Through the Looking Glass
Short CG film for the Infomatrix 2010 contest where it won the gold medal. All production work has been done in nearly 1 month by myself and Andrei Nistor with concept drawings by Vasile Adnan.
The main theme of the movie is of course love and all the implication and most of all, what love and obsession can do to a person in terms of character. The action takes place in a fictional neighborhood where our robot characters live and underground. Having the action placed in two very different environments (in broad daylight and underground) presented with a unique and difficult situation for lighting, textures and overall tone. It also mirrors the main character evolution which progresses from happy, creative but lonely robot to a vengeful mastermind who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal, as illustrated by the dark and moody tones in the second half of the film.
The storyline of the film goes like this: (spoilers)
One day, our main character Georg-E, who is a little trickster and likes to build all kinds of creative stuff (as we can see in the opening sequence where he tries to force the sunlight to reach a flower in his backyard) sights Carmen (our female character) and falls for her instantly. He tries to get in touch with her day after day but with no result as Carmen barely notices him.
But when Aliens invade the neighborhood, Georg-E is presented with an opportunity to save Carmen and show her his love. So Georg-E builds an underground bunker, but when Carmen is invited to shelter there she comes along with her friend Jeff, a massive and more high tech robot than Georg-E, whom she has feelings for. This is the critical moment when Georg-E, overwhelmed by the seeing Carmen with Jeff snaps and in his grief decides than instead of sheltering his friends he should annihilate them himself. And so he assembles iGor, a menacing robot and lets him loose on his friends. The final moments show Georg-E at his command center facing the choice of either stopping iGor or watching him disassemble all his neighbors, including Carmen and Jeff.
The storyline is very emotional and since we had little time to develop this and human emotions are hard to replicate in CG we decided to use robots as characters. This also adds a little more to the comedy part. The movie feels a bit rushed and there are certain glitches because of the very short amount of time we had at our disposal, but we will make an extended and more polished version in the future.
Short CG film for the Infomatrix 2010 contest where it won the gold medal. All production work has been done in nearly 1 month by myself and Andrei Nistor with concept drawings by Vasile Adnan.
The main theme of the movie is of course love and all the implication and most of all, what love and obsession can do to a person in terms of character. The action takes place in a fictional neighborhood where our robot characters live and underground. Having the action placed in two very different environments (in broad daylight and underground) presented with a unique and difficult situation for lighting, textures and overall tone. It also mirrors the main character evolution which progresses from happy, creative but lonely robot to a vengeful mastermind who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal, as illustrated by the dark and moody tones in the second half of the film.
The storyline of the film goes like this: (spoilers)
One day, our main character Georg-E, who is a little trickster and likes to build all kinds of creative stuff (as we can see in the opening sequence where he tries to force the sunlight to reach a flower in his backyard) sights Carmen (our female character) and falls for her instantly. He tries to get in touch with her day after day but with no result as Carmen barely notices him.
But when Aliens invade the neighborhood, Georg-E is presented with an opportunity to save Carmen and show her his love. So Georg-E builds an underground bunker, but when Carmen is invited to shelter there she comes along with her friend Jeff, a massive and more high tech robot than Georg-E, whom she has feelings for. This is the critical moment when Georg-E, overwhelmed by the seeing Carmen with Jeff snaps and in his grief decides than instead of sheltering his friends he should annihilate them himself. And so he assembles iGor, a menacing robot and lets him loose on his friends. The final moments show Georg-E at his command center facing the choice of either stopping iGor or watching him disassemble all his neighbors, including Carmen and Jeff.
The storyline is very emotional and since we had little time to develop this and human emotions are hard to replicate in CG we decided to use robots as characters. This also adds a little more to the comedy part. The movie feels a bit rushed and there are certain glitches because of the very short amount of time we had at our disposal, but we will make an extended and more polished version in the future.
CREDITS
Andrei Toplician
Andrei Nistor
Vasile Adnan
Andrei Toplician
Andrei Nistor
Vasile Adnan
Production process - concept drawing, modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting, rendering, processing, editing, sound mixing and marketing.
Early concept drawings for lead characters.
Poly modeling in 3ds Max
Environment modeling, basic poly editing in 3DS Max.
Basic outdoor lighting setup.
Final character models.
Render tests.
Post production tweaks like saturation, contrast, color balance, etc for setting the tone.
Final output
Promotional character posters
