Murals Murals Everywhere

Who's a tired art monkey? *raises hand*

So I can't tell you what our show is about which is sort of like advertising a product and never saying what it is (way to go Microsoft). It makes sense for Edgar Wright to blog about the Scott Pilgrim movie since it's got the backing of a major studio and is guaranteed to go to the theaters. For us, we don't want to let the cat out of the bag before we know it gets picked up. I can say that if we pull this off, the show will be great breath of fresh air for sci fi fans which is why I signed on. We don't want anyone to steal the idea so I can't reveal any details. But I can talk about paint!

One of the major set pieces includes a giant freaking mural. If I was working full time on set, I'd have some time to do some real nice detail work. But with the day job and a limited schedule, I have to cut some corners. A few weeks ago, I recruited Yuko to make some stencils for us to stamp out crowds of people and I dragged Ananth along while he was sickly to help stamp in some crowds. Last night, our digital effects team showed up to the warehouse to help put in some last minute work to finish up set pieces. Four of them volunteered to help me with the mural. The rest were assigned to work on another major set piece that required some heavy lifting and more painting. Thanks to my mural team, there are only two sections left to finish it off before the June 20 deadline. I'm really happy with the progress they made. We had one girl doing some insane detailing work because she's freaking awesome. I wish I could share some photos because this looks great. The mural will be darkly lit when it's actually shot so you probably won't see all the details. But I think it'll look great in the shot.

I had to leave earlier than I liked so I could finish an effects shot. I have until Saturday to deliver, but I won't be home tonight and we begin shooting tomorrow. Last night was the only time I had to work on my shot. So with my team painting like insane people, I headed home in the torrential rain to push some pixels. I have to say, I'm really looking forward to working with our team on actual effect work. They all jumped in to set painting and whatever else we needed done with no complaints. I don't think we'd be able to shoot tomorrow if they didn't come in last night. And they did it all for pizza and beer! Gotta love digital artists. If there's pizza, they will come.

Anyway, so I got home last night and started my shot. The opening shot to the show is entirely CG. We want to finish it before we start getting real footage and we're pretty close. All the effects pieces will be done by Saturday. My shot is a little one second thing that hopefully you won't notice. The goal of CG is to make it blend seamlessly with the live action footage. If we're doing our job right, you won't notice that it's CG. The animation itself was done in After Effects using some of the same techniques I use to animate the Apollo 40th anniversary comics I do for work. I created some assets in 3D, textured them in photoshop as 2D plates, and then animated them in After Effects. Dumped out a 1080 HD mov for final delivery and headed off to bed.

Tomorrow I'll be on set all day so I won't be able to blog. Probably for the best because I doubt I'll be able to write anything coherent by the time we're done. I'm looking forward to craft services. I hear the food we have is awesome. I'll be sure to include our menu in my next set report.