Rubik's Cube Camera Mapping UV projection TEST + Blender + After Effects

Another (very) brief experiment using the UV projection modifier in Blender.
The resulting 3D animation is made based on a single still photograph that was projected onto some basic cube shapes, then a separate camera was used to render a short animation.
The cubes only have 3 sides each and are simple flat planessubdivided and rendered with a normal map.

The scene was re-lit in Blender in order to create realistic 3d shadows. This was the part that really amazed me while doing it in Blender 2.62: The GLSL preview allowed me to make changes to the lighting and see exactly what it would render like in realtime!
I haven't used Blender that much since it's complete UI overhaul and the last project I used it for was in Blender 2.49 using a crappy computer. It's taken me a little while to adjust to the new UI - and initially I was sceptical of the changes are meerly cosmetic and a case of bulking out the software a bit too much - but I am won over.
Blender truly is the best software progrma out there for 3D animation and modelling. It always was fairly intuitive in terms of it's workflow but occasionally you could very easily get lost in it's little buttons and menus. Versions 2.5+ have worked hard on fixing that.

Ok, lets get back to the little test footage above.
The cubes lighting up was added in After Effects using a keyframed 'Paint Fill' plugin. set to 'add'.
The 'music' (cough!) was thrown together and added also in After Effects.

Problems? Well, it's basically just a few cubes with textures projected onto them and there was no attempt made to make a more complex Rubik's Cube shape that would have added more realism. But camera projection mapping is all about saving time and getting a animated shot from a still photograph so, from that point of perspective, it does what's expected of it.

I'm looking forward to doing more experiments in camera mapping to see what effects I could use in my planned sci-fi feature.

Stuff used: Blender 3d, Adobe After Effects, Reaper, Nikon Coolpix camera for taking picture (obviously!)

Humpfninkel New Image

New image.
Look at the little guy waving. Nice!

More images form Mr. Humpfninkel's Sales Technique

Some more images from the short film.

Mr. Humpfninkel - Old Folks Home model Location

The Old Folks Home location from the Mr. Humpfninkel short film.
Creepy looking, aint it?!

Rendering out composited frames for the film takes time and isn't helped by the fact that each shot has to be checked a number of times for colour correction on different monitors to ensure everything looks exactly as it should.
You can't trust computer monitors - especially laptop screens. The colour difference can vary greatly from massively oversaturated to dull and lifeless!


More images to follow.

We've also been very busy composing and recording the soundtrack for the film. Mr. Humpfninkel's Sales Technique is gonna have an orchestral score as opposed to the dark and eerie music in To Shoot A Rurf.

By the Way, you cancathc To SHoot A Rurf at the Animation Bloc Party in New Tork this month (July). Visit Animation Bloc Party's website for more details.

Shane

Mr. Humpfninkel - Images

Been difficult to connect to Blogger.com lately. Why is it so damn slow????

Anyway, Mr. Humpfninkel's Sales Technique is coming along nicely.

Here's some more images from the film.



NB: Compare the above image with the similar un-graded image from the previous post.
Colour grading makes a huge difference to the final output file. The colours are richer and you may notice the enhanced sense of depth of field in the image above compared to the previous versions.

Mr Humpfninkel Short Film Update: Blender Fluid Sim

In our latest animated short Mr. Humpfninkel’s Sales Technique, the title character (an inept door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman) is required to get sick. Yep, that’s right – vomit!

We initially intended to achieve this using Metaballs but then changed our minds and went with Blender’s fluid simulation instead.

He reason for this was the quality and realism of the FX. Our initial scepticism was based on the sometimes fiddly and random nature of the fluid simulator when we’ve used it before (We used it for the liquid pouring from the Rurf bottle in To Shoot A Rurf, but used metaballs for blood, the ‘mirror snake’ and a plane multi-subdivided and with a wave modifier for the river in the ear canal sequence)

Here are some early tests.

The first shows some gloopy vomit (the render is ultra-lo resolution) lit using approximate ambient occlusion and a single lamp.

