D'Ark Compositing Breakdown & Updates

Salutations!

As some of you know, I'm doing a lot of compositing on D'Ark at the moment, this was the first test composite to finalise the look that Jamie was after. I decided to make a breakdown of it tonight to share with you guys.

I went for a different approach with this breakdown from the previous Lava one, by having the passes unmask on top of each other... you can tell me whether it's successful or not :)

As for the numbers, this one was originally at 1080p with about 25 layers, but I had to reduce the size and pre compose a lot of the elements to try and reduce the render time and stop my laptop from biting my face off. 

Finally, I highly recommend watching it in full HD on youtube here, but for those of you too lazy I've embedded it below. 

In other news, WE'RE ALMOST FINISHED 3RD YEAR. Huzzah! Soon there'll be cider, BBQs and sunshine aplenty and I can't wait.

Our final hand ins are tomorrow and we're all pretty well prepared for a change. We also got out sexy production bible printed out, I'll upload a digital copy in due course.

Here's to 4th year :D

Title-tastic

Pre Production on our films is coming along pretty well, I'm just starting to compile all of our current work into a production bible. I made the cover today, and we think we've decided on a title. What do you guys think?

I'll post a big update with some tests and goodies another time, we're pretty swamped with all the 4th year work, our work, dissertations... not to mention the fact we're waaaayyy behind on our Worms quota. So stay tuned.

Click for full size HQ

Naked middle aged men & Characters!

Went to life drawing for the first time in a while last week, I was pretty happy with the results! There's a couple in there from this morning when I went into the 4th year session to catch up on the weeks I'd missed. They range from about 5 minutes to 25 minutes. 

Also, we got back some of the character designs from Lauren for our time traveller! Here's some sketches from her which look awesome, what do you guys think? We need to make sure the character is appealing and likeable form the start. Feedback would be great, I also done a colour test too which we'd really your thoughts on. 

Stay classy.

3's a crowd.

Happy to announce that the ever talented Finlay will be helping us out with a lot of our modelling on the film, which is great! We're currently working on making a pre-vis animatic for the end of this semester, and finalising the style and design.

Here's a quick model of the Lab we're working on at the moment, there's no texturing in it and not all models are finalised... we're just having fun with the layout. Only the top half is populated at the moment, the bottom is going to have some sort of shape to it, and include a spiral staircase to the surface. I think the plan is to put a bit more character and style into the shape of the environment, think Monkey Island.

In other news, after taking on board the feedback, I made a second Time Machine design for your consideration... at first I preferred the hulking big one, but the new sleek one is growing on me. What do you think?

Go Go Gadget Time Machine!

Mini progress update. 

Here's the first design for the time machine... we liked the idea of having it as an archway to make it a bit more original, as opposed to your typical chair/chamber setup. I'd really appreciate some feedback on the design actually, I want to do a couple more but I'm not sure what to change. 

This is another quick concept piece too, we started looking at a lot of more simplistic styles such as Samurai Jack and similar cartoon network animations. We loved the shapes and textures in those, but we're not sure how well it'll translate into 3D. 

A great animation we found that really got us going towards the simpler side of things is The Saga Of Biorn, a hilarious 3D character animation piece. Check it out! It's got a great simplistic look to it, we love the textures in the sky!

The Saga Of Biorn from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

We've finished the first draft of our storyboards, and we're going to pass them onto the ever talented Lynsey Schaschke who'll take our mindless, scrawled doodles and re-draw them to make them pretty :D

So yeah... PEACE!