New Years Update! (Patreon)

Hey everyone!! Thanks for being here this past year! Next year looks to be shaping up to be pretty exciting, filmmaking wise- and since you're the ones making most of it possible, I wanted to give you all an update! First off, I got to scan a couple old bombers! hohoho!! 

Very cool stuff, but a lot of it still requires quite a bit of cleanup. And you may be wondering, "Ian will you be sharing these assets?" UH HECK YEAH- it's just taking longer to clean up and de-light than usual, because the scanning environment was a bit more crowded than is usually ideal :P 

Actually made kind of a fun discovery! I'd always tried to bring anything I scanned into a controlled lighting environment, but in this case, the bomber interiors were (absurdly) cramped and super dark, so I had to use my super-wide lens, and Gleb gave me the tip of using a camera-mounted flash. I tried mounting a couple LED panels and did a test (below left, below right), and not only did it work, it had the added benefit of somewhat de-lighting, since no matter the angle, the lighting's always coming directly from the lense's POV (still more work to do there, though- I got a couple more LED panels, and I'm going to mount two more on the sides, for even more light). Also a polarizing solution would help a lot with reflections. 

Also my process of scanning that F1 engine (I have a few plans for cleaning up the scan really nice) was absolutely ridiculous, involving a monopod and some very bad decisions. 

When I have a lot of cleanup to do, I find it helps to have a specific "fun" file in mind, so I'm working on an image instead of just doing cleanup, and that image is below:

I'm super jazzed about how well this aesthetic is working. The whole spaceships-inspired-by-WW2-aircraft aesthetic is one I've loved forever (I was specifically scanning in a B-29, whose windshield was famously the direct inspiration for the Millennium Falcon. 

I also modeled the above image around a LiDAR scan of the workshop stage, meaning as soon as I hang the greenscreens back up, I should fairly easily be able to shoot a little scene that takes place in the cockpit! Backwards from how I normally do it, but I think I can make it work.

Of course, now I'm trying to invent a scene just to justify "having this location" :P

I modeled the scene as above, and realized I hadn't remembered to add room for a chair, so I designed a little pop-up deal I'm really pleased with. When we shoot the greenscreen scene, we'll just pop a green box behind the actor right before they sit, and time it up with the chair popping out. 

To see the chair in motion, check it out here (so hard to embed little videos on patreon :P)- it probably doesn't actually make the most mechanical sense, but it sure looks like it could (and it's all powered by a bunch of IK chains connected to the rotation of a single bone, so there's a bit of sense to it).

Also, I really enjoyed the quilted insulative layer I found in a lot of the aircraft, so I did a cloth sim to plush out some diamonds and rendered it out as a normal map- worked surprisingly well! Here it is if it's useful for anyone! 

OKAY BUT HOW DID I GET IN THESE BOMBERS??Well- the Prospect(2018) folks- otherwise known as SHEP Films- are working on a cool new project, and they wanted me to make a teaser for it. I haven't been taking on work lately, but they made me a pretty irresistible offer. 1.) I could share any assets I made here (woo) 2.) They'd help me plan a future shoot. And also 3.) I just really like working with them. 

But #2 was the one that got me crazy excited! They have a guy, Brice, who was the major force in coordinating the Prospect shoot and dozens of other smaller shoots. They said they wanted a shot of a spaceship cockpit and I was like, "Well it'd be easier if we could scan an actual aircraft or something" and 5 days later we were going nuts in a bomber- that's not a skillset I've ever processed (just call someone and ask to do a thing? no way!) and being around someone who can do it effortlessly is simultaneously inspiring, intimidating (and intoxicating?)

He's also going to show me how to properly do taxes. I love him. SO what is this shoot I want them to help me pull off??It's been in the works for a while! I've got the next 3 episodes of Dynamo all scripted out; I'm happy with it, and folks who've read it have been really supportive, so I'm ready to try actually shooting it! From a production standpoint, my goal is to be able to film it in a way where the CG enhances the environments, instead of being the environments. The idea of shooting footage, editing it, and having a scene, instead of having to sit down and work on greenscreen stuff for 5 months, sounds really great. At the same time, though, I really didn't want to sacrifice any world-building or visual density. 

There happens to be a rad old battleship near where I live, and I have reason to believe I could potentially film on it, so in an eggs-in-one-basket maneuver I've written the script to mostly take place on that boat (and a few other pretty fantastic nearby locations), which'll fit aesthetically, without having to make everything out of cardboard. 

I'm not asking for much- please just let me fill these bunks with dirty pirate boys! 

You can picture it though, yeah?? Using this as a base then adding a layer on top of it- could be absolutely bananas! 

This has been my plan for a while, so I've been saving up the patreon money every month so that when the time is right (coviiiiid) I could get the folks together and do a big proper shoot on the boat and basically film 3 episodes at once, as opposed to the one-scene-every-3-months method I used for the first episode. Brice being here to help me coordinate some stuff and get some Actual Actors cast is the final bit of hand-holding I needed to make it happen! So, covid and other unknowns notwithstanding, come early 2022 we're going to be going absolutely nuts filming some cool stuff on the boat! 

It's also going to be a great test arena for digital extensions and tracking/photoscans/all of that, as we try to as-painlessly-as-possible mix-and-match reality with CG. I'm going to be scanning each room/actor as we go, using all the stuff we've learned over the past couple years, so I think we'll be able to seamlessly slip between the two for some pretty wild results. So that'll be eps 3 and 4. The second episode, though, is almost entirely greenscreen, but I'm trying to do it with a few well-calculated long-takes, which'll simultaneously reduce the amount of postwork, but also (IMO) significantly increase the immersion. Maybe I'm being naive but I actually expect it to come together fairly quickly. Almost everything for that greenscreen shoot is ready; Nate Taylor's been making some kickass costumes/props, Thom's available for shooting, and I've wrangled a better greenscreen camera. Hopefully shooting all of it in the next few weeks (at which point the patreon will suddenly become very greenscreen centric :P). A different shoot- still along the same vein- is also in the works. I mention a lot that we have a couple hours of "original Dynamo" sitting around. Stuff that was almost completely finished, but context-less, since I never got around to filming the scenes before/after them, and at this point a lot of the scenes are 6 years old and it'd be really weird to try to resuscitate them.  One of those episodes, though, is almost done, and the contextlessness could actually add to the experience (it's pretty friggin' bizarre). 

The original team I shot it with is back in town until mid-January, so with any luck we'll be able to snag the last few shots we needed for The Legend of Pete. I put a bunch of work into it a few years ago, and it'll be great to finally wrap it up and get it out there (and also confuse people because it is, frankly, nuts). 

Of course, most of these plans were made before Omicron reared its head, so we'll see how stuff plays out. But I'm still excited. Last year, besides releasing Dynamo Dream, was really slow filmmaking-wise. I kind of settled into making the big full-cg Interplexa scene (which- while the parts that exist are fairly cool, to be what I was originally trying to make would require a good chunk of additional photoscanning/animating- still trying to figure out how best to go about it)- and I've missed just getting everything/body together on set and getting actual footage you can go home and mess with at the end of the day so much. All that to say, I'm excited for the possibilities of 2022! Thanks so much for being here! Hope everyone has fun and stays safe! Talk soon! :D