The second shows a quick and dirty test (using open GI renderer - taht's why it looks crappy) of Mr. Humpfninkel getting sick. I know the image is small and very lo-res, but you should be able to make out that the vomit follows the movement of his head and his body deflects the flow of the vomit also.

All this talk of vomit is making me queasy!

More images and updates to follow soon.

By the way, Blogger doesn't seem to like Animated gif's so instead I use http://tinypic.com
to host them and link them to Blogger so that they display correctly on the site.

Salesman Short film: new image and details

New image form our latest short.
Named "Mr Humpfninkel's Sales Technique", the film follows the disastrous adventures of salesman Mr. Humpfninkel (pictured) as he goes door to door trying to sell vacuum cleaners.

The movie is quite obviuosly a demented comedy!

More images and details to follow shortly.

Short Animated Film Needs Actor

Dwarfed Films are producing another short 3D animated film, this time a comedy about a door to door salesman.
The role requires one male actor with a North American accent. We do not require any other actors for any other parts.
The film will be approximately 2 - 2.5 minutes long.
This will be an unpaid position but it is a great opportunity to show your comedy prowess and may lead to future paid work.
Actor will recieve credit and copy of the completed film.
We do not need a bunch of CV's and headshots - but we do want funny, smart people with great acting ability and vocal talents!

TIPS TO REMEMBER:

• When recording, speak across the microphone rather than in to it!
• It's an animated short but we're not looking for comedy/"Muppet-type" vocals.
  
• Don't try to be wacky. Be yourself and follow the direction in the PDF sample.

Requirements:

• You will need an audio recording software program such as Audacity (freedownload @ http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ )
• A reasonable quality directional microphone.
• A quiet area to record in.
• A file compression program such as 7Zip (free download @ www.7zip.org) or Winzip or Winrar.

NOTE: If chosen for the role in this animated film, all your future
recordings for the part will be done in this manner – so sound quality
is very important. If your sound output is noisy, crackly or fuzzy please
do not submit for consideration as you will not be selected.


Download the Audition Sample script PDF from here
http://www.mediafire.com/?e2jycdly9nz


If you don't already have a PDF viewer you can download
the free Foxit PDF viewer from http://www.foxitsoftware.com/
or Adobe Acrobat Reader from www.adobe.com/acrobat.

Follow the instructions contained in the sample script.

When you have completed recording, do the following:

• Convert your recordings from .Wav to .MP3 format.

• Add a text file (.txt format or a Word .doc or PDF) including your name and contact details.

• Compress these files into a single .7zip, .Zip or .Rar archive using yourcompression program. FILES MUST BE NO BIGGER THAN 2 MB (Thats 2 megabytes max). Any files larger than 2 MB will not be considered.
  

• Email Dwarfed Films with a link directing us to where to download your file. http://mediafire.com/ provide a free file hosting service.
  

• DO NOT EMAIL YOUR FILE DIRECTLY TO DWARFED FILMS.

• Successful candidates will be contacted after the selection process.

* NOTE: Visit http://www.dwarfedfilms.blogspot.com for details and advice on
submitting your audition files.


All images, names, “sample script” and “Dwarfed Films” are the COPYRIGHT © of Dwarfed Films 2003-2008.
Unauthorised usage of this documant and any images, names,“sample script”and “Dwarfed Films” is strictly prohibited without written permisssion from the authors.

Top 10 General Tips when making a short film:

Here are some General tips you might find useful (or not) when making a short film. They apply to pre-production, production and post-production. Hey, maybe they even apply to ordinary life too :)
Hwy am I posting them? Well, why not! It's a saturday and I've got the time to type rubbish so there.
These tips are in no particular order and please note that I sometimes don’t follow any of them myself!


