chillyche

Hands are good. Feet need work. Boots need to be remodeled, they're not deforming nicely at all.

I'm very anxious to start the face. Should I start the face? ARGH! Should I?!

Adorable!

Yeah, the tracking is pretty decent (with a glitch during the fade up), but the model doesn't blend in as photorealistic. Part of the problem is that the cbackground plate is sort of overexposed and low resolution, making the VF-0 stand out. The other thing that jumps to mind is that I can't see the panel lines on any of the cars, but I can see them on the Valk and they're HUGE, like the size of a roof-rack on one of those cars. Maybe if you reduced the depth of those panel lines, and their width, it would help the model feel to scale. It's a good model, after all, and as I said, the tracking is good. Better than I've done.

Semin! Long time no see.

I see the rear fins are back at an angle.

And then a two day booking turns into two weeks and the I have a shoot and then I have meetings with a producer and art director about ANOTHER project I've been trying to get off the ground. Sheesh. Well, in case anybody was wondering, that model up there is mostly completely skinned. Gotta do some blending in the hands and then he'll be ready for some mocap tests. Or for the face rig. Ugh.

(null)

All very good points. The variables mean just about anything is possible. At the same time, as humans, certain tricks make things seem "realistic" to us, based on our own terrestrial experiences. Sometimes we have to fudge the science to sooth the suspension of disbelief. However, I bow to the fact that this picture could be ANYWHERE!

I really really do not want to become vaporware! This past year I picked up a lot more regular work, and my girlfriend moved in, so I've had a bit less time to devote to making fan anime. I also spent a month or so working on my other music video project, so, the modeling I've been doing has been divided. I figured I HAVE to finish some Aria stuff soon.

Yeah, I thought I was gonna finish this particular model up this week, but they went from booking me for 1 day to booking me all week and trying to book next week, even though I already told them I had some conflicts. Sheesh.

But, yeah, I'm trying to finish the rigging and skinning on this model and then put together a lil something something.

Flipping the background image would solve the light direction issue, sorta. Or at least convince me that the same light that was lighting the clouds was lighting the character. The character art (line and coloring) itself is fantastic.

Not to come in and poo-poo B&C, but, POO-POO. I've found I'm pretty disappointed in the show so far, but not really surprised about that. I think it's a matter both of personal taste, and of sort of broader criticism.

Starting with the broad strokes, this just isn't a very well written piece of drama. I'm very impressed by the effects given the insane time and personnel constraints, so my hat is off to the effects team, but I kinda shed a tear for them, because they hustled to make effects for a show/webseries that feels more like high-budget, low-brow fan fiction. Part of the problem lies in the web series format. Somebody decided that something "exciting" needed to happen every ten minutes or so (every episode), so we have an endless stream of cliff-hangers. I'm all for cliff-hangers. I might direct our attention to the BSG2003 Season 1 finale, the Season 2 mid-season cliffhanger or the Season 2 finale for examples of insanely gripping cliff-hangers. And I can direct you to every episode of Blood & Chrome for a cliff-hanger I can't possibly care about.

Why don't I care? Two reasons.

1) There's virtually no world-building or character development. 70 minutes into this thing I don't know WHAT the mission is, I don't know WHY they're on it, I don't LIKE any of the characters, and haven't been given much of a reason to like them.

2) I damn well know that Adama survives. That's the problem with prequels in general. There is NO chance that this main character will ever die during this war, so drama that revolves around "will he make it?" is dull.

So, it feels like they're WASTING TIME with these cliff hangers. If you'll recall the 2003 miniseries, it opens with a Six kissing a dude and a space station blowing up, then there's virtually no action for the next 45 minutes. All there is is world building and character development. They build the world enough that when the big event happens, you feel the gravity of it. Also, there IS a big event, and it's obviously super massive -- it's the end of the worlds! From that point on (all the way until the end of Season 2, in fact), there is a very clear direction for the show. There is a clear tension. We understand the mission. We understand the stakes. We get to know the characters within that context. It's not fair to compare 2 seasons and a miniseries to what, when its finished will be the length of maybe 2 episodes (half the miniseries), but as a film or a pilot, we can compare the effectiveness.

