Concept Art Among Other Things

Again, sorry for the lack of posting.  I have been busy with a few things.

First, Thor Media's new live wallpaper has been delayed for a couple weeks, so I have been working around that.  Also, I have picked up a smaller VFX job.  Just some small tracking and green screen work, which I will post a little later on.

But, in between things I have been able to tidy up the script for our up coming game, and work on some concept art.

I decided to tackle some of the environments first.  There are good reasons to do this from a production stand point, but the main reason why I started painting environments is because I have very little experience in painting imagined environments.  Especially long shots of out door environments.  So, to see where I stand on that skill-wise I did a few paintings of some environments in the game.

And, to give myself a little critique, I have a long way to go.  I think the lighting in the painting with the sunset is good, but it struggles because there really isn't anything special about it.  I know when designing for video games, the worlds are very, very small, compared to the real world.  So to liven up these imaginary worlds, they need to have things exaggerated, things that stand out.  In fact from what I know, it is very similar to character design.

Then the Mountain Slope painting lacks depth.  I was trying to go for a more diffused lighting, but there is obviously much to learn before I can pull it off.  Direct lighting seems to be easier to work with right now.

I did record one of the paintings, I hope you enjoy.  Let me know what you think, or if you might have some good references for me to look at.  There will be allot of learning in the next couple months on the this project.

And speaking of learning.  I just got an awesome new art book.  It's called " The Art of Journey".  It includes a ton of the production art.  From doodles to finished concept art.  And what amazes me is that most of the art was done by one person.  It gives me allot of hope in this project we have just started.  I am thinking about using the book as a model for the kind of process I should go through to produce the art for this game.

Templar Nation | Wrap Up

This post has been waiting in the cellar for a long time to come out.  And I am glad to finally be able to talk about this production.

I have posted about Templar Nation a few times before.  But here is a run down of the project if you don't want to spend the time reading earlier posts.

Around December 2011 Thor Media LLC was approached by Joseph James Films to handle the CG and some camera work for their next movie.  Called Templar Nation.  A film that runs in the same vein as Indiana Jones with a mix of Nation Treasure.

Our company was, and still is, new to producing good CG.  In this case environments.  But we jumped on the ball and started to learn about motion tracking/mach moving and proper green screen practices.  Its funny how these thing work out.

(Unfortunately, because of bad planning, we had too small of a green screen studio to work with.)

Right when we needed the ability to do 3D tracking, Blender had just been making updates in that direction.  Which is something that I am really thankful for, as I have gained quite a liking to the process of match moving.

The film went into full production about mid-January, and finished filming two weeks later.  Jacob, Bryce, and I was responsible for recording information for match moving, and making sure that the green screen and match moving work was done right, on set.  We ran into a slew of problems with this, which I will get into later.

(I got to do some character design!)

Bryce, Jacob, and I were very much involved with post-production, as you might have already guessed.   But due to lack of budget Bryce and I had to stop working on post production work.  This was due to poor pre-production, since most of the design work for CG sets, props, etc., was done in post production.  Reducing the amount of time we could actually work on tracking and compostiting.

But regardless of us being involved with pre-production, Jacob continued on, and a final product will be sold to another studio in the near future.

But before I get into the the great things that came out of the project, I would like to talk about some of the road bumps we had during production.

The first thing I learned was, pre-production is a must.  Not just for getting a script together, finding locations, finding actors, finding sponsors, etc.  But also for CG work.  Something we did not have the time or money for, was a storyboard for the CG scenes.  Storyboards are essential for CG sequences for various reasons.

 First, it will save time in the long run. There is a big difference between going onto a green screen set with a physical picture in your hand of what the shot will look like, and going on set with no idea of what the final shot will look like.  The actors and director will obviously have a better idea of what the characters are interacting with.  Lighting the scene is actually doable because you have an idea of what the final shot will look like.  It is hard to grasp correct lighting when all that you are looking at are green walls.

Another good reason for doing a CG storyboard is that it can help the artist or designer image what should be in the shot.  For example.  The artist is thinking about adding a balcony to the side of a CG building in a outdoor party scene.  If the artist doesn't know what the shots are, how can he/she know if they will need to design and create a balcony for the building.  If you are going to have a balcony in the back ground, should certain details be added to it, like a group of people having a conversation on the balcony.

