More to see! More to do! Progress is coming along nicely with our talented team cranking away!

We had to fidget to bring all the elements into scale for a bit, but it’s looking much better now! Jason Spencer is in handling the basic geography and placement of assets, while Adam Higgins contributed the train tracks.

And one of the infamous advertisement boards Ross populates Dranac with by our modeler Adam Higgins. These guys are really doing a great job and I couldn’t be more excited to have them on our team!

And… here – we – GO!

I give you all your first glimpse into making Dranac a reality! Over the last week Jason, Adam, and Lucas have been working on this. Largely this is the work of Jason so far, laying in the basic geography and tossing in some textures and lighting for fun! I’ll be splitting up the material between updates.

Jason popped in some generic UDK models to help keep things in scale. In the next few shots the line of buttresses will slowly correct itself to the scale of the models. I’m really pleased with how the UDK is working for us so far. I really had faith that it would make for a really powerful independent film making tool and with the right team, it is.

And before we go, here’s a little bonus shot some of you may recognize:

More to come! Keep watching the shadows!

The Dacia Sandero is coming to Dranac!

After about a month or so of total black out, we’re back in action! Full swing! Tilt shift! Spandex and capes! Following the departure of Matt McClure we began a search for a new senior UDK modeler, and we’ve found him! He’s Jason Spencer, a ten year industry vet with a drive to find new applications for game design software. Our first order of business is to build the train station you can find Kyisha walking through early in Shadoweyes In Love. We’ll be using that as our demonstration environment to prove how this is going to look. More on that later!

And now, some more of Steve’s awesome storyboards!

So Shadoweyes has been undergoing a lot of behind the scenes changes recently. The fantastic Matt McClure has set sail for bluer ocean as he received a much deserved promotion at his current job. We wish him the absolute best! Unfortunately this has left us with a rather large gap in our production team.

Matt was our senior 3-D modeling guy and without him we’ve lost some of the strong direction we had with our vfx. I’ve been entertaining a couple of potentials interested in filling his shoes, but I haven’t signed anyone new onto the project just yet. We’re still growing our base of modelers, as well. So any interested parties shoot us an email, a message on Facebook, however you please. Link us to your portfolio or send a resume and we’d be more than happy to take a look.

My editing and vfx system also just went down over the last week after many years of valiant service. I’m currently in the process of getting a new motherboard, ram, and OS for it so that when she gets back online she’ll be better than ever! We’ve been doing a lot of test footage for the processes we’ll use on Shadoweyes under a side project. Once my system is back online we’ll see about getting some of that up on the web so you all can see the results of our rough trials.

In other news, our storyboard artist Steve recently finished story boarding the film, and I’ll be updating with a follow up to continue highlighting them soon! There’s some kinks in the screen direction of some boards, but over all it looks good. There will probably be some additional boards to correct somethings and expand on others. But we’ll cross the bridge when we get there. Right now I want to concentrate on getting our pitch reel done so we can begin fundraising. I’m still very adamant about having a functional proof of concept and finalized team behind it before opening up a Kickstarter. We need to get through our growing pains now, before we put it all on the line.

Recently I discovered that our contact section had a typo in the information. That’s now been corrected. So in case you sent us an email and we never got back, well, that’s why. So, please, don’t hesitate to send it again!

Today we’ll take a look at the longer, revised intro storyboards. These are much more reflective of how I want the movie to start.

Boom. There you have it, the opening to the movie. I get stoked just looking at it. The pacing is just right. When the screen goes black and those cool blue eyes open in the darkness as Sparkle yells “Shadoweyes!” Man, that’s gonna be good.

We’re also looking for new VFX team members who can work in UDK. So pop us an email if you’re interested in contributing. While what we have looks really complicated, it’s not. We only need three environments for the movie: a street scene, an alley, and a rooftop. We should be able to redress them as needed to create our static locations. I’m thinking the look of the movie will reflect the heightened reality of the comic. So not realistic, per say. More tangible but exaggerated. We can work in big gestures as long as the details are in the right places.

The first pitch for OOTS was pretty cut and dry, just some silent shots followed by an action scene and done. But SOMEONE *coughROSScough* kept trying to add in characters and dialogue and stuff. After some resistance I figured it couldn’t hurt. We can always shoot the integral stuff first and shoot the rest as we can.

It started just by adding Sparkle, but I felt that if we’re going to add Sparkle we may as well toss in other characters while we’re at it. If we can cast them, sweet. If not, no worries. Ultimately Sparkle is the biggest player next to Scout in terms of casting. And unlike Scout, we can’t sculpt her from foam latex! SO HEADS UP GIRLS WHO LOOK LIKE SPARKLE! Email our cast and crew!

Anyway. Since posting the raw script just isn’t as fun, let’s take a look at the work of our awesome storyboard artist, Steve Yarborough, with excerpts from the script!

“Start with a pan down into the city, followed by shots of crowds walking, rack focusing across the masses, cars and traffic, flickering neon signs, and overwrought industrial architecture.”

“Dranac: a city dense and dark and dank. Choked by leaking pipes and sandwiched buildings, it is a zoo where buildings are cages and people are the animals on display. The streets are bombarded by neon signs and flickering holographic advertisements, selling and pimping whatever new thing you need and how beautiful you should be.”

