Busy

Hi, just letting you know that we've been real busy lately and haven't been able to update as much as we'd like.
So keep checking the site for new stories and updates when they come!

Office Hours screenframe size

With Office Hours we are going to use a narrow frame size, much narrower (ie; letterbox stylee) than that of To Shoot A Rurf, Heli-Ball or even The Darkside. In fact we were thinking of using a narrow frame for Rurf but it proved awkward for shot composition and layout purposes.
If you're confused then think of it like this: normal PAL frame is 720X576 pixels; Office Hours frame might be closer to 720X288 pixels.
The exact frame size hasn't been locked down but it will add to the cinematic qualities of Office Hours. We feel the tighter screen size focuses attention better rather than having the viewers eyes wandering all over the shop! And it just looks damn cool in tests we've done.

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To Shoot A Rurf at Angel Film Festival

To Shoot A Rurf is screening at the Angel Film Festival in the UK.
You can see the film on Saturday 15th September 2pm - 5pm, King's Head, Islington.

To Find out more about To Shoot A Rurf go to www.toshootarurf.blogspot.com


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OFFICE HOURS: female model - new head

This is the new version of the female mannequin model from the film Office Hours.
The previous version we felt looked too harsh. Also i wasn't happy with the medelling around her mouth. In fact the previous versions mouth was all wrong! When it moved it left unnatural creases and lines. And her nose was strange too...To be honest she was a freak!
This 3D model is much better and I worked hard on getting nice smooth curves and arches. Hair restyle and eyelashes need to be added...

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Dwarfed Films Photography

It's not all just 3D animation and composing for Dwarfed Films these days!
We are heading back to our roots in photography too.
Dwarfed Films photographs combine elements of the picture grading and composition setups we use in our live action and animated films. We photograph using film in order to achieve the finest picture quality - then transfer to digital format for the editing stage. The choice of color or B&W is up to the clients taste/requirements.

Slick and stylish are the keywords here.

A good picture makes you look. A great picture makes you think and feel. We aim for the second category every time!

We cater for actors, models, commercial, corporate and personal projects.
If you require a creative eye with a professional outlook and service contact Dwarfed Films now.

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"New" film website: FestivalFocus.Org

Festival Focus is a website I only came across by accident yesterday - which is weird because I am listed on it along with a brief biography of myself and Paula.
I'm guessing that we were included by one of the founders of the Angel Film Festival, Chris.
Anyway the site has extensive listings of international filmmakers, films and festivals. Since discovering the site I have added some stills and a few more details on some of our pictures.

Go check out the site here.

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Ubuntu

A few postings back we talked about open source operating systems and mentioned Ubuntu, a version of Linux.
We applied for a free copy of Ubuntu and received it yesterday after having to wait only 2 weeks despite warnings that it can sometimes take up to 10.
We did a live install last night and gave it a quick test run. The computer we tested it on is pretty old so a live boot is expected to run slow but it eventually loaded up alright. Ubuntu comes with The Gimp, Open Office and some other software for playing audio and video but unfortunately it jammed up the system to a halt when trying to view a .Png image from our hard disk. All we could do was switch off the PC using the on/off button (the keyboard buttons and mouse cursor would not work). I presume this was only a problem because we were trying to access a hard disk while the computer could barely deal with running the bootable operating system in the CD/DVD drive. I don't think anything like this would happen if Ubuntu was installed (well I hope not).
Well, from first impressions it seems a good alternative to windows but we'll keep it in it's case until we decide to take the big step of switching over completely to Ubuntu !

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OFFICE HOURS: Typewriter 3D model

A Typewriter 3D model from animated film Office Hours.
The bottom image is a screenshot from Blender of the modelling process.

Click on the images to view them full scale.

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Our 100th POSTING!

This is the 100th posting on the Dwarfed Films blog!

Hopefully there are a few people out there in internet world that have visited the site and enjoyed what they've read/seen. (fingers crossed)

Our very first posting was back in 2006 and featured details on a "new" film called
TO SHOOT A RURF which we were in the process of making.
The following postings discussed the filmmaking process behind the making of To Shoot A Rurf and featured screenshots and stills. We also included some small bits of info on previous films such as The Darkside and Opera Baby.

