Final touch of Pigeon

by - 2012/08/23 23 Comments Animation, Rigging

Animation is starting to slow down a little for me in the last days (if animation is cranked this close to the end then you’ve got problems).
So other than a tweak or two here and there, there isn’t much for an animator to do.  So yesterday Kjartan made me this little guy.

With a quick rig and flap cycle, I’m spending the last hours pigeon’ing any scene I can. Sticking him perched in a tower somewhere in the background, or flying past in the distance just to add a little touch of movement and, eh-hem… life.

  1. Bart says:

    They remember me a well-know Elephant Dream scene…

    • Armando says:

      Yep, i’m thinking the same. How about a stripact starring Sintel (sorry the hot weather)

  2. Eastfist says:

    I see cute little toys hitting the shelves of Toys ‘R’ Us soon! LOL

  3. ThoFei says:

    Oh no … a logical flaw added to the movie: if robots want to eat amsterdam, then these pigeons are also eaters. They should attack every living thing they see …

    Nice gimmick :)

  4. Psy-Fi says:

    Hitchcock strikes back!

  5. comeinandburn says:

    In all seriousness these characters should be 3d printed to raise revenue for the Blender Foundation… or even made available in the shapeways store for people to print themselves. They’d make great collectibles!

    oh and nice job!!

  6. Hubberthus says:

    I see some serious frame-to-frame pigeon hunting coming. :)

    If you would modify the robot, this pigeon, or even some previous characers (Proog!) to 3D printable models and sell them through eg. shapeways, I would buy them!

  7. Matt says:

    I would be interested to see renderfarm stats this week. Is there anyway you can post a cpu-hours stat for all the rendering? Or maybe, a graph of frames in the queue over time for the week?

    And that said, how long does it take with Blender Institute facilities to re-render the whole film? IF you’re adding pigeons today, even if you’re smart about render layers, doesn’t that mean that you have to re-render large portions of the film?

  8. Blendiac says:

    I sense a mascot coming on…

  9. SJ Bennett says:

    For some reason i started imagining that scene from Blade Runner…

    Robopigeon flies by.
    Rachel: “Do you like our pigeon?”
    Deckard: “It’s artificial?”
    Rachel: “Of course it is..”
    Deckard: “Must be expensive.”
    Rachel: “Not really.”

    • Jack Harris says:

      @SJ Bennett, I like your mini-script. If I may, let be add a bit to the last line:

      Rachel: “Not really. It’s Open Source.”

  10. Peter says:

    That’s really nice :D I love the secondary action on the claws and tail.

    “I sense a mascot coming on…”

    Yes! Very this. Plushies would be nice.

  11. Armando says:

    I have a soundtrack for the pigeon. Marco Z with “I’m A Bird”
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEOLZiA8QPg

  12. Carsten says:

    @jeremy… do you remeber that scene that came after the credit list in BickBuckBunny? that could be a fun project to make ;)
    pigeon ftw!

  13. Carsten says:

    Bick O.o I meant “big”.

  14. Rogério Perdiz says:

    This is how John Woo doves will look from here on.
    The question is will it Fly?

  15. meltingman says:

    Beautifull I love the mechanic pigeon :-)

  16. Big Fan says:

    I sense a new Blender Conference award. A Pigeon, for the best tracking, masking, compositing etc.

    Any late news or a Friday meeting this week? Just a short summary is ok if everyone is too busy for a full post.

  17. steven says:

    How about a good tutorial on creating something like this

  18. jan the freeze says:

    Why don’t you just admit that you’re freaked out by my robot pigeon!