Bill Adama as Husker feels like a fairly empty "everyman" hero. We all know and love the complex man that Adama grows into by the time of BSG2003, so B&C has the opportunity to show us something interesting. He obviously shouldn't end the series as the Adama we know, but we can get to know the guy, see the seeds of the man he is to become, and see some of the youthfulness that he must have, at one point, had. But instead we get sort of a bland archetype. He's kind of a hotshot, but not quite a Kara Thrace damaged goods nutcase. He's a natural pilot. He wants action but he follows orders. He wants to make a name for himself. Ho-hum. How about some basic dramatic stuff here? What does this character want and what does he need? How will this particular story serve as an arc for him to move from A to B? So far in this show, there's no reason that Husker has to be Husker and not some random other pilot.

Coker? Please. He combines the surliness of Tigh with the whineyness of PFC Hudson. And he hasn't stopped this schtick in over 8 episodes. Surliness is forever, sure, but whining? Sometimes just plain irrational stubborn we-need-an-antagonist-in-this-scene whining? Gag. If they hadn't taken that left turn with the Final Five in Season 3 (keep in mind that there was no such concept as the Final Five for the miniseries and Seasons 1 and 2, and suddenly it becomes CRUCIAL to the entire plot in Season 3), then maybe this show could have actually been about a young Adama and Tigh, but no, we get a Tigh stand-in. As of yet, this character has offered nothing, not even comedy relief.

I don't care if Coker dies. I don't care if Beka Kelly dies, either, because I still don't know what her character is about. What does she want? What does she need? She's got the mystery mission, and that seems to be it. And some lame baggage. And some generic sex appeal. Meanwhile, every other character we've met has basically died, but within 1 or 2 episodes, so we didn't have time to get attached anyway. So, no worries. There has always been cannon fodder in sci-fi space operas, but if you want somebody to care about Kakizaki, you keep the guy around for more than 10 minutes before feeding him any pineapples.

Because it's BSG, though, I keep expecting to have something profound or at least thought-provoking happen. So far it hasn't. Adama goes off-script at the Galactica's decommissioning ceremony and asks humanity if deserved to survive. Wow. That's pretty heavy for a few minutes in. Not to mention there's some serious discord in that family, and the ship is filled with drunks and troublemakers. Interesting. Not in this show. I got nothing. Just a talented viper jock, a whiney ECO, and an infuriatingly non-forth-coming scientist. There have been no tough decisions made (no leaving Helo behind, or leaving an entire ship without an FTL drive behind, or venting oxygen to control fires, or shooting down a civilian carrier with a nuke aboard), no moral dilemmas raised (torture? do artificial lifeforms have any rights? can a skin-job really feel love?), not even any academic curiosities or concepts. There's just not much of anything going on in this show, and I'm really disappointed, because I WANTED to love it. Maybe just half as much as BSG2003.

