Wednesday, 28 October 2009

New Emperor Design

After many people opined that the film needed to be realistic and gritty, I decided to redesign the emperor, shedding all cartoon-like elements.



Thursday, 22 October 2009

Emperor concepts

Concepts for the emperor. He will not look so cartoony in the actual film but I really tried to push the design at this stage so that as it becomes toned down during the modelling process, it will still be very strong and original.





Wednesday, 21 October 2009

A gladiator and a hydra

Some concepts. We've since decided not to have any mythological creatures in the film now, but the hydra concept shows our line of thinking: if we were to have fantasy creatures they would have been very grim and visceral designs...not like typical fantasy but nasty and authentic feeling. Hence I based the hydra on crocodiles, triceratops and komodo dragons.

Now we have decided to hint at mythology instead. Thus, we have a gladiator in a minotaur helmet, three dogs on the same chain to represent cerberus the three-headed dog, and perhaps other such references.





A few shot concepts

Here are some concepts created as we worked out the storyboard for the film. We began to think in terms of "set pieces", i.e. self-contained little tableuxs that the camera would arrive at, explore, and then move on to the next. Thus, the process of storyboarding involved designing the poses of the set piece, and then working out the camera movements that would best display it.







These are concepts for poses.





These are more developed shot concepts, almost at storyboard level.

Stages of the film

Here are some concepts I did to display the various stages of the film. They are not shot composition or character concepts, and don't represent the final look of the film in any way, they're purely to show how the film will progress in a very broad and general way.



First we see some slaves or novice warriors awaiting entrance to the arena, in a corridor leading off of the main fighting floor.


Then we are shown various scenes of gladiators fighting, dead or wounded.


We begin to see that some gladiators are looking towards the centre of the arena.


It turns out their attention is focused on a gladiator about to kill another, and in turn his attention is on another area.


That area turns out to house the emperor, whose impending final decision is being awaited.

Hello World

This blog will chronicle the production of the short film "Pollex". We are three students in our third year at the University of Hertfordshire.

Matt Aldridge BA(Hons)Games Art http://www.matthewjamesaldridge.co.uk
Tim Mehmet BA(Hons)3D Animation http://www.limbo3d.co.uk
Jeff Hatton BA(Hons)3D Animation http://www.jeffhatton.co.uk


As none of us are animators, we needed to produce a short film that would display our modelling skills without being spoiled by poor animation, and also felt that animating would be a waste of time seeing as we all want to be employed as modellers. Thus, we decided to cut out animation almost entirely, and produce a completely still film with only the camera moving, in the vein of the recent Philips advert, and various games trailers and experimental films.

So, "Pollex" captures a single moment of time in a gladiatorial arena, the pivotal moment surrounding a champion about to deliver a coup de grace to his defeated foe, awaiting the turn of the emperor's thumb. The camera will explore the action in the arena, then reveal the champion and his victim, and finally show the emperor, who will then turn his thumb, ending the film.