Documentation Work

Title:
The Fallen Hero

Synopsis:
A playful kid encounters a super-terrestrial being with extraordinary powers and decides to play a prank.

Story:
This is a 3D computer animated short movie showcasing a fallen celebrity in a parallel universe as a superhero desperately trying to regain popularity, in this case trying just a bit too hard to please the wrong crowd. In our story, a playful kid encounters this extraterrestrial being with extraordinary powers when playing by himself in a deserted park and decides to take advantage of his "kind" nature of coming to the rescue.

Our hero first arrives to the situation assuming he is desperately needed, from his aerial perspective, the kid seemed injured. When he arrives he discovers that the kid is fine and perfectly healthy. As our hero inspects the child he discovers a few bandages on his hand and goes decides to exaggerate the situation to convince the child he is in need of desperate medical assistance from our super hero.

The child soon discovers this hero's kryptonite and decides to play a prank on him for his own personal satisfaction. The prank convinces our hero that the child is in fact seriously injured and unconscious in need of immediate CPR. As our hero starts to perform the procedure the child surprises him with a devilish scream. Our hero having a weak heart and not being able to handle the excitement falls to his demise.

Artists statement:
Our work is a short computer animated movie animated using Maya 8 showcasing a fallen celebrity as a superhero desperately trying to gain popularity, in this case trying just a bit too hard to please the wrong crowd. Our celebrity figure encounters a child who he assumes is in need of desperate medical attention, he tries to convince the child to fly away with him to safety but things don’t go so smoothly in the end for our fallen celebrity.

Creators biography:
Both Asim and Ferry are aspiring 3D artists who love creating ficitional characters in interesting environments. Asim loves to take a project from concept to productiondrawings from various art forms. Ferry uses his love of comic books to bring forward his ideas and concepts. Both work well together as a team combining a level of perfectionism with comical humor. Both graduates are looking towards a career in the Computer Animation industry and hope to work on Feature length films in the near future.

Contact info:
• Asim Zaidi (asim@b4ng.com)
• Ferryanto Tantono (befat20@hotmail.com)

Credits:
Special Thanks to Shervin Shahidi

Image Arts Faculty (Ryerson University)
• Edward Slopek
• James Warrack
• Ira Nayman
• David Green
• Kathleen Pirrie-Adams
• Galen Scorer

Sheridan College Institute of Tech.
• Mark Simon

Websites:
• http://www.fallenhero-short.com
• http://3d-short.blogspot.com

Documentation video:
To view video, please click here.

Show is over, FallenHero-Short.com launched, Toronto Star

The show is finally over, I'm not sure how man people even got a chance to see the project on opening reception since we were located on a floor with very little activity, we managed to move to the first floor on the last day. We are still getting back into our normal routines now that the show is over so not much detail will be posted on it until later in the week, first I must finish my 3000 word essay.

We will be posting the short movie online at fallenhero-short.com this week for everyone to see so keep checking back for it.

Our short also got a small mention in this Toronto Star article, it's early in the beginning.

12:00AM in RCC, 4 days till show time

MJ takes over the entire lab...

Here is another progress update straight from our computer lab in RCC where we have been spending many long nights. Tonight is our second camp out night as we are going to work straight through the night to get a lot done. So far we have gotten several scenes rendered in the past 2 days thanks to the 20 something computers in here. We have also gone through several cups of coffee and thai food. We still have to finish off some difficult scenes which Ferry has been concentrating on while I keep on rendering everything. Of course we still need to edit the video and add sound, will we finish.....anything can happen, who knows this may turn into a 4 day camp-out. For now I leave you with some short footage and pictures from the lab.

Watch a quick 11 meg movie of us working here.

A render

Mmmm..loove me...

Photos:

Ferry taking a quick nap

Me and MJ

10 days before the show

Wow, we have been working at this so hard now just to make sure we finish and we finish with something we can live with to show at the upcoming New Media show. We have been in the lab pretty much all of last week and are going to be camping out in there most of this week and the coming weekend as its our last chance to get things done before the show. So far we have had a lot of Maya crashes and corrupt files, had to start from scratch several times, but managed to pull it off. We have approximately 1 minute animated and I am guessing another minute to go which we HAVE to finish this week. At the same time we are going to start doing overnight renders in the lab using the 20 something computers to our disposal. We have our opening scene ready to render for tonight and it's looking really good thanks to Ferry's persistence and my direction :)

Anyone interested in watching the short and seeing other new media projects can drop by 122 Bond St, downtown Toronto, it is going to run from March 22-24th.