As far as personal taste goes, I felt like the moment the show began focusing on the "final five" instead of "the chase" and the "hunt for earth" things skewed off in a bad direction. Part of that also has to do with the fact that the network pushed for more self-contained episodes, meaning that the overall storyline kind of suffered, and then in Season 4 there was a change-over of some staff and crew (and then of course the writer's strike) and it also felt like they sort of avoided the sticky areas from Season 3, at times at detriment to the entire show. I feel like the eventual revelation of the Final Five and the storyline behind them was so off-base from what the show had off with that any future works in the BSG franchise that have to take that stuff into account as canon will not be a little worse than they should be. But that's my personal opinion. I think it's stupid to follow characters for 4 seasons, and then in the last two episodes have flashbacks that invent completely new problems the characters and then try to tie up THOSE issues as some sort of resolution. Inexcusable. We had four seasons of drama between Lee and Kara, but they invent a new moment to try to add meaning to their eventual character resolution. Ugh. And how about that flashback where Adama considers quitting, but then Helen and Tigh talk him out of it or whatever? WHY IS THAT SCENE IN THERE?! Or Roslin and the death of her sisters and mother? UNNECESSARY. She has cancer and everybody she knows in the entire world is pretty much dead because ARMAGEDDON HAPPENED! We don't need these weird new problems. Crappy writing. Um I'm on a rant here, but you see my point -- the writing in the latter half of the show got so bad and weird (Tigh knocks up Caprica Six? Don't worry, that's only for an episode or two before it's not relevant) that there's not much hope that anything else in the franchise could be good ever again. If only they hadn't done the final five thing. Then, when Tigh tells that story about the chrome-jobs boarding a ship, and massacring the crew, well, that could be a real story. And a prequel series could have stuff like that, instead of having to deal with the fact that the whole Cylon plan for revenge was due to a petulant cry-baby of a mean machine. Yikes.

Sorry. I just think Blood & Chrome is poorly done, and couldn't actually ever be well done, without stepping all over canon (as it already does).

That looks dope! I'm wondering what the intention with the light was, though? It's coming in at a very steep angle, as though from a rising or setting sun coming through a hangar door, or a massive, ginormous spotlight at like, a 15 degree, 20 degree angle. If the intent is the former, the sun, then I feel like there should be some color temperature shifts. To clearly indicate the source as the sun, a sunrise or sunset will appear orange or red. It's possible that the photograph could be white balanced for that magic hour look, but that would put the shadows into a bluer, purpler sort of color space. I personally believe the idea would be sun, here, because the shadows are so sharp, we have to assume that the light source is far enough away, that the Valk is MUCH closer to the wall than the light source.

Maybe just a bit of straw gel over the light would do the trick.

http://vimeo.com/54622567

So, there's this thing:

https://vimeo.com/54622567

(took me a minute to figure out how to get the video to display here on the board)

Awesome work so far. What program are you using?

Wow. Again. Wow.

Kids don't know nothin'.

Me For the very reasons I described. Not to mention no one is interested in Adama 2.0...

Well, yeah, I mean in real life of course he wouldn't be interested in rehashing the role. But, I meant more, like, upon watching BSG, did one not think, "Look at frakking Global-looking Adama right there." Which of course lead to the thought, "well, I guess he can't play Global, now." But really, BSG also killed my dreams of a serious live-action American Macross television series anyway, since there are too many surface similarities. Obviously the biggest thorn in the side of that concept is and always will be HG, but none the less, we can always dream.

Tom Selleck's got the look. Even if he's a million years old, now.

-Che

I'll keep it short. Cool. One of the better casts I've seen.

Was anybody NOT thinking EJO as Global when he grew that mustache? C'mon, guys!

I think it looks sort of Star Warsish because it's a bit baggy, and has the additional harness straps for the chute. Also because it's suddenly been realized in live action, versus stylized animation. The almost skin-tight SDFM flight suit just doesn't really lend itself well to real-world aesthetics, unless one goes the Prometheus veined pressure suit route (which is based on actual emerging, though not deployed technology).

Mr March -- your coloring just keeps getting better. This stuff straight up looks like cels. Just add a little bit of grain, slap it over a painted bg, and I'd buy it was still.

Yeah dude, I'm down. I just finished like a 7 month gig, so I've got some spare time.

Wow.

I much prefer stuff within a defined universe over crossovers. They're just not really my cup of tea.

Says the guy who has a music video featuring Valks, Megatron, Cylons, Kilrathi, the Millennium Falcon...

Haha, I meant in fanfic.

Amazing stuff. Really good work.

All in all, though, I'd say this is a pretty entertaining job.