28 August 2016

Pickman's Model - finished


Pickman's Model from Vincent-louis Apruzzese on Vimeo.

This went faster, much faster than Music of Erich Zann (which took 5 years to get done) but I think I managed to improve in several areas. The characters talk, there is depth of field in the shots and I think I boiled the story down to its essential elements. My voice is terrible, of course, but what can you do?

Problems still abound. The character modelling is not much more advanced than the last film, the rigging is better but still not where I think it should be. Texturing of the sets is fine but I am looking into a way to hand paint characters and objects with a software outside of Maxon's C4D Bodypaint which I have yet to get to work right.

Always so much to learn and improve!

27 August 2016

pendaison -hanging



I managed to quickly take some photos of some street acrobats, in poor lighting conditions, during the fierté celebrations in the village this year. The acrobats were much more "raw" in their presentation, using only a couple supports and their bodies so it was a change from the bigger productions I use for inspiration during "Montreal Complement Cirque".

Not sure I got the tension in his arms as well as I would like, but I wanted to concentrate more on his face and less on the body as I normally would for these things.

10 August 2016

Pickman's Model - well into production



I finally have some time to start animating my second Lovecraft inspired short, Pickman's Model, a follow-up of sorts to last year's Music of Eric Zann. My goals with these personal projects is to try out new things, or refine older techniques I have issues with. I still have problems making and rigging characters, but in this film they are slightly more advanced and actually talk. I worked out some of the rigging issues from last time but many still remain. I am hoping the next project will let me pin down for good a few snags I still have to deal with. This is the first personal project I am going outside Cinema 4D for the motion blur and depth of field, deciding to use plugins in After Effects instead. This saves me days of render time and as a one person studio with one iMac to render with (I can use team render with my laptop but find it buggy at best) I have to save time and simplify things as much as possible.

My good friend, Boston actor Micheal Z Keamy provides the voice of Thurber and I will try and voice Pickman myself. If that works out badly, I'll beg Mike Luce again like I did for Eric Zann. I am sort of saving that for my next project where I'd like him to be the main narrator again. Can't wear out my welcome on these vanity projects!

I am also deciding on wether or not to update to version 18 of Cinema 4D. If I get version 17 by the end of this month (1000$+ upgrade) I will get 18 free when it ships and not be 2 versions behind. If I had big contract coming up, I would do it in a heartbeat but since I live on so little money as it is and this update doesn't address much I haven't already addressed with plugins... it's not so black and white.