Check out this new, funny CG animated short, Glued, produced by four students at Bezalel Academy of the Arts

The four animation students, Alon Tako, Guy Elnathan, Daniel Lichter and Sivan Kotek were given the subject of ‘games’ for their third-year project: “We decided to work together because it would be insane to try and make your first CG short by yourself!” they say on their Blog post.

This short CG animation depicts a mother trying to deal with her videogame addicted son. Look out for her manic laughing face and her twitches – very funny!

• Interested in games? The check out the latest issue of 3D World – the special issue contains loads of tutes and tips!

Watch Glued

The students have created a great little Blog about Glued which they hope will help aspiring animators, students and animation enthusiasts.

Here we’ve pulled out some interesting bits for you.

“After we felt the storyboard was as accurate as it could be, we decided to put it in motion. We started working on an in-depth animatic so we could get a feel for how the film would be. We tried to be as accurate as possible – spending hours over the tiniest detail! It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but in the end we had something that really showed us how the film would feel.”

The team developed a colour script. “We really tried to focus on the mood and feel of each scene – thinking ‘What type of emotion do we want to express here?’ The final result was great and was a life-saver later on while working on the actual lighting for the film.”

Character sculpts

“Before going 3D, we sculpted our character designs in clay. It has a more natural feel to it and plus its fun to work with some real material for a change. After that we moved on to ZBrush.”

Head over to the Glued Blog page for the full account

Watch the CG animated short Exoids and find out how Gnomon Studios’ Meni Tsirbas created this dynamic animation using Maya, ZBrush, modo, MetalRay and V-Ray, and the help of some talented students…

You may remember Exoids as we covered it a few weeks ago when we interviewed director Meni Tsirbas about the trailer.

• Read the full making-of article on Exoids

The action takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where only slugs and robots are the survivors. A cyber-enhanced slug Gus Nitrous makes a wrong turn into the Exoids-occupied city of Los Angeles which sets off an epic battle.

Exoids has a great live-action feel to it, thanks to the camera moves and perspective tricks.

“Exoids is a culmination of many influences including post apocalyptic action films like The Road Warrior, grittier animated films like Rango, and my recent focus on live-action direction,” says Tsirbas.

• Read the making-of Rango

  – ILM shares its CG secrets on the Oscar-winning Rango

The animation was created onsite using the student talent from The Gnomon School of Visual Effects. The school selects students who then get to work on real-world productions and a professional director.

“The resulting high-end experience and demo reel material is so invaluable for the students that it usually leads to some pretty amazing industry jobs soon after graduation,” says Tsirbas.

For more about the Gnomon School of Visual Effects visit the website
For more about the Gnomon Studios visit the website

Watch EXOIDS via YouTube

See artwork and behind-the-scenes images of Exoids

Find out how 3D artist Louis Lefebvre created this animated CG short film, I, pet goat II, using Maya, V-Ray FumeFX and RealFlow

We saw I, pet goat II a few days ago and caught up with creator Louis Lefebvre to ask him about character design, environment design, the layout work, the art direction, matte painting and more.

Watch the animated short and read the interview below:

3D World: In your own words, please describe what happens in I, pet goat II.
Louis Lefebvre: The film came to me in a visual form. That is I kept seeing vivid images and symbols and I decided to follow these and see where they led.

Much like I have read about certain authors who start a book having only a character in mind and the book will be an exploration of what that character has to tell them. In my case, I kept seeing the central character on the boat and it was as if he was saying “Follow me”. I felt that I would be led to a deeper peace if I did.

So the film is about a journey through the landscape of my personal suffering using very universal symbols, a journey that leads to a more peaceful abiding place.

Throughout the process I tried to follow the story in its visual form [rather than over thinking things]. When things made sense visually and rhythmically, I went with that. In fact many times it wasn’t clear to me what the images meant and I found multiple explanations. And many people have given me alternative explanations. I think it works well that way evoking different things for different people.

