In Progres...

I was reminiscing today, looking over old projects, finished and unfinished. Our most ambitious film, PEARL, still lies unfinished waiting to be revived. A year ago, we tried to finish it in time for a film contest, but ended up not happy with the results and decided to push it aside for the time being. The problem with PEARL is that it features several minutes of total CGI rendered sequences in space. The opening 2 minutes features an attack on a space vessel from a dozen or so fighters and a couple larger attack vessels.



A sequence like that is generally done in a studio with a couple dozen animators, modelers, particle simulators, and compositors all working on separate scenes. At the time, I had only 6 months experience with 3DS Max and was just getting into learning the Afterburn plugin. I had created some test animations and explosions, and they were good, but the modeling needed some serious work.



After 9 revisions of the visual style of the ships and atmosphere between December of 2007 and August of 2008, we finally got something what we thought at the time was good enough to start filming. During filming, I started previsual work on the opening sequence which was 1:45 long. After about 16 revisions, the animation sequence was approved and then I started the final renders. In the end though, after it was completed, I decided that I hated it, and wasn't proud of it, and after a final cut was produced, we all decided that it was not good enough to finalize, so we put the project on the back-burner.

After a much needed hiatus after that, and now, two more projects finished, I feel like trying to conquer this once and for all. During the last year, I redesigned all the ships and the sequence entirely from the ground up and I feel that now something is possible which wasn't before. While the motivation hasn't creeped in yet, I'm still excited about the possibilities.