---



I haven't blogged in over a month, and that's basically because I've been cooped in either my room or in Cantor building finishing up Thick as Thieves. It's been a lot of sitting around, waiting for things to render, making sure computers weren't logged out by people who didn't quite understand why they were all logged in to the same person.. There was a lot of script writing, which I didn't quite understand (but my only job was to change the variables anyway, which was easy enough), and supervising and animating and reanimating, but not in a cool Herbert West way, more of a "this animation is rubbish, I won't sleep until it's completed" way. Which is fine too, I guess. Haste has been the best word to describe everything - both in the production and the post production, where I spent a whole night mixing sound and music, and editing clips and stuff

But it's finished, finally finished and a hundred times better than Toil and Trouble  ever was. Yeah, remember that? Here it is: watch and love. (Here's a link to it if the embed doesn't work for some reason).
Of course, as I've blogged about before, it's not even close to being all my own work. András and Li played huge parts in making it and it wouldn't have been anything close to what it is here without them, so a huge thanks to them. I don't even know what I would have done with this story if I had done it all by myself. It certainly would have looked a lot different.

---

It occurs that I'm basically not a student anymore, which is not really something I haven't been ever in my life. It's odd to think it.

Here is the finished A2 piece of work I handed in for the concept art module. It's not the composition I had originally wanted to do (originally I wanted something more like the Inception poster where the city overbears the small characters scattered in it), but the design didn't make sense for a poster that was supposed to deal with character design when the characters would be so far away.



I plan on redoing it, with the characters in their original locations when I get back into writing the story. Which I now have time to do! Hopefully I'll have it finished before I find a job, along with the coulpe of other summer things I want to do
.

The first one of these was to finish a business card and get a .com domain name. both are now achieved, although I'm still having doubts on the domain name. Sometimes it works, sometimes it only works with or without a www and sometimes it doesn't do anything at all. Anyway, i t redirects back to the front page and the link is www.basilbaradaran.com or, if that one doesn't work, basilbaradaran.com. Sometimes an http:// seems to change things too. It's very confusing, but I'm working it out. I've also put on the front page Thick as Thieves, instead of an Enter sign, but I'll switch it with my showreel once that's done.

Here's my business card design:

---------------

A quick blog post, for all the latest Thick as Thieves update.

The first one is, you might notice, the change in title from Once a Thief to Thick as Thieves which is actually a phrase and makes more sense in context of the story.

Secondly, Nick Kocher has recorded and sent me Flambeau's lines which I am very, very pleased with. I'll be certain to post one online if I do lip sync tests or something. Most of the dialogue happens offscreen anyway, so I should be able to switch between them if I need to without having to change all of the facial animation.

And lastly here are some new renders, one from Flambeau's room, the other from the Vault [these are finished, with all the extra layers - ambience, blurs, etc added on and are essentially what the finished product *should* look like]:

I didn't get the job, which was some part time Cineworld thing. it's a shame because it would have been perfect, hours-wise, for that extra cash I'd need when I graduate and start looking for an actual job. But oh well, if nothing comes up there it won't be the worst thing in the world.

Besides, right now, I have far more pressing issues to deal with, such as the impending deadline which draws nearer and nearer and threatens to drive me insane. Our renders are finally being taken care of though, and we should be able to do them in batch if we can find a room with enough free computers that won't be always interrupted with classes and other people. Here's what a finished frame looked like a week ago - they've since improved a bit and are looking better, with an ambient occlusion and depth of field.

------


Wednesday was the day I lived inside a music video. I actually knew what it would be like to live in the world of the music video. One where the same song plays on a loop nonstop, where you cannot leave the location of the video, where people break into mime-rap mid-conversation and everyone is drunk and you are the only person sober, watching everything as you hope that this time will be the last time the song plays.

I was helping out my mate Chris Gray who was commissioned to work on a music video. And I thought I'd waste a day because, you know, I just have way too much time to spend on things that aren't main project-related. Oh well, it was fun. A bit of an experience.

Here are some photos from the set. The guy who looks like Seth Rogen is Jay Brett, the main guy and the chavvy guy is the character Devvo.







Also, this happened in town:

Now if anyone ever asks me what exactly I study, I can show them this







---

..

Yet.

---


I wish I blogged more often. There are always a bunch of cool things I want to put on the posts which I forget about as soon as I finally get down to writing an entry. Today for example I came across a teaser trailer for an animation called Ruin.



The CG is incredible - those are some incredible sets. I thought at first it was a cutscene from an upcoming video game, but it seems to be for a short film of some sort. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's going to be like at the end.

---

Now, onto some slightly less impressive CG. Actually I don't have any real renders to show for Once a Thief yet. We've been animating (and once we have enough in a sequence to post up I'll show you some of the playblasts) but dont' have any final renders of anything to show. Lighting has been a drag and we've only recently solved the issues. Now, of course, there are dozens of other issues but we're working around them slowly. I'm concerned, like I am every year, that we won't get it finished on time, but I've never missed a deadline, at least not for anything that important before so I don't think there'll be a problem. Still, it's time to pick up the pace a bit and get to work.

John Janzen of Fatblueman has been emailing me, saying he's still on for music, though not until April. Which will be fine because we probably won't have any finished shots until or sequences until then anyway. I just hope he can put a piece together in a couple of weeks. Nick Kocher I haven't heard from in a few weeks, but I have to assume he's still up for voices. Again, that isn't totally necessary just yet, so I'm not gonna panic for a few more weeks.

----

I have a bunch of concept art stuff I want to post up, too, from a module we have on right now. I've been using this sci fi story I've been half-writing as a basis. Here is a quick mockup of the four main characters. From left to right:

Dustin Warren - Part time PI, who is investigating the death of Astrid Eriksson
Francesca Fojtel - Astrid's best friend, who does not believe the police investigations, and hires Warren to dig deeper into her murder, as it seems apparent she knows about a conspiracy surrounding a satellite
Dr Yuriy Kozlov - Astrid's estranged father, a rocket engineer and astrophysicist who was behind a project to send a satellite into space to search for alien life. He disappears mysteriously just before the surprise crash return of his satellite
Astrid Eriksson - Her death serves as a catalyst for the events, and her importance is shown through flashbacks.

I'll get into more detail of the module and the characters when more of it is done

---


Blog. It's been a month since my last confession. Uh, update, rather. This one's gonna be short, and focus just on Once a Thief. There's other stuff happening but right now I really want to update but it's two in the morning and I'm exhausted.

I've done a hell of a lot of work in that time. Well, actually my team has done a hell of a lot of work finishing up all the half assed stuff I started. The past week we've started animating actual production stuff, starting with the lock-and-load scene in Flambeau's room. The vault is almost finished now so we'll get that done (and it's also worth a good half of the finished piece so it'll be good to get that over and done with ASAP). We're not going as fast as we should be, though, and I foresee a lot of sleepness nights in the near future as we try to complete everything on time. We're having rendering and lighting issues too, which is always difficult (lighting in mental ray in Maya is basically just trial and error) and it means we can't even start rendering anything now.

Here are some screenshots of the room with Flambeau in (no textures there though), and one of the vault which Li has basically finished now.