Tranquilization

So here’s my second pass at blocking out this shot. I don’t usually write about my workflow, so here goes.



For this shot the first thing I did, obviously, was pick an audio clip. I wrote out the dialogue on a piece of paper and kept it in my wallet for about 3 days. I thought about the dialogue a lot. Every time I opened my wallet that little piece of paper was staring at me. I learned it through and through. I tried to get a feeling for what could be going on in the head of the character.

Then, during those first 3 days, I jotted down different situations for the setting and location of the scene. I had some pretty stupid ideas, including:

-Bishop resting on a shrink’s couch, spilling his guts

-Bishop hanging (torture/dungeon style, shackled with chains) talking to a skeleton Bishop hanging next to him

-Bishop in a cop car, talking to the police from the backseat

There were more, those are the ones I am remembering right now. I thought about these situations and quickly sketched out poses to see if it would work. When I thought about the pill popping scene, ideas just flowed and it felt like that would be the best way to go.

I sketched out some quick thumbs for what I was thinking. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted then.

Then I wrote Nathaniel Hornblower's story. Well, actually it was just a brainstorm. I didn't even consider writing it out in paragraph form until I saw fellow AMer Aja B's write-up of her character. I thought hers was great and I figured I'd put Nathaniel's story down also.

Next I broke out the video camera and shot some reference. From here, my first poses and thoughts on the shot changed. I did things in the videos that worked better than my initial poses, so I went with those. I had about 30 minutes worth of video footage when I was done.

I took that footage to the computer. Found some golden poses and sketched those in photoshop with the wacom, yes they were terrible sketches.

Then I posed out bishop in Maya, fiddled with the timing, playblasted and had Ike and my fellow AM students look at it. I had a ton of great comments this week. Ike had some really great ideas on how to push it a little more. I didn’t have the swallow in there on my first pass, that was Ike’s idea, he had a few more gems that I have implemented also. Ike kicks ass btw.

Anyway, that’s where I am with the shot right now. My next phase is going to be the inbetweens, and I am putting my head around what to do with his mouth right now. If I have time I will start smoothing this week. I am currently working (my real job) 7-12 hour shifts. So every day I have to be at work at noon and I get out at midnight. Not much time for my wife and son, or animation or anything. I think I have two weeks of this, they keep extending the deadline. I can’t wait to work a 40 hour week again.