Shaw Promo now in theatres

AnD friends,

Thanks for all of your support in the new MCL Grand Theatre. We had a great turnout with over 30 TVB stars as well as producers and directors from all over. It was nice to see my animation in theatres finally and if you want to check it out with it's full sound capacity, you can go to the Elements theatre and check out the final version of the animation. So below I'm going to show some designs and snap shots of what I have been waiting to show - but only until now am I allowed to show some of these designs and how we developed the animation.

At first I drew up some sequentials and storyboards of the animation. This procedure is important to me so that my client, producer etc. have a good understanding of how it will generally look like. These aren't all the boards just a sample of how a board would look like:

Story Boarding:

The story board's main purpose to explain in detail direction of camera and movement of objects within the camera. This particular shot the camera is pulling back but cars are moving forward. You can see basic descrīption underneath the image - we created about 25 different shots like this for the 34 second animation. Most boards aren't done in color, but I usually do them in color - it just looks nicer and easier for people to understand more.

Concept Design:

We then move to concept design of the vehicles. We used different types of looks to get the style we wanted. I was going more for a Blade Runner style at first and then ended up changing a few things to satisfy all parties. All in all we were happy how it came out. Much has changed from these designs to final so it didn't come out exactly how these designs look like - which is normal in animation production.   

Modeling:

Once we get all the designs out of the way, we begin modeling all the vehicles, atmospheres, and prepare for lighting an animation. A wire frame is developed for each model and then blanketed with texture to see shape. Programs we use are Maya to develop the animation sequence as well as molding the vehicles. It's a long process but someone has to do it. ;)

Texturizing:

From there we then begin texturizing the vehicles. This was tricky - as a Director you have to to understand reflective lighting - how the light bounces off the surface and how that reflects onto walls and also the camera. It's a tricky sometimes because you have to animate it to understand where it's reflecting. Luckily computers now have the ability to render animation much quicker then before (like Toaster back in the day). I decided on more of a sleek coating and texture for the Searpent - hence the name.

Animation/ Lighting:

This is getting too long so I'm going to fast forward a bit. Finally we can get to the animation, lighting and editing aspects of the animation. This is lengthy - I had to fly back to the animation studio several times just to execute this the way I wanted it. But all in all it came out smoothly. Animation is done through wire frames of the objects, basic sound is dropped for indicators and we watch it a few hundred times to make sure we have all the elements we need in there. This can be lengthy too.

Sound:

From here once we have a final cut of animation and Lloyd (Producer) and I were satisfied with the final, we then moved forward with sound. We got the Lord of the Rings composers to assist us with the suround sound and the outcome was wonderful. Many hours were spent in the sound rooms, testing voices, vehicle sounds, etc. at the Shaw Sound Stages. Was alot of fun actually and very exciting.

After that we wrap everything up and add any final touches and request video output to film. We test it over and over again in the Cinemas and make sure that the surround sound is how we want it to be like. This is very critical, because the animation is about the surround sound, not the beautiful pictures. ;) It all came out perfectly and how we wanted to and it was such a wonderful experience seeing it on the big screen.

Here are some screen shots of the animation:

AND That's all folks on the small tutorial on production of a 3D Animation Promo. Here are some pictures of the event, my beautiful mom standing beside me coming all the way from Toronto just to see the promo. It was nice to see my friends from Standard Chartered, MCL, Shaw and TVB there. Thanks to everyone and all your support - along with Patrick from AnD for coming out that night and watching with me the promo. Right below is picture of me my mother and Lloyd (Producer). Enjoy the pictures and hope this tutorial was fun for you as well as helped you understand how to produce 3D animation ;)