Breaking news: A blessing from the power that be

Tim Schafer, creator of Grim Fandango, has apparently stumbled upon this blog and blessed this project in a tweet. This is HUGE!

While waiting

I have finally ordered my replacement mouth set to the 3D printer i.materialise, along with a few props and will post  the pictures as soon as the parcel reaches me.

On the puppet modelling front, I had to face some misfortune... the clay shrunk, and, combined with the rigidity of the armature, some cracks have appeared around the feets and hands. My sister, who is, unlike me, a sculptor artist, warned me about the risk. Well, nothing that some miliput epoxy can't fix, but for those of you who are tempted by the adventure, make sure that you are using a clay that has 0% contraction on drying. So long for departing from the recommendation from so many wiser puppet maker. I will post a picture of the damage before I fix it later on this post.
 

Now, after the recent post I made on the AdventureGamer Top 100, here is another wonderful post that I stumbled upon, this time from EuroGamer, as a restrospective on Grim Fandango aptly named "Dead can dance". This paper flesh out (no pun intended) some very interesting aspect of the GF story and gameplay which I had almost forgotten about. They are pulling also some of the best lines from the dialog to drill their point. A little gem to read. Kind of make me want to play the game again!

Puppet Making: Modelling Manny's suit in clay

I was a bit apprehensive about this... I am not a sculptor and that was a first (as almost everything since I started this project).
I started from a basic modelling armature sized after the animation armature, then used a british clay called NewClay. It's a nice clay to work with at the beginning... but it seems to be drying pretty fast and there are some parts, which I left without touching for too long, such as the shoes, which have become very uncooperative. Anyway, that will do. I still have the hands to finish, and then I will discover the joys of mold making in gypsum plaster...

Set Building: Progress report

Here is a little update on the set building. This picture shows most of the props in place. Latest work was the application of the upper wall pattern in green, and some windows dress-up work.

This picture was taken without flash, with a single light from behind the camera. The trick is going to drop two incoming light on the carpet, as in the original game background. One square of light from the door, and another one from the window. No idea how to place the lights to do this effect. It is very hard to drop a shadow with nice hard edge...

Any photographer around to give me some advice on how to achieve this?

Animation test: Lip Sync test

Testing my new (still virtual) replacement mouth set on original audio... The Sync work was done under Dragonframe and the video was then built from still image using VirtualDub (a nice little free software).

Puppet Making : Mouth replacement set (trial 2)

A few weeks ago, I have presented on this blog a mouth replacement set for Manny made by hand in Sculpey clay. But I was still not very happy with the outcome: the match between the lower jaw and the upper skull was approximate, leaving big gaps which will prove to be hard to conceal.

At the same time, I was intrigued by Celso's skull made by Chay in a 3D software that he recommended to me: zBrush.

Unlike a conventional 3D authoring software, zBrush lets you sculpt intuitively shapes without worrying about meshes of polygon : it's a bit like using some digital clay.

I decided to give a try on a trial version, starting from Tom Beg's original 3D model skull for Manny.

As you can see, I had a lot of fun with it. It took a little while to get through the beginner's learning curve, but once you get used to a few (among many) brushes it gets really intuitive.

The advantage of this method, would be to be able to make a very clean, precise, and consistent cut between the skull and the mouth set, and get the pieces sent to a 3D printer. The fit will be almost perfect, and the remaining contact line will be more easy to conceal in post-production.

Now it gets really tempting to have a set of upper skull (i.e. with different position of eyebrows), to de-multiply the possibilities facial expression. But I am getting ahead of myself... as my father always taught me: "le mieux est l'enemi du bien".

Set Building: Details, details

Some time ago I have published a 3D model of those plaster patterns that are running on the top of the wall.

My initial thought were to get it 3D printed, then to create a mold to make as many plaster tiles as I need.

I have finally decided against this approach : too expensive, too time consuming. Got to cut corners here.


My 3D sketchup model will still be handy though. The flat sketchup model is exported here :

 Using V-Ray for sketchup (free trial edition), I manage to get a hi-res output of this tile

It still looks a little too nice and computer generated. So photoshop, throwing in a bit of burns, cracks, highlights, I ended up there :

Now repeat this tile 10 times and print on sticker paper (just as I did the walls), there we go. Quick and cheap. For the opposite wall, this same tile will be flipped so as to give the impression of that the light is coming from the same direction (the windows). I hope that, in the lens of the camera, this will be convincing enough.