Having said that, the story is clearly about the crumbling away of the hierarchical world based on control and the rising up of the spiritual man, awake to his divine nature, free of intermediaries.

3D World: What were the film’s influences, both story-wise and stylistically?
LL: I am very interested in mystical writings whether Christian, Sufiism, Advaita, Zen or others.

Films like Baraka have had a deep impact on me. Baraka mixes a gorgeous soundtrack with stunning cinematography.

Also films like the Wall I guess, to which I responded very viscerally as a child because of the intense musical score and the strong symbolism, or the Triplettes of Belleville with its mixture of dance, music and animation. Both have a strong critical message too. Which I like. Wrapping these very hard subjects in pleasing visuals and luring rhythms makes it much easier to get your point across. That’s why I chose cute little characters with vivid colors. The story line was already dark enough.

Stylistically, the initial inspiration was a Christian orthodox icon of a Christ figure in flaming reds and yellows. The idea of using gold leaf also came from there. I knew I could make it as detailed as these types of paintings so I experimented with rough brush strokes to give it an art class (a little messy) kind of finish.

There is a bit of Dali in there and the Group of Seven Painters which is a group of Canadian painters from the early twentieth century, some native American art, and many other influences in there I am sure.

The Pietà pose is borrowed from Dali and I pet goat II contains other familiar influences

3D World: What did you do on the short and what was the hardest job?
LL: Many people have contacted me thinking that we are a small company with a permanent crew. I guess that’s my fault for the way it is presented on the website. And it is my hope for the future. I am presently talking to a few producers and perhaps it will happen. We shall see.

But the truth of the matter is that it has been a mostly solitary endeavor with a few contractors hired as I needed them.
Mostly I was helped with the VFX work, the dance, the motion capture recording, some design work for the environments and some matte painting. And the music and sound.

My two pillars which did most of the VFX work were Jocelyn Simard (aka Strob of Iron Baby fame) and Hugues Coupal. Hugues was also assistant art director when I needed a second pair of eyes.

So that leaves me all of the modeling, the texturing, character animation and rigging, and most of the lighting except for effects lighting. I did all of the character design, some of the environment design, the layout work, the art direction and some matte painting.

I even was the voice at the beginning of the short.

The hardest job for me was definitely the direction; the story telling. I had never done such an extensive short so I was very insecure about my ability to do it. The subject matter was so daunting and I felt so unsure as to if I could pull it off, that it brought up a lot of stuff for me. That was the process, which was very difficult but also very rewarding.

3D World: How long did I, pet goat II take to produce?
LL: The idea started to germinate probably in 2005. As I said I kept seeing the central figure on his boat. I started to take small stabs at it while doing other work. And it started taking up more and more of my time until 2008 when I started doing it full time and hiring people punctually.

"I never thought it would take so much time," says Louis. "At first I wasn't aiming at such a high quality and the story wasn't as elaborate. But as time went on it just kept pulling me in further"

3D World: What 3D software did you use and why?
LL: I used Maya and V-Ray. Just because I have been using Maya since our company was beta testing it in the beginning when I was working in San Jose. I know myself around it really well. I script in mel and also do some coding in c++.
I chose V-Ray for the rendering because I really liked its ease of use, the way the light behaved in a natural manner and also just liked how the sss and color seemed to come out.

We used FumeFx for the natural smoke and RealFlow for the water shots.

3D World: What was the most useful piece of 3D software and why?
LL: Definitely Maya since it was the one that was overwhelmingly used on a day to day basis. Over the years I have developed an important toolset of scripts and plug-ins that help me rig more efficiently.

Most of my rigging is scripted to allow you to make easy changes at any time. In fact, even if I was alone for the character creation (modeling, animation, texturing) I approached it as a bigger studio would, having things scripted and sharing up assets (puppets, animation…).
I made making changes a lot easier.

