Beach scene

The beach scene comes after the credits, and it shows the continuation; it shows the cycle of life, as the seasons, and the representation of it with the autumn leaf in the hands of the grown up boy. now he admires the stars with a beloved in his side and suggesting that the cycle would continuous repeating itself through time.
This is the final scene and it has given me a lot of problems when rendering it from after effects. I dont know why, but to render the high quality scene from AE it takes ages... days. while the film it self has more complex scenes and did fine in the render.



Below is the beach animation which was quite difficult... as it has this timing that is difficult to get.:

end credits!

Danny has worked in this part also. We had a limited time to make the credits, because i have given the film to the sound designer already, meaning that i couldn't change the time of any scene !
Before we were fading in and fading out the information, but there was no time to read them properly! so we decided to scroll it and yes, is readable! After all this work... we got to be able to read the names involved on it.

Stars go up scene

This is the last scene before the end credits. After the credits there is one more scene, showing a couple looking to the sky when they see a shooting star.
By this stage I am already rushing with all so that I can acually finish the film in time. I though at one moment that I wouldn't make it in time for the sound designer... that it wouldnt have sound.
Danny also worked here in the animation of the stars going up.



I painted a day light version of this background originally:

Becoming a Star scene

With the time passing by the boy grew into a man and his parents got older; their time in this world had finished and they shall become stars and go back to the sky.
In this scene i had the help of Danny to do the FX of them becoming energy while the light spins around them. His help towards the end of the film in this production timeline was much appreciated and I wish he had been present since the beginning:

run cycle sequence

i though this sequence would be extremely challenging... as I needed to make the little baby morphing into the adult in the same run cycle. I think this solution works fine.
I have to say that I am not happy with the 3d character of the humans.... they don't fit the film and I had a lot of problems with their rig. I will talk more about this subject in the post called "Team Work".
here is the first test of the sequence. Pardon me for some crap animations such as the leave on his hands... lol... i just didn't have time to finish it better by this stage as I was rushing so much to finish the film for sound. I promissed I would give the film for the sound Designer a good 3 to 2 weeks before the hand in. But becose the work was done mainly by me, when animation is a collective art, I just didnt finish by the time i wanted. With a lot of night woth no sleep and s bit of stress here and there I manage to give to him one week before hand in.



Here goes the final version of this sequence:

Time passes by scene

This scene was and still is a little problem. in this first test the pick of the day light and the night light are not correct... even trying many different ways of color correction in After Effects. The solution was to re-draw the the painting of the light in the day light, as the original painting I did was very darkish light... but still it hasn't reached what I expected and wished.
He it goes, the first test:



And now the Time Passing by as final in the film:

humans creation

As you can see in the previous video posted, the light would come down after flying up, and a explosion would occur, something i was thinking of to create the humans from. I though of making it slower, with the fire bubbles slowly growing to fade in to the 3d humans. After speaking with Dan Dalli we though that i could find a nicer way of doing that, as the creation of the human is a crucial moment of the film. Below is the solution I created, as a first test (the video got squashed when i upload it here...):



This is the final version of this scene:

Scene: Creation of snake and +

Creation of Snake followed by explosion to created the humans: male/female

Scene: Creation of birds and butterflies

First 1 min and 25 sec of the film

Off course there are still somethings to be fixed, in terms of animation and colors, but i put all the scenes together so far, from beginning until the creation of the trees and flower (spring).

New Scene - Creation of the Land

The complete cut 4. 5 and 6 ; Creation of the land



first test:

The Light Within Film - First 3 Shots.

I have posted previously older versions of these 3 shots. They were improved quite a lot with the new "light", ""energy" being decided. That's the shot's I have recently made, a from the creation of the light until the creation of the water!!! Enjoy.

MAIN CHARACTER - The Light

This is how the energy/light that creates the world will look like. In both videos they are slightly different... so that it wont be the same all the way through the film.

