The Tower - Part 1
In February of 2012, I was approximately 80% of the way through my time at Full Sail University. I had entered in August 2010 as a reasonably slim-fit individual, with high aspirations and a lot of energy. By the time of this project however, I was long-haired, bearded, significantly thinner (a likely result from a poor diet and lots of biking), and beyond exhausted...having slept little over the last year...spending almost every waking moment trying to stay ahead of the workload.
The Full Sail workload does strange things to a person...
At the time, "finals" was divided up into 5 classes, spread out over 5 months:
(Month 1) Project pre-planning.
(Month 2) Projects 1-3 (roto, keying, & tracking).
(Month 3) Project 4 (matte painting).
(Month 4) Project 5 (projected card systems).
(Month 5) A class to add some "final polish" and assemble our demo reels.
We had the freedom to choose the footage and scenery, but each project was required to focus on a different skill set (roto, keying, projection, etc). While this made sense for demo reel purposes, in hindsight I feel like it tied my hands a bit. When working on a real-world project, one usually uses the technique that best fits the shot...not the other way around.
Planning for the first four projects was pretty straightforward. I had already thought of several shots well in advance, drawing inspiration from films such as "Sin City" and "The Spirit". The last project eluded me, however. Our first progress check was rapidly approaching and I was definitely panicking. After scrolling through pages and pages of stock images, I came across a mountainous valley and somehow a connection formed in my mind with a sequence I had seen in the trailer for the film "District 9", in which a squad of helicopters slowly approached a massive alien spaceship looming over the city.
The stock photo of a valley.
The inspirational sequence from "District 9".
Within the valley of the stock image I pictured a giant, weathered tower of unknown origin or purpose. Human-made...perhaps a government project, I couldn't say.
In the sequence, I wanted a bi-plane to fly past the camera towards the tower. I figured I'd render out the plane in 3D (the "hero" model and separate background model(s) sourced online, being re-textured and rigged by me), and do the rest using a matte-painted card system...as per the requirements. I made a crude, sorry-looking mock-up in Photoshop, and combined it into a matte painting using several of the stock images I had found, and then animated a block-out of the sequence. That first iteration didn't go over so well in review. While they were supportive of the general idea, my teachers weren't very complementary regarding the tower design. Frankly, I don't blame them...
The very first iteration of my tower scene.
The first version of the animation, submitted for panel review.
I returned to my classroom slightly dejected...still panicking. I can't say for sure exactly how much time passed, but after a large amount of brainstorming, another shape appeared in my head...this one much more vivid and interesting than the last. I grabbed the first piece of paper I could find and rapidly sketched out the shape. One of the teaching assistants happened to be walking by at the time, looked over my shoulder, and enthusiastically voiced his approval.
The initial sketch and the idea's progression over the course of the project. Crude, yes...but they got the point across and gave me a great starting point to work off of. Also, I'm amazed I was able to find these as quickly as I did. +1 for organization!
Now having a much better direction to go in, I roughed out a model and continued working on my matte painting. I also decided to create some auxiliary structures surrounding the primary tower in order to help flesh out the scene. By the next panel review, I had made a significant amount of progress.
The first modeled version of my Tower, along with the auxiliary buildings. I'm not going to lie...I don't know what the function of the giant tubes was.
The second style frame for review...now complete with a half-decent looking tower and re-textured biplane.
The second version of the animation, submitted for panel review.
This iteration of the project was much more well received, but there was still a ton of work yet to be done. The panel felt that the tower still lacked a bunch of detail, and I also wanted to create a few larger surrounding "side towers" (as seen in the third drawing). The majority of the work on the latter, however, would have to wait two months, as the other projects took precedence. I was able to bring the main tower to a satisfactory level though, as well as creating some quick particle simulations in Adobe After Effects to further populate the sky with distant biplanes...and finished that class receiving a relieving amount of praise.
The final version of the style frame submitted for the first month of finals.
A turntable of the biplane rig. This particular coloration was made as a loving joke for one of my friends. It's colored as the "Bi-sexual Pride" flag, making the "Bi-Plane" a bit of a double entendre.
Other colorations included a flat blue, yellow, and red.
The following two months were incredibly rough. I completely burned out after the first month of actual project work...it was really the rotoscoping that did me in. I spent nearly half of the following month not working on a single thing...existing in a daze. Eventually I was able to recuperate a bit, and still managed to pass that class with a B+ somehow...
Finally, in April of 2012, it was time to resume the tower project. With the majority of the main tower done, my focus turned to the side towers and other auxiliary pieces. My earliest iteration was incredibly medieval-looking and barely fit with the aesthetic, but I found a way to take the general shape and turn it into something futuristic, complete with landing pads for the aircraft. Would a biplane be able to land in such a set up? No, absolutely not...but I had limited time and frankly, it looked pretty cool regardless. Each building was rendered as a still image, along with shadow passes that'd I'd composite over the valley within Photoshop.
The very first iteration of the side tower. It was way too primitive in comparison to the rest of the scene...but the castle-esque shape would evolve, as seen below.
The finalized side tower, and an auxilery tower that would be embedded into one of the cliffs.
The main tower itself was generally left alone modeling-wise. I didn't have the time, skill, or resources to texture it in 3d, so I rendered out an ambient occlusion still image, and applied 2d textures in Photoshop. The whole tower (and all of the other structures) were projected onto a series of 2.5d cards in Nuke, which allowed a small amount of parallax, and fulfilled the project's requirements. I did manage to render out the small wind turbines separately, however...which created some movement in the otherwise static scene. This was not the ideal set-up...but I'll get more into that later on. I also projected the two cliffs onto bent cards in the camera foreground, so they'd move away to reveal the scene.
The final "textured" main tower. This was projected onto a card in Nuke.
The breakdown showing all of the separate cards in 2.5d space.
With the addition of a few additional 3d foreground planes, and some projected 2d particle planes for the background, I brought the project to a personal "satisfactory" level pretty early on during the month, and used the rest of the time to try to unwind a bit in preparation for the demo reel creation that'd follow.
A "finalized" still-frame of the project. I experimented with a smoke trail following the biplane, but I couldn't make the movement work in time for the complete render turn in.
The tower project as submitted in April 2012.
Ultimately, while this project has always been the "centerpiece" of my college demo reel, I've never been completely satisfied with how it came out. I couldn't get the foreground mountains to look properly three-dimensional, the tower seemed a little sloppy, and the whole scene was too static.
Now, 5 years later, and 5 years more experienced, I wanted to take a crack at it again. Part 2 will discuss the redesign of the shot and primary assets, including all of the towers and replacing the biplanes with the hovership. Part 3 will go into comping all of those assets into the final shot(s), but as of the time I'm writing this, I haven't gotten quite that far yet. But here's a preview of what's to come in the meantime:
A work-in-progress render. NOT FINALIZED!
The new and much improved side tower.
Some of the new auxillery buildings.
The hovership...replacing the bi-planes.