Blendshapes

Here is one of our secondary characters "Biff". We've broken down the facial expressions into small regions of the face and sculpted them digitally over the neutral face. These micro expressions are then sent to our rigger Devan Mussato who breaks these expressions into a left and right side and puts it into his rig so we have asymmetrical control over the face. We've sculpted 28 blendshapes for each of the seven characters. These poses were made by blending between just 12 of those symmetrical shapes. I'll post more work of the facial expressions as we get further into the rigging process.

Making this short would not be possible without the help of some really talented people. I have been very fortunate to find Adam Cable who has been so pivotal to this production. Here are a few of his concept sketches as well as some screen grabs of the set in progress.The criteria for the set was to create a posh environment, where only the wealthiest pigs would gather on a Friday night for beer and entertainment. Originally the short was to be a birthday card for my Father. I did the voice over work and the story evolved from that into something quite different. Once I figure out how to post the audio I will include some of my voice overs. In the mean time, please enjoy Adam's work for the short..........

And here is what the 3D set looks like so far. We're still modeling the props, but it's 90% done. We'll be adding sconces and then lighting it soon. We hope to begin animating within the next 3 weeks.

This week Adam and I have been busy modeling our blend shapes for 7 characters. We hope to get that completed for the beginning of next week. It's great to see these models finally come to life. I'll post some of the blend shapes in the next few days. Ciao for now....

So It's been a long time since I updated my blog. What have I been doing? Quite a lot actually. I'm really excited about what me and my crew have been up to.  Last year we animated a short 50 second piece. I was happy with what we'd accomplished, but decided to try something a bit more adventurous for our next project. It's a 4 minute short with some really fun characters. Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be updating you on our progress. I'd like to share some images with you now, but I recently had a flood and haven't been able to get the computers fired up yet. A flood is quite disruptive and has set me back, but I should be back up within the next week to 10 days. In the meantime, here are a couple of wip's of 2 of the characters.