Shop and beach scene

The shop, although not complex in layout, still needed a lot of work in regards to the creation of it's contents.  I think in total I had fourteen variety of luggage. From small handbags to large suitcases.  It was modelling these that took up the most time. 
I also spent a bit of time creating smaller items that you usually find in luggage stores. Things like padlocks and Passport covers. Even those these have hardly any screen time they still took a while to create.  For example the padlock boxes.  They were simple to model but because I didn't want to use copy-write material I had to create a padlock and render it out just as an image on the front of the box. It's not a huge amount of work but still took around an hour.  With so many small incidental things to create it was surprising how an hour here and there can turn into days.

The evil luggage, as I liked to call the bag he was thinking of buying, was specifically made to look a little menacing.  I wanted it to have a sophisticated look that you get when you buy something like an Apple Mac but I also wanted it to lack any character, especially when compared to the little bag.
So I made sure that it had a lot of straight edges and bland colours.
I also want to a slogan that would have a menacing undertone. It took me a little while to think of one but I felt  "Your life contained in style"  was quite well suited.

The beach scene was fairly straight forward in terms of creating the dunes and long grass. The dunes were simple sculpted from a flat plane.  Where as the grass was created using something in Maya called PaintFx. What's great about paint FX is that you can simply just select a brush size and an object that you want to create. Then brush that object onto any surface.  So in this case I select a long grass from the library available within Maya.  You can also adjust things like how it animates and how much wind is blowing through it. 

I probably spent more time modelling the sandwiches, apple and flask of tea then I did for the whole of beach. 

The sky and ocean were rendered by my good friend Wirginia Romanowska.  She got a real talent and can create beautiful looking particles and water in a matter of hours. I knew that for me it would take at least a few days to get anything that even looked half as good as what Wirginia could come up with in an hour. So I decided I'd ask her to see if she get the time to do something for me.  Luckily she said yes and what you see on screen is what she created. 
It was then just a case of slotting it into the background using After Effects.

Below is a short video where I talk about the two scenes

Going underground

Creating the underground was fairly simple in terms of the actual scenery. It's basically just two cylinders attached to each other.  The tiles on the walls were created using a texture and some bump mapping to give them a slightly beveled look.

The floor tiles were actually modeled, I knew the camera would be very low in the establishing shot and so felt that bump mapping wouldn't be sufficient in the detail needed.

Most of my time was spent in building the actual tube train which needed a lot more thought on the layout.

 
The airport was probably the most complicated scene, containing many shops and a burger restaurant.  I wanted to model as much as I could to give me more free reign on where I placed the camera.  This meant modelling parts like the ceiling and air vents. A lot lot of the shop interiors were "cheats" in that the stock and shelves were simple textures, that from a distance gave the appearance of a shop full of goods for sale.

In the video below I explain the steps involved in creating both the tube station and the Airport.  I forgot to go over the Tube train but the process is the same.

On the buses

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the slight delay in the latest blog.  Been busy with a few bits and pieces.

I thought I'd do a video for each scene in the movie to just briefly go over what was involved in making each set.
The first video's I'll cover the bus scene and the train station.

As you'll notice when you watch a lot of these videos, there's a large part of the models that never get seen in the final film.
This was mainly due to two reasons. One being that there's no way of knowing, even with lots of planning, exactly what parts of the scenery are going to be shown in the final shot. The second reason was some shots turned out slightly longer then what I'd planned so had to cut some shots out.

My street

On the 1st of March 2012 I begun the daunting task of creating the sets and models for all the scenes for the film.

The first scene was set in Sam's street.  At first I'd envisioned this to be quite a pretty street with your typical cartoon suburban  look.  Perfect houses with large open drives.  When I thought about it a bit more it seemed less and less logical to do this.
Sam is meant to be in his early twenties, so probably still at Uni, or if not he's just started working and I'd imagine doesn't have a lot of money. After all he is using a bag that he must have had for quite some time.
So it made more sense to have the street more run down with smaller houses.  Luckily I don't have a lot of money and so my street fits this image perfectly. 

I grabbed my camera and went outside to take lots of pictures of the houses around this area.  I did actually have a woman come running out of her house at one point asking why I was taking pictures of her drive.  I think she was worried I was some sort of debt collector.  Once I explained that I was making an animation and needed reference she seemed to calm down.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, it's always worth having reference.  No matter how well you think you know something, taking reference will always give you those extra pieces of information that you'd never think of.

Below is some photos I took of the area.  The final film has very similar houses, although I made a few things slightly oversized so that the environment would suit the characters better.  So things like the windows and doors were bigger then what they're really like in reality.

It's ALIVE!!!

I completed the bag model at the end of February 2012.  Although in terms of modeling and texturing it was complete, there was still one more process and that was to give it the controls to allow me to animate.

This process is technically called "rigging" although in plain English it basically means to add controls that allow you to move you characters arms and feet for example.
You build a skeleton for your character, very similar to how skeletons in real humans or animals work.
Once the skeleton is built you have to tell each bone what part of the model it should control. So for example you've added an upper arm bone (Humerus) to your character.  You'd want this bone to just move the upper arm section of that character.
This part of the process is called skinning.  You're attaching the polygons,  (see previous blog for explanation of what a polygon is)  to the bone.

