Torn To Pieces

I'm going to be working on an animation that I'm thinking of calling Torn To Pieces as the title of the blog suggests. And this blog post will tell the story of  Torn To Pieces. So if that changes, I'll let you know, but I won't be changing the title of this blog post if I do.

This is part of a duo project. Everybody Wants to Rule the World will be the companion to this project.

The Project BEGINS
 So at the end of my junior year of high school (2014-15 school year) my animation mentor says, hey all of you should think of awesome ideas to make animations from next year. You should have like 3 ideas that somehow relate to each other. So I did. And sadly one idea has to be let go due to time restraints. Darned deadlines! But hallelujah graduation! This one gets to survive! So YAY!

So here is the basic scope of the project: There will be a child whose parent or parents have been murdered. They feel guilty and the death(s) replays in their mind continually. I think I'll open with the child walking to the grave(s) of his parent(s) and sees them die and can't help but feel like it's his fault. For the moment I want to have 'Wicked Ones' by Dorothy be the music for this, but it is very upbeat so this might change. (FYI, this paragraph is from the blog post Triad Project, so this is from that post plus MORE!!!! Read the post mentioned previously if you have not already. I will try to explain everything from that post, but there is a post that comes before this one. Just so all of you know.)

Ok I've changed the song. It will not be Wicked Ones by Dorothy. Instead it will be Torn To Pieces by Pop Evil. I might end up calling the piece Torn To Pieces, but I don't know yet. I'll ask around and gain other people's opinions before deciding.

Pre-Production
 So far I have no concept art that I will be using. As I draw things, I will update all of you as I will start working on this more and more once I have complete storyboards. So pictures WILL come!!!!!

Finding music was a struggle! I wanted it to be kinda of sad but I liked Wicked Ones by Dorothy. But it was so upbeat I wasn't sure it would work. So I made a list of songs about death, hat I found on the glorious internet. Fun times listening to all the songs on the list. I crossed off so many immediately because I was like NO!!! NOT THE RIGHT MOOD!!! Music is a wonderful and horrible thing at the same time. Wonderful because it helps tell the story but a pain in the but when you're trying to find it. Gosh it took some time!

Well I finally decided on 'Torn To Pieces' by Pop Evil. I totally was seeing my idea beginning to play out to the music. I was like, THIS IS IT!!!! This is the song I've been looking for! Watch me hate it when I'm finished with this project. I'm not sick of it YET. Going to know what it is like for those video kids making all school videos. With the chance of it becoming far more annoying.


Story Boards

 My storyboards are DONE! It is a glorious 3 pages long. While storyboarding I realized that my song, Torn To Pieces by Pop Evil, was to long and that I would not be using the entire song. Less work for me I think, and hope. But this will be a long road to get where I need to be. I'm going to be getting to work. I'll try to keep you posted.

PS, I hope you can read the storyboards when I repost them that is. It is hard to blog and make the post look nice and the pictures aren't working with me so I'm leaving them off for now. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. If they still will not work I will give you the rundown of the story and what I have on my storyboards.

Modeling
I've been doing a ton of modeling. Modeling is hard for me to predict as I want to set deadlines to get things done but I tend to predict it wrong. Not awesome I know but I try and it normally gets me to get stuff done. Even though it seems like I've accomplished literally nothing.
For TTP I needed a graveyard. This was annoying all around. Creating it, texturing, and bump mapping. It was tedious work that I did NOT enjoy. 

I made a house for this project. Well kind of. I made three rooms. I made a kitchen, living room/ home theaterish room, and garage. The Living room is the room I really needed as that's the room that my character will be spending the most time in.  I made a couch and a side table. I duplicated them so the space looks used and like it was well used. I also made a coffee table. Then I made a flat screen TV. I textured everything. It was a pain in the butt. I don't really enjoy the couch texture but I couldn't find one I liked better and looked more normal and life like, so I left it as is. For the TV I put a still from Once Upon A Time. I thought the still fit with the idea of TTP. For the tables, I wanted them to be fancy looking. So I made the top of the table a slab of glass that was engraved on the bottom. To hold up the glass top, I made metal legs. The legs are really simple which is nice because I don't have time to be making it to fancy.

Then I also made a kitchen. I made the kitchen because there was no door between the living room and the kitchen and if the camera ever looked in the direction of the kitchen I wanted it to look like there was somebody living there and it wasn't a random room floating in the middle of nowhere. I made this nice and fancy I wanted to tie the living room and the kitchen together and the level of fanciness seemed like the best way to go. I'm really happy with the table and chair set. I feel like it has a level of sophistication that the living room had. I also LOVE the backsplash. It's just so fancy and pretty. I would love to have it in my future home. But thanks to this modeling and texturing experience I can not go to Home Depot without getting the urge to take pictures to get textures. The cabinets and appliances were a pain to texture, but I do like how they turned out. Oh fun note on modeling the kitchen, while lighting this scene, I discovered under the right lighting, the top of my cabinets sparkle. It's really cool! But I can't do it again as I have no idea how in the world I did it.

I also made a garage and cars. The cars are crappy as I didn't discover visor until after modeling them and I didn't want to retexture new models. I don't like this room nor it's models very much but they won't be seen much so they aren't as important. I really wished that Nathan Goldberg was still here as I would have loved to have him model the cars and garage for me. I would have been so happy to not have to do it as it is not my thingy. I don't do cars, so it would have been nice to have someone who knew what they were doing but no. Goldberg just had to graduate and leave me to struggle with modeling a car. But then a few weeks after finishing the garage, I discovered this wonderful editor called visor. It has pre-modeled cars that I really want and it makes me mad that I didn't find it earlier.

I've also worked on modeling the people that will be in TTP. I took a base mesh from Mudbox. I modified it as the ladies needed boobs. I also added clothing and eyes to all the humans. Hair has been the most annoying part of this process. I have made a little boy, a dad, and a mom. The little boy and the dad look exactly alike. The mom has nice long black hair and a purple dress. I don't think do much to texture them more than I have.