Since I was blogging about After Effects stuff that I did in office in my last post, I might as well blog about this motion graphic that I did for a TV show known as “Cipta!”.

“Cipta!” is an educational TV show for young children which will be start showing on Astro this coming Saturday. The main task I handle in this project was the opening intro sequence for the show. The logo was design by my boss, and I animate them using After Effects with the help from Aidi on the letter “C”.

Images above show part of the opening sequence that I did. The dude was crop from green screen footage but that two kids were crop from photos. I decide the use photos for the kids because one of them can’t make it to the green screen shooting session and it will be quite weird if one them is “moving” while the other one is just a “static photo”.

Beside working on the intro, I also did some graphic elements to be use in the final footage. Images above show some of elements that will be shown on screen when the crafting/DIY session start.

I was working on a fun project last week. Spend most of the time doing post production and adding CG background to green screen footage of an upcoming series for local TV channel.

It was a rush project as we just have few days to work on it. More over, I am still quite new to After Effects as I only had used it for like few simple motion graphics projects. Luckily, After Effects is a bit like Flash + Photoshop on drug. So, it is quite easy for me to pick up all the basic stuff.

Anyway, I don’t have much information about this show yet, but it is currently known as “Nilapura” internally. Right now, the only thing I can show you is the comparison shot for the works I did. Real footage might have to wait until when it is broadcast on TV.

As you can see from the image above, it still looks too much like a “computer graphic”. I should have de-saturate the footage and add more blur to the background. I would like to redo these scenes next time, because I believe it was just use for prove of concept at the moment.

Everyone have their own top ten things that they want to do in their life. For me, one of these “things” is to develop a single player game mod which focuses on story telling rather than blasting off enemies with shiny rocket launcher. I had been looking into Valve Source SDK recently and decide to use it for my project.

Early screenshots

Before starting a project blindly, I need to refresh my memory on Source mapping. When I was using Hammer ages ago, it is known as Worldcraft. So, I decide to develop a short campaign for L4D2 as my exercise. Below are some early WIP screenshots. Click to them to enlarge images.

Currently, I had done a bit on the starting area. I know I should have plan out the whole map before putting details in it, but I just like detailing and can’t resist. Maybe the flow and game play of this map will end up like crap because of that.

Commands to hide HUD and Viewmodel

Anyway, to take screenshots without HUD and viewmodel for Source game. Type the following command in the console. (This is just a reminder for myself)

sv_cheats 1
cl_drawhud 0
r_drawviewmodel 0
r_drawvgui 0

I was working on a short 3D animation with Aidi to submit for IPCC 2010. The original idea is to create an IP base on a few stories we discussed some time ago. But we changed our plan as we realize it is a bit too ambitious to proceed with it. More over, I am still new in 3D animation, which means I can’t help much if the animation is complicated. After some discussion, Aidi proposed “Mesinaut” and we start working on it during June.

Finally, the finalist for IPCC 2010 was announced earlier today. Sadly, our animation was not shortlisted. But this is still an interesting project for me because it is the first 3D animation that I had worked on.

Introduction

As I am not a good with words and story telling, I will just copy the brief description about Mesinaut written by Aidi in his blog post.

Mesinaut is a story about two very different robots who became unlikely friends during their journey to escape their besieged planet and in the course of their travels they discover the truth behind the attacks. The duo encounters a scenario that they must solve in order to resume their journey across the desert planet. The small robot acts as the thinker while the big robot acts as the muscle.

Concept Art

The character designs for this animation were done by 3 different person. Aidi, Daim and me. Below are the concept arts colored by me.

This is the big robot design by me. Originally it was a clean and simple robot but was change later on to have a more construction feel on it. I would like to redesign this if we win the IPCC 2010. But since we didn’t even manage to get shortlisted, so it will remain like this for now.

This smaller robot was design by Daim (Aidi’s cousin who is currently working in an animation studio at Japan). As you can see in his sketch, the “brain” part is removable and there is a CD spinning in the head when the robot start to think

This is the evil robot design by Aidi. Green color was chosen by Aidi to give it a more “military” feel.

What I did?

As I was always sidetrack to do some other projects, my contribution on this animation is actually quite limited. Things that I did were:

• 3DSMax CATMotion Rigging for Conbot and Resbot.
• Model a simple cargo container with Blender.
• Animate the starting scene when Resbot runaway from Tripod.
• Post-editing work. effects, sky, camera wiggle, sound and music (content pack purchase online).

Top image is a render from 3DSMax. Below is the final render after editing in AfterEffects. Due to lack of time, we didn’t texture the robot properly.

The Animation

Below is a youtube link for the animation. Hope you enjoy it. Comments are always welcome.

Vue Render

Company purchase a copy of Vue recently for an upcoming project. So, I play around with it with the Conbot model. I must say if I got my hand on Vue earlier, the terrain in the animation will look a lot better.