The first episode of "Dark Rising: Warrior of Worlds" calls for an attacking horde of Klangathrian Krabbs (the smaller sized version of the giant crab that appears at the end of the feature "Dark Rising 2"). This was actually the first creature I tackled at the starting of pre-production. I initially thought they should be crude and simple since there would be a hell of a lot of them and they would need to render quickly. I even went as far as a few render tests (see video below), but as I moved on to th...
The final member of the demon army for the new "Dark Rising" TV series; he features a slightly different head design with some extra facial expressions and ultra-realistic skin while still managing to keep the render time down to my goal of less than 15 minutes. The model will eventually have a slightly revised armor and some added facial jewelry, but for now, this is a good start. Check out the video below for various animated stages leading up to the final result...
Slightly more detailed model than the last in terms of facial expressions and polish. Basically a standard Kelipoth Boss base that has been aged about 100 years. The workflow for all of these models has been planned-out to start with the figures that appear in the background and/or have less screen time, working up to the ones that play a larger role. Because they are all sharing the same basic starting point, I get the benefit of refining each "draft", but also being able to keep each version for produc...
Over a week of trouble-shooting render crashes later (about nine separate issues, one being bad RAM), the final Kelipoth Boss Lieutenant (I decided he looked like a lieutenant as I have a lot of time on my hands) is now complete. This takes us back full-cycle through several stages, to the original concept sketch about half a month ago. Maybe a week longer than I had planned to spend on this guy, but all that hard work saves time on the variations that will make up the full demon army to follow as the sa...
One whole day wasted trouble-shooting crashing software and a corrupted file (unfortunately, pretty much the norm for CG work in my experience), but now the head, legs and torso for the base model are now complete (apart from some last-minute tweaks and adjustments)...
Head texture, detail and facial expressions are now in place for the Kelipoth Boss. The helmet and other armor parts are being modelled separately so building additional other members of the demon army will be...
Episode 1 of "Dark Rising: Warrior of Worlds" calls for the following: Director Andrew Cymek and I had previously discussed what the end of the world would look like in the "Dark Rising" universe, in preparation for the shot, after the script was written, so the "cliff-face" was changed to the top of a building. Also much easier to shoot than a full CG cliff with green screen actors...
Seems like I spend more time working on CG for other peoples projects than I do working on my own stuff, so I figured I may as well devote a section of this site to exactly that. CG Walkthrus (or Walkthroughs, whatever)will contain (nearly) realtime progress on CG-related stuff I am working on. First up: FX work on the second Dark Rising TV series, Dark Rising: Warrior of Worlds which starts shooting this spring. Work has already begun on the fairly extensive CG that will be required, so check it out.
I reckon, even if you have the ambitious plan to shoot a feature film with your iPhone, you are going to come face-to-face at some point with some level of bureaucracy that will impede you, even for a short time, from moving forward with your small-scale project. Making a feature film is a big thing – people will tell you – you need a massive crew and everyone has to get paid. Doing things any other way is simply against the rules and if you try to change the rules, some people will politely tell you tha...
