Xmas Sketch Props

I thought I would create a new post for images of the props I'm making for my Xmas animation, I'll update this post throughout the next few days.

The Snowman's head.
I found a great Snow material on Blender Materials.  Unfortunately it uses SSS which is going to be slow to render for an animation so I might not be able to use it.

The North Pole

This will just be in the background of the shot, adding a bit of colour and Christmas atmosphere.  I might add some snow and stalactites a bit later.

Mountain range

I was going to model the mountains in Terragen but I wasn't sure about licensing so I've gone with basic Blender.  Unfortunately I had to lose the texture on the the wooden sign, and the lighting on the pole is not perfect.  The DOF looks nice though.

And here's some footage of the scene moving!  Now with added Xmas trees that I downloaded from Turbo Squid.  I've also moved the mountains further back to increase the parallax motion.

Log Cabin
Here's that log cabin/structure I was banging on about earlier.  I modelled it with an array modifier so it hardly took any time at all.  I need to add Snow to the roof to hide the repeating textures and there will be a sign on the door but I can't show that without giving plot details away!

Snow!

Today has mostly been about bringing it all together visually and it has been a real struggle!  Mainly getting the lighting to look good, everywhere in the scene at the same time.  On top of that the render times are starting to creep up too so this could be an overnight render.  The most obvious change in this shot is the snow falling which has taken a long time to tweak but I think will really add something special to the finished piece.

Scooter the Penguin!

I've started work on a Christmas live-action\CGI sketch. Here's my weekend's progress on one of the main characters. I'm quite pleased with the way the little chubster's turned out. The next job is to rig him for animation and set-up his facial expressions.

Updated! 22nd November

And here's another updated shot of Scooter flying through the air! Thanks to his new armature rig! His wing deformations are a bit wonky but he won't be required to pose in such extreme poses during the animation so I'm going to leave it.

I want to work on a web series next year, ideally in Blender and ideally it will be based around fairly simple characters to build and animate with. i.e. no humans with their pesky fingers! I like the way Scooter's going so I may have just stumbled onto the subject matter for my web series! Birds!!

Brian Park 2 - Coming Soon!

The new props are built, the render times have been optimised and the audio has been edited so this weekend I can finally start animating Brian again!

I'm aiming for an end of November release for BP2. Hopefully that will leave me a bit of time to do something Christmassy afterwards.