B-Movie Entry: Aleksandr Berland

#1

Aleksandr Berland is entered in the “B-Movie” update: View Challenge Page

Latest Update: Work In Progress: Almira - 3d Character Sculpt & 3d Development

#2

Some quick concept sketches/brainstorms in black verithin pencil.

#3

Some quick concept sketches/brainstorms in black verithin pencil.

#4

Hi CG’ers!

Let me introduce myself, I am Aleks Berland, and I am a CG generalist located in Toronto with a special focus on character modeling. With classical training in fine art and film, I have been working in 3d since 2006, and in computer graphics since 2000.

So a bit of a late entry, but I have just returned from travelling for the past 3 months in India and Japan, and now that I am back I am working nearly fulltime on material for my new demo reel.

Whether or not 2 weeks is enough time is difficult to say at this stage of development of my idea, it will definitely be rushed, but either way, it is a perfect opportunity to get some feedback as I work, and the challenge gives me a nice framework to work within; somewhere to start with brainstorming ideas for my new reel.

Given the deadline, I will try and design my project so that it can be completed within the timeframe.

All that being said, I am super excited about this project… I spent yesterday doing some sketches and brainstorming…

I look forward to hearing from anyone with any feedback. I’ve always done my best work with a peer group, and of course I am really enjoying seeing everyone else’s creativity in action.

Today I am continuing to develop my concepts, and will post a little bit on the story shortly.

  • Aleks Berland
#5

Hey Aleks,

Welcome to the challenge, and for sure this is an amazing forum with incredible talented people. The first and most important reward in this kind of challenges is the opportunity to share your work and progress on your concept with people that have the same passion, and is an enjoyable learning journey.

Like a lot the title on one of your sketches; “Planet Fandango”. That sounds totally cool and very original. Nice sketches and style.

Good luck and looking forward for more updates. Cheers!! :beer:

#6

Thanks for the encouragement!

#7

Ark Fandango / Planet Fandango

(Working Titles)

Plot Synopsis

By Aleksandr Berland
(Febuary 2010)

Los Ritmos, a (fictional) small village in the remote mountains of southern Mexico in the early 1900’s. The name of the town literally means "The Rhythm”.

The village has long been very musical society, where dance and rhythm are as important as working the land to survive. For the past three months trees and wildlife have mysteriously gone missing and only gaping holes remain they once were; as though they have been scooped up by giant hands…

A local young woman, Almira Archuleta, a dancer, is the first to see the strange visitor in the moonlight, plucking trees and goats carefully from her father’s fields. Hiding in the shadows, she sees an enormous figure, big enough to hold a towering tree in the palm of its hands. The being is made of shiny metal and what looks like clear glass. Through the glass Almira sees what appears to be massive living landscapes in the head and abdomen swirling in a foggy ether.

Almira’s curiosity is piqued observing the care with which the visitor treats the specimens it gathers. Judging that the visitor may be benevolent, but ultimately determined to put a stop to the ravaging and the petty thefts of the environment, she approaches the being. At first the visitor seems startled, then even scared, rising to its feet suddenly, destructively, and leaping maladroitly behind a small mountain. Realizing the being is like a big child, and wanting to coax him from his hiding spot, Almira begins to dance, tapping out rhythms on the earth. The visitor seems fascinated but, its shyness is too much and it disappears out towards the beach beyond the mountain ranges. The next night Almira waits on the highest roof of the mountainside village with her friend Quique, a trumpet player, watching over the fields for the visitor. In the moonlight she sees a colossal figure appear with birds swirling around its head down in the maize fields. Rushing down the steep village steps to meet with the visitor once again, she is excited to show off her dancing once again, this time with musical accompaniment. A wonderful night of dancing and fun is had by all, and by the end, the Ark and Almira have become fast friends.

The Ark is very timid around human beings, and has avoided them, pillaging only at night, but Almira teaches the Ark about her people’s music, their dancing, their culture, and the Ark is captivated by the displays. With this new fascination keeping the Ark busy, tapping on a hillside for percussion, splashing hands across a lake sending geese scattering and honking like wild brass horns, tapping a foot to the music of Los Ritmos, shaking the earth, the Ark has put an end to collecting.

For the first time in a long while, crowded and uncomfortable, frustrated with the thefts, the villagers of Los Ritmos don’t have to keep all their chickens, goats, cows, and donkeys in their bedrooms at night in for fear of losing another valuable possession.

The villagers, relieved, and now even grateful see that the Ark has a miraculous green thumb, when forced to apply itself. The Ark is quite lazy and goes into a sleep-like state most of the day in the ocean 100 kilometres away. With the Ark’s help, crops and plants suddenly are in supernatural abundance. Everything seems more than back to normal, fantastic even! The village of Los Ritmos even works together crafting the Ark a giant hat in thanks.