Finally you need to add some user friendly controls that the animator can select to move all the bones and skin (polygons) around.  I guess you could compare the controls to that of a string puppet's wooden handle. And the strings and hooks that attach it to the puppet as the underlying bones and code that allow the software to know what moves what.
So after that lengthy explanation I hope you have a slightly clearer idea of what rigging is and why it's needed.

Having said all that, I'm actually not very good at rigging and I knew to have an easy time controlling the bag I'd need to give it to someone that knew how to rig well.
This was actually a worrying time because I didn't know any good riggers that were free. It wasn't in till mid April that I managed to get hold of a friend of mine, Jim Ovnik.  He's one of those people that just seems to be good at everything. Not only is he a great animator but he really knows his technical side.
He was pretty busy with lots of other things but he really pulled it out of the bag (sorry bad pun) to get me a working rig.
While I was waiting I got on with other animation that I knew didn't involve the bag.
Things like close ups of Sams face, or the end sequence with the evil new bag.

It wasn't till around June the 15th that I finally had a finished animate-able bag.  This only gave me around 20 days to get all the shots with the bag  finished, so as you can probably imagine this was quite a panicky time, especially considering the straps on the bag had to all be animated by hand!

Below is a video demonstrating some of the bags functions and a look at how the rig works.   Sorry, for some reason I decided to commentate this with my most boring voice. I promise I'll try to make a more upbeat one next time :)

Building the bag,

Right from the beginning I had a rough idea of what I wanted  the bag to look like. I knew it had to look ragged and used. But I also wanted it to have cute appearance.
First thing I did was to look at lots of reference of real suitcases.  I was trying to find shapes or parts of a case like zips or pockets that could be used to make up a face. Similar to how cars look like they have faces with their grills and headlights.
It was actually quite difficult to do. Not only did all the cases I found not have much similarity to real faces but I also realised that the pockets and straps had to be positioned just right to allow a lot of the scenes to work.
For example the main case's flap lid on the front is completely made up. I didn't come across one piece of luggage that actually has that kind of design, but I knew I needed something like that, to not only allow all the clothes to spill out as the bag flew through the air, but also the bag needed something that could pass as eyes.
Having big buttons for eyes seemed like the perfect solution but obviously buttons have to have a function, thus the reason for the flap like lid.
The buttons went through a small iteration.   Originally I made them based on real sizes of buttons.  It wasn't long before I realised they just weren't cute enough.
It's a well known fact that big eyes make cuter characters. Apparently babies respond better and seem happier around people with big eyes. I guess sub-consciously this stays with us through to  adulthood?
With this in mind I decided to make the buttons over sized.

Here is a few basic sketches of some of the facial expressions that I wanted the bag be able to do.
I really liked the design of the sorting hat in Harry Potter.  The way the crinkles in the material made up the face.  I decided that I'd use similar techniques for the bag and the way it would frown or look surprised. 

Below you can see a video of the process of modelling the bag.
It started as a simple box, using a package called Zbrush I sculpted it into the final shape that I wanted.
You'll notice around half way through the video that it appears with lots of lines on it.  I used this technique to help with a process called retopology.
Basically all 3D objects are made up of lots of planes called Polygons.  Because these are generally square in shape they don't always bend too well. When scuplting these polygons can end up in all shapes and sizes and aren't always best laid out for when it comes to animating.
By laying them out in such a way that they form nice loops you can get them to bend without causing unwanted distortion.  Drawing out how I wanted these polygons to lay, before actually laying them down allowed me a quick way to see what would work and what wouldn't.
Once I was satisfied with the way the lines flowed I then created a new set of polygons that followed the lined pattern, thus creating a new version of the model with the polygons flowing nicely.

Zbrush is a great package for sculpting.  Although it is getting better at creating more hard surface models like vehicles and buildings I still find it easier to use a more traditional 3D package to complete areas like the wheels and handle.   I used a package called Maya, I also used Maya for all the animation that you see within the film

Basic pitch

I should of mentioned this before the storyboards and pre-vis but actually forgot that I did this process.
The basic pitch is a good way of getting your story idea across.  It usually consists of your main story points laid out on a board similar to a comic book. It doesn't have to be works of art...as you can tell as long as it can give people an idea of what you're saying.   Unlike Storyboards you don't need to worry about every camera angle, only the ones that move the story forward.

I started this with the intent of showing it to friends and family, so that they'd have a better idea of what I was on about when I kept telling them that I wanted to tell a story about an old bag.

I didn't get very far,  to be honest it got to the point where I decided it was quicker for me to just storyboard everything then show it to people. If there were things that didn't work I could then change them in the storyboard.
But if you are trying to get funding or trying to pitch your idea to colleagues, then this is a good way to go.

Another area I skipped simply because I was running out of time having only four months left to complete the whole project, was mood boards and concept art.  These are great to get an idea of what the final image could look like.  It gives the artists a good idea of what to aim for when creating the worlds and colour palettes that are within the film.
I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted in my head and seeing as there was no one else involved I decided to skip this process.

Having said that I always use reference. It's never a good idea to go into any part of the process blind, be it modelling an airport or animating someone lifting something. Always have reference at hand, even if it is just one photo of one small video clip.