The Jester

I'm sorry for those who stumbled upon this blog long ago and loved the work but never saw the final film, but here it is !!! yaay, I hope you enjoy it. I also have a new blog now which will be my main port of call so for updates on life the universe and everything related to me then feel free to drop by! The blog is: www.lukejrsmith.blogspot.com If The video doesn't play properly or you want to check out my other work then I have a Vimeo page. http://vimeo.com/ljrsmith/videos - Cheers L.

It feels slightly weird publishing without any pictures to show you. I just wanted to let everyone know that by tomorrow night the film will be complete! three weeks after the initial hand in but all the extra hard work has been worth it. I'm not going to put the film anywhere until after the degree show but you will see it. Thanks for the views and following the films development with me. Lets hope it leads to bigger and better things. Thankyou

This is the Final Poster that you will all see at the Degree show, knocked this little baby up in 13hrs. Pulled the hardest all nighter to do it aswell and I'm happy with how its turned out. I'm very glad I can use photoshop!

Title_sequence

Hey Guys and Gals, Extremely busy Compositing at the minute, its looking great and coming together nicely! Just though I'd show you the updated Title sequence. Wanted to go for my own style I tried doing it in medieval english but it didn't fit the film.

Scene3_shot17

Scene3_shot17 from luke smith on Vimeo.


Right, all the animation is finished and its just rendering and compositing thats left. I've had several people tell me this week that this shot wasn't working and I agree so I've redone it. I've learnt an important lesson here. quite simply the anamatic should be referred to as a guide not gospel. I gave two seconds for the anamatic and it works on paper, but not in 3d. Can't wait to see this in composition.

scene1_shot1/3/6/8/10

scene1_shot1/3/6/8/10 from luke smith on Vimeo.

Hey guys, just added some camera movements to this shot. I was nervous adding the movements, but I agree with some of my classmates that its adding an extra dimension to the animation. Also remember I've added longer pauses where I'll be cutting the shots up.

Scene3_shot17Animtest2

scene3_shot17Animtest2 from luke smith on Vimeo.


Spoke with Rudy today and we agreed that the original shot was too fast. This is a slower version but still connects with the next shot easily.

scene3_shot20

scene3_shot20 from luke smith on Vimeo.


This is the next shot in the queue, its defiently going in the right direction. It again is two shots which is why there is a long gap inbetween each shot. When the jester touches the sword it will be enveloped in smoke and the balloon sword will take its place.

scene3_shot19

scene3_shot19 from luke smith on Vimeo.


This is the second part of the fall, one of the guards charges forward but thats being done by another member of the team so I'll upload that when its done.

scene3_shot19

scene3_shot17 from luke smith on Vimeo.

This is more or less finished, Its quick but the shot after this really exaggerates the speed the jesters falling at. The guards and King will be put in later this week.

animation test

scene2_shot15 from luke smith on Vimeo.


Hey guys this shot is broken up by another camera but I wanted to give you a taste of what I've been doing! I'm going to take a break from animating sometime next week for a morning and edit these playblasts together. it should give us a good idea of what the films going to look like. Also the ball he's chucking down is one of the smoke bombs made clear in the shots before this. as soon as it hits the ground it explodes and smoke spreads out, that is what the jester will be jumping in to. let me know what you think.

scene6_shot55

scene6_shot55 from luke smith on Vimeo.

 

Another one of Rudy's fine pieces of work. In this shot the jester is trying to escape from the stocks.

scene6_shots52/54

scene6_shots52/54 from luke smith on Vimeo.

