Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 Year 7 Year 8 |
Early
assembly of exterior
components, November 2000. I wanted near-monochrome
environments, but gave them a bit of colour so I still had room to move
in post production.
I've
always preferred to render as much "in camera" as possible, rather than
splitting a shot into various passes for later compositing.
This
allows things like shadow and reflection interactivity without the
need
for manual post trickery and reassembly, thereby shifting a lot of the
grunt
work onto the
computer
so I can get on with the things that humans are better at. It
also consumes a
lot less
disk space, which was an important consideration since 90GB was
my limit.
Nonetheless, many of the
shots needed to be broken into smaller parts anyway, either to
facilitate certain effects or simply because my
computer
couldn't fit
the whole scene in its 384MB of
memory. The opening shot was no exception, and constituted
nineteen separate scene files.
Many
of the other shots were progressing well, and it was looking feasible
to make it in time for Christmas this year. I was desperate to make
it this time – I couldn't let this thing just go on
indefinitely.
I
began to be plagued by periods of stifled
creativity. My
productivity ranged from zero to sixteen hours per day, and at one
time I endured a whole month of creative block. Every few days
of high productivity were followed by at least as many days of low
productivity. My waking
hours frequently strayed into the 12:00pm - 4:00am zone, and I
constantly struggled to pull myself back
into
"normal" time. I pressed on, pondering whether
three years
of my
life dedicated to a few minutes of mindless entertainment was time well
spent.
This
retouched render from April 2001 served as a blueprint for
the "look and feel" of the final interior shots.
A 2003
recreation for use as a marketing still, with final models, lights and grading.
Alas, I
missed Christmas again. The project had grown too big and I couldn't
have maintained the quality established in the opening shot.
I
pressed on defiantly, confident that it would be worth the effort in
the end - whenever that would be.
|