Archive for April, 2008

Last night saw the event called Shorts on Walls take place, for it’s very first time, arranged by Dave Allen of the Animation Forum West Midlands.

The man had arranged the showing of various animated pieces, on a screen in the back of the Rainbow pub in Digbeth, Birmingham. If memory serves, around 80 people turned up, so there was a nice little audience, and chance to have a chit chat afterwards, at the bar!

We were lucky enough to have our Reaction to Litter shown, which went down ok I think. Others which I particularly enjoyed were Don’t Touch by Dice Productions, Pedro and Frankensheep by Brothers McLeod.

Needless to say, everyone who had their work shown should be proud. I’d also like to thank Dave Allen for trying to help make this region become better recognised, just as we want to.

We met a couple of particularly nice chaps there, and I think a good night was had by all.

We hope to have some nice pieces to show in future Shorts on Walls events.
Dom

“Hello hello. What’s this?” you ask… “Eight Eyed Sea Bass going out for a jolly fun time and sipping a bit too much whiskey, eh what what?”

Afraid not chums. The only bender we’ve managed to go on lately is… actually, when did we go for one, Paul? Steve? Hmmm… can’t remember. Meanwhile, what I decided to do in my spare time, was to recreate the character Bender from the super hit TV show, Futurama. Here’s how I got on…

Got the main bulk of modelling sorted. Now for some materials…. I wanted to recreate the cartoon feel, so decided to learn how to make a “cel shaded” look in Lightwave.


I love the look in this following image actually, but sadly it’s not at all ‘true’ to the animated series on the goggle box, so afterwards I had to change it.

Got the look how I wanted it. It’s still not quite accurate to the real Bender, as in Futurama he is completely flat shaded. I wanted my Bender to still retail some look of 3D. However, while he looked nice in still image form, when I did a test render of him rotating 360 degrees, the black outlines were flickering, and disappearing in places. Not good. After some time spent on trying to fix this, I instead found a nice plugin written by a clever Japanese dude, for cel-shaded. So I tried it out, fathomed it out, and re-made all the materials with this new tool.

Nice looking image still, made to match what I had gotten before. But joy of all joys, it even looked nice when rendered in motion.

Obviously all copyright of the character belongs to Matt Groening and probably Fox as well. Hopefully they don’t mind my little tribute to this great character.

I enjoyed my learning in modelling him, and hope you people out there think he’s alright too! With a bit of luck, I may get time to animate him later in the year, which’d be nice.

Keep well,
Dom

Well, I just found these pictures on my system, and thought they might be worth sharing, just to show we did work on set of our Litter job, honest….

Yes, we began filming at 6am on freezing cold weekends in October, and yes there were still people around whom we had to keep out of the camera’s sight….

I got a parking ticket too, from the Council, who we were working for, which was nice! Actually I still have some official Birmingham City Council branded industrial rubbish bags (new) in the boot of my car to remind me of the fun and frolics we had during those days!

BEING FIRST!
Breaking News… Eight Eyed Sea Bass, one of the West Midlands leading visual and sound facilities, can now officially carry the Dolby Digital logo on everything that we originate in our high quality studios!

NU-RAY OF HOPE.
This means that when EESB takes a project through the production and post production process, to format on to DVD or Blu-ray, we are legally licenced to display the Dolby Digital logo on to your discs and incorporate the official Dolby trailers, (yes there is a choice) at the beginning of your DVD.

AHEAD OF THE REST IN THE HEART OF THE CITY.
EESB are currently the ONLY visual and sound facility in the MIDLANDS REGION, to be awarded this license by Dolby, direct from America.

EXACTLY AS INTENDED.
Even if any of our clients.. (and that could be you) choose to have the production done elsewhere, we will always produce sound to Dolby Digital standards, from mono to 5.1 surround.

Of course we would rather you came to us for the whole production, to enable us to put the Dolby Digital logo to your work, giving your visuals and sound extra presence.

DOUBLE D.
At EESB we always work to produce visuals and audio to the highest possible quality, (the very reason why we won this license). We pride ourselves on doing things properly, to add greater realism to the work which you in turn, are proud to show.

Now we have recognition from a global brand – another reason to put our talents to use at Eight Eyed Sea Bass.

With kind permission from its creator, we can now show this short film, Home Movie, in its entirety. Thanks Neil.

See previous post from February 2008 for other details of the project!!