The last month has seen the production ramping up in preparation to tackle the complex shot process required to make the film. As the process planned is effectively the same as the one used in Avatar (quite a big production), we’ve been designing a pipeline to make all the departments hand assets between each other as efficiently as possible. We have a full production pipeline test planned this month where we hope to take a trial shot from motion capture (complete with facial capture and audio) through all the various stages to a fully realized shot that will see Stina in her native environment ( mountains or forest ) all done with audio and music. As well as testing out the pipeline, we hope to use this exercise to generate a finished sequence we can take to next years SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in America; hopefully we can raise some interest and maybe even some money for the rather large amount of computer storage space we are going to need to house the full production data.
Other news: Becky patiently allowed us to plaster her forehead with quick setting bandages in the interest of getting a life cast so we could custom fit her facial capture camera rig . (when we’d finally stopped laughing: The fetching combo of green garden bags, swimming cap and plaster of Paris was a bit overpowering) regrettably no photos were taken here.
Also, we have started work on a virtual camera for the mocap studio; This will allow us to use captured camera movements, which should hopefully add a live flair to the direction as and when we need it. We’ve also commissioned a talented wood worker to help us build set pieces (doors, tables etc) and modular ramps ( for changing floor inclines) for the mocap studio. These have to be as transparent as possible for the capture cameras to work, so this should prove suitably challenging. Luckily it looks like we’re going to move to a much bigger room for the summer capture sessions. So we can at least pretend we’re in a very small field somewhere high up in the mountains and not in Portsmouth town center (I plan to dress the walls with Alpine images and maybe nip down Quiksave for some Forest fresh air freshner.. If we have any money left by the summer that is) All for now.
Paul
