Red or Dead Project

Our Red or Dead film;

My role in my group began shortly after we were given the brief; I immediately had a lot of ideas for the project so I set about drawing concept images and developing an outline of what could happen. The group agreed to use an idea I had which featured a baby crashing into a city and shooting people with a laser gun that changed their outfits into Red or Dead brand clothing. I set about designing a baby and the gun as well as developing the overall story with the rest of the group. 

I then helped create a basic thumbnail storyboard and then made layered photoshop paintings for each panel so that Alex Watkins could vector animate the layers to add some movement to the animatic. 

I drew over 40 colour photoshop paintings which included the lighting for the final animation as well as the design and look for the film.

After receiving feedback on our animatic I drew a new storyboard and helped change a lot of the storyline (we were told that we would not be lent enough clothes by Red or Dead). I had the idea of changing the overall concept so that

instead of the baby changing the clothes he changes his surroundings so that they are more appealing to him. When drawing the storyboard I researched the cinematography of mainstream action films; I found it was best to frame the characters holding the rifles horizontally as it makes him look more powerful and intimidating as well as adding drama to the overall piece. I also learnt a lot about manipulating the depth in scenes so that they don’t feel so flat, I never shot anything front on or side or and made sure that there was always an object in the foreground, background and front of the shot.

I then helped with the filming of the actors on green screen. I unofficially acted as the director of cinematography, positioning the actors so that the shots had depth and filled the frame. My task was to model and texture which baby that was by far the most laborious task. I began modelling the baby as soon as we decided that it was going to be in 3d, once I had finished the character turnarounds I made a very basic block model so that I could work out the volume of the character and its overall flow. I then extrusion modelled it starting with an eye and working my way out until I had a full face. The torso, arms and legs were then modelled separately and attached together. As I write this maya keeps crashing as I try and open the model so I can't take screenshots of the model but I've pinched some screenshots off Alex Watkins blog from when he was rigging it so you can see the wireframe and the baby without any textures;

I exported the basic extrusion model into mud box where I subdivided the geometry and did some further sculpting (particularly on the head). I then textured the baby in mudbox by painting it white and then using a picture of a baby I found on google images to as a texture stencil. The original idea had been to do high detail bump maps but I found that the baby looked creepy with realistic skin tones and textures. I painted the baby one colour and highlighted certain areas to compliment the shapes. I then added pink and red to his nose and cheeks.

Whilst I modelled the Space Baby I also modelled “the gherkin building” which gets shot by the baby and has vines wrap around it. I applied glass textures and learnt how to use paint effects to make 3D vines that I then animated. Next I made a pair of spirals which went up the outside of the building and scaled them so that one was right next to the vines and the other was further out, I attached a camera to the wider spiral and the directional point to the smaller spiral. I then animated the camera and point along the two spirals to so that it followed the vines as they wrapped around the gherkin model. 

Alex Watkins made a very basic rig for the baby as we were running out of time and I posed the model. We made the mistake of underestimating how difficult and time consuming rigging was and because I did not check the rig as it was being made there were some errors. The elbow joint was far too high up the arm which hugely limited how the model could be posed and the simplicity of the rig made animating it impossible (the gun could not be attached to the hands and key framing it separately would have taken far too much time) so the baby ended up being very static. I posed the baby and set up the cameras for rendering before passing the scenes on to the rest of the group.

When checking the shots of the baby in the render view I realised that the model did not look very good with the scene lighting (everything had been lit using a sky dome). I decided to add in extra lighting for every shot of the baby so that it would stand out in the scene and look more visually appealing. I added directional lights with a very high falloff to create a rim light around his head and then positioned point lights with various intensities to the areas that I wanted to appear reflective. This improved the look of the baby a lot and made the improved the quality of the film as a whole, it would have been good to have done this on a lot of the other shots but we did not have enough time because we had to start rendering quite early. My final task was to help with the editing process and with finding free sound effects online.

The baby with the scene lighting;

With added spot lights to make the surfaces reflective;

 Spot lights on the chin, forehead and nose as well as on parts of the gun to make the surfaces reflective. I also added a rim light behind him and put very point lights with a high falloff on the pavement so that it would appear as if the light from the skydome was reflecting off the floor and up onto his face.

 This was my first time lighting something in maya, I already knew the theory because I'd learnt it when I was researching lighting for painting and I just needed someone to show me the buttons so I could apply my 2D knowledge to 3D (once again I found my skills are transferable)!

Overall I am happy with how the project turned out although I feel there is still room for improvement. In future I will leave a lot more time for rigging and make sure the whole group checks every shot before they are rendered so that improvements can be suggested before it is too late to do anything. I will also spend a lot more time concentrating on lighting as it can improve the scene a lot more than people realise.