The Box
The Box by Stefanos Dimitriou, Marios Zenios, and Yiannis Philiastdes
Who:
The Box is a short visual effects and animation film created by Stefanos Dimitriou, Marios Zenios, and Yiannis Philiastdes. Stefanos and Marios studied a MSc in Digital Visual Effects, and Yiannis a MSc in Computer Animation.
Stefanos Dimitriou: Compositing, Lighting, Shading, Modelling, Texturing, Sound Design
Marios Zenios: Intro, Hair, Simulations, Modelling, Texturing
Yiannis Philiastides: Animation, Character Modelling, Character Texturing, Rigging, Character Design, Story Boards, 2D End Credits
What:
The BOX is an animated short which tells the story of Steve Aftakis, a CG character, whose acquisition of a mysterious box unravels a series of bizarre situations.
Why?
The film was done as a final project for our masters course. We wanted to focus on a CG character – Steve Aftakis, who was developed from scratch – in live action footage. The idea was to create a mystery of what is in the box, while Steve gets paranoid, that someone is after him. We were mostly inspired by two animations – ‘Do Ya Thing’ music video by Gorillaz, and the Snickers CGI Ad ‘Don’t Stop’
How?
When the plot was agreed, Yiannis drew up the storyboard and the character designs. We also decided to do the filming in Canterbury city centre.Steve was then modelled and textured in Maya and Mudbox.There were over 100 blendshapes for the character’s expressions and clothes. We used a low poly model for animation, and achieved the given detail with Bump and Displacement Maps. The Setup Machine 2 (TSM2) plug-in was used for rigging the Character. Marios created the facial hair with paint effects and the hair with the Maya hair system. He also created the simulations in Maya.The footage was shot in Canterbury city centre with a Canon 7D. Then the character was animated according to this footage. Stefanos used Adobe Photoshop to clean up the shots. Then we rendered Steve in Maya with Mental Ray using mia_material_x and misss_fastskinshader for the skin. Then the renders were sent to Foundry’s Nuke X for compositing. We then had to do a bit of further editing in Adobe Premiere.
Finally we worked on the finishing touches: Marios did the simulations in the introduction, and Yiannis used Photoshop and After Effects to create the closing 2D titles. The character’s actions and personality with the real environment gives it is a semi-realistic feel.
Next Project:
Stefanos is currently researching for Game development and production. Yiannis and Marios are job hunting in the Film and Game industry in the UK. Some personal projects are in discussion but nothing definite yet.
Which Animated film would you like to have made:
Diney’s UP
Showreels:
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