Progress Work: The Beginnings Animated

So I managed to get our first few seconds of animation done. This 4 second animation (click here to view) is part of the intro where MJ is flying by in the distant while Billy is faking his dead below. This is going to be inserted into the final render in post production which is why You cannot see anything but the dark figure. I think this took 5 hours...and it looks better than it is after I applied the motion blur :)

Progress Work: Creating the set, lighting

Well, I am starting to set up the actual set. I have been playing with the three point lighting system that Shervin drew out for me last week. This is how far I have gotten, I threw the funk pose in for fun. The lighting is not where I want it, nor is the bg colour but I will get it closer by Monday. In the meantime enjoy the high render above!

Progress Work: MJ-Rigging the face, test animations

I finally got some decent updates to show. I went back and re-rigged the entire character with a better bone setup than before, now he moves properly. I got some test animations done for the facial blend shapes, I still have to make the eyebrow and eyelid blends. I also got half a walk cycle going, checkout the videos below.

View Facial Blend Shape Test
View Walk 1 | Walk 2

Progress Work: Fun Wallpaper!!!

I just figure that since I have to create some poses for both characters, might as well make wallpapers out of them ^_^.

So here they are, they're 1280x768 (specifically designed for widescreen monitor) in resolution. If you wanted them in different resolution please feel free to contact me.

Progress Work: Billy's Walk Cycle

This is a .mov file of Billy's walk cycle that I've created for today's presentation. Any comments is welcome. Enjoy.

The file is 4MB in size so if you have a slow connection, please be patient. Thanks.

• Billy's Walk Cycle

Progress Work: Pose Animation

I know I haven't been updating for the past week but due to some family issues I had to be sidetracked from the project but I was away for most the time I did manage to render pose animation for both characters. Here they are, ENJOY!!!

PS: The files are 3MB each so bear with it if you have a slow connection.

• MJ Pose
• Billy Pose

Progress Work: MJ Body Rig Done

Well, it's not the greatest...Shervin pointed out modeling mistakes that would have made the rig come out better, but it's animation ready finally. I forgot the hair, I will insert it back tomorrow. Textures of course are default at the moment, we haven't polished anything in that area yet. Tomarrow I will get the face expressions done so there is more life to this character, I am sure I can get some sort of animation up this weekend, stay tuned. And yes he has 3 fingers...

Where are we this week? Jan 22

I haven't updated for a bit for good reason. I have had a fair number of setbacks. I started getting into face rigging and was making progress however when I showed my MJ model to Shervin yesterday he spotted a few problems that needed correction. My character IKs were messed up and I have to now go back and do the body rigging again to get it working right. Also we are now presenting our work in progress on Jan 30th, and I am afraid we wont have our first bits of animation to show for that day as Ferry has not started rigging yet. Hopefully I can re-rig the character quickly and get back to the face rigging and get this character moving a little before the end of this week. The rest falls on Ferry...

Progress Work: Rigging a perfect shoulder

I got to talk to Shervin again today, thank god I did. As usual I had to go back a step which meant all my hours cursing at my computer this weekend were a waste. Shervin provided some AWESOME tips that really helped in doing some good rigging today, "ALWAYS ADD never subtract". Following these wise words of Shervin wisdom I went back and adjusted the skeleton and started re-rigging MJ today. It's 2 am and I got the perfect shoulder movement done in 1 hour so I am sure I can now move much faster and get a fully rigged character by tomarrow night if I work straight through Ed's class. All of you who do character RIGGING, you are true masters...Now I know how hard it is!

Progress Work: Billy The Kid (Textured Ver. 2)

Ah... This is a rendered version of Billy The Kid using a better graphic card. I'm not sure if you guys notice any difference in it but I did update the model slightly and change a few texture. So let's play "Find The Difference"!!!

