Hexanim Production Update

A quick video update on our team and where we are at in production

- Carly Glover

Realise Your Dream, Final 50 Submission

Hey, Matt Rossato here with an update on my 2D animation which is in full production now. I have been busy working on a particular animation style, with exaggerated key poses, and fast movements between them. It has been slow going to begin with but I am now feeling more confident, especially after getting the scene shown above done, as that was a very movement intensive scene.

Realise Your Dream Competition Entry

Moss: Character Progression Update

Initial ZBrush Sculpt

Here is an update of where I am at with the character of Moss. His nude sculpt and most of his clothing is complete, just need to work on his jacket and belt and he will be ready for retopo! I'm about to start on the Props needed for both characters, including bags for each, a helmet for Moss and a Staff for Twigz. Other props will be needed including fruit which falls from their bags and a hero apple which features throughout.
Exciting times to come!

Carly Glover

Hand Painted Shader Test

This is a quick displacement test using the hand painted texture from the previous post. This technique uses ndo2 and Arnold renderer including it's displacement features. The interesting thing here is that this rock has not been sculpted at all, but instead was displaced through the image file itself. This system will be invaluable in creating and rendering out our main backgrounds and matte paintings quickly and efficiently.

James McCarthy

Hand Painted Texture Test

The handpainted texture look we feel will give us a very unique and personal style for our animation, so I am currently working to create some reusable texture's for the main surfaces on the envirionment models within the short film. Here is a quick example of the texture for the background mountains and is a good representation of the final colour I wish to achieve

James McCarthy

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This is a quick concept of an archway for the staircase on the mountain that Moss and Twigz run through in the early stages of the short film. It is made of stone an will be a similar colour to the surrounding mountain rocks, which at this stage is still to be determined.

James McCarthy

Shader Test

Just thought I would post a quick shader test to illustrate how some of the surfaces may appear in the final render. These materials are subject to change, but clearly show where I am heading with the final look and feel.

James McCarthy

Twigz

Hi, James Dobson here, character modeler for the female character 'Twigz'. Twigz is sassy, young and full of spirit. She has grown up in the wilderness of the island with her fellow tribes people in which she  has learnt 'to be one with nature'.
I've been progressing quite far on her character and as you can see she has come a long way from her original concept. When modelling her clothes I tried to move it away from the concept to more of a tribal look, adding things such as the loincloth and Armour pieces to provide that very tribal look.
She also has larger than normal feet as her people have evolved past the need for shoes. She is also slightly taller than the protagonist 'Moss' to backup the idea that she isn't really human. As she is nearing her final stages of modelling there will be more to come when I get closer to completing her.

Filming for "Realise Your Dream"

As an avid listener of Triple J it came to my attention and interest that a competition called "realise your dream" hosted by the British Council and supported by Triple J was up and taking submissions. After looking further into this competition it was clear that this competition was exactly what we need, exposure!

So began our filming, and interviews for the content of our video submission. We wanted to achieve a professional result, so out came the lights, camera and makeup! 

The pictures show just what went into our setup, and some of the fun we had doing it. The final submission will be posted on our blog soon and will be available to watch, and we would love your thoughts and feedback, 

Cheers, Matt Rossato. 

Hexanim Animated Logo

Hi there it's Carly and here's a quick animated logo I was working on the other day for our production studio, HexAnim. I blocked out a 2D logo in Illustrator then went straight into Maya for the rest before comping the renders in Nuke. We're hoping to add this to a video pitch we are working on at the moment for future support of our project, Moss & Twigz.

- Carly Glover

Hi I'm Carly Glover, the Character Modeller and also Producer on Moss & Twigz and I made this video to demonstrate the validity of our character pipeline. I was working on this version of a head sculpt at the time for Moss, our protagonist, so I took it through the pipeline to test out an problems there might be along the way. I started with a ZBrush sculpt which I sent to Maya straight away to scale it to the correct size of a head to avoid any later problems with shaders. Once the scale was correct I exported the obj to 3D Coat to retopo, then back to Maya to UV unwrap. From there the camera rig and lighting was setup using 3 lights and most importantly a HDR. I chose to set up the scene first before attempting any shaders because I knew the lighting would have a drastic effect on the way the shaders would react. After days of tweaking and test renders the model went back into ZBrush to sharpen up the edges that had been lost in the retopo and to start working with polypaint. We had decided earlier that the skin was going to be predominantly shader-based with very little texturing so very subtle changes with polypaint were made. From there I Went back into Maya to hook up the new displacement and texture map and...GRRR had some problems there but a very late night did the trick and found a solution. So the only thing left was to add a quick rig and animation. The head was only going to turn slighting so it was a very simple rig which was completed with blendshapes from ZBrush. Next I animated the head and camera to work together. More test renders and finally it was time to hit 'Batch Render'. Happy days. While Maya took its time rendering I set up an AO pass and started on the comp in Nuke. Once all renders were complete I finalised the comp and rendered out the movie file you see above. So now that my first character pipeline test is complete I am back to sculpting the character again. I will add more pipeline tests of Moss as we move through production, stay tuned!

2D Animation concepts and development

My name is Matt Rossato and I am part of HexAnim, and am currently working on the production of Moss & Twigz. My main role amongst others is a 2D animation which will play at the start, middle and towards the end of the animation. Its role is primarily a story telling device that will establish the history of our story and key plot points. The program I will be using is "TVPaint 10 pro", which is a program that specializes in the creation of more traditional animations, through the use of brushes and layers much like photoshop, onion skinning, and frame by frame animation. Above is a concept for the look and feel of the basic 2D characters. This will be subject to change and further development. As production moves along, I will be posting further concepts and developments.

I have designed a layout for the Island on which our story takes place and I am confident it will work really well for us. It's depicts a centralised mountain inside of a somewhat active volcano, which has formed into the island itself. 1/3 of the entire island is a massive lava pit and the rest has formed into lush forest and pastures and this is what sustains the two tribes on the island.

James McCarthy

The NEW character design for Moss, the protagonists for a short called Moss & Twigz.

His hair will be sculpted in Geo rather than using dynamics. We are still discussing the use of nCloth for his clothing. Modelling on this character has only just begun...more to come soon!!