So a little bad news… my pitch wasn’t picked! Which was a little bit disappointing as it went down so well with my course mates, but I guess the lecturers didn’t take to the idea! Still, I think its one to be put on the back-burner, so you might hear of it again.

Anyway. On my pro-forma I put down the skills of modelling, animation and scripting, with an interest in being a technical director and getting involved in compositing. This meant I was looking for quite a technical project which would challenge me. And boy was I not disappointed!

I got assigned to a project with the temporary name of “Ships in Bottles”. Its a 60 second short that involves detailed flying naval sailing ships which navigate through clouds. These ships come across floating glass bottles and proceed to liquify and morph inside the bottles, reconstructing themselves within. To make things even more interesting the whole short will be rendered in a painterly effect, similar to the new twinings tea advert below.

You can see from a technical stand point that the whole project will be challenging. With lots of technical modelling and rigging involved in the ships, creating a system to illustrate the clouds in an effective yet efficient way, the ship liquifying and rebuilding and finally the painterly render filter/texturing… It’s a challenge I’m looking forward to! My role within the team so far is to model the ships and be technical director assisting the others in their different areas. I will also be involved in the rendering and compositing at the end!

Our CAA team mate has been working hard getting the pre production nailed down. He’s been doing an amazing job creating some beautiful concept pieces. We’re all currently working with him to help tie down the storyboard. We’ve been thinking hard about composition as we want each shot to come across as if its come straight out of a painting. Check out the painting he did above as a teaser of things to come!