SPARX Major Production

In the past week I have done some initial render testing to to ensure that the rigs work all the way through the pipeline. The Wheel rig would break during rendering, due to the nature of the MEL script and how it calculated rotation. This problem was quickly solved by creating an alembic from the rig once the animation was finalised. The Eye rig took a few creative solutions to get a system in which we can change the look to fit with our character design. If we decided to change the look of our character eye's it is now only a few changes that need to be made to the existing rig, rather than having to create a whole new one. Kyle O'Malley

 For the longest time, the project has been called "Scared robot and scary alien". That changes today as we officially name the project ' Breakout ' woohoo! That being said, the team has been discussing and working on title designs for the project and after iterations, we came to a final result that we are all happy with. Its definitely starting to come together and the team is itching to get started creating assets and begin getting shots together. Other title ideas James

 Here are some of the Research and Development work I've done over the Break.  I was working on getting the wheel that is in the shape of a ball to rotate, for ease in animating.   I also developed the eye rig for animating the face. To create it I used MASH and blend shapes so it could all remain in MAYA during animation. Kyle O'Malley

 Here are some of the Animatic iterations, I developed over the break for our project. - Kyle O'Malley

Here are early 2D concepts that have been made to convey the overall aesthetic. There is a wide range of different ideas, all of which can be used when we move into 3D modelling as a point of reference. These drawings create a foundation for the 3D assets, allowing everyone who works on them to have a clear idea of what is expected, allowing for everything to remain coherent.   

We're taking a different approach to the robot character in the early production of our alien. It won't be until the final shot of our short that it is revealed to the audience, and so there is much less need for an immediate rig. Due to the difference in modelling, being an organic creature, basic shapes forming the anatomy of the alien were brought into ZBrush for sculpting. We've started to build our antagonist, which at a later stage will be returned to Maya for retopology.

We've jumped into Maya and ZBrush to begin figuring out our characters in a 3D space. With simple, placeholder geometry, a rig has been built for our robot protagonist that can be updated as progress is made towards the final model. Due to the fact that we've figured out the height and proportions of our character, the rig shouldn't require any major adjustments. This means that animation can be done in the early stages of production with no need to wait for the final model to be complete. - Joseph Vyner

This is our first animatic based on our storyboard! Soon we will be hopping into some blockout scenes to further refine our camera angles and movements. 

This is our first storyboard produced by Tianna! Many changes will be made, but we hope that this conveys our initial ideas and shots.

Joseph has also been working on some alien designs inspired by insects, deep-sea creatures, and of course other aliens from our favourite movies. 

Here are some robot concepts by Joseph! He has been spending time exploring different interchangeable components so that we can come up with the perfect design.

Hi there,  We are SPARX and we will be spending the next six months working together to create a CGI short film. The past week was spent discussing and planning some ideas and we are very keen to share our progress with you over the coming weeks. Below you can see a list of the team members and our main roles. Each of us will be providing updates in our respective areas. Thanks for taking this journey with us! James: Production lead, FX, layout, lighting, rendering Tim: Technical pipeline lead, compositing, modelling, animation Tianna: Modelling, texturing, storyboards, concept art Joseph: Modelling, texturing, rigging, lighting, concept art Kyle: Animation, layout, rigging, lighting