CGChallenge - TEN: B.A.R.

#1

Boy and Rocket (temp title)

Setting: 1978, American family home.

Synopsis: Meet Lowell, a 10-year-old boy who is fascinated with space. Without many friends at school and his father often struggling to provide for his family, Lowell has a hard time finding friends to share his adventures with. He spends most of his time by himself, tinkering with model rockets and other space toys. One day the TV in his room starts blaring:

“We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming with breaking news from the final frontier. Scientists have discovered that the mass of Pluto, our ninth planet, is much smaller than anticipated. Astronomers now suspect that there may exist yet another planet within our solar system … the search for a tenth planet begins!"

What follows is a young boy’s struggle to get his feet off the ground on an epic quest into the cosmos as he learns about the power of his imagination and the difference that just a little bit of fatherly support can make.

Latest Animatic Preview:

Hi everyone, my name is Kevin McNamara and I will be leading a team video entry, temporarily titled Boy and Rocket (don’t worry, we’ll come up with a real title soon!)

I will be writing and directing the film as well as doing general editorial and CG work. I have finally settled on a basic story idea after about two weeks of writing and rewriting (and rewriting again). I have a full script as well as a first pass storyboard animatic, but they need some more polish and tuning before I post them.

I’ve always been a fan of the CGSociety competitions and I’m really excited to take part!

Feedback is always welcome, looking forward to this journey!

#2

Hi,

nice story.I think title is the less important thing right now.
All the best and good luck!

#3

Thanks Adrian!

We have made big strides with our story and animatic over the past few days - I’m very excited to share it with you once we tune things up.

In the meantime, one of our very talented artists, Claire Hummel, has painted some beautiful concept ideas for our main character. We hope you enjoy - more on the way!

#4

the concept drawings are looking sweet! I like your story too, cool idea regarding the ten theme. Awesome work

#5

The concept art is looking super cool! Going to be following this one.

#6

From what I am seeing so far, this looks pretty awesome. i can’t wait to see what you guys produce!

#7

The story sounds fantastic, the power of the imagination, I like.
On the other hand the character design is amazing too. I’ll be following this post.

#8

Nice story and sketches! Can’t wait to see more :slight_smile:

#9

Thanks everyone for the kind words! We’ve now passed our story milestone and I’m currently breaking down shot and asset lists - lots of progress to come!

#10

I have started modeling a few pieces of the backyard set in order to start defining the shape language of our film. This is a quick modeling sketch to explore the style and scales that we’ll be using. Note that this is submitted under concept art (not wip) because this is just one style idea that we may or may not go with. Comments and crits would be appreciated!

#11

Hey everyone,

I’ve decided to upload a one minute clip so you can see some of our story progress. This is just a snippet from our very rough animatic sequence. This animatic was put together solely for the purpose of story work and shot timing - these boards are not indicative of artistic style, camera angles, layout, or animation. This just helped us see how our story plays out visually. I am in the process of replacing this animatic with a 3D-layout animation that will show our actual camera angles.

Sources:

NBC News theme song
Rocky theme song
www.rocketroberts.com (rocket workbench image)
istock photo (school bus)
www.freesound.org
Main character concept: Claire Hummel
All other sounds and drawings by Kevin McNamara.

#12

Good work! I like the pace of the animatic so far, it retains the viewer’s interest throughout.

#13

Hi KMcNamara …i like the character so much and also the animatic.Waiting for the next post.
Good luck…

#14

hey man, great start and I love the character designs! pls pass on my high five to Claire :wink:

looking fwd to the full animatic!
The calendar shot feels a bit short, maybe add a few frames more to read in the information.
I’m wondering if there’s a way to tighten up the pace slighty so you can get quicker into the story of him building his rocket…
What if you start with the an establishing shot of the house, and a school bus rolls in, he runs quickly into his room to get started. The calendar could be in his room by the door, and you can frame on that close up as he runs by. He doesn’t need to stop as I think it’s quite clear already that’s he’s eager for that calendar date from the framing of the shot.

anyway just some ideas… he’s kinda hard to explain in words… hope it’s makes sense.

shot numbers would be cool to make it easier to crit ;p

#15

Adam and suru, thanks for the kind words!

Martin, great advice! I think you’re onto something with moving the calendar into his bedroom (and I agree that the I need to give the viewer more time to read it). Thanks!

Always looking to cut things down a bit since the full animatic is four minutes right now :smiley:

#16

ok, I like to see the full Animatic. and I agree four minutes is a little long, it’s always good to look at where you can cut without affecting the narrative of story.
But if the story takes four minutes or more to be well told, no way. prepare the coffee, and fill with patience for rendering.

#17

Lots of progress over the past few days - we’ll be ready to show some more soon but for now we’ve uploaded a model turntable of the tree that will be in the back yard. I’ll be bringing it into Houdini for some procedural L-system leaves, updates coming soon!

Link to the turntable: http://challenge.cgsociety.org/ten/entry/KMcNamara/work_in_progress/10002676

#18

Our main character in profile and front view for modeling reference.

Updates on our back yard set coming tomorrow night!

#19

Brought the ZBrush tree (turntable is a few posts up) into Houdini for some leaves with some nice results - shaded version coming soon!

Starting to get a feel for how we’re going to lay out the back yard set. Here’s a quick AO pass of what we’ve got at the moment. I’m also mostly done with the shading so I’ll get that posted up within a few days.

#20

Turntable work in progress of our main character’s head! Still lots more to do here with the eyes, mouth, hair, and some of the shapes in general, but I wanted to keep you guys posted on our progress!

Click the image to see the turntable