2 weeks left till final delivery (17/10). James has taken some photos of the local streets for reference. Reference photos have been handy on this project. Some of the car interiors will be painted off photo reference as well as the matte paintings of the suburban streets.
With Labor Day on monday, everyone took a well-deserved long weekend. But since the deadline is tight (17 October), most of the team will have to work this Saturday. Our hours here are usually pretty good. we try to keep things 9 to 5 to keep some level of order and professionalism.
As the work increases, the days might go longer, and if we’re really desperate we’ll work on Saturdays too. People get less productive the longer they work. Overtime’s always been a weird concept to me – why would you want to pay people more to be less productive when you can put more people on the job for less? Some places have longer hours.
Our CG Lancer is finally finished. We ended up getting a CG model of an older Lancer and modified it. The model cost us about AU$110, and took Aaron took a couple of days to touch up after that. Aaron’s a great modeler, but has got a lot of other things to worry about too, so when it’s busy we sometimes get freelance modelers to help out – it’s one of those things which is easier to outsource. Plenty of guys out there with experience in modeling stuff fast in low or hi-poly for games. The client’s happy with the way it turned out so we can start locking off some car shots now.
Hey all, sorry about there not being anything new up for here for a week. I’ve been away for a week without internet access. Hope you enjoy the latest entry below. Thanks to everyone sticking by the blog and I hope I can bring out stuff more regularly.
Also, with the festive season approaching, we’ve made Christmas card to say thanks to everyone out there that has worked for us, with us, given us a job, or even just taken an interest in what we do! Brodie made the sculpture and the time lapse photography was taken by our work experience kid, Milo Gluth. We don’t do work experiencce much, but this kid’s a bit special. See for yourself! Merry Christmas!
Looks like we have a final cast of monsters and the clients are happy with them! This promo picture is being sent to ninemsn for behind-the-scenes promotional material. Some cool animation coming out of the team too…
Now that the animatic is locked off, we can get the composer on board. Ben Speed will be scoring again. It’s been good working with with Ben who has scored Errorism: a comedy of terrors, Carnivore Reflux, Sweet & Sour and is also working on our two Nickelodeon pilots. As usual, we look forward to seeing (or hearing) what he comes up with.
Animation Director Brodie is animating most of the cut-out animation of the monsters. Brodie has been working on some jackal-like creatures. Animating quadropeds is tricky – it’s not the same as just animating two pairs of human legs. Brodie has used some reference footage to work with from the 1900s Edweard Muybridge studies.
It’s now been exactly 1 month since we found out about the initiative. The clients are happy with the main characters so we can start some of the animation. The creative and technical challenges will be in getting the 3D, cut-out and 2D animation to all fit in together. there are some interesting combination shots.
The 3D and cut-out animation is being done in Maya, and the 2D animation will be done in Photoshop. Most of Carnivore Reflux was animated in Maya. South Park is also animated this way. You can still have the same look but save yourself a lot of time and make more elaborate scenes than the traditional way. The latest version of Photoshop (CS3) also has a timeline feature that lets you export animation directly. Finally, there’s a 2D alternative to Flash – our 2D animators certainly prefer it. The different elements will be put together in After Effects – simple tools and creativity never fail to give you great results.
Thought it might be a good idea to write a bit about the co-directors of this “Supershort” – Eddie White and James Calvert.
It was the 3 of us that started PRA – originally we were just three 14-year-old friends with a Super 8 camera and some crazy ideas. I met Eddie when i was 11 in primary school, and I met James through Eddie when they went to high school together. After high school we began hiring a space to work out of. We were pretty naive and didn’t make any money for a couple of years, until Eddie’s brother Sam joined us and got us organised.
Eddie is a writer-director. He’s written all our films to date, and directed more than a few. He’s also the Creative Director, with the job of driving our studio’s overall [ahem] creative direction. He studies acting at university and really understands performance back to front, which really helps.
James on the other hand is a director/cinematographer. He studied photography after high school and just knows how to make stuff look really good. He’s also our Production Director, which involves making sure the way we do things is efficient and gives us the best results.
Between them, not much gets in the way of telling a great story. They directed our first short film together, Fritz gets Rich, and our second film, Carnivore Reflux – which got into Sony Tropfest and led us to this Mitsubishi Lancer “supershort”. They’ve both grown as directors since Carnivore Reflux and now direct projects on their own.
To give you a better idea of what they’re like, I’ve dug up this funny video from last year, when Carnivore Reflux won the Inside Film award for best animation. They went up to accept the award in front of a national television audience, and well, just watch the video…
We’re not having much luck with getting an exiting CG model of the latest Lancer. Even though it will be stylised, the model has to be right. The best solution will be to buy a CG model of an older Lancer model online and modify it (no surprises that there aren’t a lot of CG models of a car that hasn’t been properly introduced to the market yet).
Josh will be animating the car. The last vehicle he animated for us was some of the Train animation on the Hilltop Hoods Clown Prince music video. A talented animator who’s done a lot of work for us, he’s also good with expression, more emotive animation and subtlety, which complements Brodie’s strengths in movement and choreography. A true scholar of animation, his blog is definitely worth checking out.
