Week 3 - 

Not as many landscapes this week as I was working around the clock to finish a short film (Watch this space for more about it).

I did however manage to test out painting on the Ipad 2, you can see my efforts in the last image of the batch, I’m really excited about the possibility of painting outside when the weather gets better.

Week 2 of my ‘Luncheon Landscape’ paintings, time is really flying by.

Watch this space for more!

Week one of my new series ‘Luncheon Landscapes’ where I speed paint an environment at lunchtime.

The focus of this series is to experiment with themes and techniques in a short time frame (Around 1 hour per image).

February 8th marks the 183rd birthday of Jules Verne, as a small tribute to the legendary writer I would like to share some artwork from my latest project, titled ‘NEMO’ which is based on the famous Verne novel  ’Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’

Hello everyone, I would like to present ‘The Labyrinth of Language’ a short animated film created by:

• Adam McAllister
• Darren Porter
• Alan Martin
• Gerard Dunleavy

I took the time to write answers to the most common questions I have received about the ‘Labyrinth of Language’  I hope to post some more in depth articles in the future on how the short was created, if you have any questions just post them here and I will answer them as quick as I can.

What is the film about about?
The story revolves around a small boy visiting a foreign land who inadvertently finds himself trapped inside a labyrinth. The boy must learn the local language and communicate with a surly grounds keeper to escape his predicament.

How long did it take?
From start to finished the project took just under 6 months to complete.

Did the team work together at one location or remotely?
For the first two\three months of pre-production the team worked remotely, we came together twice a week to share ideas and discuss the direction of the project. Once we embarked on the production phase of the animation we moved into the brand new computer animation lab at the University of Ulster - Belfast.

What software did you use?
Autodesk Maya was the main animation package used to create ‘The Labyrinth of Language’.
We enhanced Maya’s tool set with additional plugins and scripts for various specialised tasks, for example we based our character rigs on the MGear system created by Jeremie Passerin. This rigging solution is still in a Beta testing phase which meant we had to spent a great deal of time fixing bugs and optimizing the rigs to work the way we needed them too.

For the character’s hair we used the Shave & Haircut tools created by Joe Alter, these tools allowed us to grow and groom the hair into the exact shapes we needed. Once we were finished we converted the hair paths into geometry and built specialised rigs for them, these controls allowed the animators to animate the hair quickly and easily.

Pixologic Zbrush was used to create the majority of models and textures. Zspheres were used to block out the proportions and forms of a character, these zspheres were then converted into a mesh and sculpted to a very high level of detail.

The high polygon models were then brought into Maya and retopologised (Resurfaced) resulting in low polygon models that are more practical to animate.

Xnormal was used to generate Ambient Occulusion and Normal maps that transfered the high level detail on the low poly models, any further textures or adjustments were made using Adobe Photoshop.

We used the default Mental Ray renderer to render ‘The Labyrinth of Language’ on 16 workstations. We decided to render the frames as 16bit-Multichannel EXR’s which allowed us to break a shot up into many layers, with each layer having multiple passes such as Ambient Occulsion, Colour, Depth etc.

The rendered frames were composited and Graded using NukeX by The Foundry, the final 2D elements, title credits and master grade were added using Adobe Aftereffects.
Below is a recap of the software that we used:

Autodesk Maya

MGear

Shave & Haircut

Pixologic Zbrush

Xnormal

The Foundry - NukeX

Adobe AfterEffects

Where can I see the film?
We are currently seeking to showcase our film at a number of festivals around the world and we hope to make it publicly available online very soon! meanwhile I hope you enjoy the artwork on this blog.

Irish landscape speedpainting - Just over an hour from start to finish, painted using Photohop + Wacom.

I hope to start posting more studies like this as I try to get into shape.

This little guy is the main character in ‘The Labyrinth of Language’ a short animation created by a talented team of 3D artists based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Credits

Gerard Dunleavy | Character Model, Texture, Light+Comp
Alan Martin | Camera Model, Animation, Rigging,
Adam McAllister | Animation, Rigging
Darren Porter | Animation, Rigging

This gruff looking guy is one of the main characters in ‘The Labyrinth of Language’ a short animation created by a talented team of 3D artists based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Credits

Gerard Dunleavy | Model, Texture, Light+Comp
Alan Martin | Animation, Rigging
Adam McAllister | Animation, Rigging
Darren Porter | Animation, Rigging

Over the past few months I have been involved in an exciting animation project titled ‘The Labyrinth of Language’.

The plot revolves around a boy visiting a foreign land who inadvertently finds himself trapped in a labyrinth. The boy must then learn the local language and communicate with a surly grounds keeper to escape his predicament.

The talented team of animators and artists that will bring this project to life include:

• Adam McAllister

• Darren Porter

• Alan Martin 

• and myself 

Not only have the team and I been working hard on creating an awesome animation but we have also secured support and funding from the European Commission. 

As part of our funding and support, Adam McAllister and myself were flown to Amsterdam to attend an intense script writing workshop. The workshop had top TV & Broadcast professionals:

• Syl van Duin, Writer and buyer for documentaries for the Dutch public television.
• Pál Sipos, Producer and Head of Cultural Programs in the Hungarian Television until 2010
• Pekka Ruohoranta, Producer and director in YLE Drama.

Over the course of the workshop we constantly rewrote our script and redrew storyboards striving to make our story as great as it can be. We also had the opportunity to work with other film makers to not only gain feedback for our own projects but also to share our knowledge and help improve their work.

The workshop was awesome and Amsterdam is a beautiful city (even when it was raining). We returned with a much stronger script and had a great time in the process.

Stay tuned for artwork and previews from The Labyrinth of Language!

“On the surface of the ocean, men wage war and destroy each other; but down here, just a few feet beneath the surface, there is a calm and peace, unmolested by man”