Deranged Scratchings

Orc Warrior #5 UV map and textures

2012-01-05T06:23:00.000-08:00

I'm Bringing in the new year with bump maps... Is it supposed to be a stranger with a lump of coal? oh well bump maps is what I've got.

On the left is the model with just the colour map, on the right is the bump map and specular (specular is what makes things shiny as opposed to matt). Below you can see some screen grabs from Maya to give an idea of how I did it, right top is the Orc cut into pieces. You don't have to cut the model up but I find it easier rather than dealing with it all in one lump. On the left top is a very early screen grab of the basic colours on the model after I had finished the UV mapping. I spend a while messing around with basic colour schemes in the early stages.

Below that you can see the model textured in Maya with the wire frame showing, and to the left the box with the spider web of flattened geometry is the UV or texture map.

The UV map is always a head ache for me. If you look in the top left corner of the map you can probably make out the Orcs face looking like it's been ironed flat. In the bottom right is his shield. UV mapping shields is much easier than Orc faces, when I'm texture mapping I some times wish everything was flat.

So after chopping my Orc up, mapping him, painting him and bumping him I got the textured Orc you see waving their axes around.

I'm currently working through the animation list, below is the Orc run cycle.

Happy new year to all my readers and thanks for all your visits and comments.

Orc Warrior #4 skinning and rigging

2011-12-30T06:24:00.000-08:00

Back with the low poly Orc and I've skinned and rigged the blighter as promised. Below you can see the model in his stand pose, to the right you can see the underlying skeleton. The skeleton is what drives the animation, you assign parts of the poly mesh to the skeleton, so the head joint drives the head.

The next step is to rigg the character, the rigg is a set of controls that drive the skeleton. The controls need to be easy to work with, often one control will drive a set of joints like a leg for example.

After setting up the rigg I did a couple of animations, a walk cycle and an idle. The idle will be for the combat animations, I'm considering having a more relaxed idle that might be used for guard duty maybe with a conversation anim so Orcs can stand around shooting the breeze if wanted. Of course this may all be just idle talk that I wont get round to (crap joke intended). Anyway you can see the anims in the clip below.

I will be posting renders next and UV mapping goodness with bump maps specular and all the usual. I's all underway and will be with you next week, provided nothing else comes up (I was recently kidnapped by gnomes true story!). Below is a sneaky peek of early work in progress.

Grrrrr

Orc Warrior #3 Poly Model

2011-10-20T04:40:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the poly mesh for the Orc warrior model. The goal here is to create the orc in a bind pose that will deform well when I apply the skeleton. The other thing to keep in mind is I need to keep the poly count low. If the poly count is too high the model becomes unsuitable for games. The Ninja that I did previously came in at just over 3000 polygons so I will aim for around the same for the orc.

I decided to show more of my work process as I did with the concept for the orc. On the left here you can see how I put together the orcs head. With poly modeling I start with a basic geometric shape, for the head a cylinder with 8 sides. The trick is to do as much as possible with as little as possible.

Its very tempting to get right into the mesh and start modeling wrinkles and eye lids, but for most games it's a waste of time because you don't get close enough to the model to see this level of detail. For the most part you can create the fine details with the texture map and bump map ( you can see good examples of texture and bump maps in my chest mimic model).

When I first started in games we hadn't grasped this and I think most of our character models had around 1000 polygons spent just on the head. The game was a first person shooter (Timesplitters) and you just never got close enough to the characters to see all that carefully sculpted detail. Other characters were too busy running around shooting you in your pretty head.

.......unfortunately for the body I somewhat forgot about showing my process. Those pesky polygons have a habit of taking my focus and making me forget about keeping snap shots. You can still see my working here, as with the head I've used cylinders as the starting point and then pulled the mesh points around.

This is the base mesh for the orc. I've kept this so I can make variants. The leather armour version is going to be the first version.

Above is the orc warrior in leather armour ready for his skeleton and bind. I've given him a basic axe and shield. He currently comes in at 2500 polygons, so less than the Ninja. I have already put the skeleton in and got the mesh deforming. I still need to add the controls and rigg for animation. Once I am happy with the way the character moves and the skin deforms I will start the paint job and get my UV mapping head on. It's a mistake to UV map before you know the model is going to work for animation. This is because a poly mesh will always need tweaks so that it deforms properly with it's skeleton. If you have UV mapped first, tweaks are going to make a pigs ear of it.

In my next post I will show the skeleton and rigg and probably a test orc animation. There might even be a bit of colour if I get on to the textures.
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Orc Warrior #2 Concept Armoured Orc

2011-10-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

I've been continuing with my orc character. Still painting with the graphics tablet, I've been thinking more along the lines of heavy plate armour. My thinking at the moment is to have both a leather armour and plate armour version, the leather armour version wont have a helmet, so I have an excuse to model the orcs face.

Orc head in black and white

I didn't keep the WIPs this time, I got three quarters through the painting before it occurred to me. There's some preparatory sketches to show instead, in black and white with the tablet. I did try moving over to pencil and paper as I said I would in my last post but in the end, having got back into the swing with the tablet I decided to stick with it.

Here is a version of the armoured orc I did before the colour version at the top of the page. It's not that different but you can see how the stance and pose are much better in the final colour version.

A rough sketch I did where I was thinking about having a larger torso and arms for the orc. I quite like the sketch but I decided against going further and painting armour on it. What ever I'm working on I always have working drawings, even for animations. Mostly in biro on lined paper. The cannon fodder of the artistic project missing in action or round filed.

I also had some ideas for orc helmets which I painted separately, again in black and white. I found it quite fun to paint these up roughly with the tablet, in the past I would have done all this kind of work with a pencil and sketch book. To get this sort of look on paper I would have to use charcoal or ink which is a lot of fuss and mess and if your not that accurate, you can quickly go from smart looking sketch, to smudgy smeary black splodge.

