Making Of

A behind the scenes look at the film. As part of the submission we had to produce a 'making of' film documenting the production process. A few folk have expressed interest in seeing it so I've uploaded it.

This was made right at the end of production when I was pretty worn out, so much as I tried, I don't sound very alive. Maybe I'll hire a narrator to re-do it...

Scene 2

Simulated Lens Flare

I've been making and collecting various elements to build a good looking lens flare for my title sequence. The final thing won't be this intense or realistic mind you, this was just testing out the elements to see if they could create something more real than simple shapes or filters. The final one should be simple and subtle, probably only noticeable when the camera moves.

Scene 2

Scene 2 Playblast

Just need to sort the textures and lighting and then this baby's getting rendered!

Trooper 3d shots from Rob Connor on Vimeo.

After that I just need to composite the 2D animation to the window on the ship and then add engine and cannon fire effects!

Scene 18

Another 3D shot (partially).

Scene 14, aka Deep Shot

The first picture is how the shot starts, when the ball rolls in. The camera then cranes up and looks down the large chasm as seen in the second pic. By this point the camera movement will have tipped off the audience that this is a 3D shot, so I'm not too worried if it looks a bit 3D at the end... just as long as the first camera angle looks 2D enough so that the audience won't notice we've cut to a 3D environment before the camera move.

And here's another angle. It's not in the film, I just want to give another view of what Rob and I have put together. I'm really happy with it.

"Deep Shot" in progress

This shot is doing my head in. Playing with colours and shaders to try and get this 3D environment to look as much like my 2D backgrounds as possible. The pipes are about there but the rest has some work to be done. It's a slow, trial and error process that I do not enjoy. I also have to tweak a lot of the geometry (not visible at this angle) to match the 2D layout that comes after. That is my story.

Explosion Shockwave

Having never properly animated an explosion before I decided today was going to be the day I started working on it. And I've ended up spending all my time on a new idea of having a shockwave element.

Ignore the crummy explosion in this video and just enjoy the first shockwave test.

EDIT: Okay, at that quality you can't really see anything. I'll upload a better quality version once I've animated the explosion itself.

RE-EDIT: It'll be interesting to experiment with the sound for this scene. I guess the sound of the explosion shouldn't be heard until the shockwave hits the camera (which isn't obvious here due to the quality and not enough camera shake).

Fornax Chemica

Wouldn't mind doing the poster for my film like this...

Pirate Flag Animation Test 2

Again, the flag motion is driven by a robotic arm which will be holding the bottom right corner.

Pirate Flag Animation Test

It's a flag in the vacuum of space, I know. That's why there'll be a wee robotic arm at the bottom right corner waving it.

EDIT: I think I'll make the background of the flag a little lighter so it's more visable against a space background.

Pirate Ship Turnaround

The toon shader causes some jarring jumps when a flat surface turns out of the light, but when lit right the shots I need should look okay.

Pirate Ship

The texturing doesn't look like much but man... nearly killed me.

Blueshift Turnaround

BALLS - In stunning 3D!

The beginnings of another 2D/3D blended shot, with help from Paul for the 3D. When the balls are shot from the right angles and toon shaded I'm hoping it will work well.

«Spoiler warning! Click 'read more' below to see the video»

Read more...

The Blueshift

The fruits of tonight's labour. I'll need to look at it tomorrow with fresh eyes but I'd say it's pretty much finished. Just need to finish off the pirate ship and we can start animating!

Trooper Deep Shot

This blog is doubling as a production diary for my film at the moment, so expect lots more posts like these in the future.

I've been experimenting on the models (which Rob has built for me) to create the 2D style I want that should hopefully match the backgrounds in my film. This is early days, but it's showing that toon shading, shadows and fog in 3D can produce some promising results...


Everything here is the same shader at the moment but that will change. A lot of the smaller and more distant things (like guard rails and small pipes) will have fewer leves of shading (either solid or with one shadow) to stop them look too complex and 3D. And it needs to be coloured too, obviously.

More Toon Shading Tests

A few little bits in the models to fix so the lines draw properly and we're nearly done! Just a few textures to be added then we can animate!

Cannon Ball Smoke Test

Paul and I have been working for ages (or half an hour) on turning my 2D drawing into 3D. The cannon ball is going to be travelling and spinning in slow motion in the shot, so animating the gas/plasma it vents by hand would be tricky. Here's our first CG test...

Here's Paul's particle smoke:

And here's it again after I played with it in After Effects:

It's early days but we're on the way to getting a good 2D-style effect. I've devised a way to make it fade out like the picture, and Paul's working on getting it wavier.