1:Love the script: or at least like it or aspects of it such as a particular sequence or character. There is no point making something if the script is crap – it’s as simple as that. Why the hell would you wanna make a film based on rubbish? The writing part is the initial idea, getting what’s in your (or whoever wrote the story) head down on paper. Lots of people say, “Oh, I’ve an amazing idea for a film”. Oh yeah? Well then write it down and see how good it is. It’s surprising how crap your idea can turn out to be when it appears in the written form.If you write your own scripts, put as much detail as you can into them. Vague stuff like “and the man sees a car exit” could have been “the shadowy figure of a man steps out from the doorway and watches as an old fire engine red Cadillac speed away into the low descending fog”. The more detail in the script, the more ideas and visuals will come into your head when it comes time to make the damn film.
A script is hundreds of “amazing ideas” moulded together to form something that will be the blueprint for your movie. Remember, a great script does not ensure a great film. There’s lots of crap that can happen in between to mess everything up!

2:Have limits: this goes for things like schedules and your own abilities. Learn to love your schedule. It encourages you to get things done and allows you to appreciate what progress you’ve made. The same thing goes for the limit of your own ability. If you are rubbish at modelling, then you cannot seriously expect to make that photo realistic Statue of Liberty model you want for your film set in New York. Maybe you should hold back until you are comfortable enough with the whole modelling process. If you can’t rig or animate a sack of flour – let alone a human character – then maybe you should spend a little time learning to do a few ‘easier’ practice tests first.
Know how far you can push the tools at your disposal. Some software can do things they weren’t designed for but recognise that should the software fail, you’ll be right back at square one again.

3:Keep an open mind: Ok, you’re making a fantastic 3D animated short film which is going to win millions of awards and you will become the first short filmmaker to become a billionaire. And you don’t give a damn about anyone else’s work or advice because you are better than all other mere mortals. Hmmmm. Keep an open mind. Watch what others are doing, have den or are starting work on. It’s amazing what you’ll be able to take back and work into your own mighty masterpiece. If you’re doing something in 3D then don’t restrict yourself to just 3D. Look at 2D work, flash animation, and live action. Read books, newspapers, pick a random page on the Internet on a random topic and read that. You might stumble upon something useful that could completely change your thinking/understanding of your film.

4:Be organised: similar in some ways to having limits. Plan as much as possible. Keep a list of things you need to do and things that are done and can be filed away. Know where you can find important files, models, etc and keep them at close hand. Name and label your files appropriately – this is a major issue with editing footage. Make regular copies of all important files and documents. The better organised you are the easier it will be to get things down and if something goes wrong then you should find it easier to retrace your steps and get things up and running again.

5:Know your audience: this is a biggy. Your audience could be the entire population of California, your next-door neighbours cat or simply just your own humble self. Whoever your audience is, you should gear your film towards them. Keeping this is mind when making your film will keep you on track. (BTW, our audience is mainly escaped mental patients and fishmongers)

6:Know what your doing: simple, really. If you don’t know what you’re doing, then nothing will get done. In live action filmmaking you will annoy the cast and crew who will be standing around waiting for your words of wisdom. In solo animation land, you’ll probably just end up staring at your computer screen like a moron. Making a film is all about ‘making’ it. It doesn’t get made in your head. It just doesn’t work that way – well not yet anyway. Learn how to operate the camera, animate a character, and build a scene in your software packages, whatever. You are the driving force behind the film and you need to be the one leading the way, all the time. The main thing is knowledge. If you don’t know what’s going on then nothing is gonna happen.

7:Let the style find you: Some people complain that they don’t have a particular ‘style’ or that they wish they had the style of someone else. Don’t go looking for a particular style; let it come to you instead. Style can be mechanical, such as a way of lighting, designing a character, a way of acting. But even these are developed over trial and error. Van Gough had a style. But he didn’t always paint that way; he developed that swirly paint technique over time. Tim Burton has a style, so does Ridley Scott. But in both their cases they sometimes became slaves to the ‘style’, forced to make ‘quirky’ movies – in Burtons’ case – or fill every scene with smoke and neon – Ridley Scott’s case. Style appears when people recognise specific characteristics in your work. Don’t force it; let it come naturally.

8:Challenge yourself: sometimes you put no effort in and you can make something that people really enjoy. Other times you work your fingers to the bone and nobody gives a damn. Making films is not easy. It requires time and effort. As in the examples above, sometimes the effort just doesn’t seem to pay off. But always keep note that no matter what others think of your work, good or bad, it’s only yourself that has to live with the results. Ask any well-known Hollywood director or actor what their own favourite film is and they will most likely praise something obscure and little seen by the public. The effort you put into your film may not always be appreciated by viewers but, just like the Hollywood director or actor, you will always have a fondness for the one that challenged you the most.

