Clothtest
I rendered out 50 frames of a clothtest. at first I did tests with him moving around a lot.. It didn't work out very well.. but than I realized, he's not moving much in the film. So if it works with subtle movements, it would be enough!
Props
Some examples of pictures I gathered as reference for the props
Chain Simulation
I never work with rigidbodies/simulation things... So I was testing this out... Not there yet..little light weighted. Most shots are small motions so it'll probably fine. I'll tweak it per shot (3 or 4shots)
(same clip, but playspeed x2, looks better :P )
No worries, I'm not sick!
I recored myself with dots, for 13 minutes, to do all possible facial expressions, as reference for my character. It's not for capture, but I painted dots so I could see where my skin was still stretching/moving over the skull so my final character will look fleshy aswell. Here are a few seconds. I used two camera's so I also could se what happened at the side of the face, you can see the nose, ears and top of the head is moving a lot as well.
Level of detail
Actually, this is very close to the look and feel and level of detail that I want to give my deformed kid. (Brave ,2012)
Browtest
I was testing this with help of the book 'Stop Staring' during my internship at Framestore.
The shapes are not mend to be great, it was just a test of blending normal maps driven by controls.
I sculpted the wrinkles in Mudbox and exported the normal maps. I also used masks to use one single wrinkle map for 3 different shapes. And of course also the crease when the midbrows goes down.Another thing that I tested, was to make the blendshapes more true to how skin moves over the skull.
In reality the brow doesn't move thát much, it's more the wrinkles that shows the expression.
those 2 are cool, but I won't go that realistic, it's good inspiration though.
Revealing the kid.
My shortfilm will be very short, and I don't have much time, but I would like to make a nice revealing shot, because his appearance asks for a more interesting introduction then normal characters would have.I did some analyses how other movies reveal their characters. I watched a few movies with deformed or extraordinary characters, but also people like Forrest Gump, not deformed but a bit of a misfit.
I took some snapshots to show the different ways the directors chose for.
Forrest Gump (1994)
When the movie starts, and the credits are rolling, the story is allready started, the feather, who eventually will fall down on Forrest's suitcase is a symbol of his life. The Feather symbolizes destiny and dumb blind luck. At one point, Forrest says, "I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it's both" Visually, we see him quite fast, he's sitting there, and put's the feather in his suitcase. Just by doing that we allready know he's going to be an interesting character. Other people might have thrown it away, but he decided to keep it.
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1939)
The first detail we can see of Quasimodo is his eye, and when the people noticed him they are catching him and put him in the spotlights, well, as 'king of fools'. The first time we see his whole face is when puts his head through the hole, and people are scared. But then they start to laugh. We see his face quite long to see how his face looks like. Quasimodo is not happy at first, but then he enjoys being King of Fools.
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996)
In Disney's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame we see him a little earlier. First we see him from the back, as a silhouette, ringing the bells. Then he is walking, again from the back.. Then, he shows up, first looking to the other side, and then he really nicely reveals his face in a quick turn. But this time we see a happy satisfied face. We see somebody who's sympathetic and takes care about a little bird.
A beautiful mind (2001)
There is no deformed guy in this movie, nothing 'scary' to reveal. But still there is something interesting happening, as how they introduce him. The guy who's talking is talking about 'who's the next Albert Einstein' etc, and then we see him. So we know that he has ambitions, and in the end we hear 'welcome to princeton' so we know where he is and that he's a smart guy. Not to forget, we see all the other students more close to the camera, and he is sitting in the back, so we see he's different then the others.
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In this movie it takes a little longer before we see Benjamin. First we see his real father looking at his kid, but then he scares and runs away with the little baby. We know that there's something wrong with the baby's face but what? Then when the baby is on the stairs and Queeny finds him, she reveals him by pulling the blanket. The lighting makes it even more mysterious.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
I like the way we know there's something really wrong about the place, first the doors open automatically, then we see a scary shadow of Dracula, but when the camera stops moving, we see that Dracula's shadow is moving more then he does.
The Elephant Man (1980)
In this movie they know how to delay the reveal of 'John Merrick(Elephant Man) first we see a lot of people who are scared of him. Then, when Dr. Frederick sees the poor guy he starts to cry, we do see him a little bit, but it's still too dark to really see what he's looking like. Dr. Frederick takes him away to investigate but even when John Merrick is in front of all doctors, we still dont'see him. It is when a sister has to bring some food to John when we see him. She freaks out, and runs away. We see the deformed guy, a little confused, and we feel pity that he's looking like this and that it scares people.
Frankenstein (1931)
The monster of Frankenstein is hidden in cloths. But we see his hand moving. Later in the movie wee see him for the first time. He comes into the room backwards. So we only see his big black back, then he turns around.
The Goonies (1985)
In the Goonies there is a man called 'Sloth' and at first he looks very scary, the lighting makes it mysterious and the way he acts scares us. He's a silhouette in the mist. But, we also see he's watching tv and that makes it less scary. Then, after a while Chunk asks his attention, and then he scares the hell out of him. They are both screaming, but we see that Sloth is having fun with it and laughs. We see that he's probably not that bad.
Mask (1985)
In Mask we see Rocky Dennis through the window, we see somebody with a big head, we hear music playing. It feels all quite normal. He's moving quite a lot so we can't focus how he really looks like. Then we see some shots of baseballcards and a worldmap he's pushing a pin in. So we know he's doing normal things for his age and he has ambitions to go to different places in the world. Then, when he's finally standing still and is putting is jacket on we see him looking himself in the mirror. He does a ffunny move, so we know he's allright with looking this deformed. He's comfortable.
Edward Scissorhands (1939)
Here is another one coming out of the dark, Edward Scissorhands at first looks quite scary, as he walks dangerously to the camera/woman with his hands of scissors. The music sounds scary so the director wants us to think on the wrong track for a sec. But when he's out of the shadow we see a sad/sympathetic face. We know it's allright.
Conclusion:
I think it was interesting to see those different ways to reveal a character some use shadows,some turn arounds, some a hard cut, there are a lot of ways. And I noticed the first impression of the character is really important. Edward: Shy and silent, Forrest: living on a breese, Rocky Dennis trying to be an ordinary teenager, scary dracula, sympathetic Quasimodo, Dumb but kind Sloth etc. With more mysterious introduction's we see a lot of use of Lights and shadows. But also, even BEFORE we see the character, we can see things that has to do with them: the Scissors in the introduction of the movie, bells of the bellringer, the Feather as Forrest's life, worldmap as ambition etc.
Staging, where do we want to put the character, in front, or behind things, can we hide him in the shadow, or in the back of a classroom so he looks different and on his own like in 'A Beautiful Mind'? As last, but more dificult for a shortfilm, is to delay the revealing. As in Elephant man, but offcourse also in movies like Alien, Jaws, ET, Super8 etc. This is something you can play a lot with in movies, but because I want to make it as short as possible, it will be a challenge. What I can try, is having some shots that are not making a lot of more work, so maybe close ups on prop's or things so I don't have to animate more, but I can stretch the time a bit more before we see the deformed kid.
To sum it up:
*First impression
*silhouettes
*Motion
*Turn around
*shadows
*Lighting
*staging
*Things we see 'before' we reveal him.
*Delay
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