Cold
Feet
by Patrick Jensen
All Content Copyright 2005
Ringling School of Art and Design
- - -
COLD FEET is the name of my thesis project, done at Ringling School of Art
and Design, completed in 2005. From concept design to storyboard,
modeling to animation, I had to produce everything myself with the guidance
from the Computer Animation faculty. The idea for this short came out
before I ever heard word of March of the Penguins, Happy Feet, or Surf's Up....so
it seemed like an original idea at the time. Haha. You can enjoy
some of the process images below. I'll be posting up a link to the movie soon.
Cheers!
A large render from my thesis was requested for the 2005-06 Ringling calender.
I took a high res render and enhanced some of the elements in Photoshop,
which was a great deal of fun to do. Feel free to click on the image for a
1600 pixel wide version. Enjoy!
Below are stills and/or test renders of the progress of some of the shots in my thesis.
Mar 16, '05- Since I've taken a more painterly approach to the glaciers and
sky, I finally am getting close to more painterly water. I also worked a bit
on the saturation
in the face and eyes, to help pull you up there instead of his feet. Below
are all straight renders, which are still being worked on to get the final
look.
Mar 6, '05- Here's some fun close-ups:
Here's the following shot of the penguin. I might end up blurring the water behind him. Not sure yet. His texture also melds in with the darker value of the water. Going to have to remedy that. And the texture of the ice is temporary, just reusing another projection for now.
Mar 6 - Ok. Got the two characters in for this shot. And I finally found
a way to get better shadows over the projected maps. It'll be nice getting
some slight
reflections from the ice, and maybe some bounce of browns around the walrus.
Mar 6 - To speed things up for this shot,
I applied all of the projection maps I had made so far, which covered about
60% of the main glacier in this shot. Then all that was left
was painting in the empty areas, and tweaking the water's opacity. Below is
the progression from wireframe, projections, paint with wires,
just the painting, and the final render.
Mar 6 - In this one below, the shadow for the penguin isn't there yet. Also,
hs belly is getting a bit too hot.
I'm also still figuring out a way to lessen the hard edge of his head. The
original design had a tuft of feathers up there,
but for time reasons, I had to eliminate hair from the project.
Mar 5 - Still working on the penguin's deformations, and you can notice some inconsistency in the coloring from the above shot to below. Also, not sure about the water yet...It's looking a bit too realistic, and has some bump that gets too flat on the left there. Might try a different plugin.
Mar 5 - The water looks better in this shot though. Gotta watch the black levels on the penguin, and the belly of the wlarus.
Mar 4 - Here's the end of the beginning shot, when we're introduced to the
walrus for the first time. Might crisp up those shadows, the teeth and gums
aren't textured yet either.
Mar 4 - One of my favorites so far. I kept the glacier a little less refined to make you look right at the walrus.
Mar 3 - First render below! All that's left is overlaying CG water on the right there. Textures and lighting still need some work, but it's a good start.
And below is a concept painting to get a sense of the look and feel I'll try and shoot for.
Copyright Patrick Jensen 2005