9:Remove Negativity: maybe you have some people working on your movie in different capacities. In live action this will be your cast and crew. In animation it might be someone doing the music or modelling something for you. But at the end of the day, the film is yours and you cannot afford to waste time dealing with other peoples egos as well as your own! If someone starts acting in a manner that messes with your head or simply is so error prone that they ruin everything they touch like some form of anti-Midas, get rid of them. You can mess up fine on your own without adding other clowns into the mix. It doesn’t matter if they are a best friend who loaned you a kidney – if they aren’t up to the job they’ve gotta go. Then there are some people who set out to ruin your day. If you are unlucky enough to come across this kind of person then watch out for the warning signs before it’s too late: turning up late; always having an excuse for why things went wrong that they should’ve dealt with; loosing stuff; not paying attention; making up obvious lies. There are millions more clues to spot these ‘types’. Avoid these people like the plague.
Then there are the annoying ones who walk around with a cloud of doom over their heads all the time. They say stuff like “that can’t be done”, “such and such wouldn’t do that” or the most annoying is when they yawn. Why the hell do these people turn up on film sets or want anything to do with filmmaking? Never surround yourself with negative people or situations. They destroy creativity and inspiration. At the same time don’t surround yourself with groupies, either. Praise should only be handed out when something particularly good is done, not all the time. If you feel that you are getting praised a bit too easily then you are not pushing yourself enough.
Avoid stoners, too. There opinion can sometimes be very useful and helpful as they can spot inconsistencies in editing and fine details. But a lot of the time they just ramble on about absolutely nothing and waste time! Would you trust a stoner to fly you in an airplane? The why would you have ‘em involved in your movie?

10:Realise there’s always someone better: No I’m not trying to dampen your spirits, but this is important. Realising that there is always someone better at something than you are. No matter how hard you try and how much you push yourself, you can be damn sure that somewhere out there, in another town or country, is a person who can beat you. Competition is important. If you don’t have true competition then you cannot possibly judge how good you really are. Knowing that there is someone else better than you at particular things help you put stuff in perspective and give you goals to challenge yourself. A boxer who beats every body in his path is only as good as the people he fights. The same holds true for filmmaking. If Steven Spielberg had just sat back and counted his money in the eighties he would never have made Jurassic Park and Schindlers List in the same year. He could’ve made Jurassic Park with Muppet show-style puppets on strings dangling in front of the camera and saved himself an awful lot of work but he looked around, saw people like James Cameron, and said “damn, look how cool those effects in T2 are, why can’t mine be like that?” and pushed the boundaries of moviemaking. Rivalry encourages better work. Embrace it.

10 ½:Never give advice: Ohhh, I think I’ve messed up this one ;)

Basic NEW particle System Tutorial

Following on with my tests with the great new particle hair system I thought I'd put together a simple basic tutorial on how to use it for anyone out there not familiar with it.

The file is a .EXE executable that you can download from here or
http://www.mediafire.com/?8kmmr0yanud
The file is compressed with 7Zip. You can download 7Zip free from 7zip.org.
(Note: this is from Mediafire.com upload site. The previous crappy upload site failed)

Or even better yet, Download the NEW 10 Minute Blender Particle Hair Tutorial (Jan 2008) provided in PDF format. It covers the basics of particle hair creation, hair material and render layers.
http://www.mediafire.com/?cjdnjllzotz


Once downloaded, uncompresss the file, then just select the file and follow the on screen instructions to move through the images and descrpitions - it's as simple as that. To exit the tutorial press the escape "ESC" button on your computer.

Below is an image created using the new particle hair system. Click on the picture to view it large. The hair literally took about 20 seconds to make. It's rough but it does go to show how siple the new Jahka particle system is to work with.



Again, download the BASIC JAHKA PARTICLE HAIR TUTORIAL from here.

