26 July, 2006

Stirton Productons, 'The Planet' - Design Work

Before I post these I'd like to point out that we made this movie on a tiny budget and that none of us are trained 3d animators, we are film makers. Unlike many recent movies made by groups of modellers, this film has a plot and acting. What a novel idea!

Below are some early renders of the main spacecraft used in the movie. The attack craft and views of the main transporter ship. Both the main models were made by Kerwin Robertson, an architect and cg modeller, using autocad and Cinema 4D. The design was initiated by Kerwin and modifications made during the production process by the team. I retro fitted the suicide craft with some barrels of 'explodium' and pipe bombs; the baddies in the movie are a bit on the poor side.

I did the texturing and modification to the attack ships and some of the transporter craft, the main challenge was making the cannons work the way we wanted. I devised a series of particle emitters for the lasers and muzzle flash which work well when the ship is static but have to be adjusted for velocity of the craft: The faster the ship moves the faster the rate of emission for the lasers, or they start trailing behind and flying out of the ship's arse (comical, but wrong).

After a few months of r&d the firing system was worked for the attack craft and later applied to the gun turrets on the main ship. The rate of fire was adjustable so we had a lot of fun going mental with the space battles. The director, editor, digital effects chief, Mark Stirton, put all the work together and laid on the explosions etc. The results can be seen on the trailer, or on the movie if anyone is willing to buy it (
www.stirtonproductions.com).

There are other bits of design and physical props from the movie but I'll leave those till later, way too much for one blog. I'm currently working on the production artwork for the next project which features a Viking longship, so I'll put those up soon.






10 comments:

Andrew Glazebrook said...

Hey Mike,

Cheers for the visit to my Blogs !
Glad you liked the B7 Bracelets :) I tried to make my CGI look as plastic looking and as BBC as possible on them :)
Like the design here for the big ship,I'd say the only crit would be it never struck me as a cargo ship,it had more of a military 'Sulaco' type feel to it. The fighters are a nice design.

Andrew Glazebrook said...

You doing another SF movie next or you having a change of genre ??

Michael Grant Clark said...

Hi,

No plans on any other sf at moment, currently we are looking for funding for a romantic black comedy called Viking Burial. We do have another sf/fantasy project on the back burner but that needs major studio backing as its huge, its a sort of celtic legend set modern day. All in all we're pretty busy, which is nice.

Andrew Glazebrook said...

Good luck with those ! The most recent thing I've worked on is a show called 'The Outsiders' for ITV,the pilot airs in the autumn,and then there's a 2nd series of your favourite show 'Hyperdrive'
I've always wanted to do a Zombie film in space,have these ideas of zombies in a zero-g environment getting their limbs blown off !! :)

Michael Grant Clark said...

Z-G Zombies.

Man, that would be a cool film, very messy very quickly though. Make a crazy game too.

I've heard a few things about 'The Outsiders', is that the ITV retaliation to Dr Who? What sort of work you doing for that, or is it secret just now?

Andrew Glazebrook said...

It's kind of like a show like 'Bugs' with a bit of the 'Avengers' thrown in as far as I know. The work I did was an environment,to enhance the real location,nothing Sci-Fi though,it's meant to look real world !

Andrew Glazebrook said...

I put up a vote on IMDB for The Planet !!

Michael Grant Clark said...

Yay, cheers Andrew.

I really must get round to posting something new, so busy just now with new film its comical.

Andrew Glazebrook said...

Nice to see the premiere photo's up on the site !!

Michael Grant Clark said...

I wish I'd lost a stone off my head before appearing in them though. It was a great night, may do a write up on the blog about it today.