3D World: What was the most impressive technical aspect of the project and how was it achieved using 3D software?
LL: Definitely the most technically challenging shots were the smoke and the crumbling infrastructure shots. The crumbling towers, the army of business men and the collapsing church specifically. Strob did the smoke and Hugues Coupal did the collapsing church. Strob used FumeFx in 3ds and it took some time before getting what I wanted. Same with the collapsing church. I know Hugues did a lot of scripting to get that falling the way it did. He did scripting to get all the uvs working properly and also to get the various sections to collapse at different times.

The most technically challenging shots were the smoke and the crumbling infrastructure shots

Also, just trying to coordinate everything on my end with all the smoke work which was not being done physically in the same place as me. Strob was doing the smoke from home and he was working in 3ds. Getting everything to match (lighting, cameras…) was a big headache for me. I really learned to appreciate the value of a good supervisor and coordinator.

3D World: Did you do anything wrong in the production? Did you learn anything from producing I, pet goat II?
LL: I made a lot of mistakes and much of these mistakes had to do with just not having directed or art directed anything before. I had a very strong feeling about what I wanted to say but not necessarily a clear picture of how things were going to look or be strung together in the end. So I spent a lot of time redoing things, remodeling characters, retexturing, relighting as I progressed in my craft. What I learned most I think from this project was a sense of confidence. I think if I end up doing another one, I will go straight to the point much faster, with more clarity.

Louis Lefebvre has been working in animation since 1998. He animated doctor Sid in the movie Final Fantasy: the spirit within, and worked in the animation and rigging departments at Weta for the Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers.

We’ll be doing a Meet the 3D Artist post featuring Louis Lefebvre next week

In issue 158 of 3D World we find out how director Tomas Vergara created this black comedy using Maya, V-Ray, Mudbox, After Effects and Premiere. Watch the CG animated short here…

Chilean artist Tomas Vergara retreated to a small cabin in the woods of Pucon for 15 months in order to create this short: “I had a fairly comfortable life but I was going nowhere,” he explains. “Here in Chile, if you want to make a living out of being creative you have to succumb mostly to advertising in the retail area, which sucks.

“To show off my vision I had to make my own material, so I decided to cut all expenses and save money for six months prior to starting my own short film.”

Watch Tomas Vergara’s The Chase

• Synopsis: A contract hit goes horribly wrong, sparking a chain of unexpected events

It was during the few months before resigning from his job that Vergara came up with the idea for The Chase and wrote the script. “I made a few storyboard drawings and gathered some reference to see where it was headed visually,” he explains. The result was a story about a young hitman, Vincent, whose assignment goes wrong. Curiosity gets the better of him and as he hesitates, albeit slightly, his target notices him, sparking a chain of unexpected events.

Vergara knew the intricate plot featuring multiple characters would involve a huge amount of work and was determined to get it done. “It was going to be impossible to develop while I still had a full-time job,” he says. “I wasn’t going to be able to hang out with friends and do all the normal stuff.”

The Chase contains multiple characters which Vergara started work on as soon as he reached his isolated location. He used Maya to animate them

When Vergara moved to South Chile he started on the pre-viz and character designs. “I wanted to portray a stylised reality – that’s why I tried to make it as photoreal as possible,” he says. “The characters had to feel [as though they were] from the same world, but also look like they had flesh and feelings. I tried to make them very human in their behaviour and not just cartoon things that moved.”

To create realistic human movements, the director studied various movies, including the Bourne franchise and kung-fu films. Vergara was influenced by other sources for the set designs and overall feel of the film. “I used Studio Ghibli as inspiration for the look and environments, as well as concept art by super Japanese artist Tatsuyuki Tanaka and Craig Mullins – I think he’s one of the best out there.”

With pre-viz, character and environment designs finalised, Vergara started working in 3D, opting to use a Maya and V-Ray pipeline. But, being his debut film, one of the director’s biggest challenges was learning techniques he’d never attempted before. “The most time-saving tool I had was Animation Tools’ AdvancedSkeleton plugin for Maya,” he explains.

