Project Forlorn

Not much has changed since last post, other than general progress.  The environment for Episode I continues to be tweaked and added to, with dust particles and adjustments to color and fog and lighting.  Even this image is out of date compared to tweaks I made today. In the last few weeks I also modeled and textured the newest character.  He's a weird little thing, and I think I won't showcase him much as to not spoil the surprise.  Animation is so close to beginning.  All that's left now are a pile of skeletons, which requires some design and layout.  Hopefully it proves a simple task.

So Christmas break was nice.  I traveled home, saw some sights, ate some food, got a bad cold, didn't sleep at all, and watched like 3 seasons of Schitt's Creek .  I then returned home, with a week of nothing but free time in which to sink into this project.  And sink I did.  Last I had posted I had come to the conclusion that there's no reason to not give this project everything I can, and I had began blocking out the exterior environment for the film.  I had began putting the pieces together for this set in the fall of 2018, but during the holiday break last year I found it too daunting a task for just one person.  But this year, with renewed focus and a plan for putting the pieces together, I began to work.  For the last week I have been modeling and UVing and texturing and importing, and I'm happy to say that the second environment (the first "final" environment), is now complete. The idea is that this city, dubbed internally as 'Lacrymosa', i...

So I've been doing my fair share of travelling these last few weeks, and while on said travels I've been thinking a lot about the project.  A quick recap of what's happened first.  This time last year Forlorn was a considerably bigger endeavor, with a half dozen characters and multiple sets.  Seeing the task laid out ahead of me, I realized it would be too much and shelved it for a few months.  But after getting some things in order I decided to take what I had made, put together a couple more things, and make a quick showcase of the idea that, while not the full version, represented the tone I wanted to go for, and it would just be something nice for my reel.  By the end of that minute long short, I decided I didn't want to stop there anymore, and ramped the short back up.  The scale, however, would still be truncated.  But as I began to work on what was Episode I, a concern washed over me.  My original story was solid, full of set ups and pay of...

To quote that magician from Frosty the Snowman, "Busy busy busy".  That's right, it's the winter season, and being as such I've grown increasingly busy with many things, including this project.  But fret not, for over the holiday weekend I made great strides.  Episode I is now completely prepped and ready to go.  All props are modeled and textured and rigged, and animation has officially begun.  Feast your eyes on this plain and innocuous still frame of an in progress shot! I imagine I'll be able to finish this shot before Christmas.  I'm hoping to make a lot of forward momentum during the holiday break, I might be able to put a serious dent in this episode by the beginning of 2020.

This week I did some more revisions to the hair.  The look of Kaelis was another one of those things that kinda came to me suddenly.  I wanted the character to have short hair, for several reasons.  One was that the personality of the character I had in mind wouldn't want to deal with long hair, and the other is that a character with a helmet shouldn't have long hair for practicality purposes.  If a character were to take off their helmet only to have long, silky smooth hair underneath, it would be difficult to make it seem sensible without it being overly comical. This was another concept piece drawn by my soon to be wife.  It was one of several quick sketches, but this one captured what I envisioned perfectly.  With the costume and face locked in, we worked on a few more colored sketches together to lock in the specifics.  The design of her face was a combination of features from various Mexican athletes. I also decided to go with red as he...

After working on the face rig for the past few weeks, I've gotten less and less pleased with the way I did the main characters hair.  One of my art directions for this series is that there is no fur or hair, and all of it is modeled.  The fur on the angel's cape, for instance, is all textured in.  For Kaelis's hair, my original idea was to model it all as one solid piece, in sort of a clay model kinda style.  I wanted to avoid anime hair or anything like that.  So I made the character's hair when I modeled her, but since she's wearing a helmet in the first 2 episodes I shelved it until now.  Technically I still have another episode to make where she's still got her helmet, but I felt compelled to figure it out now. Looking at the hair in unreal, I found it to be just sorta okay.  It was acceptable for the style when lit and rendered, but it lacked a certain something.  And if I was thinking that, then normal people will probably look upon it wit...

I'm quite thankful I had some time this week to sit down and hammer out the layout for Episode I.  I have daylight savings time to thank for that.  These last few weeks have been a whirlwind of personal events, and in a good way.  Wrap parties, meeting old friends, helping out on old projects, exciting new work, the list goes on. Oh, and I got engaged!  That's very exciting, if I do say so myself. The layout for the first episode wasn't too much trouble.  What will be interesting is how it will come together with animation.  A lot of the angles and the timing of the scene overall will come down a lot to how the animation turns out.  Normally I'd rough in the animation, if it were a normal professional project, but since it's just me I can block in the camera to have something to animate to and call it a day.  So the good news is I'm now at the animation stage once again.  I plan on making 2 small props and some stuff first, but I don't an...