Done (again) with Gorgeous Knight

Finally done with the last scene of "Gorgeous Knight", and now it's really done as the premiere date of the film has been set to October 15th! The film hinged on the final scene that needed to be completed, a car chase scene.

For those that don't remember, "Gorgeous Knight" is a film shot entirely with over 30,000 pictures instead of actual film. The producers reached out to about 50 design artists and animators (including me) to create the motion using the photos for the film. However, the car chase scene was originally done by other animators a few weeks ago but they didn't like the outcome, so they asked me to take on this last scene for the film.

The next two and a half weeks I built a CG city, complete with traffic, and animated a car chase throughout the busy streets. With all the car and building and other models like a train, the project file in Cinema 4D turned out to be about 270mb, my largest project to date.

With ambient occlusion, a sun array for soft shadows, and hundreds of reflections it took about 57 hours to render out 35 seconds of animation across 6 shots. Then about 6 hours in After Effects to position lights, lens flares, camera shakes for violent motion, a unique design style, explosions, and a dramatic hero shot in the middle of the chase.

About halfway through the building and designing of the city and chase animation I started to lose focus. There were days in which I didn't even touch my computer, luckily the producers put a hard deadline in front of me and I forced myself to complete and meet it. I didn't have to meet the deadline, I was doing this scene for free anyways (all my work on Gorgeous Knight has been pro-bono).

But once the animation started rendering out and I got my glimpse of the final animation, I knew it was worth it. The hero shot alone was totally worth it, everything worked the first time surprisingly with no re-renders and fixing scenes after I had finished the first render. There are a few mistakes in the animation, but using some camera trickery; frame movement, and heavy camera shakes, I was able to create something fast paced, violent speed and overall epic.

The producers were extremely pleased with the results, and with the completion of this scene the film is finally done! Check out the Facebook page for the Gorgeous Knight film! I, alone, designed several key shots, including the opening cinematic titles.

So excited to finally see this film come about!

New Beginnings

Two weeks ago we finally moved out of our extremely cramped one-bedroom condo. And we moved into a 3 bedroom town-home. Needless to say, the extra space is intimidating. Considering I've lived in one bedroom apartments for the past 11 years (Sharing a 3 bedroom apartment with 2 roommates is the same thing), it really feels like home to me, but it also feels like it doesn't really exist... if that makes ANY sense :)

I come home from work, which is a really comfortable 5 minutes from home, and park in my garage (first time EVER parking in a garage), it really feels natural. What is really unnatural is my new office. The bigger of the two extra bedrooms is what my wife refers to as my "Man Cave", she even got me a sign to hang on the door. To me, it's my office. A "Man Cave" is something a man can come into and relax, watch a movie, play video games, watch the "big game" on a big TV screen and not have to worry about being too loud.

This room is not that. It's an office. A place where I can come and not be interrupted while I work on video/animation and be isolated from the rest of the house. I'm not used to being isolated, so I've found myself actually spending less time at the computer. Unfortunately that has also meant that work has not been getting done, so I've had to force myself to go in there and continue working.

Because of the move, my wife has had to quit her job. It was inevitable anyways because of the baby on the way, but it wasn't supposed to happen until February 2012. So the extra income of freelancing has instantly turned from fun extra change, to a necessary second job. It's still fun though, I'm enjoying the variety of work I'm working on at the moment, but it's feeling more like a chore now than an extracurricular hobby.

I love the potential of the office though, I've got tons of space to store my equipment and a nice big blank wall for a green screen and testing special effects, something I never had available until now. But it is taking a while to get completely settled in to see that.