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I haven't blogged in over a month, and that's basically because I've been cooped in either my room or in Cantor building finishing up Thick as Thieves. It's been a lot of sitting around, waiting for things to render, making sure computers weren't logged out by people who didn't quite understand why they were all logged in to the same person.. There was a lot of script writing, which I didn't quite understand (but my only job was to change the variables anyway, which was easy enough), and supervising and animating and reanimating, but not in a cool Herbert West way, more of a "this animation is rubbish, I won't sleep until it's completed" way. Which is fine too, I guess. Haste has been the best word to describe everything - both in the production and the post production, where I spent a whole night mixing sound and music, and editing clips and stuff

But it's finished, finally finished and a hundred times better than Toil and Trouble  ever was. Yeah, remember that? Here it is: watch and love. (Here's a link to it if the embed doesn't work for some reason).
Of course, as I've blogged about before, it's not even close to being all my own work. András and Li played huge parts in making it and it wouldn't have been anything close to what it is here without them, so a huge thanks to them. I don't even know what I would have done with this story if I had done it all by myself. It certainly would have looked a lot different.

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It occurs that I'm basically not a student anymore, which is not really something I haven't been ever in my life. It's odd to think it.

Here is the finished A2 piece of work I handed in for the concept art module. It's not the composition I had originally wanted to do (originally I wanted something more like the Inception poster where the city overbears the small characters scattered in it), but the design didn't make sense for a poster that was supposed to deal with character design when the characters would be so far away.



I plan on redoing it, with the characters in their original locations when I get back into writing the story. Which I now have time to do! Hopefully I'll have it finished before I find a job, along with the coulpe of other summer things I want to do
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The first one of these was to finish a business card and get a .com domain name. both are now achieved, although I'm still having doubts on the domain name. Sometimes it works, sometimes it only works with or without a www and sometimes it doesn't do anything at all. Anyway, i t redirects back to the front page and the link is www.basilbaradaran.com or, if that one doesn't work, basilbaradaran.com. Sometimes an http:// seems to change things too. It's very confusing, but I'm working it out. I've also put on the front page Thick as Thieves, instead of an Enter sign, but I'll switch it with my showreel once that's done.

Here's my business card design:

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A quick blog post, for all the latest Thick as Thieves update.

The first one is, you might notice, the change in title from Once a Thief to Thick as Thieves which is actually a phrase and makes more sense in context of the story.

Secondly, Nick Kocher has recorded and sent me Flambeau's lines which I am very, very pleased with. I'll be certain to post one online if I do lip sync tests or something. Most of the dialogue happens offscreen anyway, so I should be able to switch between them if I need to without having to change all of the facial animation.

And lastly here are some new renders, one from Flambeau's room, the other from the Vault [these are finished, with all the extra layers - ambience, blurs, etc added on and are essentially what the finished product *should* look like]:

I didn't get the job, which was some part time Cineworld thing. it's a shame because it would have been perfect, hours-wise, for that extra cash I'd need when I graduate and start looking for an actual job. But oh well, if nothing comes up there it won't be the worst thing in the world.

Besides, right now, I have far more pressing issues to deal with, such as the impending deadline which draws nearer and nearer and threatens to drive me insane. Our renders are finally being taken care of though, and we should be able to do them in batch if we can find a room with enough free computers that won't be always interrupted with classes and other people. Here's what a finished frame looked like a week ago - they've since improved a bit and are looking better, with an ambient occlusion and depth of field.

..

Yet.

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I wish I blogged more often. There are always a bunch of cool things I want to put on the posts which I forget about as soon as I finally get down to writing an entry. Today for example I came across a teaser trailer for an animation called Ruin.



The CG is incredible - those are some incredible sets. I thought at first it was a cutscene from an upcoming video game, but it seems to be for a short film of some sort. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's going to be like at the end.

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Now, onto some slightly less impressive CG. Actually I don't have any real renders to show for Once a Thief yet. We've been animating (and once we have enough in a sequence to post up I'll show you some of the playblasts) but dont' have any final renders of anything to show. Lighting has been a drag and we've only recently solved the issues. Now, of course, there are dozens of other issues but we're working around them slowly. I'm concerned, like I am every year, that we won't get it finished on time, but I've never missed a deadline, at least not for anything that important before so I don't think there'll be a problem. Still, it's time to pick up the pace a bit and get to work.

John Janzen of Fatblueman has been emailing me, saying he's still on for music, though not until April. Which will be fine because we probably won't have any finished shots until or sequences until then anyway. I just hope he can put a piece together in a couple of weeks. Nick Kocher I haven't heard from in a few weeks, but I have to assume he's still up for voices. Again, that isn't totally necessary just yet, so I'm not gonna panic for a few more weeks.

