Digital humans the art of the digital double
Ever wanted to know how digital doubles are created in the movie industry? This course will give you an insight into how it's done.
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16
17-04-2011
, 04:18 AM
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cheers bullet
bullet1968
"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes
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17
17-04-2011
, 07:42 AM
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18
18-04-2011
, 11:17 PM
The Maya Mountain
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19
21-04-2011
, 03:23 AM
The Maya Mountain
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Finally after all my hard work and dedication to looking for a job, I got an interview!
Volition, Inc. flew me up to their office in Illinois for a two day interview. I spoke to several people, going over everything. At the time, they were making an open world game that, I believe, eventually became Saint's Row. At the time that I saw it, however, it was nothing like that final product, but I digress.
The interviews all went very positively and I was very excited. I got put back onto a plane and headed back home just KNOWING that I was going to finally get my career off the ground and headed toward really happening!
But it was not to be. The studio had a hiring freeze and they did not hire me or anyone else for the job they had advertised. I was truly bummed. I was entering 2003 without my dream job and I was really discouraged.
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20
28-04-2011
, 12:09 PM
The Maya Mountain
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After the disappointment of not getting the Volition job, I didn't really know what to do. But after a brief "poor me" session, I just started looking once again and continued to practice. I even got a couple of side jobs. There was a video production company in a city about 100 miles away from my parent's house. So, I decided to cold-call them and just see if they had any desire to have any 3D work in their productions. It was called Simmons Creative Productions and it was owned by a fellow who used to do voice-over work. I remember calling him the first time and this deep, baritone, very professional voice came over the line.
"Simmons Creative Productions!"
*beat*
"Hello?"
Me - "Oh! I thought you were a recording! Sorry!"
This guy's voice sounded like a radio announcer, and I would've sworn I was talking to some sort of voicemail voice. I was waiting for the options to be read off to me, but no, it was a real person who talked like that. He laughed; said he got that all the time.
Anyway, he was interested, and I did a couple little things for him. He produced hunting videos mostly (don't forget, I lived in Mississippi... lots of hunters!). I did a couple still images to show things like over-head maps of the areas that the people were hunting in. Small things like that. The biggest thing I did was an opening animation for a TV show he was developing called "The Do It Yourself Hunter". I made a 3D deer with an animation and a 3D logo and all that. That was kinda neat to see it on TV! I even got in the credits.
But that wasn't what I wanted to do, and it was not much money at all. I kept submitting applications to any jobs I could find! Finally I got another art test! This was with a small studio in Texas. The test was to make a "Goblin Tree" in a fantasy setting. After working on it about a week, I submitted it!
To my surprise, just a few days later, I got an email officially offering me the job!! That was it?!? No interview? No flying me out to talk to me in person? Nothing like that? Just, Bam! here ya go!?
To put it mildly, I was ECSTATIC!!
To be continued.
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21
28-04-2011
, 12:24 PM
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TBH....this is annoying the hell out of me...NO MORE BLOODY ADS!!!!!!!!! Im RIVETED bugger you LOL.....you certainly have the ability to get one hooked and LEAVE them on a precipice....I know roughly now how old you are but jeez mate you have had some difficult times...kudos to you for sticking to the path mate...
More...please? this is getting ggggoooooooooooooddddddddd.
cheers bullet
bullet1968
"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes
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22
28-04-2011
, 01:44 PM
SM Tea Boy
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Dave
From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs damage my videotapes?"
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23
28-04-2011
, 02:53 PM
The Maya Mountain
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24
28-04-2011
, 07:01 PM
The Nurb Herd
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lets see!Ugh, that old "goblin tree" of mine is an eye sore.
good story so far.
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25
28-04-2011
, 08:08 PM
The Maya Mountain
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WARTHOG TEXAS aka FEVERPITCH STUDIOS
After getting the job offer, I milled it over for a good day, just to be absolutely certain that I wanted to take that step. Then of course, immediately responded with a resounding YES!
Just to clarify: the job was a Junior Artist position and was a contract job for 6-9 months. I wouldn't get benefits, I would have no 401k, or anything like that. I wouldn't have taxes withheld on my pay either, which I later found out would mean I needed to pay my own taxes every quarter. And after 6-9 months, my job would potentially be over!
I bought a car, got a 12 month lease at an apartment across the street from the office (yes, I know, that's pretty crazy), and showed up for work on my first day in May 2003. The studio was called Warthog Texas, but they knew themselves as Fever Pitch Studios. They had been bought by Warthog earlier that year and had the name change, but they still considered themselves their original name in casual conversation. To this day, this was the best place I ever worked!
