rendered shots of them.



(P.s. The red lines around the snake are just construction lines that will not be present in the final shots. Ignore them.)

As far as I'm concerned that's enough to update you all with now, but I am trying to work a few more CG influenced shots into the ending to really kick the climax up to the next level. There will DEFINITELY be one or two epic camera moves that just need to be figured out plausibly. Can't live just on Pan's and Zoom's alone, right?

Test Shot of THE TIGER

This is a test shot, encompassing the color, effects, and sound that I would like to achieve. Ideally the final shot will look a lot like this one, only better!

The snow falling towards the ground took the most time to work out with AE particle effects, in the final however, I would like to have it torrent around him in the wind a bit.

Also I would like the dragons shadow to be longer (and obv have the Tiger look over in fear when it passes.... or should he never notice... maybe just a blink....)