I should be done with Billy's texturing now. Its off to rigging for me which will be a total PAIN as Asim had mentioned :(.

Progress Work: Rigging MJ, Painful

No he's not screaming.

Remember Murphy's law? "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong". That's exactly what happens during the rigging stage, everything goes wrong. This is the part that I HATE the most. If there is anything its rigging I hate because you can spend hours and things still won't work out right. So far I've managed to correct most of the distortions to get MJ animation ready. Unfortunately I was not able to meet my test walk cycle due date for this weekend. Sigh! Season premiere of 24 was on.

I need a lot of Shervin's help in class Monday, hopefully he can help me correct alot of the little things that are bugging me alot and I can move onto a walk cycle tomarrow night. As long as Ferry's character is UV Mapped correctly we can have him start rigging tomarrow in class. It's sad really, I am taking Shervin's class without getting the credit, I need that class so bad. Oh well...

Progress Work: Billy The Kid (Textured)

This is the textured version of Billy the Kid. I'm going to post a cleaner and better graphic of him tomorrow. It seems like my computer at home didn't have a powerful enough graphic card to produce the maya rendering I desire.

Progress Work: Updated Billy with a Touch of Magic

What can I say? Wasn't this much better than it originally was? Once again KUDOS to Asim!!! I'll start texturing it today and hope to meet the due date on Saturday. In the mean time, enjoy the render images above ^_^.

Progress Work: First Look at Billy The Kid in 3D

First of all, let me tell you guys that I'm alive and well. And second, KUDOS, to Asim who applied his magic touch to the Michael Jackson face which I had created and turning it 100 times better than it originally is. You're SUPERB!!! Loved the whole costume too!!!

Putting that aside, this is the first progress work we'll be showing of Billy The Kid in 3D ^_^. This is the basic model that I've created and awaiting for Asim to apply his magic touch (again) to make him better. Than it'll be down to texturing him which we've already predicted should be done by Saturday.

We've also been assigned for our next presentation which is scheduled to be on January 23rd which is in less than 2 weeks. We've decided that by that presentation we'd like to have at least finished the first scene of the movie to be presented in class to get feedbacks about it. So we'd have to get both characters ready (created, textured and rigged) by that time.

Overall Update: Week of Jan 8th

I got a chance to talk to Shervin this week and got some tips on how to add more life to the character with textures. I also learned that I UV Mapped my character in high res and should go back and do it in low poly form. That took out 2 days, but the character is now UV Mapped in low poly. The UV Mapping is simple to start with, I didn't do proper stitching for areas we wont even apply detailed textures to, my main concern was the face and chest so I spent more time on those maps and setting them up. Maya's UV Texture editor is just a PAIN to work with. Tonight I am going to add any final adjustments to the face and mouth maps and move onto rigging the character for animation. I will skip detailed texturing for now as I feel it is more important for us to have maximum time to animate. I could spend weeks on just texturing but we don't have that sort if time. Our characters are also stylized and not hyper-real so I won't get into texturing till we are ready to render our first scene. Ferry's character model is coming along he is a few steps behind me but he can catch up when I move on to lighting and setting up our set location for shots. I want to still stick to my goal of having atleast a walk cycle done this weekend. This week is running on 6 hours of sleep and lack of GYM time, which sucks...

Progress Work: Some new hair?

I spent a good day on the eyes because I really wanted them to be alive. I found this free 5 hour online video tutorial "Creating Believable Eyes" here and decided to give it a try. The outcome is a lot better than what I had before. The character looks more alive. Also, I think the character would look more believable with the longer hair MJ always has rather than something tied up. I decided to give a stylized cartoon look a try, it still needs to be stitched and smoothed but I think it is a lot better. I am going to meet up with Ferry tomorrow to catch up on progress, if we both can agree on this hair I will start rigging. I need to ask Shervin tomorrow if how to make the skin look more skin-like and alive, and the proper material characteristics for the costume, belt, and boots. So far it's coming together and by next weekend I want to have the first walk cycle completed. At this point, sleeping is not an option and coffee is going to be my best friend.

Tomorrow's goal = rigging, wish me luck on this painful journey...Oh and click the image above for a high res version, it looks nicer.