So the film is staring to pick up pace with the pre-production now well under way. Some great new talent in modelling and environment areas with Harry Ellard already producing some splendidly dramatic  work on the fluid dynamic simulations. The script revision has started in earnest with each revision bringing the themes and characters sharper into focus. The addition of Graeme Herwig as script supervisor has provided a much needed check and balance to my story telling skills and has already added a tremendous amount to the narrative structure and focus.  We now have some storyboard animatics and it’s very exciting to see the first glimpses of the music working with the narrative.

We had our first round of auditions yesterday and the quality was frighteningly high, well beyond what we were expecting. Which is going to make choosing the final performers a real challenge.

The main character model is nearing completion with the facial animation system now reaching a somewhat ludicrous level of complexity (i just hope it doesn’t break as fixing it will be a project in its own right) But it provides the functionality to recreate some very subtle performances; useful as we have a fair few close ups planned.  The modelling of the final character has sent me slightly do-laly, as getting the specific age with its request subtle proportioning, keeping a certain look to the face and all the animation controls with their deforming muscle volumes has been a nightmare of balancing and revision. Not to mention the accompanying sleep deprivation. I start back at uni lecturing in 2 weeks (actually looking forward to a break from modelling!) so am trying to get this all done by then.

We now have a fairly smooth mocap to rig pipeline worked out, although the cleaning of the motion capture could be fairly time consuming and we’re looking for help on this. We presently have about 10 people on the pre-production team but will be slowly expanding to full production capacity over the next 6 months.  All in all the project is going swimmingly but rather a lot left to do 🙂

So, I’ve been working hard on the Stina model the last few weeks. Modelling, rigging, testing and shader writing.

Although she’s CG, i really want her to have a physical and textural presence, so i’ve been working to get the shaders used on her cloths/boots/skin to have a real sense of depth and physicality. This has been a real challenge and pushed my creaking computer to breaking point. Unlike the good old real world, you have to work your arse off in CG to make things look translucent/rough/dirty… anything but smooth and shiny in fact! I’ve posted some eye tests where i’ve been trying to get the translucent jelly like effect of the white around the eye and the glowing gem like highlight you get cast across the iris. She will be doing a lot of eye acting, so the eyes need to really have it.  Similarly with the clothes i’ve been experimenting with velvet like shaders to get a touchable, physical sense to the cloth.
I’ve also been trying to get the cloth to react well to the body. As with much traditional sculpture, i want to describe the body and it’s movements through the shape and movement of the cloth . (tests below) it all seems to be going well but has pushed my computer to the point where it crashes pretty much constantly. (Trying to secure funding for some new computer stuff, but as i’m in the education sector.. during a recession.. with a right wing government i’m not holding my breath)

These are admittedly fairly excessive production values i’m attempting.. verging on WETA DIGITAL levels, but as i used to work there it seem only right and proper. Of course, they have hundreds of skilled staff and a massive super cooled render farm. I have my home PCp.c. i bought in Portsmouth 2 years ago, and a dim memory of a well paid over worked job.

On the story front (easy to forget about story, once you’ve been sucked into the mind frazzling vortex of CGI) I’ve started storyboarding, which is a relief from the colourless tweaking of minute variables in digi-land.  Its actually a relief to see the story arc and characters coming to life and getting lots of the themes i’ve been mulling over  finally fleshed out. Unfortunately my drawing skills have become so god awful that only I’ll ever be able to make sense of the boards. To solve this, I’m planning on poaching a talented student to help me draw them (particularly as there’s about half an hour of them), as a director has, at some point, to start delegating. Even if he is a demented control freak.