Creative studio Royale has released this festive little short to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas
La-based creative studio Royale has released new short Impossible present to spread a bit of festive cheer to their nearest and dearest and to spread their creative wings. Royale’s creative director and partner Brien Holman comments, “Every day we work on client driven, commercial driven work. As artists i think we need to have some sort of release to play with new techniques, new software, or just simply sit back and tell a story. It’s in our company philosophy. Impossible Present came to us out of the desire to craft a character driven short film with a hint of a darker side. We decided it would be the perfect piece to flex our creatives on, and also serve as a company holiday piece as a gift to our friends, family, and clients.”
So, the Royale team got to work on the film’s main character, a small boy named Edward. His initial model was created using 3ds Max and ZBrush before being taken into Maya to complete the process. “Maya was key to this piece being made,” says Holman. “The entire piece could have been built within it if we didn’t have a kick ass 3ds Max modeler on hand. We created the rig to have complete control over his expressions – with no dialogue it was key to have expressions tell the story – well that and plenty of eye twitch. With the rig completed we split the shots between 3 different animators, while the model was being added to and textured, then the render scenes setup and lit. At the end of the process, we referenced the animated Edward into each shot’s render file and rendered passes for composite. The ease in which Maya uses referenced files was key to getting this piece done in an efficient way.”
This organised approach stretched right through the entire film’s production. “We were very nimble on the Maya side, organised in a way that allowed artists to work with each other seamlessly, Holman explains. “The entire piece from start to finish was done by a small handful of artists, it was imperative that the pipeline was smooth so that everything worked together… I know this seems like a small thing – but getting a system down, and organized, that all artists can understand and use is important to getting out of work on time and enjoying some late night television. Animators would be creating revisions to shots, while other artists were getting the render files ready. As soon as animation was locked, a Master file was made, and since the Master file was being referenced in the render file all the while, it was as simple as hitting render. Again – sounds simple, and sounds like something you should be doing all the time (and it is) but it is what differentiates staying till 2am and leaving at 7pm.”
Check out Royale’s website for more work
Posted on Saturday, December 31st, 2011 at 11:57 am under Shorts, Showcase. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: 3D animated short, 3D animation, Animated short, Impossible Present, weareroyale
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