The project was a Lord of the Rings RPG called Shadows of Mordor although it eventually would get a name change to Shadow of the Ring. Back in 2003, the LotR movies were still coming out and they were all the rage. Electronic Arts had the license for creating games based on the films, but Universal thought they were clever by getting the rights to create games based on the Lord of the Rings books. In other words, we could make a LotR game but could not use the actors from the films or anything that the movies had that wasn't in the books. Some of the games that came out using this license was The Hobbit and War of the Ring. Both didn't fare very well at the time.
Our game was, I have to say, a very cool concept. It was an RPG like Baldur's Gate but in a Dungeon Seige type gameplay system. Shadow of the Ring would have a morality system that had three stages: Evil, Neutral, and Good and not just the black and white systems that most games had.
It was pretty complex, but I loved it.
My job was creating environment assets, such as buildings, trees, rocks, dungeons, etc. I'd be the first to admit that I was under qualified for the job, but I learned tons and managed to get a little decent at the whole making game art thing as I got more practice then I ever had before. I was finally doing what I had always wanted! And it truly was a dream job. The people were excellent, the game project was fun and exciting, and I was having a blast!
By the end of 2003, we were still trucking along on our RPG, developing storylines, quests, branching outcomes based on moral choices, items, monsters... it was amazing. And soon, we'd find ourselves in a bright and shiny new office space! But that's for next time.
Next - 2004, and year 2 at Fever Pitch Studios.
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29-04-2011
, 01:56 AM
The Nurb Herd
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27
29-04-2011
, 12:31 PM
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It's not something you see all the time in these kinds of forums, and if you do it's usually a much briefer tale.
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28
01-05-2011
, 10:07 AM
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That would of been awesome. Although did you ever rock up to work late? Haha!got a 12 month lease at an apartment across the street from the office (yes, I know, that's pretty crazy)
Cant wait for next post.
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29
01-05-2011
, 11:47 PM
The Maya Mountain
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I thought I'd take a minute to talk about Fever Pitch Studios. This studio was an offshoot from Digital Anvil (an offshoot from Origin) in Austin, Texas. They had been making an RTS called Conquest: Frontier Wars for the PC but near completion, it got cancelled. A couple of the developers broke off from Origin and got the rights to complete Conquest on their own, creating Fever Pitch Studios. It was released, published by Ubisoft, in 2001.
They then set about finding new work. They hired a few people with the Conquest money and took the Conquest engine (a real-time strategy game set in space) and converted it to be a dungeon crawler RPG engine. They used Lord of the Rings characters and showed it off to Universal and got the green light on an ambition Lord of the Rings RPG! With this new project, they staffed up to the team I eventually joined. Including myself, there were about 15 of us!
Next I'll go into the next year at the studio.
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30
02-05-2011
, 09:44 PM
The Maya Mountain
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If my time line is right in my head, this is the year that Fever Pitch Studios merged with another studio. It was quite a change for us, as you can imagine! The merger was bringing in a studio called Outlaw. They had about a dozen people and were working on a title called Johnny Whatever and were in danger of folding. Warthog purchased them and brought them into the fold. We had no room at all in our little office, so a new office was needed!
We moved into an old renovated movie theater over the Christmas break. I had traveled back home to visit family, so when I came back, I had to drive about 20 minutes to the new digs. I missed being able to walk to work, but the new office was pretty sweet! It even had a big marquee out front that we could put whatever we wanted on.
At first, I shared an office with one of my co-workers, Grayson, an animator. We continued to truck along on Shadow of the Ring and I was really enjoying it. We hired a few more people even! I remember it was around mid-year, and I was creating the buildings for a stilt city that were all made of old ship parts when we had a big meeting called.
This was one of my first experiences with "The Meeting". For those who can't tell where this is going, "The Meeting" is that ominous, out-of-nowhere, company-wide meeting that can go either really really well... or incredibly awful. Just that week, we had a new hire show up for our team and it was literally only days later that The Meeting happened.
Shadow of the Ring had been canceled.
My heart leaped up into my chest. My contract had just been renewed! My boss told us somberly that he held on as long as he could, but the decision was out of his control. Universal had made the decision to cancel not just SoR, but ALL of their Lord of the Rings properties, stating that the EA competition was just too much without the film rights.
So it wasn't that they didn't like our game... they were just going to take a bath on the whole Lord of the Rings thing alltogether. My boss told us that we should prepare for layoffs to be announced within the day and that he would do his best to get us a new project soon. I felt like there was very little chance of my being kept on to stay. I felt REALLy sorry for the new guy who had just moved to Texas from his home state of Virginia...
Talk about a lousy day at the office...
Next: Who makes the cut?
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