The Jones Files - original work

[Shredder565]

The idea came in a dream. A secret agent with incredible out of this world inventions saving a damsel in distress. hardly original, but it's evolved a little since then to hopefully make it unique.

This is the first page I received back from my artist. I'm decent at copying things, not making them original. so so long as I have t something to work off of, I can reproduce it.


This is it's CGI counterpart. The plan is to turn the comic into a 20 minute show.and at the slow rate I am getting these pages back, I will have plenty of time to go and refine things. it will also help me build up a library.


This is the start of Trevor Jones lab, built Deepin a mountain. The house sits on top of that mountain. I am going to make this all one fully functional piece so you could walk around it like it actually existed...




it's times like this I wish I knew more people into CG who actually had time to help. I'd need people to build props, decent looking buildings, and city streets. This story takes place in Australia, but just like inspector gadget, will eventually travel the world...and I don't have the patience to build all the little things, especially when I am busy working on writing and refining the important part, the scripts ;o)...

[Shredder565]

taking a needed break from turtles
now that one explosion and one plane is done, onto a chem trail and one FBI guy. then it's onto seeing how it can all move.

[Shredder565]

I've got the timing worked out in Vegas, but I've got to fix it natively in SoftImage. The runner moves to slow, and the background moves too fast and or choppy.
I've also got to add in the two FBI agents.


Are there any pre existing libraries for things like cars, planes, buildings and people's bodies that you can buy? It would cut down on the modeling ten fold and I can focus more on the animation side.

there's also alot of blurring, for some reason added by VEgas, and I don't know how to get rid of it.

[luceric]

I'd love to see this just rendered just in grayscale. Later, maybe you could introduce some accent colors, perhaps Sun City style. I think you're introducing shading and colors too early. You may not even need any

[Shredder565]

like this?

[Shredder565]

just have to finish the individual heads.. and then it's on to finding out how to make them move good. with no pre existing animation to go by, it'll be a bit tough. and even with pre existing stuff, it probably wouldn't turn out good.

[FXDude]

Definitely nice to see some original work, but would also eventually like to see the end of the turtles episode (don't think there was much left was it?)

cheers

[Shredder565]

there is still one more act to go on the new one, and a re fix of two acts on the old one. But I needed a break to refresh my batteries

[Daniel Brassard]

Interesting story.

Like Luceric said, turning your color to greyscale is a good idea, even just to check the tonal contrast of your scene. Your last picture frame shows very little contrast between the buildings in the back and the men in black. You will have to change the color of the background buildings to mid tone (mid-grey) or use key and back lighting on your characters to separate them from the background.

Perhaps, your main female character would benifit from a lighter color as well to separate her from the Men in Black (light beige, white or light grey)

Check Men in Black and Oblivion for inspiration.

Good luck on your project.

[Shredder565]

Interesting story.

Like Luceric said, turning your color to greyscale is a good idea, even just to check the tonal contrast of your scene. Your last picture frame shows very little contrast between the buildings in the back and the men in black. You will have to change the color of the background buildings to mid tone (mid-grey) or use key and back lighting on your characters to separate them from the background.

Perhaps, your main female character would benifit from a lighter color as well to separate her from the Men in Black (light beige, white or light grey)

Check Men in Black and Oblivion for inspiration.

Good luck on your project.

as a kid, EVERYTHING in our house was either white or beige.. I'm trying to stay away from those colors after major burn out.

Perhaps a light green could work....

But yeah,Not only will I have to learn how to make things look passable, I'm also going to need access to a sound effects library (in a dream project, they'd all be original effects)....a Theme song produced, an introduction story boarded so I can animate to. Temporary voices that I can lyp synch too.

Also, I put the script https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9h5XM ... sp=sharingt up on Google Drive, so if anyone wants to read it, LMK. I HOPE it makes sense, and the people who have gotten back to me arn't just being nice cause I know them.
Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors....I thought I got most of them, but it's been a few years since it was written .



Also, keep in mind that considering my skills are lackluster at best, this whole project would be used as a demo reel to sell it to someone. Maybe IDW (anyone here have contacts? LOL) or as a CGI Animated Movie that could be turned into a TV series. But for now, I plan to do it as independendant as possible. The Kick starter failed, so I don't have any money to higher real artists to help out and make it look GOOD...until then, it's just my stuff ;o)

[Daniel Brassard]

Light green could be nice on her, what ever suit the need of your project.

Are you story boarding/pre-visualizing your animation to get the pace, timing and camera angle/move of your scenes or going straight to animation?

If you have key drawings, you can use them to storyboard your scenes or do a rough animatic.

[luceric]

like this?

it's good to render grayscale, especially to check out the lighting and balance, especially if you are color blind (if I recall correctly) maybe you see things differently than we do. However, I was thinking, why bother with color at all, and instead why not look to create a black-and-white look a bit like the original drawing, or some other sin-city-like stylized look. Film noir. Since you're using the toon shaders already (I think) you could use them for just highlights, like the two 60 seconds test I've made here with the face robot head. Use them as creative tools to give this thing a style one will remember

[Shredder565]

that's not a bad idea....make it look like a moving art page.

[Shredder565]

I'm going to keep the grey scale in mind, since I REALLY like that idea.

But for now, I'm just focusing on getting things to look right the way I normally do them.



I had to go b ack and fix all three FBI guys. First their shoes wouldn't animate with the skeleton right. then their mouth animation messed up... then the right side of their bodies went out of scale. ugh. five hours I'll never get back.

Hopefully it works right so I can finish scene one tomorrow. I also added rim lights around the black clothes to try and help separate them...

[Shredder565]

A nearly complete shot. But there's ALOT going on..I'm still wondering if the action is going by too fast.
I've just got to animate the guy on the left and shot one is as good as it's going to get.
I am also not sure if the light green separates her...

And I can't remember if I answered this before, but no, I don't have timing sheets. All I have to go by is a comic book page, and trying to backward/forward engineer it by that...

[Shredder565]

shot two done. New video rendered in greyscale coming soon.