Sintel, the Durian Open Movie ProjectSince my last post and over the holidays I have mostly been working on smaller things which I didn’t even think it worth posting about, some of these were requested for specific tasks, others were just for fun. Recorded 5 videos, read on for the other 3.
And before you ask, all this is in the public subversion builds.
Shape Key Transfer
Grease Pencil Depth
Well, not so much a new plan but a fleshing out of the plan Ton has been busy working with. Yesterday we had our first Monday kick off meeting for the year with the team at almost full strength again after the holiday season and Ton went through the effectively complete production schedule. We all knew it was tight before hand, but seeing the project all accounted for and blocked in was for me at least a very key moment to get my head around things. A lot of discussion followed during the day on everything from different tools needed for scenes, when certain major landmarks in art assets and code should be reached, who was taking ownership of which segments and so on. Normally I’m not a fan of lots of discussion, especially when we have a whole lot to do in limited time but it was good to nut a lot of these things out. Helps in both mentally planning and even in gaining a bit more confidence to get on with the tasks at hand. Now that we have the concept art, script, storyboard edited in animatic form, a full schedule and Colin working on the ‘layout’ for the film – (effectively a roughed in animation with camera placements in the proxy scene) we are invincible!
Ok, just better organised than we were.
Better get back to work, but the team has been up to some cool stuff so expect more posts soon. 🙂
Hope you are off to a flying start this January! Even if that means making the most of your local beaches / ice skating rinks.
– Ben
I’ve just made quick screenshots of the lone soldiers here… they’re still at work, but in 30 minutes I’ll get the beer, Lee gets the playing cards and we’ll have some old fashioned fun. Then Angela arrives too, and we go to our favourite thai – even open this evening for us – and around 23.30 I take everyone into town to watch Amsterdam explode at midnight!
On behalf of the entire Durian crew, I wish everyone here a totally amazing & happy new year! New chances, new opportunities!
-Ton-
(Soenke, Nathan, Lee, Ben, Campbell, Oliebollen).
I’ve felt my progress being slower than I’d like it since getting here, one reason being my texture reference library. Usually I would select some photo reference as a base for a texture, blend some stuff together and then continue painting and tweaking the image textures from there. The problem with my library thus far is that it is a mix of free images and image packs I’ve purchased. Seeing as everything used to create the film ends up on the DVD’s as well – it makes sense that we use or make our own Creative Commons material to keep things simple.
Rather than sift through my lousy folder structure to figure out what parts of my existing library are ok, it’s just easier to take a bunch of new photos. Soenke has a nicer camera but for reference mine is ample so I thought I’d get into it today. Fortunately Amsterdam is a city with history and a range of weather so I only had to walk outside my apartment to start taking photos of weathered surfaces. A couple of quick small samples – my camera is 6 megapixel, so obviously the real ones are bigger.
We are all very happy to announce we’ll get another Blender artist to work in Amsterdam! Jean-Sebastien is well known in the Blender community as X-warrior, posting amazing graphics and animations already for years. His expertise in managing complex and big environments are going to be very welcome here.
JS will finish his current work in Montreal first, and flies in the weekend of January 23rd 2010.
Let me also wish everyone on the blog a Merry Christmas! Things slow down here now a bit, with only the Aussies staying over during the holidays. Oh, and me! We’ll do an indoor Barbie or so! 🙂
Laters,
-Ton-
Sintel, stage 2 model
Sintel’s 2nd modeling stage is completed. Sculpting finer details will follow.
notes: Scale of measurement for Durian, 1 Blender unit = 1 meter. Geometry pieces of hair/eyelashes are temporary and will be replaced with hair particles.
Here’s the .blend
Happy Holidays! 🙂
– Angela
Good afternoon, blog! How’s it going?
Thanks everyone for your comments and for keeping tabs on us. We even appreciate unreasonable criticism! Here’s a little update from the studio:
Didn’t get a chance to interview Nathan, Soenke or Brecht, but next time around I’ll be in their faces!
–Colin
