Sometimes there are shots that require models not used in any other shot. And they just happen to be very short, sometimes less than 2 seconds. You have to do all the models, textures and lighting that are not reusable for any other part of the film. In the end the time you spend per frame on the shot is well…. quite high.

Below is one of those shots from ‘Rhapsody with James’, visible for 46 frames…

I’m in the process of lighting, rendering and compositing all the shots in ‘Rhapsody with James’. It’s been quite some time since I’ve done any serious lighting so it took me a while to get used to the whole thing. I’ve been thinking how much will I render in 3d and how much will I solve in compositing. At first I thought I’ll do most of it in compositing and break it into as many layers as possible. Sounds good but at the end of the first shot I rendered I realized that to have this functionality things had to be much more automated so that layers/passes would be created on the fly and that’s an option I don’t have at the moment. So I took the middle road: I ended up with around 10-20 layers per shot which allows me to tweak things quite fine in compositing but if something is really off I still have to rerender things.

I approach lighting the same way as animation. I take a first pass at the whole film and then go through all the shots and make another pass instead of sticking with one shot and tweak that one to the end. The only difference is there will be much less passes/corrections than I did in animation since I’m focusing much more on animation than on lighting in this film. It’s also a good excuse because my lighting skills kinda suck these days.

Though things aren’t yet final for any shot that’s rendered I’m showing sort of work in progress of one of the bathroom shots.

Well more or less, I’ll still have to fix things that are only seen in rendering like objects intersecting, contacts, etc… Below is the final version of the sequence I’ve shown in blocking stages before: James coming home.

Now off to rendering & lighting!

I have finally finished texturing & shading of the main character – James. This is pretty much more or less how he’ll look in the film. I have used subsurface scattering for his skin to get a bit softer/fleshy look and simple texturing for everything.

This image has a few Photoshop touch ups here and there (besides the background) but otherwise it’s pretty much straight from the render.

The sets will have more or less the same style, maybe a bit more painterly textures but I’ll see about that later when I start rendering sets and shots.

The modeling is finally finished!

So now I only need to fix some animations here and there (minor stuff) and then it’s on to texturing & lighting. Yay!

Below are model images from another set from concept to final model.

I’ve been a bit lazy during the last month and haven’t posted any new info on what’s happening with Rhapsody with James.

In short I’ve managed to do some work on it (mostly in the last 2 weeks) but december was a bit slow for the film. Mostly because I was a bit sick for the first two weeks and the last two weeks were mostly family/friends time with the holidays and all that.

But things are back on track. I’ve managed to pretty much finish the modeling. Below is the bathroom model. I’ve also added the concept sketch so you can see how things changed here and there and give you a hint of colors.

I’ve been very busy lately by modeling the sets for ‘Rhapsody with James’. Below is the street set model. The buildings you see in the background are just placeholders for the matte painting and won’t be rendered. I’ll also probably change a few things here and there after I model the other sets, nothing mayor just to glue everything together.

Here’s another concept from Rhapsody with James. I’m basically just putting elements there to see how much needs to be modeled and how much can be painted. I’m not to keen on the mirror and the picture on the back wall so that one might be rearranged in the final film.

I’ve taken a bit of time off after I’ve finished Animation mentor. This means resting mostly. I was just too exhausted to continue by the same rate as I had for the last nine months.
I worked on Rhapsody a bit here and there though. Mostly planning what still has to be done in order to finish the film. This includes set design, modeling, some animation and lighting the whole film.

The animation is 90% finished which is cool. When I started animating everything that wasn’t essential for animation wasn’t build or there was only a box or sphere just to somehow show the environment. So right now I’m designing and modeling the whole environment and turning those boxes and spheres into proper models.
Below is a sketch of the street where James lives. I still have to do some detailed sketches of lamps, windows, doors, etc…so I can start modeling the set.

This one is just for fun. I had an idea for the poster image for my short film ‘Rhapsody with James’ and decided to do it when I’ll need a break from animation. So I did it here and there and finally put it together. The model doesn’t have any final textures or shading applied like it will have in the film, because I made just a simple render and then played with it mostly in Photoshop.

Though it was pretty much done for fun it’s also cool to see how the character will look rendered (well, kinda).

Enjoy!