Hey Guys, sorry its been a while been off uni this week with the flu. lucky for me the teams working well. I've come back to some jolly nice work. This test here was done by my work partner Bo Yang Zhao aka Rudy. shot 53 doesnt feature here because it is actually the jesters POV looking at the crown. Let us know what you think. cheers

new tree design

Hey guys, hows it going. Just keeping you all in the loop. The render time for the trees is incredible almost 6 minutes a frame and that's without lighting. needless to say with the time we have left we can't be getting bogged down waiting for trees to render. lucky for me the film is already stylized which means I can do whatever I want to make the trees 'more artistic' which I've done. the trees are now flat planes, and we're using displacement maps. and I love them. But I'm ment to say that, the render time however is now 23 seconds! however it doesn't matter about my opinion its yours that matters let us know!!!!

scene1 shot1/3/6/8/10 test

scene1 shot 1/3/6/8/10 test from luke smith on Vimeo.


hey guys, this is a more or less ready to be rendered out test. I'm pretty happy with it. Just a few notes on what it is your watching. The reason it seems so long is because I've left a certain number of frames so when I come to edit the shots I have enough either side. so where he's moving that is where the action is. Let me know what you think.

scene1 shot1

scene1 shot1 test from luke smith on Vimeo.


I've been staring at this scene for so long, Its not quite finished yet but I wanted other peoples opinions on the hats follow through. drop us a message!!!

Smoke Particle test

Smoke Transformation test. from luke smith on Vimeo.


This is a test for the smoke that we'll be using throughout the film. Kind of happy with it still needs some work though. I'm considering Attempting to add a light effect inside the smoke as something disappears and also a subtle camera shake. Let me know what you think!!

Particle Butterfly test

Untitled from luke smith on Vimeo.

Hedgehogs

We are ready to animate! Rudy and Me have set to the task of setting up the cameras for each scene. I finished The cameras for the caravan site last night and having some extra time I thought it would be fun to build a hedgehog. I've been doodling him at work over the last couple of weeks. The model was easy enough to build but creating the fur wasn't so easy, the result being lots of research and tests! but I got the knack in the end. Think I might stick him in the film. Maybe a good way to introduce the title sequence with this little guy running past the screen wiping the title on.
Oh and some more good news we've also booked our tickets to travel down to London in mid March. Our plan to force ourselves on the industries finest. fingers crossed we'll stick up the first test next week!!!

the final caravan site

its finished! the box represents where a statue of the king is going and I've got the lighting to sort out bu the texturing/ positioning/ is done, we can now animate in the scene! wwnt with these types of trees because it saves over 3 minutes in render times and I personally prefer them!!!!

happy families

Here is a rough guide tot he scale of the characters in the same environment!!! can't wait to see them interacting with each other!

the guard

The guard, I'm not to happy with, I've decided to design a coat of arms that will go on the chests of the two guards, one will be a bull the other a ram. in a form of a shield. then the designs will be combined and added to the flags that will be flying in the court! but apart from that I think its ok. opinions?

The king

The king I found hard to do. I found that the jester could be quite dirty and his clothes stained. The king and the guards should realistically have neat and tidy clothes. the hardest thing about texturing is that you can't really add shading because that will be the jobs of the lights!!! for someone like me who's very interested in painting and shading this is a hard habit to break. But I have, At least I think so. what does everyone else think!

the jester

 

Hey my fellow bloggers its been a while, I've been texturing like a monster over the last week and a bit! So there is about to be a major uploading of the work!!! the texures are more or less complete, and Rudy's done a fantastic job with the rigging which is also done, i'll get him to do a couple of tests and we'll put them up during the week. We start animating on monday! Tell me what you think.

Tada

 

Hey Everybody, Sorry I haven't spoke in a couple of weeks it's been hectic at Uni. My life has still been one large texture. I've been texturing the Caravan and it's looking awesome. Rudy has been making blenn shapes and rigging. It's a struggle but we're getting on with it. On darker news my laptop went a metephorical super nova. so I've been stuck in the dark wonderful Maya suites. We had a visit from a couple of guys from The Mill. A very large VSF firm in London. Tom and Sid who are very experienced, sound guys. They gave us their opinions and advice about the film and where its heading so to them. Thankyou. As for the camp site we rushed to get it done to show them something finished, the ground is to be textured and the leaves varied as well as bringing in the transparency so they actually look like leaves. Apart from that its looking awesome. But my opinion counts for nout tell me what you think!!!

heres the guards sword which if you remember from the anamatic. Is turned into a Balloon! I'm very happy with both models and textures!

props 2

Just some extra props built with some character props for the jester as well.

props

Final props!!! I've got no complaints, buts its just me and myself thats really seen them! as per usual opinions and thoughts! cheers