Second Animatic

Second Animatic from dov vishniya on Vimeo.

This is the first draft soundtrack,composed by Dorian Kelly, with some animation, lighting, textures locations,and props. As soon as i have finished skinning and rigging all of my characters, i will then start blocking the main key frame animations.

Some of the film locations and camera shots.

The two main characters

Now that my two main characters are almost finished I feel that I should introduce you to them properly meet John and his daughter Dora. John left home in 1914 when Dora was only twelve years old, John went to France to the front line trenches. They will not see each other again for another eight years. The inspiration for Dora’s look came from a 1920s fashion magazine. 

Backgrounds,Textures,and Environments.

The dramatic atmosphere I am trying to create for my film is going to be something between Hollywood’s old fashion sets and the theatre stage painting. The sky texture was digitally painted in Photoshop and applied as a UV map onto 3D cylinder geometry. The house texture was also digitally painted in Photoshop and applied as a UV map onto 3D rectangular geometry. For the cobbled paved surfaces I have used a photo of a cobbled road that I have taken in the old part of Winchester, and applied as BUMP map with 3DS MAX material editor, using black diffuse colour. 

Aesthetics, Props, and Research material.

The Forgotten Hero

The Forgotten Hero from dov vishniya on Vimeo.

This is my first level skinning test. After modelling getting the right topology edge loop and deleting all the unwanted vertices, the next important stage is rigging and skinning (not for the faint-hearted). I have decided to use bones for the eyelids, eyebrows, jaw and mouth. In order to simulate the realistic working of the facial muscles the skin around the facial bones will have to be weighted, and tested,

Facial Bones from dov vishniya on Vimeo.

Character head and body model.

The textures are not final,and I am not sure about the final look of the hair.

These are some of my experiments with digitally painted textures

3D Max geometry

Layouts and Environments

These are some of my ideas for layouts, environments, aesthetics. The plan is to combine 3D geometry objects and characters at the foreground with digitally painted backgrounds and props; the look I am aiming for is similar to what you will find in theatre on stage, and the old fashion backdrop paintings, or matte painting. In searching for inspirations I stumbled across this article which I think will be of great interest to many other artists:

"In the era before computer-generated special effects, budget-conscious film-makers relied upon background paintings to conjure up convincing historical or exotic locales as a cheap substitute for building sets or filming on location. This arcane art, known as matte painting, supplied the illusion of Captain Nemo's volcanic island in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Treasure Island in the film of the same name and the rooftops of Edwardian London in Mary Poppins, and the pre-eminent practitioner of it throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was the special-effects virtuoso Peter Ellenshaw.
In matte painting, mattes are used to block out parts of the frame before the live footage is shot, the artist paints in the matted areas (usually on glass) and the two are blended via a double-exposure. Ellenshaw's wizardry with the technique was used on over 30 films for the Walt Disney Studios and won him an Oscar for his stunning settings for Mary Poppins (1964), along with nominations for his work on three other Disney films: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971); The Island at the Top of the World (1974); and - jointly with his son and fellow matte painter Harrison Ellenshaw - The Black Hole (1979).
Peter Ellenshaw's connection with Disney began in 1947 when he was hired as a freelancer for the studio's very first entirely live-action production, Treasure Island (1950), the inaugural project from its English production unit. From 1953, when he moved to California, until his official retirement in 1979, he worked exclusively for Disney, mainly on live-action films such as The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952), Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and The Love Bug (1969).
He also designed several of the rides for Disneyland, as well as painting the iconic first map of the theme park, and supplied backgrounds for the hit television series"

The Independent

Complicated Facial Expressions

These are my plans as to how i should approach my final animated CG film.
i have realised that in order to portray my character’s feelings and emotions I will need to have lots of complicated facial expressions, as well as poses.
This will require a solid construction and planning for my character design.
There are two options for facial expressions in 3D Max; one is morphing targets which require a solid plan of all your possible facial expressions, the reason for that is that once you skinned your character there is no way of adding new targets, and the other is constricting a facial bone structure that can be manipulated to create the required expression, this takes longer to construct and skin but when done properly can achieve endless facial expressions. I am not certain yet which one will work best for me and how much time I will have to do it in.

For my character limbs I will be using IK (Inverse kinematics) and link them to a
manipulating object.

For my aesthetics I will be using digitally drawn textures and apply them on the 3d meshes. I want my environments and characters to look like drawings as opposed to
3D objects.

My story has considerable amounts of flashbacks from reality to battlefields that could be confusing for the audiences; therefore my idea is to have the reality shots in almost black and white with some dark blues, and the flashbacks in browns muddy colours.

My film inspirations

THE FORGOTTEN HERO

Synopsis: This is a short animated film. It is set in the 1920s during the years after the “Great War”. It is about a shell-shocked British soldier, suffering from amnesia, has lost contact with his family, living out on the streets, and his struggles to overcome his war time fears.

My inspirations for the character design came from artists such as: Tim Burton and Gerald Scarfe.

Tim Burton
Gerald Scarfe

For my environments and textures I will be using L.S. Lowry’s style. I like Lowry’s loose naive style, and his ability to capture panoramic urban views.

L.S. Lowry