Maya rigging made easy

“I’d never rigged a character before and I knew it would take me several days to learn the craft. And even if I did, the rig had to be perfect to avoid the whole thing falling apart in the middle of the project. The free plugin allowed me to make a fairly decent rig per day, instead of a possibly defunct one in a week.”

The plugin also helped when it came to the facial expressions, which was a massive technical challenge.

The short stars four mute characters, so it was essential that their faces tell the story. “Having no rigging experience, I had to think carefully about how to tackle it,” Vergara says.

The director turned to AdvancedSkeleton for the facial expressions

“The first and most obvious alternative was to use blend shapes, but at that length and with the timeframe I had, it seemed like an almost impossible task. But then I found that AdvancedSkeleton also provided a facial rigging tool, and even though it wasn’t flawless, it ended up working very well.”

Not-so-perfect location

While the isolated location enabled the director to focus on his work, it also created some time-consuming technical problems. “The biggest and most frustrating issue was gaining access to the internet,” Vergara says. “It only worked about three days a week and only for a few hours, so things like gathering references was a crusade in itself.”

The weather also proved to be a bit of a problem, with heavy rain, blackouts and poles falling onto electricity lines were common problems, but Vergara’s hard work, effort and months of living in isolation eventually paid off.

“The Chase got me some attention among Hollywood people working in the film business who want me to make my feature debut as a director there,” he explains.

“My ambition is to direct and produce lots of cool projects over time, make stuff that I really want to see and make a living out of it.”

But would he endure such a unique production process again? “The experience was refreshing to me as an artist and as a person,” Vergara says. “I needed time and space to think and try to see everything from the outside, from a very different perspective. I guess it’s not a false statement to say that someone would go literally crazy being isolated for a long period of time. I was, many times, very close to that. Luckily for me, the area was big and there was plenty to do; it was definitely a very stimulating place. I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but just once. The next thing I do has to be a collaborative effort.”

The Dynamica plugin for Maya provided the solution to the complex action sequence where hitman Vincent falls into some barrels

Key technology

The Chase is full of complex action scenes: in particular the one where Vincent falls into some barrels proved problematic: “There were at least a couple of thousand objects in this scene and I quickly remembered why I don’t like using any dynamics in Maya: they suck.”

So Vergara looked to find a better alternative. “I did some research and found a free plug-in for Maya called Dynamica, which uses the Bullet physics engine,” he says. “I tried that and it worked straight away.”

“You can spend hours playing with that thing; it’s incredible – it makes everything feel so organic. I baked about five versions of the fall in a couple of hours and used the one I liked the most.”

You can read the full article in issue 158 of 3D World magazine – which also contains a massive making of Prometheus feature, a steampunk masterclass, a ZBrush FibreMesh tutorial and more.

Send us your shorts (CG ones!)

To submit work for inclusion in Short Cuts, contact us at enquiries@3dworldmag.com, attaching a brief synopsis and at least three stills.

The quality of this CG animation is so good, we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple actually used this as a bona fide advert in the future. Find out how 3D artist Michael Ko used Maya, After Effects, V-Ray, PFTrack and Photoshop to create this awesome short

It’s difficult to believe that this animation is an assignment for Michael Ko’s advanced 3D class at Otis college of Art and Design, because it is an absolute belter of an advert.

In fact, the quality of the rendering in this animation is so good that if Ko didn’t say it was created with CG, one might assume he had built the set by hand.

We caught up with the 3D artist to ask him how he created the cute animation. Check out the film and then read his story below.

Watch Michael Ko’s iPhone – Diorama

“The initial assignment/idea was to create three still shots using a diorama of any kind,” Ko says. “I’ve always wanted to create a miniature city using any sort of medium. So I thought it would be a great opportunity to build a miniature city using 3D software.”

“From there, I researched digital artists, magazines and web blogs to develop my miniature concept.”

Through this research, Ko found loads of inspirational phone commercials created using 3D software, and he discovered that the iPhone was the most popular phone out of them all, and that’s when he decided to use the iPhone for the animation.