I used a template orc head and painted a few variant helmets over it. When it comes to building it, I will probably have some more ideas. At the moment I'm liking the below version or the one in the colour version at the top of the page.

Probably will be with the polygons in the next post.

Orc Warrior #1 concept

2011-09-28T04:19:00.000-07:00

I'm planning to start a new games character model for Turbo Squid and I've decided to go for an Orc this time. I've started by getting my tablet out and getting back into painting. I've used photoshop for this as usual. This time I've kept some records of my work in progress so I can show how I got to the final result above.

This is how I started. Using a fairly large paint brush set to a low opacity I quickly sketched in a rough form.

I then tightened up the Orc, still concentrating on the underlying form, not worrying about armour or clothes. I tend to work in quite heavily and then drop back the opacity, then create a new layer and work in again.

Next I put in the armour and clothes roughly, you can pretty much see the picture coming through at this stage. At this point I also flattened my working layer (not with the background, that causes headaches) and put a heavy blur on the whole thing. This is to stop me getting too tied down to the lines. By blurring the image I'm forced to rework. This stops me fiddling with details before I'm happy with the basics

It's then a matter of tightening further until I get something I'm happy with in the above WIP (work in progress) you can see white cut lines running through the legs. This is where I've used photoshop to grab sections of the painting and move them. I try to keep the painting fairly loose and open to change as I'm working. If you look at the earlier WIPs, you can see the arms and legs went through lots of changes.

It always takes me a while to get used to working with the graphics tablet again, I think what bugs me most is zooming in and out. With a sketchbook this feature is accessed by moving your head nearer and further away from the page, with photoshop you have to press a button. My photoshop has a glitch where it jumps to a zoom of 12 pixels, drives me up the wall. On the flip side, when I'm using pencil and paper I often start thinking ctrl Z but of course there is no undo.

I think I'm going to go back to paper for a bit with the orc. I want to think through the armour a bit more. I'm considering having a version with leather armour, and another with more heavy metal plate armour. I also need to think about weapons.

Game Sprites

2011-09-22T02:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a sneaky peek at the project I've just been working on. I recently finished working on my first sprite project and I loved it!. My client kindly gave me permission to show a couple of the characters here. I can't give anything away about game play or other details at the moment, but once it's released I will post links to where you can get a copy.

The bandit character playing an idle.

It felt like working on a proper game as all the games I used to play were 16 bit. By the time I was working in games it had all gone 3d. I have stuck to what I know, so as you can see, my sprites are 3d models that are rendered. What I've done is tried to inject all my happy memories of super nintendo carts and arcadey goodness into this project.

The difference is, because everything is rendered image files for sprites, I had much less to worry about: does it render, does if fit in the frame? job done. I've done bug fixing for games I've worked on in the past, (all 3d,) and there is a lot more that can go wrong with a 3d model. Textures, poly mesh, riggs and animation can all have bugs.

This is the Bandit character. A simple mesh with cartoony proportions.

Sprite design was also great fun, because your dealing with something that needs to be recognisable at a very small scale, you can create very broad archetypal characters. They were great fun to animate.

The guards armour was another fun job to build and animate.

There are loads more characters to show and I am looking forward to seeing this one published. In the meantime you can see the guard and bandit animated below.

Chest Mimic #5 Animation Set Complete

2011-09-09T03:15:00.000-07:00

I finished the Chest Mimic. It’s my second low poly games character for Turbo Squid and it comes with a full games animation set. The demo video is below (above the animation list).

Turbo Squid now require a render with a back ground so I made use of a certain temple Temple. Here are a couple more renders I did for the product page.

The render was a real ball ache for the demo vid, I used ray trace which is much slower than my usual depth map method. One of the renders took around nine hours and I also cleverly overwrote and had to do it twice. Not fun!

The good news is it looks peachy and you get to see all the animations! I think the animations worked really well on this character.

Here’s the complete animation list, I added a few thing since the last post.

20 to 49           Chest Mimic Walk Cycle
60 to 92           ‘Chest Mimic Run Cycle
110 to 136       Chest Mimic Chest To Mimic
150 to 209       Chest Mimic Idle
240 to 264       Chest Mimic Attack One
290 to 320       Chest Mimic Attack Two
350 to 374       Chest Mimic Attack Three
400 to 465       Chest Mimic Death One
490 to 580        Chest Mimic Death Two
590 to 600       Chest Mimic Turn On Spot Left
620 to 630        Chest Mimic Turn On Spot Right
650 20 665       Chest Mimic Dodge
680 to 690       Chest Mimic Fall
700 to 710       Chest Mimic Land
720 to 730       Chest Mimic Hit Reactions Front
750 to 760       Chest Mimic Hit Reaction Left
780 to 790       Chest Mimic Hit Reaction Right
810 to 815       Chest Mimic small hit reaction Front
820 to 825       Chest Mimic small hit reaction Left
830 to 835       Chest Mimic small hit reaction Right
860 to 940       Chest Mimic Incidental
940 to 950       Chest Mimic Mimic to Chest
950 to 980       Chest Mimic Chest Form

Attack One also works as a jump, games characters have to have a jumping attack it’s the law.

As with the last games character I did (the Ninja) this model ticks all the boxes for game ready, a one piece clean mesh, zeroed, low poly and bind pose included. With these models I basically just build them to the same specs I did when I was working for games studios, in fact if anything they are higher quality because I can spend more time on them.

Here's a link to the model on Turbo Squid.

Chest Mimic #4 Bite and Run!

2011-07-08T03:26:00.000-07:00

Here's an update on the Chest Mimic, I've done an animation for the initial reveal when an unwary adventurer goes to the chest hoping for well deserved potions gold and epic trinkets, only to discover many more teeth than he had bargained on.