As we progressed we realised that people were interested in seeing the developmental progress of piecing a film together so we included more and more images and screenshots but this time with annotations and comments. An extension of this lead to the idea of putting together the Dwarfed Films Essential Freeware List which promotes the most effective and useful freeware/open source tools available for making films. You can find lots of freeware on the net but it's annoying having to trawl through lists and advertisements just to find something good so we hope our freeware list packages the best of the best together nicely :)

In the past few months we've delivered an abundace of material showing the making of our latest film OFFICE HOURS. By the end of it you'll have seen the complete breakdown of how this 3D animated picture was put together from initial design concept through to the finished end product.

To anyone thats stuck with us or to any new visitors we say a big thank you and hope you'll stick with us for a hundred more postings featuring details on filmmaking, photography, animation, our music and much more!

Shane Sheils & Paula Sheils
Dwarfed Films
Ireland


NOTE: To Shoot A Rurf is screening at the Portobello Film Festival in London, UK on the 17th August at Westbourne Studios. Visit the Portobello Film Festival 2007 site and download the programme brochure (2mb-PDF format).

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Office Hours: male polygon hair re-style

Ok, I know you're probably as sick of seeing pictures of this character from Dwarfed Films' "Office Hours" as we are but I think it's interesting to the see the complete development of the 3D model and the various stages of redesign that happens.
These images are accompanied by some brief text notes describing what has changed.
Click on the images to view them full scale with annotations.
What you will see is that polygon hair modelling techniques have been applied to the male character. This is combined with particle hair for the beard and stubbly patches on his scalp.
The reasons for using polygon hair is described in the text accompanying the images.
I think you'll agree that this character looks way better than before by utilising a combination of these two styles.

(Note: I just realised that this is our 99th posting on this site. Stay with us for the century!)

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Office Hours: UV Textures

Here are some images of changed UV texture maps as they appear on character models.
Click on the images to view them with descriptions and comments.
Keep vising the site for more updates!


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An update on "Office Hours"

An update on Dwarfed Films' "Office Hours":
We're working on improving the quality of the textures in the film. We want Office Hours to look the best and some of the UV textures are not quite right yet so I've been creating better ones with much more detail and realism. I was looking at "To Shoot A Rurf" (T.S.A.R) the other day and, although it's textures are good, they seemed in places to be a little bland. Office Hours has much more daylight scenes and detail will be far more important as opposed to T.S.A.R's nighttime setting. Textures will play a massive part in creating the 'realism' of this Frankenstein-esque fantasy short so they need to be perfect!
Images to follow...

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Dwarfed Films blog is B.B.D featured feed

Our site is the featured feed on the Big Blog Directory (B.B.D) for this week.
So if anyone who is reading this linked to us from B.B.D we'd encourage you to check out the Dwarfed Films site history of postings.
You are sure to find something interesting to read or view!
Oh, and don't forget the updated Dwarfed Films Essential Freeware List or the To Shoot A Rurf blog either.
Check the links section on this site to navigate to more Dwarfed Films related sites.

As usual you can email Dwarfed Films or simply leave a comment on the site

Free Texture Resources

Looking for free textures?
Check these sites out:

http://www.tellim.com/texture_cd

http://www.imageafter.com/

http://www.vb3d.com/Textures.html

http://www.mayang.com/textures/

http://www.mega-tex.nl/highqualitytextures/

http://www.3d-rekonstruktionen.de/downloads/

http://www.digitalcraftsman.com/textureBin/textureBin.htm

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Buy a model and save a life *

Hi, Shane here.
Only recently I added some models I created onto a few sites for sale.
They are all architectural elements or buildings such as high rises and are available for download in a variety of formats including 3ds, Lwo, Obj, W3d and others. All the models were created using Blender 3D.
I hope to keep adding to these collections when I find the time but until then please visit the links below!

Checkout my TURBOSQUID page

Checkout my 3DSTUDIO page

Checkout my 3D02 page


*"Buy a model and save a life" is not technically true;)

KVR Audio

The best site I've found on the net for VST plugins is the KVR Database
The best thing is that you can find free plugins in all categories by using it's great search engine.
Just select the format you're looking for and choose the various options to narrow your search.
You can find VST instruments, hosts, DirectX, etc in commercail,shareware and freeware categories. Some of the freeware ones are very high quality and sound excellent.
This is is a very good site and we recommend it to anyone who hasn't discovered it yet.