He looked to projects done by Yum Yum and Vinicious Coasta for inspiration. “I’ve always loved Yum Yum’s cute models and cheerful colours in his projects. So I tried to practice using his colour palettes and styles with my project,” says Ko.

“For animation in particular, one of the projects done by Vinicious Coasta, Zune, shows holographic buildings/environment popping up on top of a phone. This really caught my eye, so I thought it would be fun to try them out on my project.”

Building the diorama

Maya 2012 was the main software used on the project. “I started out with getting the concept through research, laying out the shots to find angles to match the storyboard, and modelling the phone with orthographic view of an iPhone 4s.”

iPhone - Diorama offers a glimpse at what the future may hold for iPhone technology. We think the animation here is so good it could be picked up by Apple and used in future 3D iPhone campaigns

“Then, before I proceeded to the next step in Maya, I asked my friend to shoot the footages based on my storyboard and the HDR for lighting purposes,” Ko continues.

• Read a review of Maya 2012

“The next task was to track the footage using PFTrack. After I tracked the footage, I continued to model buildings, cars, and other props.”

Ko kept the buildings and props low in polycount to make it easier to layout the UVs and textures.

“I laid out UVs in Maya in a way I can cover one entire building with single file for efficiency,” he says. “All the textures were created in Photoshop with the combination of solid colors with overlaid color paper textures.”

• Read a review of Photoshop CS6

After a week researching and developing the ways he could animate based on his storyboard, Ko decided to manually animate every object in the scene.

“I thought it would be most efficient because that way I’d have total control over timing,” he says.

The whole animation process took about a week to finish. “After animation, I used an HDR image for the base light and two V-Ray rectangular lights to light the scene,” Ko explains.

Ko says that the most interesting shot was the beginning establishing shot. “I usually put all my effort into the first shot to grab the attention of the audience,” Ko says. “After I finished comping the first establishing shot, I showed people to judge if the shot felt complete. The biggest moment was when my instructor didn’t notice that the iphone was CG.”

It’s a good point. We hadn’t really thought about that either! Check out the fine details and reflections of the pastel-coloured buildings by clicking on the images in this post.

Many thanks to Michael Ko for granting us this interview. We hope to see more from this talented artist in the future.

Let us know what you think of this 3D animation

Have your say on Twitter, Facebook, or via the Comments box below.

Want to see your work in 3D World? The send uus your shorts (CG ones!)

We love to see new 3D art and you could gain exposure you never dreamed of.

Many 3D artists currently working in the 3D industry have been spotted in 3D World first – after all, Oscar-winning VFX supervisors and leading studios all over the world read 3D World.

If you would like to see your work featured in 3D World or on the website, email us, attaching three low-res stills and a brief synopsis. enquiries@3dworldmag.com

Find out how this comedic animated short about a guy with a passion for working nine-til-five was created using a combination of Maya, Nuke and Mental Ray. Watch the short here too

Waking Gus is a surreal comedy that plays with the idea of dreams. The film opens with the main character, Gus, happily going through his normal morning routine before he heads off to his office job. However, as he walks through the front door his day turns out to be anything but normal.

The short animation was created as an entry to the Team Video category of the CG Society XXVI Dreamscape challenge by Paul Capon, Mack Carruthers, Die Gaztelumendi and Mark Rodziewicz. “We were all working at Guru Studio in various roles when the CG Society Dreamscape challenge began,” says Capon.

“Mack and I had tried unsuccessfully to enter their previous espionage themed competition. So, knowing where we had gone wrong previously, assembling a team of folks with various complimentary talents was top priority.

“We knew that with the number of people on our team and the amount of time available to us, we needed to streamline the story as much as possible. One or two characters at most, simple sets and a plot, in this case a dream, that almost all of our viewers could relate to.”

Personal experience led the team to the final concept for the film. “Who hasn’t dreamt of falling at some point in their lives?” Capon says. “As someone who isn’t exactly keen on heights, it’s certainly something that haunts my dreams on occasion.

