BlockHeads

by - 2012/03/20 17 Comments Rigging

We’re starting to gear up for the animatic. With Ian getting the timing together with a storyboard edit, I’ve been rigigng up some low-poly, least-distracting, fast, quick and easy to use proxy characters I’ve affectionately named BlockHeads.

The idea is to use these with low res environments to really plan out how each scene and shot will be done. Obviously we’ll probably tweak it all alot once we start the actual filming. But for now this will give us a really solid idea on how each shot should be planned, how when and where we need to add detail and also what the film itself is going to be like.

Editing the Storyboard

by - 2012/03/19 8 Comments Artwork, Directing & writing, Production

The video has nothing to do with the rest of this post :P. I was sketching “defensive tombstones”, and Sebastian walked by and said, “I have the perfect shot tracked for that!” so I threw some in! I’ll wait to develop them until we know if we have a specific place for them, though.

It’s also the first video on our new Mango-Specific YouTube channel. There are some videos we want to post, but aren’t really deserving of the massive traffic the BlenderFoundation channel gets, so it’s more for scraps and the like. If that’s your thing, though, feel free to subscribe-or-whatever.

Anyway! Anyways? Anywaying?

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Monday morning kick-off

by - 2012/03/19 3 Comments Production

Every end of friday 18h we do weeklies – artists/devs show their work. These weeklies we try to be constructive and cheerfully positive. That way everyone can enjoy a friday drinks/dinner together and weekend without too much stress as well. Every monday at 10h we do the kick-off meeting. Then the new targets for the week are being discussed, and some asses get kicked – when needed. For Durian this practice did quite well, so I’m testing it with the team here if it works :)

Notes from today’s kick-0ff:

  • Ian will work on moving storyboard edit
  • Everyone continues design work (robots, dome, props)
  • Target: friday basic models – also character stand-ins – ready for 3d animatic work next week
  • Ton/Rob and Ian will finish breakdown work (all scenes and shots numbered and quantified)
  • Sebastian finishes the tracking training dvd this week, Francesco assists on dvd design and html work.
  • Everyone does a blog post, of course!

Image: a tree across the institute already has leaves. It’s spring soon!!!

Weekly – March 16

by - 2012/03/18 5 Comments Production



Every friday at 18h we’ll drop our work and gather together to do a short presentation of work. We always have a couple of guests then as well. This friday we had Tony Mullen here, the girlfriends of Sebastian and Jeremy, and Filmmore VFX supervisor Willem Zwarthoed. Willem worked for me 11 years ago (with Bart!) on the website and for Blender support. Since his film academy graduation he works for Filmmore, mostly using Maya and Nuke. Willem shows us some cool Amsterdam vfx work he did for “Sint”. Check the docu here.

Every artist then showed his work and progress of last week; which is mostly doing tests and designs – also to get ready for animatic work. I’ve copied a random selection of graphics just for your fun. Most of this had been discussed here already, or will be next week!

(If you like to attend a weekly, just mail me to make an appointment. We prefer to limit to a just few guests each time, we cannot handle masses here! ton at blender.org)

Robo-Rigging

by - 2012/03/15 7 Comments Rigging

I’m baaaaaack! Arriving a little later than everyone else but now the team is complete!

Making up for missing out on the “Quit Blender” fun, I’ve been spending my first few days playing around with some of the half finished models that have been laying around. This robotic arm (modeled by Kjartan from David’s awesome concept with little tweaks by me) is the first to be rigged up as a test.

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Development update: Cycles & S-curves!

by - 2012/03/15 41 Comments Development

We didn’t forget what Mango is really about; which is of course to help improving Blender!

Last Monday we had two meetings with the devs & artists, on cycles and general issues. Yesterday we discussed pipeline designs. This morning we worked out a design idea for curve editing for masks. Time for an update :)

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Team complete!

by - 2012/03/14 17 Comments Production

And, here’s the Mango Open Movie team in two versions, all of them still looking like fresh young happy people! From left to right: Nicolo, Ian, Sergey, Kjartan, Jeremy, Francesco, Sebastian. (Brecht is working from home still this month).

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