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OFFICE HOURS: animation update

A Screenshot from Blender showing animation process during Office Hours production.

Click on the image to view it full size with notations.

To get in touch with Dwarfed Films click here or simply leave a comment on this site.

Essential Free Software List has been updated

The Dwarfed Films Essential Freeware List has been updated with some new programs and direct links to download sites.
Some websites that advertise freeware are fake and contain malware/spyware. The sites we've included are ones we've used ourselves.
We hope you find some useful programs and realise that just because something is free doesn't mean it's crap! The particular programs we've featured are the equal or better than their commercial rivals. Programs marked with "*" are ones we regularly use.

Click to go to Dwarfed Films Essential Freeware List

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Office Hours: "array modifier" example

Here is a screenshot from the modelling process of "Office Hours". The building was designed and modelled in Blender 3D. To save a great deal of time, sections of the building were duplicated using Blender's "Array modifier".

Click on the picture to view a larger image with brief descriptions and notes.

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Linux Ubuntu: check it out

I was just thinking of the software we used today and realised it was all freeware or open source.
They were Blender 3d, Audacity, VM midi Keyboard, Psycle, Firefox, Paint.net, The Gimp, Irfan View and Open Office. (click here for details/download info)
We really like the idea of freeware/open source software and one area we haven't really tried fully yet is open sorce operating systems. In the last post we mentioned Linux Ubuntu, and today we applied for a copy of this open source( Free) operating system.
Go check out their website. Ubuntu looks impressive and you can download it or apply to receive a free copy by mail if your connection is slow or you just like getting mail (they say it takes between 4 and 10 weeks to get it).
You can run windows applications on Ubuntu but there are thousands of freeware programs that are free to download and use too. Remember to check the Dwarfed Films Essential Freeware list.
I'm not sure how well windows designed programs work on Linux but you can go check out details on the web or check the ubuntu wiki.

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Windows Vista

We're using Windows Vista Premium which came pre-installed on a new computer. It looks nice although it's just really a fancier version of XP with the addition of a side bar with a clock, a calender and some other things. It all seems a bit gimmicky and is fun for a day or so but when you just want to focus on doing tasks such as audio/video editing you don't pass too many remarks of it. But it does run nicely.
I wouldn't have bought it as a standalone package but it is great when it comes pre-installed. The price of buying Vista Premium edition in Ireland is around 300 Euro or around 200 Euro for upgrade. I think that's too expensive considering that it isn't a massive improvement on the previous version of Windows. It is more user friendly and accessible but with some of the versions of Linux operating systems like Ubuntu that are coming out with excellent features, Microsoft should make more of an effort! I tested a bootable version of Linux last year (can't remember the name) and it looked great. Linux operating systems tend to allow programs like Blender 3d to run better too. Why didn't we switch to Linux if it's so great? Most of our software is windows based and we were unsure how stable it would work on Linux and we didn't want to waste time getting used to a new system either. We will switch over some day..
I haven't tried all our software with Vista yet but most of it seems to work ok. Blender was a bit glitchy: strange blockiness on the screen when moving windows or objects about. When settings in the optimisation panel were adjusted it worked as normal with major noticable errors except in render settings: when selecting a codec, the window that opens causes the blender screen immediatly beneath it to turn black when you try to drag it around.Of course this isn't a serious issue but it shouldn't happen. (You need to disable the AERO theme in Vista and it should work as normal)
Shit Talker (which appeared in a post from a few days ago) didn't work so good. It wouldn't shut down correctly and kept on running in the background and needed to be switched off from the task manager. Even then it wouldn't go away properly so Vista needed a reboot. I wouldn't recommend Shit Talker with Vista. Works fine with Windows 2000 but not on our Vista!
The drum sequencer program DT-100 Drumstation works with Vista but when attempting to save and enter a file name I was restricted to only certain keys and numbers like "a", "l" and the number "4". This was strange and annoying so I just removed the program in case it would cause any other problems.
I'll post any problems I notice with other audio/video editing programs when I come across them.

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