“When I first thought about it, I realised how perfect it was. It had everything we were looking for, really simple sets, one character, two if you include the rubber duck, and not render intensive. The basic idea was there, but the team and Mack in particular, fleshed out the idea and really helped give the short it’s bizarre sense of humour. “

Time management

With the film’s narrative decided, the team started building assets using Maya as their primary 3D application. “Everyone in the group knew it well,” says Rodziewics. During production, the team’s biggest challenge was the sheer amount of hurdles they encountered and the time frame they had to sort them.

“The greatest technical challenge was the amount of technical issues we had to solve,” Rodziewics explains. “Our first pass of renders revealed many errors, glitches and artifacts. There were some bad UV’s, flipped face normals, bad name-spaces/references, Gimbal issues, flickering, the list went on.

“Some of the problems were easy to solve, some not so much. But solutions were found in the forums and rendering artifacts were explained in Boaz Livny’s book “Mental Ray for Maya, 3ds Max and XSI”.

The time taken to overcome these issues meant reprecussions further down the pipeline. “About 2 days remaining into the challenge, it was realized that only one workstation would not be sufficient to render the remaining frames in time for the contest deadline,” says Rodziewics.

“Instead, we gave the rendering task to a web-based rendering service which saved us. We were able to make the submission deadline with only a few hours to spare.”

Having now finished the film and although time was a constant problem, the team are happy with the final short.

“The tight time constraints of the project didn’t allow us to polish the animation as much as we would have liked, but we can safely say we’re thrilled and fulfilled with the end result!” Carruthers comments. “Working together as a team, each of us putting our all into the creative process was a truly special experience.”

Like this short? Check out the selection of other awesome animations on our showcase page

In issue 155 of 3D World we talk to director of student short Worlds Apart Michael Zachary Huber about how the effects of pollution on Earth prompted the creation of this heartfelt story. Watch the animation trailer here

Global warming, climate change and freak weather conditions are all signs of the impact humans have on Earth. New student short Worlds Apart follows this subject, telling the story of how man-made pollution contributes to the end of the human race. The desolate Earth is visited by aliens, who find a lonely teddy bear in an abandoned farmhouse in California. Using futuristic technology, they’re able to extract memories from the soft toy and learn how humans had once enjoyed happy existences, full of hopes, dreams and goodness.

The nine-minute short is the second film created by student group Project X of Cogswell College in California, and assistant professor Michael Zachary Huber. The idea for the short first came about as Huber contemplated his future. “A few years back, my wife was several months pregnant with our son and I was consumed with concern over the world in which we were going to be raising him,” he explains. “The environment and pollution are big issues with me. And being a sci-fi fan, the story just flowed out one evening.”

The characters followed shortly after the plot, with Huber designing them from the world around him. “I wanted the teddy bear to be that stuffed toy we all had as a kid,” he says. “As far as the aliens go, I wanted to go with amphibian types. On Earth they’re one of the species most susceptible to pollution as they breathe through their skin. And they’re also cute in their own way, which helps from an anthropomorphic perspective.”

With the plot decided, Huber took his idea to the Cogswell College students and production got underway. First they had to decide upon the short’s overall visual style. “There were many inspirations for the film’s look,” Huber explains. “In particular, I found some great pastoral paintings of central California that were done over 80 years ago, perfect for the look of some of our more idealised scenes.”

You can read more about the technical process behind Worlds Apart in issue 155 of 3D World magazine.

Watch the Worlds Apart trailer:

Like this film? Check out the selection of other awesome animations on our shorts page

Find out how this atmospheric, painterly animated short was created using Maya, Photoshop and After Effects. Watch the film here too

For the Remainder depicts the last moments of a house cat who bids farewell to its home before leaving to perish. The short was a graduation project created by Omer Ben David while studying at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Israel. Ben David first began working on the plot in November last year.