I've been thinking on what animations the Chest Mimic will need and here is my list so far:
Animation List Chest Mimic

20 to 49        Walk Cycle    Done
60 to 95        Run Cycle    Done
110 to 136        Chest To Mimic    Done
5Idle

9Attack One
8Attack Two
7Attack Three
6Death One
5Death Two
4Incedental
3Turn On Spot Left
2Turn On Spot Right
1Dodge

I'm not sure whether to add a jump to this list. This would be so the Mimic would not be left behind if it's prey were to jump to safety leaving the Mimic marooned. It could work for game design as a way to ditch the pesky Mimic, but maybe I should give the option for the Mimic to jump. If I do a jump a fall animation will be needed too.

I'm still freelancing on another project so Mimic updates are likely to be sporadic. I have permission to post a couple of characters from the freelance work on my blog I just haven't got round to it yet.

Chest Mimic #3 walk cycle

2011-05-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

My blog has had to go on the back burner as I have been very busy recently. I managed to get a walk cycle done on the chest mimic the day after my last post but a lot has happened since then.

I've got some freelance work on at the moment which is going well. It's sprite work which I always wanted to try out. So I am still creating lots of art, just nothing I can post here. Hopefully I will be doing 20 characters.

Below is the walk cycle for the chest mimic. At some point I want to get a full animation set on it, with attack animations, a run and death animations. It will probably take me a while to get round to it as I will be busy for some time yet. The plan is to add it to Turbo Squid when it's finished.

Chest Mimic #2 Textures and Rigg

2011-04-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

Following up from my last post I've been working on the paint job for my chest mimic monster. Above you can see the simple untextured geometry and wire frame of this classic Dungeons and Dragons beastie. The first stop with painting any model is to map the UV coordinates creating a nice unwrapped flat version of the model which should be intuitive to paint. Below you can see the UVs layed out.

Because this model is based on a my previous treasure chest model, I re-used much of the work from the chest. One problem that keeps tripping me up with texturing is bump mapping. For some reason the bump map seems to arbitrarily reverse on some map pieces. Pretty annoying and it can be fairly hard to spot, below is an early bump test. An attempt to spot reverse bump problems.

Below is an example of how I start painting a model. I work in basic blocks of colour, the basic tone, then a highlight and a shadow tone. I work in photoshop and frequently check how the textures are working on the 3d model gradually adding detail and tightening the finish.

It takes some time of course but I end up with textures like this.

I've also managed to get a rig on this model and will be starting animation tomorrow. There were quite a lot of teething problems with setting the mimic up. He has such stumpy legs. Thin legs are much easier to set up. When ever you have characters that are a bit chunky it causes problems, as fat rolls or tissue that collides with other tissue is very hard to convey with game models. It generally means more joints to drive the skin, and as with poly count for games a low joint count is desirable. Games models are driven by a skeleton, the model or mesh is sometimes called a skin. Skinning is the process of assigning different parts of the mesh to different parts of the skeleton or joints.

Above you can see the rig in this case a number of wire handles which can be selected to move the model. The idea is to have as few handles as possible give the maximum amount of control to the model.

Chest Mimic #1 Poly Mesh

2011-03-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

I've started on the chest mimic today. I started by building some low poly legs. All the detail with this creature is going to go into the legs and the teeth. I'm planning on a long tongue also, that will be rigged up to animate. If you have read Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic your probably familiar with the idea of chests sprouting legs and trying to bite you. The Mimic is a classic Dungeons and Dragons creature. Often disguised as a treasure chest to catch out the unwary.

The legs are quite short and should give the chest a nice broad waddle like a drunken angry duck, at least that's the picture I've got in mind at present.
I actually bothered with toe nails on this model as there is a lot less detail to worry about on this character compared to a normal character. Heads and hands usually eat up your poly budget with a more standard games character.

Here is an early shot of what I've got going with the teeth. Pretty basic at the moment, the upper set fit with the lower set to a reasonable standard at the moment. I may want to put some more polygons into the teeth to stop them looking so angular, or I may leave them not sure yet.

I also did a test animation for fun. Just to see how the teeth are fitting and if it will look right when I'm finished. Looks like this toothy critter is going to be fun to work with.

Treasure Chest Low Poly Model

2011-03-23T04:57:00.000-07:00

Just made a new low poly model. It's intended as a game asset and it's up for sale on Turbosquid like my last model. I decided to make a treasure chest as it's a common model to find in rpg's and mmorpg's like WOW and Runescape.

I started out with a sketch to get in the mood, and ended up with this.

I put a lot of work into the bump map which was fun. A bump map gives the impression of surface detail by using a greyscale texture map (an image file like a jpg or targa). The white of each pixel represents how much it sticks out from the surface and vice versa.

You can see the wire frame in that image too which I rendered into the colour channel. I've always wanted to work on an rpg but so far no luck :(
I'm planning on developing this into a Mimic which is a D&D monster, I will post up my progress here.

Ninja Post #9 Animation Complete

2011-02-16T14:12:00.000-08:00

My Ninja model is now complete. The file is all neat and tidy and everything is tagged and named appropriately. I've uploaded it to turbosquid and you can now buy it as a Maya file Turbosquid have approved it as game ready.
I've also been working on some new vids to show it off on U-tube. This first one shows some of the Ninja animations stitched together. You can see the new sword attacks are done now.

The second one is a more nuts and bolts affair showing a complete list of all the animations, 48 in total.

I also did a few new renders. These show the kind of Ninja war I would like to put together. I need to get some more work at the moment so this might need to go on the back burner unfortunately, unless I can squeeze some money out of it.

I have been nosing around Turbosquid for a few days now, but just when I was ready to upload, they went and got them selves a nasty virus. It's all sorted now and you can see my model there if you click this link.

