A Light Before Death
A Light Before Death by Clint Rodrigues. Final project at Vancouver Film School for the 3D and Visual Effects program. Clint discusses his Burton inspired film below…
Who?
All visual Elements were made my me, that includes character, props etc. My character was rigged by Ryan Seok Jang and Amir Ronen for posing purposes. I used Autudesk Maya 2012 to do all my models, that includes the props and the character as well. Normal map and bump map creation (Sculpting) was created in Pixologic zBrush. The models were then UV Unwrapped in Maya and sent to Autodesk Mudbox 2012 for texturing. I alternated between Mudbox and Adobe Photoshop a lot for my texturing (whichever served the purpose). After the Texturing was done I shaded the Models in Maya using Mental Ray shaders with Adaptive Sampling. The lighting was done in Maya using basically 2 – 3 lights at the most ( basic 3 point lighting).
The compositing was done in NukeX 6.3 with basically Three passes the Beauty, Ambient Occlusion and a Camera depth pass. Color Correction was done in NukeX and Adobe After Effects. All the work was compiled in Adobe Premiere Pro.
What?
Its about a Lady “Eeva” who is diagnosed with cancer and is about to die anyway, Eventually she succumbs to the pain smoking her last cigarette.
Why?
I love “Tim Burton’s Work” I have to be honest, getting the look I wanted was the most I enjoyed about the creating the image. Getting the right mood, the lighting and even the style. I did not want to go all “Bonkers” with the style just a little bit here and there.
How?
– The Techniques were pretty straight forward ( text book stuff really ) the Character “Eeva” clothes though were built in a Program called “Marvelous Designer 2” owned by the company “CLO 3D“. It is a cloth simulation program to build clothes. Emulates real life stitching.
– For my textures I usually painted most of it, but for picture manipulation I used Google Images or CG Textures and did a paint over.( Texturing is one of my strongest aspects since I come from an Art background) . I used Turbo Squid to get some free props but just used it as reference.
Next Project?
Currently I am looking out for a job. Probably will dip my hands into some animation, probably Stop Motion (Because I love it) and some 3D modeling and Texturing.
Which animated film would you like to have made?
Paranorman ( Those guys are awesome Laika for life and Probably Aardman just because they are great (Wallace and Gromit or the new Batman and Robin spoofs)
