Entry Numero Uno

Welcome all. From now until we yell "FINAL!" this shall be our production blog for the short film Jason Downing and I, Lawrence Grijalva, are doing for school. We were originally going to do our own thing, but our teacher allowed us the luxury of working together. Jason loves modeling and makes it look easy. He has really taken off with ZBrush and has done some extraordinary work so far. I love animation so we saw the benefits of working together. We're like a two man VFX army! We get to concentrate on the one, or more, aspects of 3D animation that interest us the most.

So out of the ideas we had started working on we chose to go with my concept. The sole reason behind this is that both Jason and I are creature junkies. We both love the same movie creature moments and can easily list off ILM's best creature work. In a quick attempt at summation, my concept is basically a rite of passage story. It takes place on a different world where the native race is under siege by a hostile alien race. The native race is comprised of soldiers who train their whole lives in combating the alien race, also known as the Lascers. Our short film focuses on one young soldier, Jake Archer, who is searching for a friend. What he finds instead drives him to hunt a rogue lascer. An act that is considered a rite of passage for an experienced and prepared soldier.

More of the story will be revealed later as we develop the storyboards. We have a good idea of what we need in terms of 3D assets as well as the inevitable fight between the two. Jason has already sculpted a concept maquette in ZBrush and is well into modeling the creature in Maya. Once he finishes the primary form he'll take the model into ZBrush and begin sculpting in the details. In the meantime I'm brushing up on my rigging skills as well as researching how I want the lascer to move. I've got a good idea of how the walk cycle is going to look as well as a few key hero movements that are going to eventually come into play. Once we finish the lascer, we'll begin work on Jake. A stylized human character is a tad difficult to do, but shouldn't be much of a problem to pull off. The key is to keep him as stylized as possible so that his movements and look are more acceptable. The basis for why The Incredibles worked as well as it did.

We both hope to use the blog as a means of documenting the production of the film. We'll be posting concept art, 3D models, and eventually animatics and rough animation. There may even be footage of us making complete fools of ourselves in out attempt to rough out the choreography of the main fight. All this and more to come.

Stay tuned...