Download the NEW 10 Minute Blender Particle Hair Tutorial (Jan 2008) provided in PDF format.
http://www.mediafire.com/?cjdnjllzotz

Edit 23/Jan/2007: This is a newer version of the PDF Tutorial provided in a compressed .Rar format. It includes more detail and tips.

Any questions or comments post 'em on the site.

OFFICE HOURS: what's it all about and other useless details!

Hi, I’m Shane Sheils, co-writer/director of Office Hours.
Hmmm, that kinda sounds like something Troy McClure might’ve said on The Simpsons!
Anyway, I thought it’d be “nice” to fill you in on what’s the story on Office Hours and really what the hell this whole filmmaking fuss is all about.
Well first here’s a bit of background info stuff.

It all began with To Shoot A Rurf. Well actually it started before that, but those other films were really just test runs and mainly dipping our toes into the animation water.
When I say “we” I mean myself and Paula Sheils, my co-writer/director/composer/producer/etc, but unfortunately I’m the idiot that is in charge of the animation and visuals. The reason? I have the “background” in animation and I can draw “good”. The thing is, I “studied” Classical Animation – which, in normal human language, mean’s 2D hand drawn animation like the old Disney stuff before Toy Story came along. I was a crap student. I never completed any assignments, I fell asleep in class and I hated it. Why? It was boring as hell, that’s why! I didn’t like being told what to do. Drawing should be fun and done for enjoyment. C’mon, it’s about using the right hand side of the brain – it’s not meant to be wasted on tedious repetitious lines and squiggles. Heres the thing, most animators end up doing the crappy work that people who watch movies don’t notice. Who the hell would seriously want to be the guy/girl that cleans up the lines on drawings all day? It’s not creative. It’s no different than dotting the “i’s” and crossing the “t’s”, the kind of work even the most uncreative pencil pushing office worker could do. Do I sound bitter? Heck, yeah! Classical animation robbed me of my love of drawing and I wanted out of that place fast! I also studied live action filmmaking – which I was much happier and better at – but live action equals money. I like films to look great, ye’ know sweet visuals, moody lighting, great locations, blah, blah. All that generally requires money, and anyone that knows me or has visited www.dwarfedfilms.blogspot.com or www.toshootaruf.blogspot.com, well you should know I’m a big believer in “cost saving measures”. Oh and live action also throws up the problem of dealing with stupid people. I’ve been pretty lucky that most people I’ve had dealings with were nice and tried hard, but there are always a few gimps that can mess up your whole day by doing stupid crap or simply just messing you around!

They say never work with kids or animals. It should really be “don’t work with gimps”. Myself and Paula put 100% into whatever we do and in return we expect at least the same in return. Some times that just doesn’t happen. Gimps create problems for you to deal with. Live would be much nicer if all the gimp-bags of the world were stuffed in a sack and dumped in the nearest river. I salute all the gimps that have crossed me – you will never get the chance againJ. Word of advice to those who are starting out in filmmaking: believe in what you do, trust your instincts, don’t get too comfortable in what you do – always be aware of what others are trying, learn from not just your own mistakes but other peoples mistakes too. Vary your interests. If you wanna do some animation stuff, don’t turn your back on live action, books, magazines, newspapers, and all the various pictures, photo’s, drawings and visual stuff out there. Slip a little of your personality into your work. Don’t be a carbon copy of somebody else. Put a little bit of your character into your movie, it could be anything like a hobby or a way of thinking or talking or acting, just do it. Can’t afford expensive equipment and tools? Don’t make excuses; just find a way around it. When we were planning a live action film called The Darkside, we didn’t have a camera, lighting or anything. Everything just fell into place, as if by magic. Remember, expensive equipment didn’t exist years ago and amazing films were made. Those guys just did their best with what they had, used their knowledge to find cool ways to do cool things that had never been done before. The same goes for story and plot. If everybody wrote and made the same films, the world would be a very dull place. Sure there are rules for story arc and all that kinda thing but rules exist to be broken! Don’t make the film others want to watch, make the film you wanna see. If others dig it, then great; but accept that your film may only find an audience with a few people. Shorts, in particular, are a tricky thing to work with. They are supposed to be a way to present and try out new ideas, but mostly they just turn out to be mini rip-offs of other feature length movies or TV dramas. And the people who watch shorts can vary from drunks in pubs, eager to laugh at anything remotely funny, to pretentious twats waiting for a literary reference to some boring old dead guy who wrote poncy poetry!

