Totsugeki!!

Greetings fellow internauts! Unitzer07 here with a long overdue update. With the holiday season now past and my robo-virus finally under control, I can make a post with some work updates on our computer animated short film "Cowboys and Dinosaurs". This is a shot where a dinosaur is charging at a fence trying to break through. Right now there are still no textures(skin) and no lighting(shadows) in the scene, so this does not represent the final look. See for yourself and let us know what you think!

Cowboys and Dinosaurs shot 38 animation from zero seven on Vimeo.

WATCH OUT!!!

Shiro Ninja here! Things have been a little slow on the blog lately, but I can assure you that a lot of work has been going into our CG and 2D projects. "Cowboys and Dinosaurs" is finally entering its animation phase. I thought I'd share a frame from the storyboards so you could get an idea of the world and the kind of action to expect. Here is a rough colored thumbnail sketch of our two heroes in an aerial assault:

We're still working out color schemes and other designs elements, so expect more concept art in the days to come!

Nin, nin!

Over another hurdle

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greetings fellow sentient beings!!

Unit 07 here with an update on what's been going on at Studio Gattai. Keyframe Samurai and I have been refining the human and dinosaur rigs. The characters are pretty much ready to start animating. We'll have some more updates with hair and hat variations in the coming weeks. According to Keyframe Samurai, the dinosaurs just need a bit more tweaking. Once that's done we can start work on our trailer. The tentative release date for a teaser trailer is March 7, 2011. I hope you all look forward to it!! Until then, here are some images of characters in color looking very angry...or constipated....

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-07-

When Dinosaurs Roamed the Interwebs

Keyframe Samurai here. I haven't posted anything in a little while. But I'm basically finished rigging all the dinosaurs. I just have a few little touch ups to do on everyone, but I just couldn't resist posting them now anyways. Enjoy. I'll be posting some test animations with all the characters soon once I iron out the last few bugs in the characters rigs.

V for VICTORY!

(a sexy bartender designed by ShiroNinja)

This post officially marks overcoming the rigging hump. The bartender rig is officially done which means we're more than half way through rigging human characters. (4 out of 7 to be exact) We also only have 1 dinosaur left to rig, which means in no time we'll be starting textures. I'll be doing a more in depth post about textures in the coming weeks.

Keep your eyes peeled for a trailer as well! It can come at any time...


powering down...

-07-

A look at Rigging

Greetings autobots! unitzer07 here with a new post on the exciting topic of Rigging!

Some of you may be wondering what exactly Rigging is. Well, a "rig" is a representation of the bones and joints in your body. Those bones and joints can be used to manipulate and animate a model. "Rigging" is the process of creating those bones and giving the artist control over them. Think "putting the strings on the puppet". Check out the video below for an in-depth look at the process of building a rig for our Sheriff character.

As always, questions and comments are encouraged and appreciated!

Rig Demo from zero seven on Vimeo.

see you, space cowboy...

stay tuned after this word from our sponsors...

unitZer07 here! It's been quite some time since I've had a chance to post. I've been very busy troubleshooting and managing our entire pipeline. For those of you who don't know, a pipeline is a system you develop to take you through all the different steps of production. After you've written a script and done storyboards, there are still quite a few steps to be taken: modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting, effects, rendering, compositing and editing. Starting next week with modelling, I'll be going through the list and explaining what goes into each step and how it fits into the overall scheme of production. For now, you'll have to settle for some updates on the main character rigs. First up is our villain :


I have just finished setting up his head. He's definitely looking mean!

next up we have a few poses of the two heroes of our short(courtesy of the keyframe samurai):

We still have to design a saddle for our Cowboy to use. I should have done that before production started, but I'm still learning hehe...

that's all for now!

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-07-

Konichiwa interwebbers. Keyframe Samurai here to give you another little taste of Cowboys & Dinosaurs*. :) I just finished the pachycephalosaurus rig, so I decided to have fun and do just a quick little pose. I didn't want to do a full walk cycle because I wanted to continue rigging the rest of the dinos before spending too much time playing. Hopefully Zer07 will give me enough play time to have some fun with all my new dinosaur toys and a few of my soon to come humanoid play things before we moved on to the next step. We still have a ton of work to do. Finish rigging, normal maps, set modeling and texturing......all before animation. Ugh. Lots of work. But twice as much fun. Especially when it's all finished.

Here is the complete Dinosaur lineup. I modeled the Utahraptor, Pachycephalosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Styrakosaurus, & the Triceratops. Zer07 modeled the Apatosaurus.

Next up for rigging is the Parasaur. Look for him soon. As soon as Zer07 finishes Josiah, I'll pose and post some Hero shots of Josiah and Gwanji. Keep an eye out. Jaa mata ne. ^_^

Cowboys and Dinosaurs concept art

Shiro Ninja sanjou! Along with directing our 2D short, "The Last Cookie," I've also assumed the role of concept/storyboard artist for our CG short. This time, I thought I'd share some more of what's to come for our cowboy story. Here are some character designs I drew. The curvaceous lady is a bartender who flirts with our sad cowboy, and the old man is a semi-useless town sheriff:





This is some concept art of the bartender's tavern. We're going for a rustic Dino-world aesthetic!



That's all I can share for now. Saraba!!

Completed walk cycle

Keyframe Samurai here once again with the completed walk cycle for the raptor. Dialed back the tail and found out that I will indeed have FK control over the tail instead of the dynamics system controlling it right now. Next up is the pachycephelosaurus, so keep an eye out for him.

Valley of the Gwanji

Moshi Moshi interwebs!! Keyframe Samurai here, reporting for duty. Here's my first addition of our WIP CG short film. I modeled, and I'll be rigging all our dinosaurs for the short. Here are some early rigging tests I'm currently working on for one of our other main characters. Until next time. Jaa, mata ne (see you later).

Every Cowboy sings a sad sad song....

I've been working on rigging our cowboy character and made a bit of progress today.



To those of you asking..."We already saw facial poses, how is this progress?" I'll tell you. In my previous post I was merely testing out how well the face would pose. For that test I was not using a rig to make the character "ooo" and "bleh!". Some of you at this point might ask..."What is this rig we keep hearing about?". A "rig"is what makes an action figure posable.The figure's "rig" allows the arms to bend at the elbows, shoulders and wrist . A marionette's rig is the strings attached to it. Basically without a rig the character can't move. So What you see below has a rig inside of it making our cowboy very, very sad.



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-zer07-

Human Rigging Automation Complete!

I have officially finished the human rig script. Complete with facial setup.

What this means for anyone who doesn't understand animation lingo is, now I'm one step away from being able to make a character actually move.



We have an ambitious seven different human and 6 different dinosaur characters to rig. I will be doing all of the human character rigging. My deadline is fast approaching.

7 characters in 5 weeks...can it be done? Is it unreasonable? Too ambitous?



KICK REASON TO THE CURB AND DO THE IMPOSSIBLE!

-zer07-

Questions? Feel free to ask!

First post!

Welcome to STUDIO GATTAI! servicing the web with fine cartoon action from now till infinity....

I'm unitzer07 one of the creative minds behind STUDIO GATTAI, in our first post, we'll see wip shots of our upcoming CG short film..

main character face animation setup(above, below)


some early rigging on a raptor:


another angle:


We would love to get any feedback or questions so if you happen to stumble across this blog feel free to ask anything you want about Computer Graphics, Animation, our process, or anything else that comes to mind...

more progress to come...

until next time

GATTAI DA!

-zer07-