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Short Film:
'A Hero Book In The Making'

 

| A Hero Book In The Making | 3D intro segment | the full animatic |
| Planning | Props | Environments | Characters | Rigging |
| Facial Rigging | Animation | FX | Lighting and Rendering | Comp |
Completed in-house by Stanley Watt. All original work, except where indicated otherwise.

'A Hero Book In The Making'

An animated short

This story interweaves instructions on how to make a Hero Book with a tale about a young man named Tiger.

I completed the full 15-minute-long animatic in 2007, which has been put to use by REPSSI together with their Hero Book training materials.

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'A Hero Book In The Making'

3D intro segment

in 2010, I completed a 3-minute-long introductory segment of the story using Softimage, which completed the project for the time being. It wasn't possible to complete the entire film due to limited funding. The completed animatic was used as the functional training product.

 

 

 


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The full animatic

   The full animatic for the movie (in two parts).

   Part 1

   Part 2

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Preproduction

Making the movie...

Planning

 

 

 

Storyboard, audio, and animatic.

 

 

 

 

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Production

 

Props

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A few rigged props.
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Environments

 

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Characters

I look forward to spending more time at character design, development, and rigging in future.

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To move.

Rigging

Rigging was built using the Softimage Character Development Kit as a starting point. There was an integrated rig for tool manipulation, and an animation-mixer-driven rig for finger posing. The faces were also all fully rigged.

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To speak and to emote.

Facial Rigging

Facial rigging was built using a system of about 65 blended shape-poses. About 15 of these are specifically for speech. Emotive expressions and speech can be adjusted seperately.

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Posing and animation setups

Animation

Bringing the characters to life. I did this work before attending Animation Mentor; I've come a long way since then. It is now my intention to specialize specifically in character animation. I do also have film ideas I'd like to eventually see realized.

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Effects

FX

Softbody dynamics were used sparingly.

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Composing the final beauty pass.

Lighting and Rendering

Here is an example involving the process for accomplishing the effect of a room lit only by natural light.

A goal of this process was to achieve the most natural effect. Simpler solutions would do just fine in most cases.

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Post-production

Achieving the final look.

Comp

An example of render passes used toward the finished look.

 

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 last updated: May 13, 2013