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Blog. It's been a month since my last confession. Uh, update, rather. This one's gonna be short, and focus just on Once a Thief. There's other stuff happening but right now I really want to update but it's two in the morning and I'm exhausted.

I've done a hell of a lot of work in that time. Well, actually my team has done a hell of a lot of work finishing up all the half assed stuff I started. The past week we've started animating actual production stuff, starting with the lock-and-load scene in Flambeau's room. The vault is almost finished now so we'll get that done (and it's also worth a good half of the finished piece so it'll be good to get that over and done with ASAP). We're not going as fast as we should be, though, and I foresee a lot of sleepness nights in the near future as we try to complete everything on time. We're having rendering and lighting issues too, which is always difficult (lighting in mental ray in Maya is basically just trial and error) and it means we can't even start rendering anything now.

Here are some screenshots of the room with Flambeau in (no textures there though), and one of the vault which Li has basically finished now.

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It's been sinfully long since I've updated this blog with information relevant to what I'm doing, although what I'm doing is, more or less, a constant anyway and doesn't really need constant updates. However, since my last update, quite a lot has happened to Once a Thief (not so much my life. That's been the same for years).

To begin with, here's one of Li's renders of the environments he's been working on sans repos, in order for András and I to start animating ASAP (seriously, it needs to be *soon*, we are running out of time so badly it's crazy).



When we have this one scene it should be the head start Li will need to keep on working on new environments or models while we animate, then have them finished by the time we need to produce those scenes. That's the plan in any case, although my time management skills haven't really served me very well. Tomorrow I need to finish up so many loose ends it's crazy. There are still models of guards to finish, models of so many items and small things which always go above the radar. Then there are lines I want to re-write, as well as a couple of plot bits. Since we decided to cut out the third thief, we've had to make a couple of changes to keep the pacing up. I'll write some new bits and storyboard them and make another animatic maybe.

I've gotten into contact with comedian and actor Nick Kocher (you may know him as part of comic duo BriTANicK, and if you don't then what are you doing, go on their Youtube, watch all their videos and subscribe), as his is exactly the voice I imagined the character would have -  who has expressed interest in voicing Flambeau, which I'm incredibly thrilled about.

So today, I took a 3-second voice clip from a short film he and Brian made and animated to it, both to see how his voice fit the character and as an exercise in animating on András' rig, and in Maya which I'm pretty inexperienced in.

Have a look:



So far, so good I think. Tomorrow - walk cycles, or something similar. We're having rendering problems, and we're considering rendering at home with VRay or use Mental Ray using the university computer labs.

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I'm slightly annoyed I haven't written or drawn anything in a very long time. I promise to get some stuff like that done soon, and seeing we're doing a character concept lesson this semester, it should get me back into a drawing mood. I'm thinking of doing concepts for a sci-fi noir story I've no doubt mentioned in passing on this blog some time in the past. Hopefully this will give me a bit of a push to write it.


Also, I want to tweak the site design a bit in the near future.


That's it for now, I think. I'll be back with more, soon.


Probably.



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- is the line that kept going through my head yesterday when I was watching The Artist. It's really quite a fantastic film, I must agree with the critics. I think it's the first wide release silent film since Mel Brooks' Silent Movie came out over thirty years ago. It had a simple enough story - a famous silent film actor struggling in a world with developing sound in film -  but it worked to its advantage, as you could enjoy the style of the film without trying to follow a complicated plot. I could spend some time going on about the film, but I'm not going to bother and waste everyone's time writing what other people have written, but better.  I was watching it, though, thinking of how much I could learn from silent films working in animated shorts. After all, both use music primarily to tell the story, and to express character emotions. Barely a word is intertitled throughout and only when it was necessary. The plot was totally coherent and you know exactly what each character was like and what they were thinking just through their actions and the music. It got me thinking how much I could learn when doing shorts like Once a Thief. It actually makes me think if there are going to be any more films like this; other directors riding its popularity, or if it will stand out as being one of a kind (in this decade, at least).

Speaking of that, and of the blog title, I probably could scream right now, just because at how much there seems to be left to do, and how little time we have to do it all. I've spent half a week trying miserably to fix the third character (whose name changes between Rose and Marie, depending on who I'm working with at the time)'s body to look more stylised but failing terribly and making everything look worse. Still, no failure without trying. We'll get there eventually. Hopefully.

More positive Once a Thief news is this great video featuring Flambeau - now fully rigged and operational. Check it out:



Flambeau Rig Tryout from Andras Daniel Ormos on Vimeo.

It's great! András has done a great job rigging it, so at least in that area it's not going to be a disaster. If I can only finish this one character then we'll be sailing (still be two more security guards but they shouldn't be too difficult).

There's not much more to show. A few more character models without textures, some scenery but nothing I'm not gonna show later and looking much better.

Classes start again soon. Maybe that'll be the productive push I need. I don't know, it's just not feeling like it's gonna be a very productive week this week, but hey, I'll try. I'm really grateful I have two teammates, actually, so if one person ever falls behind, his teammate's stuff is usually the push he needs to get back into it.

So, to start off a new year, here's Spike Jones and his City Slickers singing about their New Year's Resolutions. What are yours? (Mine is to watch 200 films I haven't yet seen. Because at least I know that one's doable)










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It seems the design of my site's gone to shit over the last month or so. Going to fix it as soon as I get my computer back this month


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I'm also going to post up the life drawing work I've done (as I have to hand it in digitally I think, and I'll make a separate page on the blog for it), so I'll show all of that soon too.

But for now, I'm going to retire to nothing, spend time with my mum (which is the reason I  came all the way home after all) and celebrate New Year's in a quiet manner, as the passing of any other day should.

See you in 2012, all!

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