New VFX and Workflows... No Longer Necessary.

New film I am working on "Just Add Water", the last scene is huge VFX wise.  It originally involved some fancy camera tracking, CGI water animation, and some character animation.  All of these would be my first real production use of new workflow and programs.  As my excitement (and frustration) increased, the scene gradually decreased in complexity (for time and story's sake) but my realization of this didn't come until today (5 days after filming).

Several days of trying to animate and render CGI water ended in frustration and I was at my wits end to find the "solution" to the problem.  I was desperately trying to find import/export settings to work with each other to successfully transfer models and animation between Cinema 4D (modelling and animation) > Maya (Realflow Export plugin) > Realflow (animating and generating water, splash, foam, mist) and then back to Maya for final rendering composite and then compositing the final footage in After Effects.  Getting caught up in inconsistent settings and metric conversions and excruciatingly long simulation times, I really wanted this to work.

But it finally hit me today, it's all unnecessary.

I came up with a new simple workflow; using a few displacement maps, some positional tracking, a few water splashing assets and some photos positioned in 3D space... all in After Effects.  There might need to be a 3D model, but certainly no character animation, and exporting Cinema 4D > After Effects is a breeze.

I like to think I'm a good problem solver when it comes to visualizing working through FX shots, but I just shake my head at just how long it took me to get it.

Maybe I need a break, well that's what this vacation weekend is for!

One finished, another begins

Gorgeous Knight is finally finished!  The film is going through the final touches as we speak, still no exact ETA when it will be shown, but it's all up to the editors and sound crew to make the final adjustments.  Here's a list of scenes that I worked on for the film, in no particular order.

• Final death scene (stop motion)
• Reunite scene (stop motion)
• Escape scene, final shot (stop motion)
• Where's Gorgeous? Locale zoom in/out animation (street to earth to street)
• Opening Chase scene, Jeep fitted with missiles - CG
• Opening Chase scene, missiles firing and destroying an suv.
• Opening Chase scene, final shot with rubble, debris, smoke and fire (motion tracked)
• Gorgeous Knight opening title sequence

As soon as the film can be viewed online I will post a link to the video as well as times for the vfx that I worked on.

And in other news, I got a call from Manny at Fusion Radio yesterday, very surprised to hear back from him. Fusion has been getting bigger and bigger and they just purchased their next door building to be used as a studio.  And they want me to direct and produce an interview/documentary on the band "The Japanese Popstars", this is something that I've been wanting to do for a looooong time.  Short documentaries with music and digital flare... totally my style!  I've also been wanting an excuse to create a new animated intro for this kind of film, I absolutely love the minimalistic yet sexy look of BBC One's Formula 1 graphics when they first introduce the circuit.  I want to take that and turn it into Fusion style.  Because of the work involved (also will be using all my equipment) they are going to pay me $300 to put it all together.  Cheap I know, but it's a start and better than nothing!

The small problem is that the interview is July 8th, the week after my vacation weekend and right smack in the middle of hopefully finalizing the film "Just Add Water" with Paul.  That will be our 4th film for the Land of Lincoln Credit Union's film contest, and has nothing to do with ancient debates or fancy portals! ;)