But perhaps the new cornucopia is all too good to be true. The Ark has a new fascination, and his nature as a collector, but perhaps ultimately as an interstellar guardian of flora and fauna, returns in full force. A dying old woman, a good friend of Almira’s, mysteriously disappears, and the town is sad and confused; wondering how the old weak woman could ever wander off on her own from her deathbed. To make matters worse, Almira’s relationship with the Ark is faltering as its temperament seems to get more difficult each day.

The Ark stubbornly refuses to do work or help out anymore and is perhaps a little too occupied with Almira, even jealous. When a troublesome shopkeeper who has been hording the new abundant crops disappears mysteriously with a lion’s share of the new harvest, much of the town just dismisses it as a good riddance, grateful for the overflowing harvest still remaining. But when Almira’s Father discovers the stolen crops stashed conspicuously under his new barn in a pile as big as the barn, and the barn itself not looking exactly new anymore teetering fifty feet higher than it was yesterday, on a pile of vegetables, he lets Almira know the time for guessing games and dance lessons is over. The being’s true nature must be discovered or he fears that Almira herself will disappear as a prisoner into the great beyond.

Some Possible Taglines:

“A mysterious collector from Beyond… Is it a friend or foe?!”

“A wandering planet stopping at nothing for its galactic zoo!”

“Will the romance of music and rhythm of dance soothe this unknown giant?”

“Roaming the universe in search of the perfect specimens! But for what purpose?”

That’s all for tonight. Tomorrow I should have some more concept work to show off. My goal is to begin modeling by Sunday at the latest, after doing some hour breakdowns and planning.

  • Aleks
#8

Some speedpainting in Photoshop with my penenabled tablet… I think this is the pose I want for the character on the cover. Almira should be in his palm… still have a lot of work to do to realize all the inner landscapes and body structure.

#9

The concept is a little further along… about 2 hrs photoshop … decided the ark really should be doing something with his other hand. I am thinking of adding a goat to the little landmass under the tree…Almira will still be in his palm.

#10

I’ve added a possible movie title with a quick job in photoshop. I am spending a little more time on this concept to work on my painting skills since I recently got a new tablet pc. Any feedback would be much appreciated!
Cheers,
-Aleks

#11

Since I haven’t got any critiques yet, I’ll offer some of my own.

  • I will need to do some more quick profile and front/back concepts of the Ark to make sure the body makes sense in 3d and I know where to start with my base geometry.

  • The lighting in this image needs help as well as contrast. Although I can experiment in Maya, with the lighting, I’d like to nail it down as much as possible in the concept. The material of chromish possibly brushed steel metal needs to be more rendered. I will look at some more references. In my mind I see Almira Standing in a beam of moonlight in the Ark’s palm. I think this illustration has a long way to go to really make that believable as far as lighting. Any suggestions on lighting and digital painting here would be great.

  • My brush strokes are too rigid or blurry, and generally texture quality is too variable. I think since I mostly use photoshop for texture painting on 3d models, I should look into working with more dynamic brushes, and possible in Sketchbook or Painter. I did afterall go to university for painting, and I need to learn to be as loose as I am with a brush on my computer tablet. I think also I got a bit carried away enjoying my new tablet and could have finished this looking sketchy but more consistent in a lot less time… Total time for the most recent image as of this post was about 5 hours.

  • The figure is not perfect in anyway as far as accurate foreshortening, form etc… it’s a bit stiff also. I think the general pose is good but in the 3d final image I hope to enhance the extreme forshortened camera angle and breath a little air into the scene.

Moving Forward

I am still undecided if I will model the background or purposely make it look like a backpainting in the scene. I already have the idea to make some of the terrain inside the Ark and out look like train models. I may be able to accomplish this with one of those trick lens filters that can turn photos you already took into miniatures. I think it will all depend on time breakdowns today/tomorrow… but if I cannot model them then the idea of a backpainting is also very strong I think.

Overall, after today, and a few profile sketches of the Ark, I must move on from concept phase with confidence. In the end think the concept as is strong enough to work from in 3d. One thing i will need to remind myself working in 3d from this image is to keep base geometry simple, but decide where my hardest edges are and stick to them. I think also, I will need to do some profile sketches of Almira!

  • Aleks
#12

Added a goat and Almira…
Some improvements to the title and added a tagline and credits tests. I think I am getting close to 40’s movie graphics.
I am going to breakdown hours and a few more sketches tomorrow and maybe get started on modeling.

Noticing some serious contrast issues between my tablet pc screen and my desktop lcd… all the flaws appear! %^).

