This is going to be a quick post,  just wanted to keep up with the progress on the short, which looks like it might be renamed simply to Isaac, that one’s still up in the air.  So here are a bunch of pictures of the sets, another character called Isabelle, a reworked version of Nikolai the Owl, and some maquette renders.

Isaac colour tests

This is one of the colour schemes for Isaac.  Not sure how much it will change by the end of the process but It’s a start.  Isaac’s ears have also been properly modeled at this point.

Isabelle character prototype

This is Isabelle, she’s arguably a more important character than Isaac, but gets less screen time so she got done last.  Mike drew some great sketches and I went from there.  I’ll definitely be changing the eyes, not sure yet if that means making her’s more like Isaac’s or Isaac’s more like hers.

Nikolai remodeled

Nikolai was a complete mess, the character looked fine but the feathers were all wrong.  They either had terrible intersects or were tilted at weird angles to compensate.  This model is more symmetrical and detailed, it also has a more bird-like profile.  Since this character is so small physically I had to exaggerate the facial features, it has a much different feel now and I’m liking it.

Classroom Set

These are my test renders for the classroom.  Basically these are lighting tests, using a combination of HDRI, standard, and polygon lighting.  The scene has been reduced in detail for testing purposes so the models are not as slick as the finals. I’ll only have to light the whole scene like this for a couple shots, the rest will be scaled down a lot.  I still need to make the “outside” of the school for the shots out the windows.

Forest scene test

I also did some tests with lighting for outdoors.  About half the short takes place outside, so this was pretty important.  I tried out some stylized trees, but I’m not quite there yet, these dont really have the feel I want, I think more clones with higher detail will give me the look I’m going for.

Maquettes

This is a test render I did because I’m thinking of making some plastic models of the characters at the rapid prototyping lab at school.  It would cost a fair bit of money so I’m just visualizing here until I decide how I’m going to do it.