The Red Kite Characters!!!!!!!!

Comrades,

Its been quite a long time since we have had a chance to show you what we have been up to. Luckily its been worth the wait.

Current Progress you ask? My name is Zeb and my responsibilities lye in the realm of Characters: modeling, texturing, rigging, hair and clothing dynamics, animation, and Recruitment. Our Modeling deadline was just recently so I have 5 of the main characters finished (or nearly) to show you tonight.

So, without further ado, and with promise of fully colored and furry characters around mid August.

Characters:

Maxwell Lostrum





Michael James Chapman



Laura Chapman



Thomas Chapman



Nurse Kate



These are the 5 main characters of the short. Max is a bitter old man. Michael is an 11 year old boy who is sick with cancer. Tom and Laura are his parents. Nurse Kate takes care of both Max and Michael. The story will be left a mystery for now...

Thank you for all of your support and frequent request for updates. I average about 6 hours in zbrush per character. A Rough estimate start to finish for all 5 characters would be around 30 hours per character to model bodies, clothes, and accessories, then unwrap everything, then zbrush. So I have spent roughly 150 hours on these guys so far...

+1 for the recruits!

The Red Kite has began recruiting for 3D model creation! Our first recruit is Zach Barner, recent grad. Visit his blog to check out his previous work! We will be crediting all recruits on the film come time to do so, until then, our blog and website will have to do!

Thanks Zach for your help! Those of you interested get a hold of us. We have a good idea of who we are going to contact, but are always looking for passionate people!

Regards,

The RED KITE Team!

April Update

Hey Everyone :)

A couple people have asked me why there are no updates! Well, since the last update we've changed the story a bit and had to re-assign responsibilities. But this doesn't mean that the work we've already done, like the characters or the hospital are no longer necessary. On the contrary! They are even a larger part of the story! I'll attach a couple things that illustrate where the project is headed.

This is a snapshot of the hospital layout. The room I had rendered previously is room 208 on the diagram below. Right now I am working through blueprints to make the modeling go a little smoother, but this gives the idea.

So we're stilling having spirited meetings every Wednesday to show off our progress and plan the next week. Right now our goal is to have all modeling finished on June 15th. I think we'll do it.

Also I had mentioned that the story had been reworked - this is essentially it.

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Sorry, I've had to remove the story until we're certain about festival rules.

Here is the most recent render test. Thanks to suggestions given to me by a SME, David (DJX), and the need to have a color render to show next week, I went ahead and started roughing the lighting and texturing out a bit more. This image uses physical sun and sky with a portal light. Both GI and FG are in use. The final render was tweaked in Lightroom.

Contour Shader Test on Organic Models

I am finished with the low-polygon versions of Maxwell and now the boy Michael James Chapman. In the next few weeks I will be in ZBrush creating Normal and Displacement maps for all of the above as well as some temporary textures to show off our project in April.

The contour shader I used to render the Wheelchair Turntable unfortunately it doesn't work as well for organic models because of the smooth curves. But it was worth trying. Stay posted.

Hospital Progress

The story opens with Max in his hospital room. Hospital Modeling is underway. Here's a render with basic lighting. Actual modeling is perhaps 25% completed.

Wheelchair Model

So one of the main characters in our story is a boy who is sick and confined to a wheelchair. I figured that a wheelchair model would be fairly easy, but took an approach that allowed me to replicate all the details of the fasteners, welding(s), and intricacies that actually make up a wheel chair.

The rendering style is one I have been wanting to experiment with for a while. It is a combo of Mental Ray interior lighting setup, Ambient Occlusion, and a Contour shader to add the Vector Stoke look. Pretty happy with it.





I have no idea what is up with Blogger's compression of video Mine is Quicktime H.264. Will look into it soon.