Hiya folks,

Im hoping to get an entry into this years CTA contest called Sushi Ronin.  Its about...well,  a sushi ronin. Ive been working on it for about 3 weeks so far and have managed to watch enough illustrator tutorials to eeeak out my characters and rig them up in CTA. 

Also managed to get a lovely little three page script written, developed a system for getting props out of sketchup with shadows half opaque, shored up about half my voice actors and just this eve managed to get 10 seconds of animation largely complete.  Im heading down the right road I thinks.

I would like to complete and post this by end of August - the video views/popularity criteria means I will need at least a month to get someone to watch my movie (in case your wondering why Im posting a production thread...well, it's to get you to hopefully watch my movie if and when it gets released.)

Im also hoping to release the characters and props after the release either as freebies or on the super cheap for anyone who might have an interest.  All the characters are created by me but the hands/arms legs/feet are from the orange character from RL.  I wonder if this will be an issue.  I suppose I could make my own if push came to shove.

My biggest issue right now is what to use as the background.  All of my shots will be using a wooden table/bar texture that will cover 3/4 of the screen littered with various sushi bar prps. However, the background is blank for now.  Sushi restaraunt stills?  Sushi bar chef videos?  A simple blue/grey gradient. As yet Im at a loss.

Anywho, thanks for listening.  More in the near future. 

Production tread - it's a great idea, I think! Good luck!

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Igor

This is a great idea! It helps users, like me, in how a production is put together. (I'm more in the category of "I have an idea, but....").

Thanks for posting!!!

sjonesdc :hehe:

STILL LEARNING!!!

I like the characters :) They look like fun.
Good luck with your movie.

Life Suits Them

Raven's Roost - Marketplace Store

Thanks for the show of support Raven, Sjones and Kurzal.

Here is a little screeny from one of the latest scenes. Ronin kicks back in his soy sauce sauna enjoying some Sake and getting his drink on.

Here you see an example of using just the plain background (here blue). I've got an idea for having two distinct areas. The good section having nice sushi props (teakettle, teacups, chopsticks ect.) and a blue background while the bad sushi area would have bad sushi props (forks, salt and pepper, ashtray, spilled asahi bottle) and a yellow background. Still I worry the backgrounds are too plain. Ever vigilantly hashing it out.

Another issue with this scene is that of having Ronin drink from the sake cup. Currently I have a sloppy motion and then a drunken look (its only a 3-4 second scene). To sell the drinking of sake I think I'm going to have to make a second um..sprite (?) of the cup being upturned when he takes a drink. Just thinking out loud.

Otherwise, animations are going ok. For the most part I'm using the key editor over the puppetry editor. This requires me to set up the poses (face and body) and let the program interpret the middle (occasionally adding a frame in the middle to get what I want). Timing is very important doing it this way. Rarely do I set a motion too fast but often they are too slow. Mix this in with some zany camera work (it is kung fu theater after all) and its developing nicely.

Speaking of the camera, I suffered from the same malady in CTA that I originally did in Iclone. That is wanting to set up the scene and then get all the scenery in the shot. Once I reminded myself its all about the actors and started getting the actors closer and the shots much tighter and closeup, things started looking pretty solid. CTA shines with face animations anyway so good to focus on faces.

More later (mayhaps a little Voice Actor introduction...I hope)

After treading through the warehouse for many an hour I think I've managed a solution for at least half my sets. I found a japanese restaurant set that I liked, stripped out the elements I wanted (chairs, tables, pictures on the wall), recreated the interior in IClone and then shot my backdrops. However, instead of importing them as backdrops, I imported them as a prop so that they would move with the camera. Here is one of the backdrops.

This is a nice solution for a couple of reasons. I can now use multiple angles in a scene. For instance I can have the sushi walk across the shot and then show a front facing closeup on the sushi using the other angle. The other advantage to creating it in iClone is I could animate the set if I want (place some people in the background or whatnot) and I'm now envisioning a (iClone created) tracking shot through a sushi restaurant window to open the scene. We shall see.

So now Im on the lookout for a suitable Sushi Bar.

Work progresses on this little production. I've filled out my Iclone set and now have four angled backgrounds (front, back left and right) for a table in a sushi restaurant. I can use stills or have patrons in the background of a video as shown below (this is the front angle). Sorry, I haven't posed any of the actors. This scene hasnt been animated yet. Just setting things up.

Interestingly, I set up my lighting and shadows and had some nice HDR effects in the Iclone scene but then found that the more realistic results contrasted badly with the characters and ended up settling on a flat look in Iclone to match the CTA scene. I also played around with depth of field thinking I would blur the background a bit to put all the focus in the foreground CTA characters but in the end I liked the clear flat look the best.

Last night I had some success creating a multi sprite prop for the sake cup shown in a previous post. This allowed me to attach the prop to the character (so that the hand could be placed on top of the prop layer) and then easily switch the prop image from regular cup to upturned cup during the drinking motion. Success!

Next, the ever talented, smart and handsome Kurzal created a groovy video tutorial to help me figure out how to get assets out of iclone and into CTA with transparent backgrounds. I had never used the popvideo export feature thinking you had to have some kind of popvideo software installed to use it but it worked a treat and I managed to get some fire effects into CTA easy peasy. Big thanks to Kurzal for sharing the knowledge.

Finally, it has been suggested that my feature may not be eligible for the contest as I chose to spend hours drawing my sushi instead of stealing a picture of sushi from the internet, er I mean photographing it myself. I will have to check on this detail. If that's the case I still have room for a luckycat (the waving paw kitty statue you find in many Asian restaurants) character that could be photographed, boned (is that the correct term here?) and inserted into a 5 second scene. Hopefully that will cover me. I tend to think this is a rather silly requirement. Sushi is an everyday type of item as much as an apple or what not and whether it is drawn or photographed shouldn't make all that much difference. Especially when the second paragraph in the main contest page says:

"Create actors from photographs or illustrations, and bring them to life with automatic facial & body fitting editors."

Yes, it refers to the functionality of the software but its still there on the contest page to add to my confusion. So we shall see.

The voice acting phase of the project is almost complete and Im hoping to tell you all about my wonderfull voice actors soon. In the meantime Ive been working on my sushibar set in Sketchup and Iclone. Here's an early render. Still needs dishes and a sushi chef. Anyone seen a sushi chef around?

Most of the scene will go unseen as the action will be taking place on the bar itself. However a side angle may show a customer at the end of the bar. Lighting here will probably also be flat as in the sushi restaurant screeny.

Oh, and I received word that I need not have a photograph of my everyday item so hurrah! I'm still eligible.

I'm already beginning to enjoy this. Although the thought of eating raw fish makes me blanche:sick:. You going to add a microwave, by any chance?;)

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You seem to be making good progress with the production. It all looks great :)

Life Suits Them

Raven's Roost - Marketplace Store