My Giant Robot!

I'm still tweaking this giant, but you can take a look at the progress. (It'll take a moment to load the Quicktime movie). Once again, special thanks to Horizon's Mike Beaumont for another amazing effort with the sound design. I love hearing the car alarm flying out of sight!

Experience Lovey's super strength, super spin, and super blast in stereo thanks to the talent of Horizon's Mike Beaumont. You can view the animation and hear the sound design right here. (It'll take a moment to load the Quicktime movie).

To pose the question "What kinds of powers would you give a robot?" Lovey demonstrates three from his arsenal. Super strength, super spin, and super blast. Take a look! (It'll take a moment to load the Quicktime movie). This animation marks my first attempt lighting a 3D character with HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imagery). Huh? Basically, it's a technique that uses a panoramic photo you've taken to emit light in 3D space giving you a far more realistic robot. For more info on HDRI click here.

Two of Avery's responses begin and end the film. Pint-sized bookends if you will. And why? Because I believe he might be from another planet, and that jives well with the sci-fi nature of this particular project. So take a look at the development of his brick robot by clicking on the image...

I just bought a book at the Wexner Center book store that has me pretty fired up. It's a collection of photos of Japanese robot toys from the 70's and early 80's entitled Super #1 Robot. There's a brief intro that outlines the history of the "super robot" and the rise and fall of the genre's popularity. There's something very noble and pure about the design of these robots that I'd like to capture in My Giant Robot! I think you might notice the influence as I go. The one shown here is from the book, all beautifully photographed by Tim Brisko, which I highly recommend.

I added a 4x8' bulletin board to my apartment to keep track of the project, "at a glance."

I just got my 6 Sony HDCAM masters dubbed to miniDV for the final edit. There are not many Sony HDCAM decks in town and a few phonecalls lead me to our local CBS affiliate, WBNS, for the best transfer rate. My friends at Spacejunk Media have been kind enough to allow me to capture my anamorphic footage uncompressed, so the final film will look nice and crisp! Excellent...

So there's been some trial and error, and there's bound to be more, but here's a look at where I'm at with the Toon Shader. I have plenty of compositing to do to get the look I want - both with the appearance of the "neighborhood" as well as the background. Plus, my outlines (dark purple) are so thin and close together on the front porch, that they're flickering. Kind of annoying... Anyway, here's a glimpse of it in motion.

With the toon shader set up, I need to prepare each shot before rendering. So I had to place cameras in my 3d scene and pick my shots. Seems straight forward enough, but then you realize you can put the camera anywhere! So I focused on stringing a series of shots together that would best tell the story. The house robot gets up, sets off a car alarm, and kicks the car outta the neighborhood. Done. So here's a rough cut with 7 shots from 7 separate cameras in my scene... Click here to check it out - and here if you need Quicktime.