After the pitch.

After the chat, it seems that there's only really one interesting element of it all. The fight itself. Everything else is pretty much secondary, but when push comes to shove, if it doesn't look as good as it's animated, it'll kinda fall through.

I'm a little worried that may be the case, but a few things brought to my attention have given me both hope and direction.

1. Jackson has informed me that there is a way to simply place a Maya object in After Effects. This will effectively allow me to seamlessly work with the characters and bridge at the same time, making the animation process easier and quicker too.
2. Justin is totally up for some Choreography and acting. He wields a staff just like Zhuang does, has a similar build (legs that are almost needlessly long) and he is easy to get a hold of, since he randomly appears at my house whenever he feels like it.
3. Justin also knows a few Chinese guys for voice acting, so looking for talent has a few new options rather than posting it up in Uni.

So here is my new to-do list:

• Re-do the character sheets for both characters, since the bow leggedness has become less apparent, and Zhuang has changed completely.
• Make tests to recreate a canvas look.
• Re-do the bridge to make it more artsy, and experiment with placing said bridge into After Effects.
• Get the storyboard finalized, especially the choreography and key elements of the fight scene.  Since the bridge may become thinner, heavy planning is required.
• Script it.
• Create a document that looks into fight Choreography, and its evolution.

I plan to spend Monday evening and Tuesday day filming some choreography and making a start with animating towards the final week of Christmas (since the next few weeks will be focused upon my seminar and visual effects), hopefully making sure the fight itself is finished towards the end of weeks 13 and 14.

Really, I'm not making anything truly ground breaking or original, but I never fancied myself an artist. I prefer to be an entertainer...

OOOOoooooooooooohhhhhh stuff

Okay, as added in my presentation, I have a few ideas for the overall look of the damn thing. Of course, I'm already working on alternate ways of rendering the background and sky, rather than the mahooooooosive sphere in Maya which pretty much messes with the resolution of the picture. This is mostly making a 'fog' effect, which may hide the length of the bridge, but in return will probably discard the need for said massive sphere, as the background can be added and moved in after effects.

The canvas effect will essentially be masked over in Final Cut (or After Effects, whichever is easiest) and the characters are flash animated separately from the background and bridge.

Pitch Tiem :D

Ok, I've worked enough on the main meat of it all, so it's time to make it all coherent enough to reference for my pitch.

Concept: Honor, spirit, and friendship arising from fierce battle

Reason: To put all my strengths into a finished piece, thus creating a fluid and high quality animation that could pave the way for later development on a grander scale. It will also bring out my strongest animation ability, while allowing me to touch up my weaker aspects.

Outcome: An exciting, hyper-kinetic animation with a nice twist as apposed to 'two warriors fight to the death', which blends a stylized 3D environment with traditional animation, allowing for real life movie techniques such as motion blur and complex camera movement.

Method: Environment will be rendered in Maya, using custom textures to make it seem hand drawn (as apposed to the system-heavy toon functions), characters and other elements will be animated in flash, then exported as GIF files. Both elements will be brought together in After Effects, where the hand drawn part will be fused with the 3D and tweaked with various effects and motion tracking. The final edit will be in Final Cut Pro.

References: Vast amounts of martial arts films, friends and freerunners that can be used for reference and second opinions.

Characters:

 

Basic Story: Hao, a mild mannered martial artist is crossing the Hong bridge when he notices Zhuang walking the opposite direction. They meet, and stop a fair distance apart, and Hao looks at Zhuang's spear, held upon his back and taking up the full length of the bridge. Zhuang looks up, aloof and somewhat irritated, and Hao politely asks to pass by, which Zhu responds to with an uppity 'no'. Hao tries to negotiate how he'd get past, but Zhu makes many excuses as to why Hao cannot pass, then orders Hao to go back on himself. Hao kindly refuses, then Zhu puffs up and threatens him. Hao tries to walk by, but is attacked. He decides there is no choice but to fight, and they do, spectacularly. Both men are as fierce and as talented as the other, but Hao manages to switch past Zhu. Zhu lunges, but Hao signals him to stop. He looks over his shoulder and realizes that they had passed. With that, Hao bows and thanks Zhu for the good fight, which is met with hearty laughter and equal respect. Both men turn and continue their journeys.

Time: 2 minutes approx.

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Now I just have to scan in the character sheets and finish the storyboard, then make a few micro animations, as well as test textures. Long week ahead.

Tuesday 23rd - 2:50pm

More Thoughts

So I started thinking about the execution. I'll have to heavily storyboard the project, since I've started to think that maybe masks and tracking would be a better option rather than putting the 2D into Maya. Not just because it is very system heavy, but Maya has a nasty thing where you must project the image onto a shape, which means that fixing the shape to a camera can make the movement of the characters difficult.

With this in mind, it may be best to just animate the characters with a rough BG and then move the 3D model camera around according to the storyboard to make it fit the characters. Thank Christ I have a second screen to reference from now...

 

Here are some quick sketch ideas for the background and environment. I'll probably go for a painted background and filter all the final video onto a white parchment style texture to make everything seem like a painting. It will be minimal colours since my focus is on the animation itself, so if I have time towards the end, I'll add light dashes of colour to the scene to give it a tad more depth. Otherwise, it will be very black and white.

I'm starting to become very excited with this project now. I'm quite willing to say that this may very well be my best work yet...