Turbosquid is one of the main places where you can buy digital models online. Everything from scantily clad ladies to heavily armoured tanks, and a fair few Ninjas an all. To that end I've been writing user guides, making help images and trying to make things as user friendly as I can.

Lastly hello to my new readers, thanks for following the blog. I can promise a varied mix of digital art, this however, may be the end of the Ninja chapter.

Ninja Post #8 Ninja animation

2011-01-13T11:32:00.000-08:00

Here is the Ninja animation set so far. There are still some more animations needed, like the sword attack animations and all the hit reaction stuff. I'm considering doing some get up animations so that the Ninja can be knocked down and get back up, at the moment if he gets knocked down that's it he's dead. The clip is a quick Maya playblast not rendered. I will do a proper render when I get closer to finished.

If your wondering about the colour change it's just a variant I fancied a change so have been working with the red Ninja today there's also a green Ninja too. It's all in preparation for the Ninja war I'm still planning on putting together. I did a couple of the Knockdown/death anims to day planning on doing some more tomorrow.

Ninja Post #7 Texture Mapping

2011-01-11T14:09:00.000-08:00

I've been working on my texture map for my Ninja. The first step was to UV map the model. UV mapping is a bit like backward engineering your model so that you end up with a flat template that if folded and bent in the right places would create a paper model of your character, it's also a bit like a dress makers pattern I suppose. The basic principle is to take a 2d image and wrap it round a 3d cg model.

Above you can see the finished map with a transparent wire frame overlay showing the position of the UVs. It's quite a time consuming and mind bending process to get the 3d model into a flattened state like this. In a similar way to working with a pattern for a dress or suit you get seams with UV mapping and it can be difficult to hide these seams where the characters geometry is split into sections as they form the join between different painted areas of the texture. It can lead to a patchwork effect if your not careful. The U and V of UV represent the 2 dimensions of the map, U for horizontal and V for vertical.

Most 3d software like Maya or 3d studio Max come with mapping tools such as Planar Mapping or Cylindrical Mapping. These tools help you lay out a 2d flattened map of your character that you can then take into photoshop and paint. The painted image is then saved as an image file like a jpeg or targa that can then be applied to the model. Above you can see the first steps I took after finishing my map. I started by blocking in the basic base colours.

The above image here shows a slightly later version of the texture where I've sketched in more detail and started to put in in some highlights and shadows. Below is the finished texture on the model in bind pose. The texture was all hand painted using a digital tablet and Photoshop.

Here are some more renders of the textured Ninja model in different poses from the animation set I'm working on. I 'm still hoping to use this model in a Ninja rampage where Ninja factions engage in a manic Ninja war with plenty of back flipping, somersaulting and shuriken chucking.

I'm pretty happy with how that turned out, if you want to see any of the images larger just click on them. When I get a chance I will post up some more animation progress.

Ninja Post #6

2010-11-30T14:06:00.000-08:00

Ninja update!
I've been working on the animations and I'm posting up some clips. The first one is the sword draw and idle with sword.

This next one shows the shuriken throw and a forward sumersault. There are quite a few more done, I'm thinking of patching together a Ninja battle when I have enough of the set done. Probably blue Ninja versus red which brings up the other missing ingredient, theres still the UV mapping to do (he needs painting).

Digital Desparado

2010-11-24T07:50:00.000-08:00

This is a follow on from the sci-fi detective in my last post. Painted in the same way using the tablet and photoshop. I spent slightly longer on this one than the detective, probably because things keep distracting me. I'm trying to learn to drive at the moment and lessons amongst other every day things keep cropping up.

This character has taken a bit of a gunslinger look. I'm a big fan of the old spaghetti westerns like The Mercenary and High Plains Drifter. I was tempted to put a poncho on him, maybe if I get round to another one.

Sci-Fi detective

2010-11-17T08:51:00.000-08:00

I painted this today, trying out painting with my tablet without using a pencil drawing as the first step. I used photoshop as usual. Had a look at Ridley Scotts Blade Runner for inspiration, I wanted to do an iconic Film Noir private detective character but was thinking about making it slightly sci-fi. I will develop the theme tomorrow maybe go more of a cyborg route. My main aim was to see how I got on with out scanning a pencil drawing as my guide. Drawing is what I usually rely on but it was quite fun to just use paint. Click the image to see a larger verion.

The 9 Dragons

2010-11-10T04:37:00.000-08:00

This is something I've been working on over a long period in small doses. I spent a bit more time on this than on the other paintings and pictures I've posted up here. Like many of the other pictures on this blog, it started off as a pencil drawing that I scanned and then painted in photoshop using a tablet. The dragons on the metal ring where drawn using the tablet as was much of the golden horde the main dragon is sitting on. It was a picture I worked on when I was getting fed up with Space Temple or what ever project I was currently on.

To mark the year of the Dragon on the 23 Jan 2012 you can now get The Nine Dragons as a print from my cafe press account. click the Black Water Dragon print if you want a 14x10 inch framed, high detail version to hang on your wall.

Space Temple #25

2010-10-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

Space Temple has finally been accepted to a film festival. It failed to get into most of the festivals I entered it to. Of the thirteen I entered, there are three left which I've yet to hear from. I did get a few mails saying they liked my film and thought it looked professional but it didn't fit there program. SO I've been pretty down recently.

I found out yesterday that Space Temple has been accepted to the Euroshorts film festival in Poland.

The festival will have 4 screenings in Warsaw on November 22nd, 26th, 28th and 29th, then it will go on tour to 15 other cities of Poland.

In Warsaw the screenings will be held in Luna Film Theatre, National Film Museum Screening Room and Powiększenie Club.

The Schedule of events will be available at www.euroshorts.pl soon.

Here is a link to the catalogue I'm about three quaters down in the animation section (Kosmiczna świątynia umysłu Waywarda), reż. Ezra Allen Wooooo Hooooo!

