I am producing and directing my first short film Tunnel Another Way in Waterford, Ireland. As I have had no luck finding an FX make up artist willing to take on the job, I have decided to try CGI to create and animate photo realistic characters with the actors doing voice overs. I am new to Blender and feel that it would take me too long to become proficient enough with the software to do this myself, so I am hiring.
The characters are humanoid with human emotions, but they are not actually human. You could say that they evolved along a slightly different evolutionary path. They have no hair or eyebrows. They have pink eyes and their skin colour is outside of the human range, with some green tones. The texture of their skin is comparable to ours. I would like to base the look of them on the likenesses of the voice actors.
I built the set completely by myself. Here is the link to a YouTube video I put up calling for a cast and crew. The footage in the video is of the actual set. It will offer you a glimpse at how the film will look. I would like to superimpose the CG characters directly onto footage of the set. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8wR7CO-bEo
I want to be sure that the characters are on the right side of the uncanny valley. I have wondered about the possibility of using performance capture, where I would put little dots on the actors that the software could follow to allow the performance of the actors to actually drive the performance of the CG characters. The set is dark and in the film it will be lit only by little flash lights that the characters have. This would allow us to drop the lights from time to time to overcome technical difficulties with the CGI.
If you believe you can do this, are interested and have the time to work with me, please send me a PM.
If your budget is low I don’t think that CG char are the way to go as opposed to live action with makeup. What you’re asking can be very time consuming and although it is possible to do is it practical? It sounds like fun but I doubt you could afford to do it this way. Motion capture works well if you know how to capture it but it can be very tricky as well. You can use the kinect to do motion capture as well. Then you don’t need the dots. Check out Ipisoft. http://ipisoft.com/ . I would recommend you supply a budget so everyone knows what you can afford and then they will be more apt to help.
Budget would be nice. I (and I’m sure many others) would be interested in this project, but the subject matter and quality you seem to be looking for would be neither cheap, nor likely the work of a single artist if you’re looking for a speedy turnaround.
Making moving, humanlike characters on the right side of the uncanny vally is very hard, and therefor very expensive. The first movie I ever saw that really beat the uncanny valley was in my opinion Avatar.
My advice is to either accept that it will probably look a bit creepy to some people or do it in a more cartoony, less realistic style
BLavins, I had planned to go with live action and a make up artist. But, every make up artist I approached turned me down. It was not even because we couldn’t agree on a fee. They just didn’t want the job.
I am sorry to say that where I am filmmaking tends to follow an archetype. If you’re a new filmmaker and your film isn’t set around a pub, a church or a field, people will shy away from you, thinking you’re strange. This led me to explore other, less conventional ways of making the film. CGI was the obvious alternative.
What I like most about this option is I can work with people from anywhere in the world. I like that Blender is open source software contributed to by people working together from all over. That’s something I want to try to encourage in life.
I have thought about what you are all saying about motion capture and how hard it really is to get on the right side of the “uncanny valley” with it and I have come to agree with you. An alternative technique has started brewing in my mind, still employing CGI.
For CGI, scraping the bottom of the barrel I can muster up about €1500EUROS. I understand that by Hollywood standards that is nothing, but I hope it’ll get me somewhere. I would like to go with what m9105826 says and work with more than one artist, if that is possible. I have already hired one person and I am very happy with him. I would love to be able to offer some work to others that are struggling like I am, trying to get into the film industry.
I really like that you want to encourage the Blender community and the collaboration over the world! For that I am sure many can get paid a little less than “normal pay”, myself included.
€1500 will of course get you somewhere, the only question if how far you want it to go
I have two questions; How much of the CGI work will you pay others to do? Will you do anything yourself or is it supposed to be for the entire finished video?
Also, how long will the finished video be in minutes?
It is hard to judge how realistic the budget is without knowing how big the project really is
Gustav and I have since discussed this via PM, but I will answer the questions he raised in the above post here in consideration of people reading the thread.
I am paying others to create the CGI based on visual images or sketches that I am providing them with. This means they are doing all of the actual CGI, but not necessarily all of the character design. Not all of the film is going to be CGI, hence I will do much of it myself. The colour grading, video editing, sound etc. will be done by me. I will guide the people working with CGI in a way that could be compared to how the director guides the actors in a conventionally shot film.
I cannot dependably calculate the amount of screen time featuring CGI at this time, as the POV will not be fixed squarely on the characters at all times. Some of the dialogue will be presented off screen. I estimate that the complete edited film will be 5 to 7 minutes in length.
Try to find the talent in the same location. It will help you to reduce your headache of makeup and setups. You just need to give them a good tanning and it will save your money also.
I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone that showed interest. Regretfully I could not hire everyone that applied. Some showed portfolios that I thought were excellent, but not what I needed for this particular film. I wish them and everyone the best with their future work.
If the forum moderators could mark the thread [SOLVED] that would be great.
Andrew, I do not know what you mean, but it sounds very poetic!