To do the films myself and Paula wanted to make we simply couldn’t achieve it properly in live action-land.
Attention turned towards animation. So I come full circle again to the animation “thing”. Ah, but this time it was different, now we were in 3D animation time. Yeah, but that 3D stuff is pretty costly, isn’t it? It is if you’re a rich idiot. I’m a poor idiot. I discovered the wonder that is Blender3d (www.blender.org), a free 3D animation programme and sequencer with advanced texture unwrapping and a fantastic in-built render engine. I’ll say it again – Blender 3D is FREE. That’s 100% free, not shareware or one of those featureless demo programmes that expires after 21 days. And it’s very reliable and dependable. Again, if you’ve visited our Dwarfed Films blog, you’ll have heard plenty about Blender as well as lots of other essential freeware programs for video/ audio/image editing. We even have an Essential Freeware List on the Dwarfed Films site with links to all the software.
Ok, if you’re still reading, then great – I appreciate your time – but you’re probably still wondering what this has got to do with Office Hours, or what the hell I’m even talking about. Be patient, we’re getting there.
So, like I’ve said, we did a few shorts, mainly as testers, using Blender 3d to see how the whole 3d thing might work out. This lead to To Shoot A Rurf. Visit www.toshootarurf.blogspot.com or www.dwarfedfilms.blogspot.com to find out more about this film and lots of images and background making-of stuff. For those too lazy to bother checking out these sites right now I’ll just say that To Shoot A Rurf utilised everything I NEVER learned from college life all those years ago. Yeah, It’s true, I learned nothing, nada, zilch. To Shoot A Rurf was a complete course – self taught – in 3D animation. In the previous shorts I’d handled lighting, camera work and basic texturing fairly well( My experience in live action lighting and camera work slightly helped but 3D lighting is more complex than the real world lighting situations). What I learned –through trial and error – on To Shoot A Rurf, was delicate character animation, cloth animation, fluid animation, physics animation setups, particle effects such as smoke, complex UV mapping, particle hair and lots of other stuff. It was a real learning experience – maybe no different than most self-taught users of Blender – but it was also one of the most rewarding filmmaking experiences I’ve had. Literally every day I learned something new. The picture edit and composing the music and all the other elements on To Shoot A Rurf was very enjoyable.

Actually To Shoot A Rurf is probably my favourite film. It is totally mad, utterly surreal and it has a quirky sense of humour running throughout it’s 8 and a half minute running time. I just watched it again today and I was struck by a number of things. The lighting is fantastic and the mood is set up right from the opening shot. The music, which Paula and I composed and performed, is great. The music accompanying the singing Rurf, Rurfetta La Fey, is like a gonzo version of a John Barrymore Bond theme. The liquid metal mirror snake is cool. It’s hard to believe that it was an afterthought that I decided to add to the movie because I simply wanted to animate a mirror snake! Ya see that’s the cool thing about making movies – anything is possible and you can add cool stuff just because you feel like it. Now I admit To Shoot A Rurf might not be to everybody’s taste. Maybe it’s a bit too “out-there” or seen as experimental.