It' funny to see the synopsis in Polish:
Kapitan Oren Metz odbiera sygnał alarmowy z niezbadanej
dotąd części Kosmosu. Odkrywa tam tajemniczą Kosmiczną
Świątynię, w której czekają na niego mroczne niespodzianki.
W filmie wykorzystano muzykę Modesta Mussorgskiego, Richarda
Wagnera, Igor Strawińskiego.

I am so relieved that it got into a festival. I thought that I would have to make do with just putting it on the internet. I'm so glad that it will make it to a cinema screen.

I expected Space Temple would have no problem getting into festivals and was actually worried about how much I would have to pay converting enough copies over to digi-beta for the screening (£25-30 a pop) but as time wore on and the rejections and silences rolled in (not all the festivals respond it just comes to the day of rekoning and you dont get the magic email). It's dawned on me that film festivals are a tougher nut to crack than I had first thought.

Ninja Post #5

2010-10-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

My ninja is ready for animation. It was more tricky than i expected, I had quite a lot of trouble setting it up so that the ninja can take out his sword and have both arms follow the sword and then put it back in the scabbard and have it attach to that, and function as normal.

It involved a technique called space switching or dynamic parenting which was horribly technical and after quite a lot of time spent I came to the conclusion I could'nt get it to work with out using scripts. I need to avoid scripts so I ended up cheating. Now the ninja has two swords one in the scabbard and one in his hand and I just swap between them. I did a quick test but it's too ugly to put up here. Once I've spent the time to make a nice animation of it I'll post it up. In the meantime here's a clip showing the model skinned and rigged doing an idle animation.

Also I've been doing some research looking at somersaults, backflips and martial arts. I put in "ninja moves" as a U-Tube search and found this top clip.

Ninja Post #4

2010-10-18T08:58:00.000-07:00

Have done a few tweaks got rid of the holes and added the sword. I will be working on skinning and rigging next to see if I need to alter my mesh. Skinning is the process of adding a skeleton to the model and attaching the mesh so it moves correctly with the skeleton. This can lead to problems meaning the wire frame model needs to be altered so that it works better with the skeleton. Rigging is the process of making the skeleton easy to interface for an animator, so that he can work comfortably with the model. So lots of technical messing about on it's way for me. Sometimes it makes me want to throw the computer out the window, but if I do a good job of it, it will make animating the model much easier.

My ninja is currently around the 3100 polys mark (tris).

Ninja Post #3

2010-10-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

Ninja production is progressing. Sword still to come and some other details to go in like his belt.

Still lots of tweaking to do. There are some holes in the mesh and I will need to go through the whole skinning process before I start with textures. No point UV mapping and then finding the mesh needs changing.

Ninja Post #2

2010-10-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

I've been working on my Ninja model, and I've started with the head and hands as this is usualy the most work. I'm aiming for no more than 4000 polygons hopefully I can get it lower. At the moment the hands are quite high which I might have to change.

I'm quite happy with the way the hands are looking, games characters often have pretty awful boxy looking mittens so it would be nice if I can avoid chopping too many polys out.

Tomorrow I will probably start with the feet and then hopefully get the rest at least started. I will probably leave the sword till last as it should be easy but also satisfying.

Ninja post #1

2010-10-12T05:14:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start work on a new character and decided to go for the old tried and tested Ninja. A stock badguy for many arcade and console games over the years. I've started by doing some research and doing some drawing to get an idea of what I'm aiming for.

The plan is to get a rigged and textured version together, and then do an in game set for my showreel. I think these two are about the best of the sketches so I will be working towards a Ninja that looks like this. I will post up my progress here so you can see how I get along.

Hand Of Judgement

2010-08-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

Keeping my hand in, with a bit of giant robot art. This fella has been lying around for many months in need of a paint job. I did it to go with the Mecha series I did ages ago but just finished painting it today.

Space Temple #24 Trailer!

2010-07-30T06:34:00.000-07:00

Here's the trailer at long last.

About Space Temple

2010-07-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

Space Temple is a short film I worked on From November 2008 to the end of May 2010. It is my first short film since college.

It is 5 minutes 50 seconds long and is a computer animated sci-fi spoof, influenced by Star Trek, Alien, The Body Snatchers and a general diet of fantasy and B-films. Or to put it another way.....

Captain Oren Metz investigates a distress beacon deep in uncharted Space.
He discovers the mysterious Space Temple. There a tale of dark terror awaits him.

My stap line is..

Carved in pure evil, Secrets never spoken.

You can view the trailer here

Space Temple was a solo project. I created the visual elements myself using Maya and photoshop, although I did have help and support from Dave Packer particularly with particles, and other technical aspects, like aspect ratio and rendering.

For the sound I used online resources like Musopen , The Free Sound Project and FreeSFX. I did all the character voices myself, as well as some of the more basic sound effects.

Here's the complete credits list

Special Thanks to
Melanie Janz
Dave Packer
The Musopen Project

Music composed by
Modest mussorgsky
Igor Stravinsky
Richard Wagner

Music performed by
Skidmore College Orchestra
United States Marines Band

Sound effects from
FreeSFX
The Free Sound Project

A film by
Ezra Allen

The film took 241 working days total to finish from the original idea to having a copy on DVD to submitt to film festivals. I spent 107 days on animation and 134 days on environments, lighting, particles, rendering, sound etc.

I made the film to be a show case for my skills particularly my animation and because short independant animated films have a lot to do with why I first decided I wanted to be an animator.

If you would like to know more about Space Temple you can contact me at:
ezromation@yahoo.com

Space Temple #23 poster

2010-07-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

I've entered Space Temple into another 12 festivals. It's off all over the place Spain, France, Canada, America, Estonia and a fair few Uk festivals too. I wont hear back for a while now if it's been accepted, so now I will need to focus more on sensible things like getting a new job.