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I have a bunch of concept art stuff I want to post up, too, from a module we have on right now. I've been using this sci fi story I've been half-writing as a basis. Here is a quick mockup of the four main characters. From left to right:

Dustin Warren - Part time PI, who is investigating the death of Astrid Eriksson
Francesca Fojtel - Astrid's best friend, who does not believe the police investigations, and hires Warren to dig deeper into her murder, as it seems apparent she knows about a conspiracy surrounding a satellite
Dr Yuriy Kozlov - Astrid's estranged father, a rocket engineer and astrophysicist who was behind a project to send a satellite into space to search for alien life. He disappears mysteriously just before the surprise crash return of his satellite
Astrid Eriksson - Her death serves as a catalyst for the events, and her importance is shown through flashbacks.

I'll get into more detail of the module and the characters when more of it is done

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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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Nothing screams busy schedule like a blog post at five thirty in the morning. I should be updating this more often because there's so much happening each week that I can never be bothered to post all about it at these sporadic intervals, plus it would help to document when everything was done, which will be incredible useful when it comes to writing the inevitable reports and talking in the presentations which will no doubt come up soon.

More Once a Thief stuff now. Here's a basically finished version of our first character. It's looking a *lot* better than it was before, thanks to Li's skills in ZBrush.



And that's not the only thing due in soon. A day before the animatic presentation, there's a lot of life drawing stuff we have to hand in, which isn't going to be most difficult thing, but it'll take an afternoon or two to finish, so I have to consider it while I do everything else (including the character animation module, which is taking up a lot of my time as well).

Instead of bore you with traditional life drawing pictures, here are ones I did when I got bored of drawing the same person over and over again:

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It's great when things get done, isn't it? It's even better when the deadlines aren't looming closer and closer, and you're left wondering if you'll get it all done in time, but it's still pretty great.

Christmas is coming, which is pretty cool, up until you realise that the end-of-semester hand-ins are due, too. And there are so many of them. Character animations - of which I'll post up here soon and on youtube - which are just basic animations of a rigged character or a simple CAT doing whatever task we were told to are always fun to upload, and get feedback on. It's also fantastic practise for the upcoming project Once a Thief which needs some serious speeding up if I'm to get the animatic finished in two weeks.

Then there's the life drawing module, which is actually pretty decent indeed. We've only had the one model so far, which is a bit of a pain because we were promised more than just the one, but I'm not complaining. It's still excellent practise for later on. Every week I seem to be getting better and although it doesn't seem to be noticeable at first, looking back, I see it's done a world of difference. It's certainly going to help with the main film, that's certain (I now find I have to draw out the key poses before I can animate. It grounds the actions so much better than if I were to do it straight onto the computer).

Here's some work from Once a Thief that's been happening while I haven't been blogging:

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It's certainly been a pretty busy week or two. Somewhere I stopped playing Arkham City (which was a great game, by the way, and the challenges certainly live up to their name) to work on uni stuff. My main project for the year, Once a Thief, is going well. Thumbnails have been worked out, a story has shaped itself, and the characters are developing more and more. We have another member on the team, too, which is a big relief, because he's really into modelling and texturing, and if he wants to take on the bulk of all the masses of models we need, then who am I to stop him? He's the best man for the job, anyway, that Li, and András and I have our hands full doing other work. The guy's been a great help so far. He's been doing a stand-up job, for example in creating this zip line launcher gun:


It'd be great if that was the only thing I had to do this year, but as usual we have two other classes - not nearly as heavy duty as this - but important nonetheless. Thankfully they're both pretty fun, intuitive classes; life drawing and character animation. It's nice to see we don't have any pointless addon classes like we've been given every year so far.


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I'm wasting all my time blogging, when I should be doing some of this stuff. I said I was gonna model the main characters, so I should get started on that. Thankfully I don't have any more of this 30 Day Drawing Challenge business to do, which is saving me a couple of hours on my days. Only now I really want to write something.


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Have been spending a lot of time working on developing ideas, concepts and themes for Once a Thief - a short animated piece about two burglars who plan on stealing a huge diamond from a museum. OK, well that's not entirely true. I spent most of the last week watching TV with my flatmate. A few days back, we ended up watching four different variations of Batman serialised for television. The 60s series was playing on TV and we had the DVDs for Batman the Animated Series, The Batman and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Yeah that was a productive day. However, we were witness to Batman asking the Penguin to "surrender that gigantic pie!" (Alfred was inside) and the Penguin being put on trial for "attempted mayhem".

The sixties were a different time.

But I have done work towards Once a Thief. It hasn't all been a waste of time.There's been a script drafted, and am currently editing it, as well as a fair few concept sketches and technical notes on both how it should look, how it should be animated, and what skills I'd need to have in order to do it.

Here are the two main characters. (Their names, at least for production purposes only, are Flambeau and Raffles, named after  G. K. Chesterton's gentlemen thief character M Hercule Flambeau and  E. W. Hornung's Arthur J Raffles.




I really dig the new posting layout on Blogger now.

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