Animation Project: Masque of the Red Death

 I have started preproduction for "Masque of the Red Death" based on the story by Edgar Allen Poe. This has some new challenges for me such as there needs to be many more characters in some shots than usual. I keep it to three as a rule to not overtax my computer but since switching to Blender and having my MAC in 10 processor i9 with a good graphics card I feel I can push farther. For the crowd scenes I might use 2D characters for the background and have several 3D ones who can have more movement. I was hoping I could find some free or cheap medieval costumes but not much much so far. I will have to wing it. 

This image is the opening shot after the title sequence and when the narration will begin. It took a few weeks to design and put together despite using some great plugins to lessen the work load. HunGen for the bodies, Fire_fx for the bonfire, Auto building for the houses and castle, Alt tab easy fog 2 for the atmosphere, and Fauna sketcher to ad crows in the sky and flies (not visible in this shot, for the bodies. The fog rolls forward and the trees have a slight breeze blowing them. Depending on how the narration works out this could be several shots or one longer tracking shot. This is straight from Blender so there will be some colour grading etc in post eventually. 

One big challenge, other than my dumb debutant Blender mistakes, was placing the flickering light for the bonfire. making was easy enough but when I placed it in the bonfire it wasn't visible and the render time went up 4 times! I am using Eeevee to render as I did with my first Blender short "the Hound" as its pretty good now and getting better but also fast. This shot takes 30 seconds to render (with the light issue 20 minutes!)

Next step is the model the interior castle rooms where the story takes place. it's 7 rooms, identical save the last one but in different colours. I will need to learn to making some blood effects for this one and continue to work on getting better performances from my characters. Hopefully I can get together with the voice actor for the narration sooner than later as not having it slows down production. 

This was a suggestion from some people and I assumed the story was beyond my skills for years but I think I might succeed now and upon writing the script I realized it was not as long as I thought and got some good ideas on how to economize the plot to fit a short animated film. 

Poster: Earth VS the Flying Saucers

(Image was updated after getting some feedback)

 
Another in my sci-fi series of posters done with affinity designer and publisher. I watched it the other night and thought it would be a quick and simple project and it was. The saucers are pretty basic and the alien didn't have much detail. 

Animation: The Paranormal Challenge" Cesare the Somambulist

I got very sick recently so I couldn’t put too much more effort into this. As it’s a test to learn more Blender animation skills I would say it was a big help in seeing more that I need to know and will lead me to try some new things in future projects.

Outstanding issues:

• My first Blender animation (The Houund) was something I was very happy with, this one less so. I used Cycles to render over eevee because eevee was crashing my computer and it slowed things down a lot.
• I need much better facial controls I think I know how to get what I want using shape keys next time out
• I am no where near as comfortable with the Blender timeline and keyframe features as i was in Cinema 4D. It will be a challenge to get where i was before switching.
• I need to get a better handle on Blender lighting

Things I got a better hold on:

• Lip syncing, not there yet but i can see how to get there now
• Grouping and moving collections as one. Not happy with this really but I understand the limitations better.
• Planes with images using alpha channels. I had no idea how to do this in Blender and it’s working now so that is a big plus.

A second episode I am planning is a visit from Alistair Crowley who insists he is invisible. 

Illustration: Trinity Church reflected on Hancock Building

 

This was a longer term project... over 6 weeks. I am not sure how many hours but it was 40-50 maybe. I didn't realize until this was done that is part of a series of 3, really 5 that started in 1989. I original took a black and white photo of the reflection and then years later used it for a pen and ink drawing. In the drawing the reflected parts were all done with stipple work. I gave that drawing away. something I regret since I gave it to someone I no longer have any contact with. I don't even have a photo or photocopy of that drawing. Then I did a drawing of a crane reflected on the Hancock which was fast and easy. That encouraged me to to try a large one of the old John Hancock reflected in the new one. Then I sort of forgot I did all that until I came across the original photo and decided I should maybe redraw that illustration for myself. On a visit to Boston I took all new reference photos and then... forgot about it again! Finally I started but instead of a pen and ink I went full colour. 

This has about 20 layers, the window frames are on one, the interior lights we can see through the reflection are on another and then a couple for the sky etc. When It can time to paint the church I went window by window. Since each panel had 3-6 layers I had to merge them down as I went or maybe crash the iPad with literally 1000s of layers open. I would draw for a few hours and then look at the illustration overall and see I still have something like 87 window panes to do. I kept pugging away until finally it was done. 

Below is a closeup of the part of the drawing. A both complimentary and frustrating part of doing something like this is when I send it to anyone they think it's a photograph because they are almost always looking at it on a phone and never realize the work that went into it. The other image is the original 89 photograph. I could not get the exact angle matched up because there is a lot more stuff going on there now and that angle just wasn't available and other things were blocking the view. 