If or when I hear that Space Temple is going to be screened I will put the details up here. I still intend to do a short trailer, but it has to stay on the back burner at the moment as job search stuff is becoming more the priority.

Space Temple #22 the final furlong

2010-06-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Space Temple is now finished and is going into the festival submission stage. The first festival that Space Temple has been submitted to is the Klik! Animation festival in Amsterdam. The submission went off on Tuesday the first of June so hopefully it’s there now.

Space Temple finished in a bit of a crunch as June the first was the last possible day that it could be submitted to the Klik! Festival and, although the film was all finished on DVD and in working order, there were some technical specifications that were required for the submission, which ended up being a last minute scrabble to fulfill. Very dull stuff to do with frame order and video compression. I also got in a bit of a muddle over PPI and DPI for my stills, there seem to be a lot of conflicting opinions about this fascinating subject on the internet. It looks like this is probably going to crop up again with the other festivals, as they all seem to want slightly different specs when it comes to the submission.

Me looking rough after getting the credits in, still plenty of work ahead when this was taken

There is still more work to do as I want to have a nice poster and trailer to go with the film. I am looking forward to putting a decent trailer up on U-Tube as at the moment it feels like a bit of an anti-climax finishing. U-Tube gives a bit more of an instant feedback. Space Temple wont screen until later this year and that’s only if it passes the submission process.

Here is where it all took place note the cheap microphone stuck on a mop handle, used for recording the narration. Also assorted broken lamps lying under the window. I rattled these for clinky armour sound effects,... high tech stuff.

I am hoping to get it to as many festivals as possible and as far a field as it will go. Melbourne looks about the remotest location I’ve got my eye on. In the UK if all goes to plan Bristol, Canterbury, Birmingham and Bradford. I will keep the Blog up to date with festival screenings as I get the news.

Space Temple took me 241 working days to complete. 107 for the animation 134 further days till the first submission. I spent around 19 days on sound effects music editing (choosing tracks chopping them up and placing them) and voice recording for narration and characters. There were some laughable moments with me banging kitchen utensils in front of a microphone. 85 shots in total 5minutes 50 in length.

Its been a slog but it’s been very rewarding also. It took an awful lot longer than I planned but I’m glad that I saw it through to the end. I'm glad to have worked on something I'm proud of. The last step is to try to get it to as wide an audience as is possible.

Space Temple #21

2010-05-11T01:47:00.000-07:00

Bit of Space Temple news, the render is finished and I am now working on sound. I've managed to get it on DVD to a reasonable quality and have started putting sound effects in. I need to finish everything ready to submit before the end of June. It's now just sound in the way.

Space Temple should be on the big screen in November this year. (I am still planning to do a trailer but I need to tie up all loose ends first)

The Line Between Technician and Artist

2010-04-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been coming up alot against the question "is this the work of a technician or an artist?"

I have been working on making a particle effect to simulate liquid splattering against a wall. Mostly this has involved scouring the internet for clues and altering an array of numerical fields named magnitude, rate, radius, friction and resilience (etc etc). I've even attempted copying and pasting lines of code into the equation.

Technician or artist.....the question I'm asking myself now is "what the hell am I doing? this isn't what I signed up for, how did it come to this?"

It's been a gradual creep since I moved over from traditional to computer animation. From having to fiddle with character set up, polygonal modelling, and uv mapping. More and more I've found myself typing numbers into boxes. Until I've come to the point where with these particles, the closest thing to art I've done is choose the colour.

Sure I keep telling myself that I have the picture in my head, that's what I'm working towards. It's my visualisation skills that set me apart from being a technician......but I'm not really convinced. When the medium for creation is umpteen numerical fields with abstract names tagged on them, it seems largely a job
of trial and error.

Of course knowing the right boxes to type numbers in, is highly valued knowledge. Most of my lead artists have had a very strong understanding of the technical side of cg art. Some of them could barely draw.

In the kingdom of cg art, it seems the coder artist is rapidly becoming king.

Space Temple #21

2010-03-30T03:28:00.000-07:00

Titles time! this is a mock up but pretty close to what I ended up using. There are a few letters missing from the type set and there is no lower case but I intend to make use of this font having made it from scratch.

I've also been working on a 2d version of Oren. It was quite fun to do, but time consuming. It works like a cut out animation, like South Park. The different body parts are on different layers and you can postition them.

I'm working through what I've dubbed special effects at the moment. It's all the stuff that will need to be composited like the teleport effect. At the moment I'm working on the scanner screen. There's some liquid effects to do as well, liquid is quite hard to do for cg animation so I hope I dont get too much of a bumpy ride.

Space Temple #20

2010-03-16T04:13:00.000-07:00

Here's the Space Temple! as seen from space. This is shot #1 and I've got a render of it. It's almost there need a few more details on the planets (can't really see them in this bit the first shot is a big camera move round space)
That corridor was a right pain in the Harris. The reflections crashed the render so many times before, I finaly understood what was going on. I had to turn the motion blur off, and then it behaved itself. By the time I'd figured it out I'd optimised the crap out of the scene. It went from being 1minute 40 per frame to 20 seconds.

So post 20 I thought I'd done much more than that on Space Temple. I'm three shots away from having the basic render complete. Today I will be fixing up shot 1 there's some shadow flicker to remove and details to add. The next post will hopefully be the title. I started trying to put something together yesterday, trouble is I've never liked typography much, seems like how deadly dull people pretend to be artists. Ah well best be at it!

