First motion test of the Elder critter! Eee!


First motion test.

Last year I didn't even get to the point where I could make a test clip of the Elder moving. I had the stationary model, and I did several experiments with bending an elongated cone (as a tentacle stand in). So, color me thrilled that in just two work sessions, this is how far I've come.

The movie above is an mp4. If you don't have a recent media player, you might have trouble. I think you can download QuickTime 6 for free from apple -- that'll do the trick nicely.

...And may I just say, mp4's ROCK! The uncompressed file -- all two seconds of it -- takes up 70.3MB. The mp4 takes up... wait for it... 60KB!

FUNNIEST STORY EVER:

I was sitting on the couch compressing my file. G comes up behind me and watches.

I compare the file sizes aloud, before and after. Sez I: "I don't understand how that can even be!"

G, who is just taking a drink of water at that moment, spews all over -- getting me, the couch, and the laptop wet.

Hee!

Rolling around on the floor laughing maniacally ensues. :-D

I've started working again on my submission for the H.P. Lovecraft filmfest. Last year I was working on something, but could see that I wouldn't make the deadline, and decided not to kill myself about it. The deadline this year is on July 20th -- hope to get this thing done by then...

I've been working with the story "At the Mountains of Madness". At first, I wanted to do a full-on adaptation -- but what I've got now is really just a tiny vignette that's inspired by the piece. Last year I had just purchased Lightwave, and was perhaps (duh) overly ambitious about what I could accomplish, before I'd even started hiking my way up the learning curve.

So, I'm working now on modeling the critters for this thang. In the story, they're alternately refered to as "old ones" and "elder things". Me, I'm just refering to them as "elders" -- which opens the possibility for making a joke at some point about "respect your elders".

I've just come up with a new strategy for modeling these beasties...

I dig Lovecraft's critters, cuz they're very alien, constructed out of geometric shapes. The problem is, however, that if you go too literally, they wind up not looking organic enough. My last version of the elders was constructed by making the foot tentacle, body, head, and necks all as separate bits -- splicing them all together -- and then copying and pasting the composite five times. This time, I joined two cones and a cylinder into a "snake", distorted them, and then applied "radial array". Compare:


Last year's version.


Yesterday's fresh start.

Obviously there's plenty more to do with this new model -- but I'm very excited about the new strategy. ...It also leads to a new idea about how to animate this critter (which could easily be a nightmare). The new idea: have 1/5 of the critter be the basic animating unit; animate each fifth separately; bind the five moving "snakes" together into one being.

I'm looking forward to posting further images (and QuickTime movies!) as the elder evolves. Stay tuned! :-D

...And hey: a big shout out to mph, who's providing server space for my image files now! Thanks Michael!!

*ahem*

...!!!!