#13

Had to take sunday away from the hot CPU.
I’ve switched from PS to Painter…
It’s much more fun and…easier to use…I think I am giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome though!

So some parts of the Ark needed to be resolved, and I have also added some drawings of Almira.

#14

Almira Studies! I’ve tried to keep this character simple. I gave her little pineapple earrings and some silver bracelets.

#15

Just a quick breakdown of my workflow for modeling the Ark. Credit to Nick Zuccarello for the model I started with. Free at: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=061792

Although the model’s not quite finished, check out the next image I am about to post for STEP 5.

#16

So I still need to add the landscapes inside as well as continue with the scalloping in the hands, legs and feet… maybe 4 more hours max I’d say.

I made a quick shader using mia_carpaint in maya with a granite procedural for a bump map. Glass is a mia_material that I have made myself.

I also put together a quick procedural starry sky shader.

Body is not in true symmetry or welded, just quickly thrown together for the general idea.

Tomorrow night I will complete the model and pose. Probably won’t need to bring the body model into zbrush for surfacing but I may sculpt the landscapes there… or use maya paintFX. will do tests tomorrow.
Will start modeling Almira Saturday.

#17

When I left off last I was doing some R&D as to the best approach for creating the inner landscapes. I unfortunately had to reinstall windows and hit a few roadblocks in the past week, but the past 2 days I have made some good progress.

I started off experimenting with Landscape generators, which ended up being more trouble than they were worth and ate up a couple days. Now I know %^)

Next I experimented with a displacment map made from a sculpt in Zbrush. I found that although I could get a decent amount detail in, the landscapes read as cluttered and scale was hard to read.

I needed to take a more cartoony and iconic approach. Experiments with PaintFX mostly clogged my system up before I could get anywhere near the detail I am hoping for. Finally I decided that It should be a combination of a displaced and sculpted terrain with some PaintFX trees/foliage here and there.

Before I got started on the final landscape sculpt, I needed to understand it’s final shape since a few things occured to me:

  1. How the landscapes could logically be upright or have gravity if the Ark is jumping around
    2.That the Ark, although looking like a 40’s style scifi character, wasn’t quite interesting enough inside.

Sofirst I modeled some gears and compass style encasing the landscape. I also added something of a mantle and core for both the head and midsection of the ark.

I experimented with some more shaders and rendering fluid effects for solar flares on the core, but found that they would not render behind my mia_glass. In the end, I could probably render effects like that on different maya render layers and composite the final image behind the appropriate layers with holdouts used to focus overlays of the reflection pass etc, if there’s time… right now the core is just a glowing lambert with a facing ratio utility mapped to white on ramp based on V. Its OK… will need some enhancement either way but I dont want it to be too much of a focus since it will be close to the center of the final shot, and Almira is more important.

I also refined some of my modeling on the ark… a bit of work on the hands and feet is still needed before the final image but I want to get a better idea of how to best spend my time for each of the remaining aspects of the project.

I think a half day of tinkering will wrap up anything with the Ark before final rendering. I will be painting some more material/shader maps for it as well as posing it in the next few days when I need to take a rest from Almira.

#18

After staring at the Ark for a long time, I needed to step back for a bit and get a better idea what I would be dealing with on Almira. I started with a female model of mine that I created for an earlier project of a Gauguin painting. I cut it in half, and did quite a bit of retopologizing. I spent last night massaging it in zbrush. Had some difficulty placing the eyes, and ended up closing the holes there. This is a common problem with my characters and can be quite challenging managing the spread of the edgeloops appropriately while experimenting with expressions and eye shapes. I am happy with her face in a general way right now but will add some finer details and hopefully give her some more unique features/lack of symmetry etc.

I will likely finish Almira and clothing before getting into the background or any further developments of the image. Its getting close to the deadline, but I am optimistic about getting something complete for the 19th.

I brought the lowest cage down to maya with a smooth on it in maya and put on a quick sss shader. The scale had to be adjusted since she is quite small compared to the scene and default maya scale. I did this mostly to get a general sense of how the light hit the model with skin. Now that I have an idea I will return to zbrush and start adding fine detail to the head, and hands since those will be exposed through the clothing etc. The rest of her body is fine in general shape to inform how the cloths fall on her.

I am doing her texture painting in colour, and will convert the final image passes for her to grayscale or desaturation since I plan to leave hints of colour here and there in lights and materials even though I plan to impress that the final image is black and white.

#19

Well as of tonight I have spent two days in the wasteland of displacement errors and artifacts… Really my number 1 obstacle to completing artworks for the past 3 years… I doubt I will get an image in by tomorrow but I do plan to finish this project and keep my progress updated. I did come into this project a month late so it was ambitious to try and meet the deadline…

Good luck everyone!
its been fun!

#20

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