Thumbnails of the new Story

Yesterday me and Danny set down in the sun to fix the story, the little parts that wasn't clear. We made this thumbnails to visualize each scene, camera angles and cuts. The main change is that the Angel, that was once the main character, doesn't exist anymore. It will be only the light (a magical energy) through out the entire film.

Scene 1 and 2 Test

Here it is, from the beginning until the creation of the water! I hope everybody likes it... After here he will start to look similar with what he just created... so that after the creation of the man he gets to be the angel... more human. There are still a feel things in the animation that need to bit fixed, but here it goes:

Team Work

CHARLIE:
Charlie was in charge of rigging the male and the female characters that Ajdin modeled, and give it to me straight away, as we were already running out of time. He then decided to use a plug in called Anzove - the face machine. He came to my house to install it in my computer so that I could start animating his rigs., otherwise I wouldn't be able to work on it. The rig was kind of cool, but there were some problems in the weight paint, that I was happy to fix, but the joints did not appear in the side window, so I couldn't do it my self, and I would need to send to him for fixing. This happened a few times. Bellow are example of images that I have made to explain my point. I realised that this was the best way of making myself clear:

Below is the picture of the problems I was having when animating his rigs. The controls were really nice, after the file traveled from me to him a fell times and it was considerably good to start animating I started to have problems. The hands would sooner or later explode as shows the picture, in the early stages of this "explosion". I know Maya is temperamental, and sometimes thing go wrong with not apparant reason for it... but at some point I would key frame the arm and the feet would also move....
-I had to re-rig both of this character at the end, as I didnt have more time to wait for a fixed file from charlie. At somepoint he also didn't know the cause of the problem. I have though been able to make use of his facial expressions controllers, that were quite nice!


Here was when he was modeling the fish for me. My read mark show how I wanted the film, together with the original design.
- At the end I had to model the fish myself because his fish didn't get approved...


MOE:
I have quickly made a expression shit to Moe, as he is working on the blend shapes of the main character.
Moe rigged the little boy for me. Our combination originally was that he would rig the main character of the film. But then the film has changed quite a lot, although it kept the main story, but the angel that would be the main character become a secondary character. I have used him, without the wings, as the boy in the film. His rig was really good, I haven't had any problems with it, and I was quite please working with Moe. Below is some of the images of his work:






DAN E.:
I can say i am learning how to be a director. and probably getting better on it. I find that drawing and illustrating clearly what you want is the best way, otherwise you can't complain if the team work is not good or not what you wanted. Here are some examples of how i have been working. Dan Elvins sent me the textures and i have pointed out some of the changes i though appropriate.
I have painted this fish to give to Dan Elvins as reference for texturing.


AJDIN:
Originally I made drawing for Ajdin tht wasn very clear, as the 3D models werent as i wanted, ans it might be that the fault was mine as I just sketched the character to give to him. One more thing I hav learned!
Here are 2 drawings for Ajdin, so to guide him when fixing the female 3D model. I have to say that the problem in the model was in part my fault as the first drawing of the female i made was not detailed and clear enough so to give to a modeller. "Living and Learning"

Water

That's the water that was approved for the film. I hope it was a wise decision. I made it using photoshop and affter effects.



Bellow are the first water style i attempted to do. But I have realized it doesn't suit the film.. but is interesting what so ever.

Film - First SCENE Test

Background Painting

Light Creation
Land Spring (close up)
Land winter (close up)
Land winter (close up)
Land 1



Water:
Scene 1, sky background:

After Effects Studies

I have been collecting plugins for after effects, and also watercolor brushes for Photoshop, and studying a lot how to make the best use of the such for the film. The film will be a mix of 2D and 3D and a lot will be done in compositing. Below are a few studies i made, and cool results. I was also watching the film Mulan, and i got quite interested in their introduction, therefore i have decided to try out if i could reproduce it. Here are the results of such studies: