click here

here’s a clip from the beginning of my six monsters minute. … lulu wants to be as pretty as a baby. … s’why she’s bawlin. .. i’d post more but it’s .. .. the whole thing is only a minute?

man.. floyd’s blogging ability is supreme. YOU ARE THE BEST FLOYD!

you’re the best .. arouuund.. nuthin’s gonna ever keep you down..

love,
-pen

So our section of “Six Monsters” is finally finished, and if you haven’t yet noticed, it’s all 3D. It was a long hard slog, but it’s done.

I had made a post a while back that showed how a shot is broken down into it’s various elements for compositing, and that post disappeared somehow, so here’s my second shot at it. This is a quick version of how our renders work. We break things down into seperate render layers or passes. Why so many passes? Well, it gives us more control during the composite to control the various elements. If we need to re-run Buck’s layer, we won’t have to calculate all the rest of the things in the scene.

[Read more…]]]>

So our section of “Six Monsters” is finally finished, and if you haven’t yet noticed, it’s all 3D. It was a long hard slog, but it’s done.

I had made a post a while back that showed how a shot is broken down into it’s various elements for compositing, and that post disappeared somehow, so here’s my second shot at it. This is a quick version of how our renders work. We break things down into seperate render layers or passes. Why so many passes? Well, it gives us more control during the composite to control the various elements. If we need to re-run Buck’s layer, we won’t have to calculate all the rest of the things in the scene.

We start by rendering out a Beauty Pass. This pass has a lot of stuff in it. Gailard, the bottle, the background, etc. You can see Buck’s reflection in the fountain, but where’s Buck? Well, he’s got a lot of fur, so we save him for a seperate pass.

Here’s Buck now. He’s got a lot of fur - over 350,000 hairs.

This is an RGB matte. We render this so we can isolate different things in a frame. The purpose of this matte was to get something so that we could select Gailard’s glowing bits.

So we select Gailard’s glowing bits from the beauty pass, and then make a new layer with just those in there. We then blur that layer just a bit, and use a lightening blending mode on that layer. It give Gailard just enough of a spectral look so that he doesn’t get confused with a balloon or something.

This pass is called an Ambient Occlusion or AO pass. Ambient occlusion is a shading method used in 3D computer graphics which helps add realism to local reflection models by taking into account attenuation of light due to occlusion. This gets put on top of the beauty pass and a multiply blending mode is used to strengthen shadows.

and HERE is the final result.
-Floyd Bishop

This is Chris Hacker’s color version of Jim Worthy’s design based on an old seminary in Kalamazoo. You’ll see this for three seconds at the beginning of the cartoon, then again for about two seconds halfway through.

[Read more…]]]>

This is Chris Hacker’s color version of Jim Worthy’s design based on an old seminary in Kalamazoo. You’ll see this for three seconds at the beginning of the cartoon, then again for about two seconds halfway through.

– Eric

For the Six Monsters, that’s who. Last week Fred, Alan, and Eric asked me to do the inter-scene transitions for the cartoon. School bells ringing throughout all the creepy corners of John Zacherley Middle School will wisk us from one strange scene to the next. I had only 72 hours to put them together so I was lucky to have interns Joshua Jularbal and Ramon Mejia around to work on backgrounds and roughs.
To see these shots animated click here.
[Read more…]]]>

For the Six Monsters, that’s who. Last week Fred, Alan, and Eric asked me to do the inter-scene transitions for the cartoon. School bells ringing throughout all the creepy corners of John Zacherley Middle School will wisk us from one strange scene to the next. I had only 72 hours to put them together so I was lucky to have interns Joshua Jularbal and Ramon Mejia around to work on backgrounds and roughs.
To see these shots animated click here.

DAN METH.

We officially commissioned our 6 Monsters composer yesterday, so I’d like to introduce you all to the Emmy Award winning Michael Karp.

Michael’s been making music for television and film in New York since 1976 in all genres and styles and has had his music performed by concert stage orchestras. Alan and I thought he’d be an ideal choice for the monsters because of the unique nature of the film.

As you know, this cartoon will not a standard structure of introducing a couple of characters and following a story. Instead, the film’s made up of eight entirely separate, stand-alone comedy sketches (starring our 6 monsters). About the only common elements will be the voice actors, the character designs, and yes, the music. Michael’s been solving strategic problems his whole career, in addition to composing compellling, engaging music, and I think we felt this cartoon could use his brain and his talent.

A few of [Read more…]]]>

We officially commissioned our 6 Monsters composer yesterday, so I’d like to introduce you all to the Emmy Award winning Michael Karp.

Michael’s been making music for television and film in New York since 1976 in all genres and styles and has had his music performed by concert stage orchestras. Alan and I thought he’d be an ideal choice for the monsters because of the unique nature of the film.

As you know, this cartoon will not a standard structure of introducing a couple of characters and following a story. Instead, the film’s made up of eight entirely separate, stand-alone comedy sketches (starring our 6 monsters). About the only common elements will be the voice actors, the character designs, and yes, the music. Michael’s been solving strategic problems his whole career, in addition to composing compellling, engaging music, and I think we felt this cartoon could use his brain and his talent.

A few of you also know Michael as the composer of all the original music that packages Channel Frederator. His cool tracks there are among our most commented on aspects of the podcast.

Last but not least, we met Michael through his son, Frederator intern-turned-Channel Frederator imagineer-turned-web entrepeneur David Karp. Thanks bud!

–Fred

Alan and I are old.

Not too old mind you (though that, of course, is what we think) but old enough that we find it amusing to pay homage to John Zacherley (though Wikipedia has it spelled with his birth spelling).

We know of Zach (we don’t really know him, even though we called for permission to use his name in the cartoon) because he was the originator of some of the most enduring horror/comedy gags in television, first in Philadelphia, then in New York on Channel 9’s, then Channel 11’s Chiller Theatre. That was enough to get him into 6 Monsters but for New Yorker’s our age he capped that with being one of the hippest, and oldest, progressive radio DJs in the city (really).
[Read more…]]]>

Alan and I are old.

Not too old mind you (though that, of course, is what we think) but old enough that we find it amusing to pay homage to John Zacherley (though Wikipedia has it spelled with his birth spelling).

We know of Zach (we don’t really know him, even though we called for permission to use his name in the cartoon) because he was the originator of some of the most enduring horror/comedy gags in television, first in Philadelphia, then in New York on Channel 9’s, then Channel 11’s Chiller Theatre. That was enough to get him into 6 Monsters but for New Yorker’s our age he capped that with being one of the hippest, and oldest, progressive radio DJs in the city (really).

Next up: the voice of Buck, Chuck McCann.

–Fred

We asked background artist Jim Worthy to come up with a look for John Zacherle Middle School, the locale for “6 Monsters”. You’ll see this art, completed, for about three seconds at the beginning of the cartoon to establish the scene. For reference, Jim worked off this 100-year-old image Kalamazoo’s Presbyterian Michigan Female Seminary (closed in 1907, razed in 1935).

[Read more…]]]>

We asked background artist Jim Worthy to come up with a look for John Zacherle Middle School, the locale for “6 Monsters”. You’ll see this art, completed, for about three seconds at the beginning of the cartoon to establish the scene. For reference, Jim worked off this 100-year-old image Kalamazoo’s Presbyterian Michigan Female Seminary (closed in 1907, razed in 1935).

– Eric

So we recently got a short test of our segment in 6 MONSTERS and “gulp” never posted it. In fact, the whole segment has been completed by YESON. The same studio that did BRONK and BONGO and they did a stunning job translating my poor chicken scratches into a coherent and colorful feast for the eye.

Alright, let’s do a quick shout out to some of the peeps involved. The backgrounds and props were designed by JIM (I’m not) Worthy and the BG’s were colored by Dazzlin’ DAN CHESSER. All of the segments were directed by ROB RENZETTI of TEENAGE ROBOT fame and who has a name that sounds like a pasta dish.” I’ll have the RENZETTI please.”

CLICK HERE to see the test animation. Sorry no sound, but feel free to make up your own dialogue. It couldn’t be worse than ours.

Slogginly yours, Manny and Alan

With the recent post of some Fanboy animation, I thought we’d better put up some more of our stuff as well.

HERE is another final shot from our piece. We stressed for quite a while as to how to handle the effect of Gailard’s hand phasing into the water fountain. We thought about a spectral mist, then a flash of light, then maybe some sort of ectoplasmic goo release (yuck!), before we settled on the more subtle effect you see in the clip.

It happens so fast, and the effect is not the focus of the action, we think it works. What do you think?

-Floyd Bishop

HERE is a peek at Gailard from our section of Six Monsters.

He was textured, lit, and comped by Keith McMenamy.

As always, let us know what you think.
-Floyd Bishop