Recent Narrative Changes and Suggestions

These are some of the changes we have made which I felt it would be important to document as we have been doing a great deal of editing recently both for the narrative and for the audio syncing.

- Removed Sheriff badge close-up shot in favour of the Sheriff pulling out a Wanted Poster of the Bandit.
- Animation of Poster at the beginning goes straight into transition to Bandit's face.
- No flying poster at start.
- Bandit has an illustrative map in his hand at the start which he looks at and then tucks away before realising the sound of the train.
- Environment pan establishing shot at the start much more subtle panning in slightly.
- Adopted my test to have dangling on train shots as just two cuts - one on top of train and one at side of train.
- Establishing Shot of the Mines Entrance shows the train aswell as the entrance to give the audience a perception of the imminent danger, followed by Danger sign close-up.

New Shot Lists

In addition to our main schedules I have these animation shot lists. After I did the one for the entire film I made some changes based on some additional changes. Also each person now has their own PDF sheet as reference for just their shots and the timings etc.

New Ending Edit

After not being happy at the end of the last edit we did to the audio tracks, I decided to work on a re-edit to try and nail this ending and the pace of the shots as it seemed to get longer. This cuts down the credits and uses less audio through the jail shots and also cuts a shot off to make life easier with less animation. Hopefully with the groups approval we will use something like this for the end.

Steam Cloud Tests

These are some tests I have begun with particle emitters and Maya dynamics. I have got this looking like a nice volume of steam however I need to work on the depth of it using colour and also try and get the clouds 'fluffier'. The edges are a little harsh at the moment.

Mines Entrance Modeling

With Sam having such a huge workload of texturing to get on with I took the start of his Mines Entrance modeling and finished it off to this state. This is only used in 3 shots but it is quite a nice environment which links the desert to the Mines. I've added alot of props to this and tried to build up its depth within the rocks also. Alot of this will be brought to life by texturing however.

Train Carriage Modifications

In order to make the Prisoners pass easily between the carriage and to add something towards the action I have modified the train carriage to make it break apart. Essentially the Prisoners will literally shoulder charge through the walls of the carriages in order to escape. It should be quite an action packed section also. I've modeled it in a way that planks of wood can fly out in all directions and the wall of the carriage will split into multiple pieces, Combined with effects later on it should look impressive.

Harv Re-writes the Bible....El Bandito Style

Okay as far as everyone should be concerned.......there is nothing else in the world more important to read right now than the El Bandito Shot List. This will be our Bible for the next 11 weeks! Basically it lists all the character animation required for each shot along with how long each shot is and a basic description. This is so people do not deviate from timings as these are now 99% finalised as we edited it to the royalty free tracks perfectly. All group members will be supplied with this document ASAP.

Animatic Blockout Ideas

Here are a couple of tests for ideas I had. I thought we could put these into the animatic to see how they worked. The second one at the end of the animatic was something me and Sam discussed about having the Prison in the background as the train pulls away from camera.

El Bandito Intro Sequence and Poster

After putting an initial version in the blockout I have made a few changes and I think this will work well in terms of speeding it up slightly and still communicating the idea that he is getting progressively older and worthless. This will be an alpha at the end which will reveal the opening shot. Also below is an image of the A4 portrait style poster which will be used as a texture in Maya as an nCloth version to hit the Bandit in the face in the opening section.

Final Train Interior Model

Some final shots of the train carriage interior. Decided to make the space work better by scaling the width of the carriage by 25%. Will make it easier for movements and poses etc. Also spent alot of time adding detail in terms of the ceiling and wall paneling without overloading the scene with props. Alot of the finer detail will be added once its textured and Sam adds things like torn wallpaper, scuffed walls, and just general all round dirt and grime to make it look like a once plush carriage that is now totally ruined.

Prisoner Carriage Seats/Restraints

These are the seats I modeled for the train carriage for the prisoners. I tried to make them look quite bulky whilst also secure. I got some good inspiration from old electric chairs which were wooden but had lots of metallic elements. I then stylised the design up more by making the metal joints really exaggerated and chunky! Should look good with some rust textures on.

Canyon Bridge

After taking a look at the Water Tower Environment me and Sam decided that we should simplify the train's entrance to simply be a tunnel going into a rock face rather than having a small gorge and bridge going across it which won't really be noticed. Instead we will use this idea to diversify the environments later on from just plain deserts. When the tension mounts later on and the prisoners move to the rear carriages upon exiting the mines, the train will come out onto a huge bridge which crosses a canyon. This will be much more dramatic and also enhance our options for dynamic camera angles as well as perhaps increasing the tension of falling into the canyon. It also removes the need to model an intense environment for the mines exit.

Final Train Rig

This is a video showing the final train group. Each section moves on the principle of groups. I tried working with a joint chain through the carriages using rigid binding but this appeared to affect the wheels and the axis on which they would turn depending on the translation applied. This works much more successfully where rotating one wheel on each section turns all the other wheels in that section, or in the case of the engine, animates the pistons which is rigged using an array of constraints.

Train Interior...Continued

Some more shots of the modeling in progress. Trying to make this look like it used to be plush but now its battered. Ajdin will be texturing this also so that should get it looking nice. Going to keep working on adding detail and get thoughts of group as I'm going also. Don't want to overload it with props either though as there need to be room to move around. Will probably add things like bottles which will roll around the carriage during the fight sequence and these can be picked up and thrown also.

Windmill Rigging

Me and Sam got this sorted today. Some speedy texturing from Mr King got it looking very nice and then some basic grouping in order to rig it means we can animate this very subtly in the final scenes to add more character and secondary animation to some of the backgrounds, especially in the early scenes.

Train Joints

Went back to the train rig to find we were going to have some problems. Basically the rig went weird when you applied any kind of movement to the train so I've gone back and rescaled it down to make everything smaller. Then basically I've grouped the sections and added a joint chain with rigid binding so now we have this really simple way of twisting and turning the carriages which will be so important in the mines. Also means we could do more with curves in the desert scenes if we wanted to add more. Basically I now have to redo the rigging but it will make the rig much more intuitive and easy to use. And we can have much more fun with it animating!

Steam Train Rigging

Finally got all this working with some wicked pistons! A lethal combination of constraints and combining elements and we are sorted. Just need to duplicate this onto the other side. Sweet!

Schedule WC 02/03/09

Ok, reworked the schedule again. Good thing is that dissertations are almost out of the way and PPD isn't a big hurdle so everything is going into the film and the degree show. Texturing is taking longer than expected, obviously with Sam being our main texture artist, he's doing a very good job also. As soon as the bandit rig comes back then Matt will be animating. Hopefully he will get the sheriff and marshal rigs done by then. From this we should still have 10 weeks of animating with plenty of time in post-production to bring everything together. We also have a 2 week barrier before the submission on the 19th in which extra production and finishing can be done which could extend our animating time as well to perfect elements. Good times!

More Water Tower Environment

Here are some more renders showing additional assets to the environment. I will be putting in more assets such as cacti and rocks once they are modeled just to add more detail and interest to the shots.

Jail Model Renders (from Ajdin)

Some lovely shots courtesy of Ajdin. Really simple design and lighting is pretty much as we designed it even in the early concepts. Just need some gritty textures now.