February 21, 2011

Happy Presidents' Day

But, really, shouldn't happiness be for everybody? Well we think so, and we created a brand new Brudders comic to help spread that happiness. Read it here: Brudders - Episode 51 'Confession'. It's good for the soul.

By the way, the drawing session for this episode was recorded. We'll premiere the video at our YouTube channel in a few days.

Speaking of video, work on the Brudders music video 'Don't Fear the Pooper' continues. Fear not; we're still intent on getting this project done before next Gothtober.

- Sgt M.

February 4, 2011

What's the scoop on 'Poop'?

Sorry for neglecting the website since last November. (Yikes! Has it been that long?) The Brudders short film project 'Don't Fear the Pooper' is taking a lot longer than we anticipated. Most of our time is being spent R&D-ing the experimental mocap system but we have the process mostly nailed down now.

Another reason for the delay is that we decided to up the production value quite a bit. Funny how that always happens. We were originally aiming for a 'quick and dirty' machinima look for 'Pooper' but because the quality of the mocap software improved dramatically last December, it seemed a shame to settle for our original goal of 'just okay' animation. Anyway, now we're shooting for a spring or early summer release and I think the extra time will be well spent. Hopefully, the release won't be as late as next Gothtober. Now that would be embarrassing!

Just for fun, here's a peek at the proxy model of Sister with mocap test data applied:


I know I keep talking about starting a public production log, and I will try to get it posted on the website this weekend. Really, I mean it. In the meantime, here's another mocap test video from last year: Deform Test Mocap Session. The motion from this session was created to test how well the characters deformed in motion, and it's the same data applied to the Sister rig in the above image. Pretty fun stuff! Come back for more sneak peeks at this production soon.

By the way, we posted Act I of the 'Pooper' animatic at the Little Green Dog Movies channel. This is essentially the same video that premiered last October at Gothtober 2010 so there's nothing really new here. If you haven't already seen it though, I hope you enjoy it. (The original blog entry about the animatic and Gothtober can be seen here: Hello Gothtober 2010.)

Finally, I've been itching to draw the next episode of Brudders. Maybe I can make time for it this week. Keep your eye on our tweets!

G.