Games: Myst V: End of Ages (2005) developed by Cyan Worlds

 The end of the Myst series of games that moved from various versions of point and click to to full 3D navigation and replaced inserted actors with 3D characters. As far as the story goes its not complicated and I thought it made sense as it showed the negative effect that "writing worlds" had in the inhabitants of those worlds and what is the responsibility of those who create "ages". Visually, though not as dense and beautiful as previous games, it still have that Myst look though for games that, to me, hinge on exploration of created places it was lacking in details that expanded the places visited beyond story needs. I am not a fan of the computer generated characters, they were distracting looking and it's something cyan has not been able to really get a handle on. Their latest game Firmament suffered from many of the same issues, including FAR too much dialog and interruptions by characters into the game play. Their "comeback game" Obduction was much better, lots ot look at and discover even the game was done and used real actors in the character roles. 

The game relies, as did Myst 4 on too many confusing circular pathways, constantly going back and forth to do one simple thing to progress. Maybe people like that, I don't. Many of the ages in this game are good looking but i tink were limited by the free roaming aspect. Earlier games you could get into smaller spaces  and they had a lot more details for each age. 

Did I enjoy it. Sure it was fine. I am Myst'd out for the moment. I still have Uru to do which is the first time I will be playing it through as it was not available on Mac when it was an internet game. Because of it's early internet origins the graphics look pretty bad and the story seems to be a hodgepodge of stuff not used from other Myst games. Maybe it will change my life. Likely, it won't. I am much more excited to start getting into No Man's Sky as it looks great and I think will scratch my explore places bug. It has a no conflict mode and I'm all for that. 

Games: Myst IV Revelation, Cyan Games

 

Cyan finally remastered their older games to 64 bit and the updates were free on Steam so I can now finish playing them all, including Myst 5 and Uru which I never had a chance to play before. 

Myst 4 revelation is an odd duck in the series. While some of the visuals are as stunning as ever, the gameplay was a bit stale in places and the story wasn't as engaging as I would have liked. 

Visually, the game is pretty stunning considering it is still basically a point and click game. The different is  each node you click to has video overlays and the ability to pan around giving it gameplay ALMOST but not quite like some more modern 3D games. A lot of attention w s put in the details and designs and it shows. 

Gameplay and technically there are problems. The puzzles are sometimes just annoying and hard and don't advance the story much at all. The ability to figure them out on your own is not always possible, too much information is missing to make sense of some of it. Some of the puzzles need much more precision with the mouse and its just not there making it very frustrating even if you have something figured out. A couple of the worlds have mazes composed on pathways that are deliberately confusing and i you stop moving the mouse, the scenery will rotate on its own making it impossible to get a good sense of direction. 

At the end of the game I was literally minutes from solving the last part and could not move forward because I couldn't get to the a door. In the end I just watched a play through to see what I couldn't get to and it honestly wasn't that interesting. I would have felt cheated had I managed to get it working. 

I would still recommend playing it to see the environments and the creatures that are animated throughout. When it's works, there is a sense of a real place with lots of life. There is a lot less room to explore and discover little details that are not important to the plot but nevertheless make it an interesting place to hang out bus there was enough visual stimulation to keep me playing until I was unable to move forward anymore. 

Illustration: rue de la Visitation 04

 

Another house on the the way to my gym/pool. This was not in the best shape for a long time and a few years ago fell victim to fire. After the fire there was a major renovation that kept most of the original details and restored it to perhaps more than its former glory. 

This was a rare case I didn't hate the drawing until the end when it was near finished. It came along much more smoothly, thought slowly. Lots of bricks. I think before the fire it was all painted pink! 

Illustration: Lucky bats

 

I had a 1930s silk smoking jacket for years that eventually sort of rotted away. It was black with stylized gold Chinese bats on it and I thought it was the best thing ever. After I had to dispose of it I found myself wanting to reproduce the bat images but I didn't have any photos to work from. I thought the I had kept a swatch but if I did it's disappeared. The one photo of me in it is too far away to see any details. So every now and then I search the internet to see if anyone else had a similar jacket I could use for reference. Nope. So I decided to look at Chinese art and art inspired by Chinese art and make a series of drawings that might scratch this itch to reproduce these lucky creatures. 

I didn't really succeed, so much time has gone by I have only impressions left of what I wanted to draw. That said, I am still happy with the work and I'm sure these will be eventually useful somewhere. Maybe wallpaper in an animation or I would love to have embroidered versions added to a tuque or the top of some knitted gloves. I might add more details at some point and take them away from solely silhouetted images to something more decorative.

Poster project: Flash Gordon poster ( finished (?)

I did redraw much of Flash's face as I was very unhappy with it. I showed Ming to a couple people they really liked it a lot so maybe Flash suffered from being my first vector portrait as well as me giving into some of my worse tendencies like making him too pale, especially the lips. For the ship I used a 3D model I made combining several Flash Gordon designs. I used it as a special effects test years ago. I was able to position as I wanted for the poster and drawing it was fairly straightforward. 

Poster project: Flash Gordon poster - Ming The merciless

 I finished Ming and so far I think I like it... and of course, now I had the Flash portrait. I might start over or at least remake the eyes and mouth and see how that comes out. This one was going to have Ming's hands and his rings showing but I didn't want Flash, the focus of the poster to be a floating head and Ming to be more complete. I think Ming might have worked out better because he is much more of a cartoon with his heavy eyeliner and giant collar. The thing that really brought his face together when when I added the ears.