In 2008 we had an opportunity to work on a interesting project with the creator of the Moonjoos line of vodka jellos.
Aidan wanted to create an experience site where the legend of the brand could be developed. So working with our friends Digitalus we set to and devised a world on the dark side of the moon where men were tempted by beautiful maidens on earth, kidnapped and then set to work as slaves of the Moonjoos Corporation, mining, distilling and packaging the famous Moonjoos brand of vodka jellies.
The process of 3D Animation is magical and obscure to the general public and often even some of our clients. This humorous video is an entertaining watch and goes a long to help explain the process.
The problem with 3D animation appearing so bewitching and almost anything being possible, is that people don’t understand certain 3D workflows can be extremely linear, and therefore certain things cannot be adjusted after the fact, without losing a great amount of work(this video is highly simplified, but it presents a few of these issues clearly). Read the rest of this entry »
With Siggraph 2009 only a matter of days away (August 3rd - August 7th, US Time) many digital artists will be salivating at the tasty thought of what developers have added to their favourite applications (well at least I am).
I’ve been asked for two years to join this so called 48hours film making. But I never got the chance to be part of it as I’ve scheduled my annual leave come April or May to escape New Zealand winter. However this year, I finally got to stay in NZ for this gig. Together with some fabulous Naki peeps I got to take on this 48hours thing (actually it was just 6 hours for me, but hey who’s counting?)
Anyway, our team’s genre was educational, the mandatory element was a rock and the character is Alex Puddle the exaggerator. Our team came up with the idea of a how-to video for everyone aspiring to a great career in undertaking hosted by Alex Puddle.
We made it thru the Hamilton city finals, we walked away with Best Cinematography for the Hamilton heat but didn’t get lucky to get into the Nationals. Boo!
But hey we loved the experience and we’re proud of our film and WE ROCK! (pun intended)
Even if you find the story absurd, devoid of character development, or find the acting laughable, nobody can deny the sheer mastery and quantity of visual effect in Tranformers 2. Personally I think they did a great job, remember this was a cartoon in the 80’s and its target audience was young kids. For some mind boggling facts regarding the production of Transformers 2, check out this page at Geek Tyrant. I have listed some of my favorite quotes below. After absorbing that crazy info, and if you have an interest in visual effects check out these links. CgSociety have got a good article covering Alice, the robot woman, and Reed Man, the super thin praying mantis robot. VFX World have also got a longer article, which covers the effects in a broader spectrum. Favourite Snippets from Geek Tyrant below.
If you rendered the entire movie on a modern home PC, you would have had to start the renders 16,000 years ago (when cave paintings like the Hall of Bulls were being made) to finish for this year’s premiere!
If you had all the gold ever mined in the history of man, you could build a little more than half of Devastator.
TF1 took 20 Terabytes of disk space. Trans2 took 145 Terabytes. Seven times bigger!
The pyramid destruction simulation was 8 times bigger than the old rigid simulation all-time record holder at ILM.
If all the texture maps on the show were printed on 1 square yard sheets, they would cover 13 football fields.
IMAX frame render times: As high as 72 hours per frame!
Can’t wait to see how crazy Transformers 3 will be, by that time who knows it might be fully in stereo (3D), then the IMAX render times would be 144 hours per visible frame. With stereo you need two slightly different camera views rendered and overlayed.
