The next big thing

Retro Toy Reviews seems to have gone down pretty well, and I have ideas for 3 more episodes which don't repeat the same joke so hopefully there'll be a few more of those later this year.

I've started work on my next film and for some reason... actually I know the reason.  It was this film:



This brilliantly mental rollercoaster ride was filmed by two guys (and a Cat) in a room.  These are the exact same limitations that I have... although my Cat refuses to act.  But when I look back through my films, they all tend to be quite small in scale, 'two guys in a room talking'.  Even the X-Wing sketch we only ever see inside of the cockpits.

This time round I'm going to try and create this big world that my characters can be a part of, try to add more drama and try to make it much more fun visually.  It's going to be like a proper movie.

This project is set in Swindon... and yes I realise the irony of choosing Swindon as the setting of my cinematic visual extravaganza.  The first thing I need to do is build a CG model of the town where all the action takes place.  Here's the rough footage of where I'm up to so far, I still have loads of buildings to add and the vintage film look is only a test... but it does disguise the bad CG quite nicely.



It doesn't work in this test, but the moment the camera goes over the top of building I want the viewer to have that sense of height and that 'dropping' feeling.  If I can get that then I'll know I've created a believable environment.

So to sum up.  This project is by far the biggest thing I've ever attempted and there's a good chance I'll go mental in the process of making it.

Retro Toy Reviews: Buzz-Off

Here's the He-Man themed video that I've been banging on about for the past couple of weeks.  I'd love to make more of these so if you have any ideas for 80s\90s toys then please suggest them in the comments section, or to me on Twitter.

And finally, thank you to the very generous and talented Eddie Bowley for providing the voices.




Warning!  The Nerdy CG bit

The toy's motion was tracked using Syntheyes and then the data was imported into Blender to do all the CG animation and various other compositing.  Here's a shot of the raw footage before all the work was done.

I drew tracking markers all over the toy's chest and then I removed these in Blender by blurring the entire video until the points were averaged out by their surrounding colour.  I then composited just the blurred areas where the dots used to be over the top of the dots in my un-blurred footage.  I used a mask to do this which was created with shadeless material planes parented to the tracking empties that Syntheyes created for each dot.  Here's the node set-up of just the tracker removal (Click to enlarge).  This was a technique I learned from reading a comment by Sebastien Koenig.

Oh and I also discovered that if you have Anti-Alias enabled in Blender's render settings then it blurs every render layer which can cause problems if you're rendering a mask.


















For the chroma keying (which by no means is perfect due to bad lighting around my hands)  I used the Channel Keyer node.  I usually use a combination of Color key nodes but I read another comment by Sebastien Koenig (He gets around!) that the Channel Keyer gives cleaner edges so I tried it and it's great.

Another useful Blender technique I learnt and used while making this video was UV projection painting.  Thank you Blender Cookie!

So that's it!  Any questions on the Blender set-up, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.  And please send me suggestions for which toy to do next... otherwise it'll be My Little Pony!

It's in the mail.

Fingers crossed I should be uploading a new animation next weekend.  I've finished all of the CGI and now I'm just waiting on a prop to turn up from eBay, it got lost in the post.

Once that's live I start work on a short film which has to be filmed by early April.  AND!  If I have the time I'd love to write something for this BBC Sitcom writing competition.

And finally, this is brilliant.

I Have the Power!

When I was about 10 years old I got lost one evening coming home from a friend's house,  I found myself at a dark scary crossroads which had four possible alleyways to choose from.  And then from the darkest of the Four directions I heard someone shout 'By the Power of Grayskull'.  So I chose that path, and when I came out the other side, I knew where I was!  He-Man had saved me!... from ending up back at my mate's house.

Anyway, I've come up with the idea for my next sketch and it's He-Man related.  I have this incredible voice actor lined up who is going to record all the voices for me and I'm pretty excited about the idea as I've not seen anything like it done before.  I can't wait to get started on this one.  ETA is mid to late February.

As I'm on a bit of a nostalgia trip I thought I'd share some great He-Man related artwork that I found a while back. The first two are from MonsterBrains blog which I highly recommend you check out for all sorts of crazy monster artwork.  These are posters or artwork that would come with the toys.

Here's Skeletor looking like a Pimp (Click for larger versions), I don't remember Webstor being such a short arse though.

And here's an epic battle scene.  I love how much is going on in this poster, everyone just doing their thing.  It's not exactly a great military tactic but if wars were won by adopting cool poses then Mer-Man would be a shoe in for king of the universe.

If you want to see more of these posters check out MonsterBrains.

Aswell as the old Mattel artwork many artists have been re-imagining He-Man over the years.  Here's some artwork by a guy callled Mattias Fahlberg.

With his Spiked skin and Trident arm Spikor was already one of the most bad ass characters from the MOTU world.  This image takes his evil brutishness up another notch.

Whereas the toy of the Webstor character (the short arse from earlier) never really looked that terrifying.  But this image really taps into his creepy Spider origins.

Check out more of Mattias's images here.

And the final image is from an artist called Raul Abonitalla Jnr.  An incredible Frankenstein\Zombie looking re-imagining of Trap-Jaw.  This makes me want to see a darker, more adult targeted MOTU film.  Surely Chris Nolan can't be that busy now can he?

ShoePie's Year End Review - 2011

What just happened?!

I'll start with the positives.  I became a professional comedy writer this year (sort of).  In that I wrote 5 episodes of a children's TV show which will be on the telly next year.  Unfortunately it's not enough work to justify giving up the day job just yet.  It was however a great learning experience and proof to myself that I can achieve a certain standard, hit deadlines and generally not suck when thrown in at the deep end.

My video output took a dip this year thanks to a 7 month layoff.  Only 5 new videos produced and two of them don't really count.  But I was pleased with the feedback for Terminator Ultimatum and the Penguin Thief sketches so the year ended strong.  I've also made a lot of improvements on the VFX front by adding Syntheyes to my skill set.

But what about the Stats?

According to Youtube statistics for 2011 my videos were viewed 363,000 times and my subscriber count rose by 64.  That sounds good until I look at 2010 when I had 602,000 views, and an increase of 211 subscribers.  More worryingly, the videos produced in 2011 accounted for only 7,000 of the 363K views, which is very sad because they're some of my strongest stuff.

I think I can improve next year if I start upping my output again although I probably need at least one big hit if I'm to get anywhere near 2010's figures.

Next Year

I'm currently working on some CG character animation for a friend's sketch show pilot.  I've learned a tonne of stuff working on that and my next Blender animation should be a giant leap on from what you've seen with Brian Park.

I have the same old ambitions this year as every year.  Develop a web series, make a kick-ass short film and do some television writing.  So fingers crossed I can achieve at least one of those goals!

Thanks for the support and here's a teaser for one of next year's sketches :0) - Happy New Year!