Now we come to Office Hours, which will be a more “logical” picture. The story is far more straight forward, for a start.
The script was written by myself and Paula a few years back. It was originally planned to be a live action short but the To Shoot A Rurf lesson showed that it was doable in 3D. The story tells the tale of a lonely office worker who falls in love with a mannequin head he discovers in a trash can outside an old back street lady’s fashion shop. After his cruel boss gets killed in an accident, he digs up her body and steals it – taking it back to his office cubicle where he stitches his beloved mannequin head to the decomposing decapitated body. A freak-lightening storm brings the mannequin to life where it goes berserk and tries to kill the man who must fight for his life against the bizarre zombie.
It’s a romantic/comedy/zombie movie, all very tongue in cheek. To Shoot A Rurf (TSAR) was very surreal and weird. Office Hours is weird but in a less “mondo bizarre” way. Plus Office Hours looks way better than TSAR. Office Hours is being rendered out in hi-def format, the characters and backgrounds are more realistic and highly detailed. Actually realistic is not the right word for the characters – they occupy a place in between cartoonish and realistic.
Lots of tests have taken place for every aspect of the picture, and they need to: rendering at full scale can take a long time. 3D animation is more enjoyable to do compared to classical hand drawn animation but it can still be a pain! Working on To Shoot A Rurf, for example, thought me a lesson in using strand particle’s for human hairstyles. The particle hairs would sometimes react weirdly to movement giving the impression that the lead characters hair was alive! Also during rendering I noticed that depending on the camera lens used (yes-3D animation uses camera lenses just like live action filmmaking) and rendering size, the character would sometimes appear to be balder or hairier in certain sequences. Irritating stuff that only becomes obvious once a sequence has been rendered out – thereby wasting a lot of time on re-renders and fix-ups. Cloth animation also proved dodgy. Blender doesn’t have a dedicated cloth animation system but instead I used “Softbody” settings. These control the elasticity and fluid-like motion of an object and by tweaking you can achieve acceptable cloth like movements, except sometimes it doesn’t work out how you want it to. The lead character in To Shoot A Rurf magically opens his hand (after being attacked by a “liquid metal” mirror – don’t ask, just go check out the film instead!) and finds a mini version of himself standing in his palm. The mini character is wearing a tuxedo jacket on which I applied a cloth-like modifier. Sometimes it moved nicely, other times it behaved erratically and went “through” the characters body or stretched weirdly. Trial and error, people, trial and error is the only way to get through awkward situations! Office Hours will present as many hurdles to cross and lots of technical difficulties, but it will be worth it in the end!

So stick with the us and follow the whole process of the making of Office Hours by visiting this site www.officehoursfilm.blogspot.com or our main site www.dwarfedfilms.blogspot.com.

To Shoot A Rurf: DVD

Anyone interested in getting hold of a copy of the TO SHOOT A RURF DVD should email Dwarfed Films here and include the subject "TSAR" in the email reference box.

The DVD extra's for To Shoot A Rurf include a number of audio tracks explaining the making of the film, animation tests, lots of still images and early concept designs and other goodies.

The DVD costs 20 Euro(exluding P&P) and is only available from Dwarfed Films.

Also go visit the To Shoot A Rurf blog.

SCI-FI film in the works

Yes just like the heading says, we have been doing the groundwork for a science-fiction fantasy film - all of this on top of the continuing work on OFFICE HOURS.

The Sci-Fi pic is in a very early pre-production stage but we can confirm that it will be a live action short film with extensive C.G.I visual FX.

The film is set in the not too distant future and will feature a post apocalyptic world and fantastic machines. All vehicles, buildings and locations will be computer generated while the actors and certain props will be real.

We've been doing some greenscreen composite tests and so far we've been impressed with the results. Dwarfed Films have dabbled in merging C.G.I and live action before but we've never considered doing a project of this scale until recently. Also we've never made a science fiction action film before despite threatening to make one for years!
So when does it happen? Well we're still busy with Office Hours but, as I've mentioned, pre-production testing has already began on the film. There's a lot of work to do yet!

Ok, all this might sound very vague at the moment but trust us when we say that this is gonna be something really special.
So stay tuned to the site for more info on this and our other films.

Contact DWARFED FILMS

Office Hours: character in underpants

Here is a test render of the lead character in his underpants and vest. Why? Well, it is to be used during an important scene in the movie, thats why!

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: female character

Another image from Office Hours, this time the female character (who is actually a mannequin).
A number of costume designs are being worked on for her in various styles. Also skin tone textures are constantly being updated and revised.
Office Hours is the latest film from directors Shane Sheils and Paula Sheils.

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office hours: location images

These images are untextured work-in-progress screenshots from Office Hours.
Top image is a dark back alley. The other image is of the city street location.
Click here to contact Dwarfed Films.