“I was dwelling on a concept of a cat that leaves his house and searches for his final resting place for some time before then,” he says. “I pondered on that notion since hearing the rumour that old cats sometime leave their home to die somewhere else unseen by their beloved ones or enemies. I felt that this essence of a story is very poetic and thus should be treated as a song rather than a narrative.”

First impressions

After developing the main plot, the director carefully considered the importance of the film’s characters and what role each would play.

“From the beginning, the story was about a cat and a house,” Ben David explains. “The cat’s owner was also a main character but I wasn’t sure if he would be performing or his presence just suggested. The spider came somewhat in the middle of the storyboarding stage, when I was searching for a death motif to allow the cat to deal with.”

“I was greatly inspired by sketches and calligraphy, and some colour blocking when searching for the look of the characters. I figured the house, as a character, should be mostly colour blocked while the cat should be wired so they were in contrast.”

Creating perfect brush strokes

The film’s unique style was inspired by a number of sources. “I was very moved by a series of paintings by Lukasz Pazera called Postcards from the Zone and his brilliant Dog of Zone, which I figured would be awesome animated,” Ben David says.

While researching, the director also watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. “I thought it to be the exact poem-like atmosphere I was searching for both visually and musically. I love the ambiance and slow rhythm,” he says. “I was also greatly inspired by color block paintings such as Gerhard Mozsi’s, and the dreamy feel and pace in animated films such as Tekkonkinkreet or Ghost in the Shell which I adore.”

One of the film’s main influences was a series of paintings by Lukasz Pazera called Postcards from the Zone. You can see similarities in tone and style between them and For the Remainder

Ben David’s extensive research and inspirations helped him to develop the unique painterly style of the film. In order to achieve this in 3D, he turned to the powerful tools of Maya. 

“This software was vital to production,” he explains. “It was an inherent rendering method that got the look for my characters and objects, combined with the overlapping textures on the sets. Photoshop was of course crucial for painting the textures, but Maya allowed me to rig and control almost everything I needed.”

The film’s style, however, also presented some technical challenges. “The whole sketchiness and painterly look was the biggest technical issue,” says Ben David. “I did a lot of research about NPR (non photo realistic) rendering before developing the technique for creating it, and it was pretty much an experiment throughout the entire process. I didn’t have a clear point of reference on a technical level on how to achieve this look, and so I did a lot of testing until I reached a certain point where I knew that the composited render would satisfy me.”

Despite extensive research and testing, Ben David managed to complete the film within a fairly short time period. “It took me around nine months to finish the short,” he says. “I did some touch-ups, on and off, for a few months afterwards as I was not completely happy with some renders and I’ve worked some more on mastering the soundtrack with Onili. I’m very pleased with the final result. Both on the aesthetics and the feel of it.”

Like this film?

Check out the selection of other awesome animations on our shorts page

Make sure you visit next week for more Friday Animation Fun!

Find out how this ultra photorealistic film was pieced together using 3ds Max and V-Ray. Watch the animated short here too

The Accuracy of Time is a depiction of part of the process of building a watch, more specifically the ceramic crown. Created by art director Javi Martinez, the short was made as a case study for his upcoming CGI training roadshow TAOT2012.

The idea was to replicate a real advertisement and the entire production process behind it. The film will be used as part of the roadshow training to highlight some of specific challenges currently facing digital artists.

The project was created using a 3ds Max and V-Ray pipeline. “The decision to use this software was simply to make a technical demonstration of the many capabilities offered by the two working together,” explains Martinez.

3ds Max and V-Ray: an ideal combo

“3ds Max allowed us to develop the short very easily using the new MASSFX to perform physical dynamics and the ceramic particles and at the same time offered great performance in the modelling and animation of objects and cameras. The reason we chose V-Ray was the quality of representation of light, versatility, simplicity to recreate materials and the optimisation of production times.”