Space Temple #19

2010-03-07T10:38:00.000-08:00

Finaly here is the corridor on the space ship, yes it looks dead simple doesn't it but its been driving me up the wall. I've been trying to sort out some animated textures to make some flashing lights. I thought I could remember how to do it but ....no. So I had to use the help files and do they cover it properly NO THEY BLOODY DONT! they kind of give you a general idea of what might work.....but it doesn't. So I had to resort to trial and error. If I hadn't seen it working in the past I might have given up, but finaly success (the little red lights on the doors now flash when the doors open and close). Now I need to import in the characters and get a render going. I may post up the animated shot when it's done, I'm thinking it will probably go in the trailer. So either that or it will be the promised Space Temple exterior. Thanks to everyone who checks in on the blog it's great to know people are interested in the film.

Space Temple #18 Mech-Bot

2010-03-03T14:11:00.000-08:00

Change of plan I decided to work on the space intereior. I've been busy texturing this little fella. I'm pretty happy with him, and I've managed to get a run cycle animated on him too. He is a little scutter type bot doing maintenance around the ship like Huey, Dewey, and Louie from Silent Running.

Currently working more on the interior, I will stick up a render in the next few days.

Space Temple #17

2010-02-28T02:26:00.000-08:00

I am currently working on the last shot, that I mentioned in my last post. Except strictly speaking its the penultimate shot, which fades to space. The shot of space will be from the intro which I still have to render and I have to build an exterior shot of the Space Temple. I'm looking forward to it but hope it isn't going to take too long. I still have to render the last shot this is just a test snapshot. It's the longest shot in the film and the longest shot I've done I think at over a minute.

Still lots of things to think about, I have another name to add to the credits after a friend lent me a couple of microphones and some recording gear. I am going to need to create the title which will be some kind of one off model, and lots of special effects to do when I've done the complete render. Then there's the last hurdle of sound.

I'm also starting to realise how much I will miss the film once it's finished, I thought I'd enjoy the end game, but I'm finding it difficult to let go of shots at the moment.

I hope to post up the exterior shots of the Space Temple in the next post once I'm done with this massive render.

Space Temple #16

2010-02-06T11:12:00.000-08:00

Still working away. Haven't managed to post anything for a while. It's quite hard to find stuff to post in at the moment. There's lots of stuff rendered now, but as I'm going towards the end of the film most shots have Space Temple secrets that I dont want to give away in them.

There are 17 shots left to render of the total 84, on top of that there are 16 special effects that need to be delt with. Yes the end is in sight, has been for some time but everything seems to take longer than I expect. The Space Temple pod plants take ages to put together, depth map shadows also seem to need constant attention. There is also sound which I keep thinking I've found someone else to take over, but so far it's always fallen through. It takes me ages to go through all the details everytime I approach someone new, so I think I'm just going to try and finish the film and sort out the sound last.

I'm working on environment for the last scene at the moment, although I'm not working on the last shot yet. The shot I'm currently working has a lot of the background for the final shot in it, so I'm checking both shots at the same time. It should be the last section of background I need to do. What I might do is empty all the characters out of the shot and just post up a render when it's done.

Space Temple #15

2010-01-01T02:40:00.000-08:00

Latest Space Temple work. Still not managing to get many full days in at the moment. Worked on this quite late last night, it turned out pretty well so I felt like sharing. Happy 2010!

Space Temple #14 Evil Statues

2009-12-18T08:16:00.000-08:00

I've been making some background props, some evil statues to get some more atmosphere into my shots.

There is still quite a lot of background to set up, but I should be able to use the background elements I've already got, to put them together. There is a fair bit of foliage now that I can use to stop things looking too repetative. I want to add some bits and pieces of wreckage and junk to show that there have been prievious, visitors. whether or not I get the time is another matter.

I get the urge to add new pieces some times if I think a shot isn't looking the way I want it to, but I have to keep in mind that I dont want to be working on this film till next christmas, so I try to make my models as re-useable as possible.

Seaonal Greetings

2009-12-09T05:10:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year, I've been pretty busy recently my girlfriend had an operation on her knee so I'm looking after her and my son. I am still working on Space Temple and have got about a minutes worth of rendering done, the new computer is working out well. I will be posting up more Space Temple stuff when things become a bit easier round here, but for the time being here is one I did earlier, a christmas card I did around 2004 I think, I just got round to converting it from flash and sticking it on U-Tube. If I dont post up again before Christmas, hope you have a good one.

Space Temple #13 (not looking too unlucky)

2009-11-21T09:06:00.000-08:00

So back to the Space Temple, I've been dealing with lots of dull but scary stuff over the las couple of days. Moving into my new computer which has the dreaded Vista operating system. So I've been loading up my software moving in my files, and after some hassle I think I've got everything working as it should touch wood.

The good news is render times have been reduced from over 5 minutes a frame to around 30 seconds. This means rendering the film is looking much more manageable.

I've also managed to get a render onto DVD and looking good, so the technical worries in terms of rendering are looking much better today. Now it's just a case of getting all my backgrounds built, getting SFX particles, splats and lightning effects done. Getting the music for the film, sound effects and getting the voice track to an exceptable standard (apparently it's spicky)........so not out of the woods yet, but it's looking more positive for the first time in a few weeks.

I have also been working on a few new shots, and props as you can see. The Space Temple marches onwards!

Space Temple #12

2009-11-10T04:27:00.000-08:00

Space Temple has been having some trouble. I did my first

full size render and it took 14 hours for my computer to

process, the shot is 3 seconds long.....this is pretty slow.

I then came up against the problem of how I was going to

get the finished render on to a DVD. I thought this would

be easy....turns out I dont have the right equipment. I am

now trying to get to the bottom of what I'm going to need,

and also thinking I'm going to need a new computer...........

not happy about this.

Oren with out texture in low poly mode

I have managed to get some new stills of shots that are set up for render, but here comes the other bad news. I have 86 shots to do and I have none at final render yet. To be finished on time mid Feb I would need to be rendering 3 shots a day as of last wednesday. Substances are hitting the fan.

