Tuesday 30 March 2010

Kirk keyframe linetest.

We got all of our keyframes done today and scanned them in and got the timing sorted. I copy and pasted the crash footage on top to get a rough idea of how it'll look. It's a very crude test, but it works. He disappears behind the satelite as he runs off screen but I wasn't going to mask every frame so just try to imagine him running around it as he's being chased.

I put in some very crudely drawn and animated placeholders for the UFO and rocket.I also fired in the sound from the animatic and quickly fiddled with the timing but it's by no means perfect.

Also... we thought it'd be kickass to give him a massive afro at the end :D It'll be accompanied by a lovely "Foomph!" sound as it pops into shape.

Kirk linetest from Kieran Duncan on Vimeo.

Monday 22 March 2010

"Kirk" Satellite impact test.

I was experimenting in After Effects with some different looks for the satellite impact. This one was the most impressive, We'll need to try it out with hand drawn smoke etc but this is a nice, quick way to do it... plus it looks PIMPED.

I'll need to run it past the rest of the team but I just wanted to show this one off anyway. We might have the entire camera obscured by smoke etc so nothing is final. I was just dying to try it out.You should really click the video title and watch it full quality.

"Kirk" satellite impact test. from Kieran Duncan on Vimeo.

Hopefully Kirk won't get squished in the real animation. Although... it would save 30 seconds of work. Hmm.

Saturday 20 March 2010

"Kirk" update.

Team Tinfoil have been pretty busy working on "Kirk" this week but we've got a lot done. We've got the finished background, UFO model, and most of the keyframes all done. We're pretty much on schedule to have it all finished in time, and we're excited at how it's all coming together. Expect a video of the keyframe animation soon.

Here's the background I drew up in photoshop, alongside Kirk just for a size reference. (Click thumbnail for full size)


Here's the finished model sheet which I meant to upload before, Suzanne done an awesome job of coming up with the final character design. (Click thumbnail)


And finally here's the UFO model. Suzanne modelled it and I textured it, we're super duper happy with how it turned out considering we've had next to no Maya experience and never even touched texturing before. The model is a bit squint and the texture is by no means perfect but we thought that really added to the effect, it adds character! The thing has just crashed from outer space... (Click thumbnail)

Saturday 6 March 2010

Kirk Animatic

Team Tinfoil completed our animatic last week for the 40s character animation and I've been compositing, pimping and adding sound over the weekend. It's not the finished thing quite yet, we've still got to review it but I'm pretty sure it'll main relatively unchanged except maybe for some timing issues.

The sound design needs some more work for the final animation, but this fits fine for animatic purposes. We're not sure what to do about a voice or anything yet...

The animation is about a 10 year old kid called Kirk. Kirk is a boy-genius, fascinated by everything space related. However, he has to live his otherwise normal childhood with the constant fear of being abducted by aliens wherever he goes. He wears a tinfoil hat to protect himself from their mind reading technologies, and finds himself conflicted when a genuine piece of space equipment crashes into his infinite white expanse. 

Feel free to leave any feedback in the comments! :D

(I'll be adding more material of character designs etc later)

I've just realised the quality in the upload isn't fantastic, you can't really see a lot of the details... You can barely see the rocket at the start, or the smoke from the explosion :( you can still get a pretty good idea though. It looks a lot better if you view it fullscreen.


Kirk Animatic from Kieran Duncan on Vimeo.

Monday 1 March 2010

Concept designs.

I thought this would look pretty nice animated, I might do a test soon. I tried to go the "Ooohhh I'm cinematic" look by including some lens flare, grain, lens dust, a vignette and the oh-so-ever cinematic black bars.






These ones are just doodles, I think they'd look pretty sweet when animated. I'll do a test for these asap.