My point is, is without a storyboard there will be no way to consider certain details that cannot be thought of during shooting.  It saves time, money, and headaches for all those involved.

This really was the one thing that made the production very difficult for most of those involved.  And because of it, this has become one of my requirements before becoming heavily involved in a large production again.

As you have probably already seen, we worked on everything from full CG environments to props.  So overall it was a great learning process that provided some things that we can show off.

Now there are a whole bunch of things I could continue rambling on about this production, but I won't.  I am willing to answer any questions you many have, in the comments.

To close this whole thing up in my mind, I would like to thank Bryce and Jacob with all of their help on the CG end of things.  And besides listening to me complain allot, Jacob did the bulk of composting, while Bryce helped me with allot of the design work on the 3D environments.

Without their help we wouldn't have been able to get out what we did.

We hope, if the movie sells, they will want Thor Media to do another pass on the CG.  Because of budget and time, there were allot of sacrifices made to quality.  And it would be great for our portfolio, to go through and polish what we have.  I'm crossing my fingers.

Wedding Montages

This is something I don't get to do very often.  My sister and my new brother in law got married about 2 months ago, and my sister asked me to put together a few photo montages for the reception.  So instead of a bunch of boring photos, fading in and out, I decided to take the time and do something a little more fancy in Blender.


I want to thank Sarah for the ideas for her bridal and engagement photo's montage.

The timing is a little wierd for some of the pictures.  I was asked to do this last minute.   That explains why they aren't a high resolution as well.  Also, there is not music to these videos because they had music playing on a seperate system, during the reception.

I have learned from a few of my brother's sad experience that I should probably stear clear of weddings.  But because of how layed back my sister was about how the videos needed to turn out, this was actually a fun little project.

It's good to be able to do something that isn't so serious every ounce and a while.

Commercial | Empowered Life Solutions | Logo and Bumper

This one has been one a while in the making.  And I am very happy to post about it.

Thor Media was approached by Josh Lee.  Someone who we have done work for before.  Specifically some CG work for a short film based on the book "Alliance" by Gerald Lund (I posted about it here).  And Josh asked if we could put together a logo and a bumper for Empowered Life Solutions LLC.

It was slow going, because of different scheduling difficulties.  But, so far, this has been one of the best work situations I have been in.  And learned allot on how to deal with timing and other issues that may arise with a client.

Here are some of the process sketches and other ideas that we played with. Also a shot of website with the new logo.

iCuff | Internet commercial

This is a project that I started over six months ago, and just haven't gotten around to posting yet.  I thought now would be a good time because of how long it has been since I have posted any 3D work.
A little about this commercial.  Except for a little texture work in the Gimp, and the storyboard, this is 100% Blender.  I need to thank my brother Jacob for the advice, critique and the job.  I really enjoyed doing the manual match move of the watch coming off of her wrist, and the overall simplicity of the commercial.
I am doing more 3D work, then I lead you all to believe.  It's just the projects that I do VFX work for, are technically not finished yet.  This makes me unable to post that content until the final work is released.
So I promise some somewhat impressive visuals in the future.  Things like full 3D environments with live action,  explosions, etc...

NxLeveL Commercials

This is one of three commercials that we did for NxLeveL, and one of the three storyboards.
I did the storyboarding for this project.  Jacob Thorup compiled it into an animatic to get our timing right. I also had to remake the graphics for the company, and do new animations and other renderings.  I also designed and created the  the product fly ins at the end of each commercial. 
The final editing and compositing of the commercial was done by Jacob Thorup

The Alliance

My brothers and I were approached by an independent film maker to do the visual effects work for a short film called "The Alliance". It is a small job that requires the creation of a hover jeep, and compositing, along with a bunch of other small effects. (muzzle flares, scifi blasts, etc..).

 I am responsible for the modeling, texturing, rigging, lighting and animation of the jeep. Jacob Thorup is responsible for the compositing and other post work. The original jeep concept was done by Eric Thorup.

Thor Media LLC Logo Bumper

This is the Thor Media LLC logo bumper. It was all done in Blender and we are planning on using this particular logo for a while.

Thank you to Aaron Thorup for collaborating with me on the logo, and Bryce Thorup for providing critique on the bumper itself