More-than-reasonable render times

Rather amazingly, The Accuracy of Time was created using only one workstation! It just goes to show what can be achieved if you’ve got the right amount of dedication: “The short includes the processing of raw materials [to create the watch], the material injection to obtain the piece itself, then it passes through the baking stage and ends with the exposure of the product with elegance and quality,” says Martinez. “But the whole film was in fact a very simple macro CG production playing with a basic geometric model, a virtual light and virtual camera. Given that the piece was produced using a single workstation, the render times were very manageable, ranging from five to 35 minutes per frame.”

Playing with the look

It wasn’t all plain sailing, however. Due to the style and close-up nature of the short, Martinez had to work out solutions in order to achieve the correct look. “The animation treatment and lens blurs were resolved by ZD channels and working on it in post,” Martinex explains. “The animation of the camera lens can easily change the meaning of a sequence so experimenting with this technique was very attractive to me.”

Overall, the short took Martinez approximately just under a year to complete from start to finish. “The 10-month production time was an amazing experience,” Martinez says. “But it led to a lot of sacrifice and [it was a] joy to finally get my work out to reach the community of artists in an industry which is so difficult and exquisite.”

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Find out how this new short about a fascinating sensory condition was created using a combination of Maya, After Effects and Photoshop. Watch the film here too

Synaesthesia tells the life experience of a synaesthete; a person with a condition where two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together. Synaesthetes can experience sounds, tastes, smells, shapes, or touches in almost any combination. Synaesthesia features a character as a small boy, an adult worker and a retired man, who can see and feel shapes and depicts his different reactions to the phenomenon.

The short was a final year project created by four students – Tien Hee, Kasumi Saito, Leo Chida and Nikko Hull – of Massey University, New Zealand. The quartet had to think of an idea to suit the brief of the school, which had a self-driven component as well as a pre-defined part. “This was basically to pick a topic and find a need or something that needs changing etc,” says Hull. “We chose Synaesthesia.”

Things shaped up nicely

In order to tackle such a complicated condition, the team spent a lot of time researching Synaesthesia and how it was going to affect their characters and set designs. “We decided during the research stage what we were going to do,” says Chida. “Each character was associated with a shape as were the environments. These were contrasting, for example, the first scene the kid was a circle, round and innocent and the environment was a triangle, sharp, scary and alert.”

The team also used many sources of inspiration to achieve the look and style they were after. “For the environments, I looked at lots of animations, Studio 4°C, Team Cerf, Tekkonkintreet etc and mixed them all together to get the end result,” says Saito. “It was hard to simplify the forms to get it right. We ended up mixing all of these with our own ideas to get the style we came up with.”

Added Layers

With set and character designs completed, the team began creating the film’s assets in Maya and UV layout tool, Headus. “This software is pretty awesome, I was really happy with how Headus sped things up,” says Chida. They also adopted a rendering technique which helped with production times.

“The process was quite simple, which also helped in a way,” says Hull. “Each layer was kind of easy, it was just a matter of putting it all together in After Effects. We found the technique demonstrated (kind of) on Deviant Art, I can’t remember the specific artist, but then we tried to figure it out in Maya and it worked quite well. But we didn’t choose that because of its ease, we chose it because of the style.”

The scenes were separated to make the whole process more manageable. “The old man walking down the hall is a good example,” says Hull. “We had the walls, which were all on different render layers. The background and walls were a single layer and frame. Then anything which was moving, so the phone and the character, were on their own layers and were the only sequences. There also had to be a sequence for the shadows so they could cast on the walls. Then we had diffuse, shadows, highlight, AO and particle layers. This all went into After Effects with some lights and colour correction.”

After two semesters worth of work, the student team completed the film and are pleased with the final result considering their prior experience in animation. “Up until the end, you have no idea what it’s going to turn out like,” says Chida. “But it was so rewarding finding out that all the effort wasn’t wasted and the film actually looked OK. I mean, some was wasted but we’re learning so it’s all good. Our degree consisted of lots of general design and even fine art so we’ve only really had about a year of animation training (in total). With this in mind, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.”

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