04 May 2013

11 Second Club: The Story, Camera Layout and Basic Lipsync

This blog post contains my work of 3-4 May. Sadly, I had a ton (and a ton means a lot!) of problems with my scene and Maya. The result of this is that I was fixing stuff for 80% of the time, and the only rest 20% on developing the Shot. I had to start all over at some point, and still have some things I need to catch up!

PROBLEMS (attention! technical talk):
I can't be too sure of why, but when I opened my scene the rigs wouldn't work, leaving the meshes behind, some of the objects and materials disappeared / went wireframe... It was ruined! I think all the problems appeared from mixing reference's materials, applying a texture to "lambert1", a stupid sword rig that always bugged, or something else. The way I solved it was.. starting over, NO references, and NO touchy touchy the lambert1. Everything seems fine, until now... I still haven't added a sword, but I will make my own, instead of risking it all with the buggy one.



So, last post I promised to tell you the story, and here it is:

STORY:
The first thought that came to mind was... Russian Mafia. With that deep threathning voice, full of that Putin accent... Hard to think of something else! I didn't go with it for 2 reasons: First, first idea is always cliché. In this type of competition, you want to stand out, with your animation skills as well as your shot idea! And Second... Well my last shot was Mafia, wasn't it? Not a good idea to repeat it, reel wise!
After some thought, influenced by Spartacus, a TV series I watch with my brother (it's awesome by the way), i thought of the Roman and Gladiator world - something that was always appealing to me! I believe that many generations ago, my ancestors were proud citizens of the greatest Empire in History, Rome of course!
My first idea inside the Roman World, was to have a Roman Dominus (slave owner) speaking with his new slave. Checking on his background (you come from a family of thieves), he then would decide to make a Gladiator out of him, as punishment AND second chance (and now, as a guilty man, you will try to rewrite your history) - meaning that being a gladiator, he would make himself a better future with "arena honor" and be forgiven of his crimes.
For the scenario, I decided to have two huge brute soldiers alongside with the Roman slaver, and they would obstruct our vision to the "surprise", the thing that tells us that the slaver means Gladiator with his words. The dialogue is pretty intense, and I wanted to make sure that there was suspance and intimidation. But then the problem had risen... What could that be? My ideas were: a gladiator statue, with two of them fighting; a simple gladiator sword; a window view of the arena, etc... But all of them, either were too difficult to make (i should focus on animation anyway) or weren't clear enough to the audience. Then, I had another idea, much easier to represent, easier to understand as well! Instead of a slaver telling his slave he would become a gladiator... I would make a Roman General ask a prisoner to join his army. This image explains it by itself, doesn't it?


CAMERA LAYOUT:
This was before the crash. Here's my "Director's opinion" on how to convey this story:
In the 1st shot, we should be intimidated by the Romans, so the cam is looking at them from down to up. Also, we can see the prisoner's chained leg with rags on, which tells us who he is.
For the 2nd shot, helped by that sound FX, I wanted to show how scared the prisoner is by the tone of the Roman and how the situation is looking. We do a pretty close shot of his very, very scared face.
And for the last, I wanted it to be more or less like the slaver's view. Staging wise, it would be great to leave space in the middle to reveal the Roman armor, behind the brutes, once they move. here's it:


LIPSYNC:
I decided to take a friend's advice and try to get the (basic) lipsync out of the way before blocking, and then adjust it on the polishing phase. Hope it goes well! Here's the rough, basic, ugly looking lipsync:
(note: The chars are in T poses because I lost everything I had done in the other video and had to start over. I know how it will look now, so I'll redo that tomorrow before blocking

That's it for today, hope you ebjoyed it! :) ciaoo

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