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on Tuesday, August 28 2012, 08:52 - Finished
We are starting to send the film to festival, so I guess this production blog is no more a production blog, more a distribution blog !
So here it is , the official poster and trailer :
on Saturday, June 23 2012, 22:22 - Music
Hurra ! "Le Printemps" is finished ! I have been too busy to update the production blog. So I guess it will become a promotion blog ?
This video is the sound mixing session on june 19.
on Sunday, December 11 2011, 04:16 - research
My recurring characters too are getting older !
on Friday, November 18 2011, 03:38 - Finished
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
on Sunday, November 6 2011, 13:11 - Animation & Mocap
This was quite a difficult point. At some point in the film, wooden masks made of branchs rise up from the ground and start to dance.
I used a technic mixing physic simulation and motion capture. The fall of the mask is a physic simulation. The animation is then reversed and slowed down to produce the rising effect.
Then this animation is mapped to the movement of the dancer (the back an forth movement is mapped to the up and down position of the hands of the dancer . When the mask if formed, the animation becomes those of the dancer only - a mix of the positions of the hands, the head, and so on.
on Sunday, October 16 2011, 02:37 - Pre-production
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.
on Friday, July 22 2011, 08:52 - Animation & Mocap
One of the main scenes of the project is the forest groung becoming alive.
The following video is a work-in progress of this scene. I have the captured motion of the dancer, from which I generate a black-and-white height map. Where the body is close to the ground, it's white, where it's highter, it's black.
This black and white map is then used to animate cylinders verticaly (the colored cylinders in the video).
These cylinders in turn are used to animate objects on the ground (here, plaks and cubes which later will become branches and dead foliage). This animation is made by using a real-world simulation tool.
The cylinder is also used to deform a big blobby object in which the particules are placed : this will be sand, stones, roots....
on Monday, June 20 2011, 14:14 - Modeling
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.
on Thursday, June 9 2011, 03:12 - Modeling
The previous modeling of the trees is abit too heavy to be used for the whole forest. So for the trees which are supposed to be farther away, I use a simpler, classic technic.
A basic branch is hand drawn on paper.
Then placed on a simple object, which is duplicated.
then a full tree and a forest.
on Wednesday, June 1 2011, 10:50 - Modeling
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
on Monday, May 23 2011, 02:44 - Rendering
I've been working recently on one of the most important parts of the film - the backgrounds. In this case, all the film takes place in a forest. I took initial inspiration from a Japanese cedar woodgrove - a common type of forest here. But actually I changed a lot of things.
The following images are work in progress images and of course,the final rendering will be more sophisticated - and not black and white.
The difficulty is to keep control of the image while still keeping control of the rendring time. There are a lot of tool to make digital forest, but they are either unsufficient, too expensive or too hard to masterize for a one-man project. So I decided to go with the basic max tools and developped my owns.
In the next entries (soon) I'll give more details on the fabrication process.
on Friday, April 22 2011, 09:43 - research
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
on Saturday, April 9 2011, 05:00 - Music
After a short break, I'm back to the production of the film !
A month and an half earlier, we took profit that Michel Korb, the composer, was travelling in Asia to record musicians in Kyoto. We recorded traditional instruments : Taiko (drums), Koto (kind of harp) , Kyoku (kind of violin) and shô (a mouth organ) - plus some bells and gongs. That was a great experience, even if the communication was somewhat difficult at time.
短い休憩を取って、自分のプロジェクトに戻った。二月には、コンポーザーのＭｉｃｈｅｌ Ｋｏｒｂ氏アジア旅行のついでに？京都で和楽器のレコーディングをしました。太鼓、琴、胡弓、笙、ゴング、鳴り物のレコーディングでした。少し言葉の問題あったけど、とても面白かったです。
Taiko 太鼓など ： Rin - リンさん http://rin-ring-ring.jugem.jp/
Koto 琴 ： Reiko Imanishi - 今西玲子さん http://www.myspace.com/reikoimanishi http://soundquest.exblog.jp/
Kokyû 胡弓 ： Nehito Ishida - 石田音人さん http://www.nehito.com/
Shô 笙 ： Tokiko Ihara - 井原季子さん http://wateki.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
Studio レコーディングエンジニア ： ＤＮＡＳｔｕｄｉｏ Mr Yamamoto －山本さん http://dna-studio.jp/
皆さん、本当にありがとうございました！
on Tuesday, February 8 2011, 10:37 - Modeling
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....
on Monday, January 24 2011, 01:18 - Rendering
Alexandre Dubosc has finished modelling and mapping a set of objects which will allows me to create all the characters (later, more on this subject)
So I could do this animated rendering, to be compared with the previous stage on this note : http://www.rascagnes.com/printemps-blog/index.php?post/2010/08/19/Second-test-Khen
on Monday, December 27 2010, 06:40 - Animation & Mocap
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.
on Wednesday, December 15 2010, 03:13 - Modeling
This is a family portrait of some of the characters of the film, the musicians. Before doing the actual modeling of the characters, I make a "rough sketch" modeling, to be sure of the volumes, respective sizes, global design, and so on... These rough model will also be usefull to do the animatic, the rough animation.
Final modeling and material will be much more detailled of course : to be as close as possible to the sketches.
on Monday, December 6 2010, 15:28 - Modeling
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".
on Friday, November 26 2010, 01:48 - Animation & Mocap
Most of the film will be made using recorded movement. A big part of it is made with a professional system at EESI, but lot of recording will be made using a very simple system : 2 cameras and a software called Syntheyes
I have posted a technical tutorial on how to do this here.
on Friday, November 5 2010, 17:25 - Pre-production
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.
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