Le Printemps Making-Of

These are the first finished, rendered shot ! There are a few correction to be made here and there, but it's how the film will look like.

These are also the first shots of the film after the beginning credits.

They can be seen in HD format here http://vimeo.com/32299346

After a long break spent to make some money, I'm back on "Le Printemps". There is now a first milestone on december, and a deadline in february - France2, who bought the film, the producers and myself are all growing more and more impatient to have the film finished. So I have entered the "final rush mode". Lot of coffee, few sleep !

The first step was to put everything in order :

- a small, do-it-yourself rendering farm. Thanks to Pierre at Kawanimation ! I still need to make them a small carboard case.

- Putting in order the drives, folders, and eveything. That include some delicate computer work... and some not-so-delicate work, when an external drive box refuse to let go freely its drive.

- Backup ! For internal backup I found this very nice tool which synchronize folders : freefilesync It's free. That for preventing system crash or disk failure. In case of a Godzilla attack on Kyoto, I also have an account on crashplan which allows the huge database of the project to be saved in a galaxy, far, far away.

and a big, very big To-Do list, and a schedule. For this, I prefer to have everything hand-written.

The third and lasty point for the background is the ground itself.

As for the other elements, there is first a set of small objects : stones, leaves, branches, etc...

They are combined to make small groups of vegetal fragtments.

Then the groung object itelf

And finally the groups of vegetal fragments are randomly scattered on the ground between the trees.

Obviously, the main elements of a forest scene are the trees. The difficulty is that every tree is very similar to its neighbour, but not identical. In the same time, I don't want to create as many trees as there are in the forest...

So I start with a single model of the same big tree (the lower part). All sides are different. So, seen from different points of view, it looks like 3 or 4 different trees.

Then I model 6 different variations : making it bigger in some parts, thinner in other parts, smoother or rougher, With differents patterns of bumps and holes. That will do for abour 24 variation of this big tree.

I also made smaller ones, much simpler.

Then the tree branches. From a single element, duplicated many times I create a basic branch. It's not supposed to be seen from very far.

These branches are assembled in two size to make the upper part of the trees.

Then everything is duplicated, and randomly rotated

I'm working now on the animatic, a rough version of the project. It's one of the funiest part of the project : i manipulate lots of small videos, one for each shot or sequence of the film. The quality is very low so it's very fast do create a new shot, place it and check it - and if doesn't work, I just delete it - not a big loss of time.
I work simultaneously with the 3D software and the editing soft.

It's impossible to show the result without revealing too much of the film. Below is an exemple of what it looks like.

The images below are the editing table at 2 different points. I'm searching how long has to be each sequence.

Over the blue line are videos, Under the line are sounds. The big sounds are the music files, the small ones are the Shô music, the japanese mouth organ.

In (1) I was searching If I should open the film with the shô - I decided not to.

In (2) I decided to place a key event of the film 40 seconds later

in (3) I started to fill with images a previously empty area

in (4) I decided to reduce the film by 1 minute, and at the same time reduce the last music sequence

Alexandre (http://adubosc.free.fr/) has finished a while ago the modeling of the different elements which will be used to create the Masks. As said in a previous note about modeling, it's mostly about modeling branches and straws...

It may not look such a big work and not so spectacular. The real difficult part is technical : these elements are to be multiplicated hundred of times. So they need to be light and render fast. Alexandre used a technic commonly used in video games, normal mapping. It's usually used to make big monsters and things like that, but it's also being used more and more in film production.

The second important aspect is to avoid repetiting patterns when duplicating the obects. All of the objects are created so that when rotated 180° in one direction or another, they look like differents. There are only 2 different straw elements. Rotated twice, they become 8 different looking elements - cutting them in 3 or 4 different part, we have 32 differents parts. Then, mixed with similar leaf and branches elements wz have in theory around 30000 differents looks....

The most important movements, dances by dancer-choregrapher Nicolas Vladyslav, have been recorded using a professional capture system at EESI, in Poitiers, France. The following video shows how one of these motion-catures will be used to make alive a "ground monster". This is still a technical stage, so it's a very geometrical image.

Alexandre (http://adubosc.free.fr/) has begun to do some of the modelling work. It's mostly branches and wood sticks that will constitute most of the characters.

First there is the concept sketches, then, with alexandre, we defined the basic elements that will compose the final elements. Alexandre modeled about three dozens branches, planks and sticks which are then duplicated and combined together.

This first test rendering doesn't include many important elements, like final eyes, stuffing with straw, ropes, and other things. The lighting is also for "presentation only".

We are about to record the motion capture next week at EESI (École européenne supérieure de l'image) in Poitiers. The following sketches are mostly research sketches for the choregraphy of the film.

This is another test of using the music to directly generate the animation. Usually in animation, for on-screen music,, the music is recorded first, and the musicians animated frame by frame. But for this project I want to be able to allow the composer (Michel Korb) to change the music late in the project and let the musicians improvise during the recording sessions. So I need an automatic way of doing the animation.

The music (here the sound of a small tom-tom drum) is first inputed in a a software dedicaced to real-time sound analysis for performance and live events (MaxMSP). It's quite complex, I use it to record the attacks and frequencies on the music (see the yellow points and moving bar on the first part of the video). They are translated in numerical values.

These values are then reported in the 3D software on small point objects. They are translated to vertical motion.

This vertical motion is then translated to the elements which makes the core of the character : a self-playing drum mask.

These elements will be replaced by final, detailled, model later in the process.