To the right is the first shot I tried to take to final render. It looks nice in the still, but has bugs. When the scene runs I have flickering lights. I know how to fix this I think....bit if it's going to take 14 hours to re render finishing the film is starting to look like an ugly prospect.

Lastly here is a warning message painted on the entrance to one of the Space Temple catacombs. After the last couple of days I am guessing it should say something about render optimisation or avi conversion. Those are the current perils that the Space Temple faces, I am hoping I can overcome them.

Space Temple #11 teleport effect

2009-11-03T02:18:00.000-08:00

I've been working on my teleport effect over the last few days, I still have more to do but I thought I would post up my progress. I've done so many versions of this, but I've had a fair bit of trouble with my particles.

I will probably have to come back to it as I think I need to move on with my rendering, still a lot of shots to go.

Space Temple #10

2009-10-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

I've done my first renders, not final resolution but they are looking good.

These were done some time ago but I've had some time off recently so haven't posted anything for a while. These are shots 4 and 5 from the film of 75 in total so still lots to do. I'm working on my first special effect at the moment, a teleportation effect. It's looking nice, having some trouble with particles effects though. I'm planning to post it up here when it's done which will probably the same time next week.

Space Temple #9

2009-10-14T02:55:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a lot of bits and bobs over the last few days, firstly Oren's utility belt.

Secondly I've done some minor alterations to Oren's specular map (Shininess)

Also I textured (painted) his shoulder armour.

Lastly I've been working on my foliage, moss and grass. The moss was quite a pest, all the other textures in the film so far are hand painted, but I just couldn't get the moss to look right so I had to use an altered photograph to get the look I wanted. Here's the foliage set.

Here it is again in use on the Space Temple.

Space Temple #8 Props

2009-10-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

I've been working on my props this weekend. This is a scanner like the Star Trek Tricorder

used for scanning an area. You can see it in its place holder state in the walk cycle

I posted in Space Temple #6

Below is a test render I've done. I think it turned out pretty well, it certainly looks pretty sturdy.

Next week I shall be working more on the main character, adding

some detail to the shoulder armour.

Space Temple #7

2009-09-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the pod plant again. Here are all the pieces, now it's a bit like

a mechano set in need of construction.

Here's an assembled version.

Finaly here they are in the Space Temple opening shot.

Space Temple #6 Main Character

2009-09-22T04:46:00.000-07:00

This is the main character for Space Temple, Oren Metz.

Above is the moment where Oren beams down into the

Space Temple in a Star Trek fashion.

Below Is an animated clip showing Oren stomping along.

Space Temple #5

2009-09-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

I've been working over the weekend on my Pod Plant. I've built it in repeatable sections. Above is a wire frame showing the stems connectors and pod.

I'm pleased with my leaves, the textures are all hand painted. After finishing the leaves I adapted them to make the PodPlant flowers.

I tried a few colour variations on the flowers

That's as far as I got I still need to do the roots and to put some variation into the pieces. All the stems are currently straight which will have to change. I will post it up again when there's some more progress. Tomorrow I will be posting up the main character.

Space Temple #4

2009-09-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

The intro starts in space here are a couple of renders of my planets. The camera zooms between these before settling on the Space Temple. I will be working over the weekend on my pod plant so hopefully will have some renders to post come Monday.

Space Temple #3

2009-09-17T01:12:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the environment for the introduction to the temple, creating some glowing mushrooms to add a secondary light source. The mushrooms are poseable so I can do lots of variants.

I'm working on some giant pod plants at the moment, that are going to give a day of the triffids / Jack and the bean stalk look. I still have a backlog of renders to post, so I will post some more tomorrow.

Space Temple #2

2009-09-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

I've been working on my temple blocks, for the Space Temple. Here are a couple of test renders. I've also been working on my alien foliage. I will be posting up more updates next week.

Space Temple #1

2009-09-07T06:10:00.000-07:00

These pictures are from the film I am currently working on. I'm not getting much time for drawing at the moment, but I am generating tons of these test renders so I've decided to start posting them up here. This ship is from the intro.

Work Shop

2009-08-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

Stilt Wraith

2009-08-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

The Wrecker

2009-08-14T01:35:00.000-07:00

Red Spider

2009-08-13T01:58:00.000-07:00

ClawBot

2009-08-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

Night Fair Ground

2009-07-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

Twisted Tree

2009-07-25T13:15:00.001-07:00

Haunted Grove

2009-06-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

Tick-Tock

2009-06-01T13:59:00.001-07:00

Robotic Doodle

2009-05-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

They walk among us

2009-05-05T13:38:00.001-07:00

(mostly in Texas)

merry-go-round

2009-04-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

Fire Dragonette

2009-04-19T15:35:00.001-07:00

Girl Doodle

2009-04-15T13:53:00.001-07:00

Snow Demon

2009-04-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

Gothic SciFi

2009-04-06T15:26:00.001-07:00

Have been reading Liz Williams, seems there are some side effects.

Bank Aid

2009-04-04T17:05:00.000-07:00

Bankers are in trouble all over the world, but with a little help from you we can save them. You can donate at any time and chances are you all ready have.

Flying Nugget

2009-04-03T15:26:00.001-07:00

Assasin Fish

2009-04-02T15:39:00.001-07:00

Green Dragon

2009-04-02T15:37:00.001-07:00

Mechanical Castanets

2009-03-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

Tree Man

2009-03-29T05:05:00.000-07:00

The Inevitable End

2009-03-27T16:25:00.001-07:00

Moth Eaten Mummy

2009-03-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

Evil Snake

2009-03-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

Doom Bat

2009-03-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

The Angry Mole Of Vengeance

2009-03-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

Todays Scribble

2009-03-26T11:54:00.000-07:00