“Sidewalks and alleys are clogged with people bustling back and worth. Faceless masses. Cars hum around overlapping highways, perilously close to pedestrians and buildings alike. A cyber city of the future that is festering more than living.”

These are the first 18 boards from the intro to the movie. The movie begins with an over view of Dranac and its inhabitants to both introduce the uninitiated and to set the mood. You’ll notice there’s less “panning” in these boards than there are “fly throughs.” Steve went and dramatically reworked these later to create an opening more in line with what I had in mind. More on that later!

IN OTHER NEWS:

I’d like to welcome Adam Higgins to our prestigious team of misfits and criminals.

Adam has always had a huge passion for video games and the world of 3D, since getting hooked on the subject in 2004, discovering the editor for the Unreal Engine, he’s steadily progressed, developing his skills both in environment design and 3d modelling. He is always on the look out for new ventures and opportunities to push himself, and isn’t afraid of getting stuck in

You can check out Mr. Higgins’ personal site at  http://www.aghiggins.co.uk/

FORTHCOMING:

More Story Time! Interview with our Concept Artist! Designing Scout!

Until we start raising funding, OOTS is going to be in a state of planning. One of the biggest decisions I’m going to have to make is who to hire to make Scout. I’ve talked to two guys so far and I’ll probably send a few stock emails to some other companies before I’m done. But right now I’ve talked with Josh Counsel at Toxic Image and exchanged emails with Pete Mander at Pete Mander FX.

I emailed Pete right out the door when we started to see what we’d be looking at in terms of cost so I could budget what we’d need to raise, which was about 3 to 8k depending on what we want. Ross and I have both settled on the possibility of not having an articulated face for Scout. Using a static expression with internal monologue seemed like the best choice for cost vs. quality. We also decided her tail could be finished digitally rather than having poorly articulated garden hose hanging off her butt. That was six months ago or so.

More recently I spoke with Josh. Now, when I approached Toxic Image initially it was because they were among a list of studios locally who did special make up effects. When he got back to me, I discovered that he’d actually moved to Utah. This seemed like a bummer at first, but he was quick to point out that he still does a lot of work in the Orlando area and has a shop he can use, as well as transportation and a place to stay already. Not to mention he already knows the other effects groups around here and the performers, which would give us a leg up on casting.

Josh was really enthusiastic. I’m not sure he really gets to do full scale creature costumes like this much, since the demand is pretty low these days thanks to that evil we know as CGI.  (as our municipal team member, Dave, likes to say “CEEGEEAYEGOPHERS!” in reference to the idiotic opening of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.) So I got the impression working with us, while being low budget, would be doing something he was passionate about.

One of the biggest issues I could forsee with working with someone like Pete is distance. You have to factor in travel and shipping and staying and scheduling. It becomes a real nightmare, real fast. I really love what Pete does. I feel like he embodies the kind of attitude this production is about. But damn, that’s a lot of extra pain in the butt I’d like to avoid. Josh, on the other hand, he’s got a career, he’s got thirty years of experience, and he’s pretty much set up for working locally still. But he’s also got a career, you know? He’s a busy guy. Working with us would take time out of his schedule, and take up work that would probably pay better. Plus it would probably take longer from juggling other projects, etc.

Time is one of our great and worst commodities. I don’t want this movie to take years. No way. This should be quick and easy, really. With a little more help, we could get this thing done in months. I would like to be shooting by the end of Summer or early Fall. Our two biggest hurdles are Scout and our digital effects. If those two elements come together, we can shoot all day and night. No problem. Everything else I’ve got in the bag.

Conversely, though, we can take our time and do things as they become available/cheaper/easier. It’s a tough balancing act between pushing people to make the most of our time and giving them space to take care of their real lives.

Recently, when discussing my thoughts on Pete and Josh with Ross, he made an off hand remark that got me thinking. Why not shoot in New York where it’s closer to Toronto, Pete’s base of operations? I know I can reasonably get a cheap flight up there, the rest of our crew… maybe. What would the benefits of that be? I know I’ve got a loose connection with someone in public transit up there who could potentially show us around. I know I’ve got friends acting up there, they could probably help raise awareness with casting. So it’s a thought. There’s no reason we couldn’t shoot Scout’s stuff up there, at least. It might could work.

I do, however, really hope to stay local. I want OOTS to bring people together down here and form a team I can come back to when we’re done. If we can do something more with this, maybe a web series, then I want to be able to keep using our actors and crew. Just keep rolling. Things need to change here. And they’re only going to change if we do it ourselves. We can’t wait around for industry to find us. We have to make our own.

Maybe we can just get Legacy Effects on board and call it done.

Continuing our spotlight on the design of Dranac and our concept artist, March Whisnant, we have two new pictures!

Looking decidedly more Blade Runner this time, Marc continues to experiment with Dranac to create an appropriately brooding atmosphere.

I’m really fond of this last piece. It’s one of Dranac’s highways, but devoid of cars. There’s a really classy, old Star Wars or 2001 vibe here. Very Ralph McQuarrie. Very haunting.

Our next segment with Marc will feature some commentary by him, so if anyone has anything they’d like to ask email us or comment!

And now a special Shadow-Valentine from our friendly neighborhood web ninja, Caroline: