rigging

The cars are rigged using dummies. We had problems moving the cars with the biped sitting inside, but figured this rig out pretty fast. The top dummy moves everything and the four others controlles the wheels.

Still working on the previz!.. We have buildings with textures now and of course the road. The cars in their colours and wheels and rims. Not using any lighting here because we are just going to have regular sunlight. I rendered a picture for you to see how it looks.

previz work

Today I have done some modelling. And I finally remembered to record my work. I recorded myself making some tires and rims which we will be using on the cars.

I also made a hospital room for the hospital scene in the end of our movie. I played around with som cameras in the scene after that. This is just for the previz.

Meanwhile Philip has worked on the city outside.
We have both cars in the previz and he placed them on a simple road texture with some buildings with texture of a city landscape behind them.

details

Today I decided to do the final touches on my car model. Since we modelled the cars differently (Philip with many pieces, and I in one piece), I wanted to add some lines on the hood, door and back of the car like you can see on the picture. I did this to make it look more real and like philip's style of modelling, because I feel that it's important that the cars have the same style.

The cars look less plain and also add the feeling of reality instead of toy cars with these lines to separate the pieces. I made them by using chamfer twice on the edges and extrude the second chamfer in.

I also tried to find a good texture to the car and for the rims that would look good and also not have a lot of render time. The picture above took about 2 minutes and 30 seconds, and I think I captured the look I had in my head at least.

Floter help

Today me and Alf wrote a contract to Nicklas who is a floter this semester. We heard that he is very skilled when it comes to research, and decided to send him a contract.

In the contract we wrote that we wanted at least 8 images of different types of styles within the genre out short animation film, which is car racing. We have not discussed style alot, and need to focus on the previz this week because the deadline is near.

If everything goes well we will have different styles to choose from a week from now!

Modelling

In our film we have 3 vehicles. Philip is working on the Murcielago, Alf Ivar on the truck, and I have been working on the Mustang. Both me and Philip work in planes, but we did model the carsdifferently. Philip made his car in many parts, while I did the whole car in one piece.

This is my first time modelling a car, so I am pleased with the result. But I think making the car in many pieces is a better and easier way to model, because the mesh is harder to get clean in one piece.

I also made som tires and rims to see what it would look like, and also maybe include in the previz with the cars. I also made som lights to make it more alive and played around with textures

Meeting

On tuesday we had a meeting with Paul. He liked our animatic, but also said it was too long.

I will explain how.

The film of course have a start, middel and an ending. What we need to do is get some more shots in the beginning,and have fewer shots in the middel which is the car race. We need something like 5 more in the beginning tointroduce the characters more. Build op to the race and the tension. he also said we have too much beat in the songat the beginning.

For the middel part we need to shorten the film with about 30-40 sek. which I think is alot! But I also know thatsome of the shots in the animatic won't last as long in the previz we are about to make. During the storyboardprosess we had too few shots, so we added mostly in the middel. I guess we will get a much bigger perspective inthe previz.

Final Animatic

The final animatic- Check it out!

changes

When we showed our story we got som comments on some things to change. The banana peel one of them weresupposed to throw out of the car window is gone. it just don't fit with the style of the movie.We have replaced the banana peel with a hole in the ground that the car-tire drives into and the driver lose control.

We also had a discussion about the truck that they crash into at the end of the movie. Paul said we maybe couldreplace it with something more funny like an icecream truck. But in the discussion we still wanted to stay withthe truck we had.

Inspiration

I started to search for some 3d animated car films. I came over a movie that just blew my mind! I thought was perfect in so many ways. The reason I say I think it's perfect is because I can watch it again and again and talk about it alot. Which I have done with Alf and Philip, and they seemed to like it alot too!

It's about 2 years old now, but you wouldn't be able to tell! It's done by a Visual Effects company called Fxnine, and the animation itself is called Overdrive.

Chech it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiz7pfuCayM

What I love the most about this film is the camera angles and movements. They are the main focus and i love it.We have not talked much about style yet, but I am a big fan of the textures on these cars because they shineand reflect so nice. That's also the main reason I wanted the race to be during daytime! So the cars can shinebeautifully in the sunlight!

That film is very straight forward with racing. No special story or funny moments. So I guess I can say that wewant a movie like that! Only with characters and some humour;)

Starting scene inspiration:

We ended up having our starting scene in a road cross instead of the bar where the two friends would startcompeting by playing dart and have some dialog. We went away from that idea because it was too much to model really.
The road cross idea came to me through a short movie I saw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNMCu8J7iCA

I really like the idea that one of them just shows up and wants to race. I think just by filming them lookingat eachother with different facial expressions is a great way to get to know the characters and their differences.The car that pulls up is superpsyched about racing while the other one is more calm and tries to ignore but can'tresist when the light turn green.