Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Not ANOTHER Halloween Story!?



Yes, that's right. I'm starting a new animated short for a new contest. I just found out about it last Friday. I have my story now. Its about 90% done. At first, I wanted to save some time and steal my scene from last year. But I changed my mind.

This is a new original story that I fleshed out between me and my wife Stephanie and daughter Marissa and a friend from work, Kelly. I'm pretty happy with it. I will probably ask for some feedback from some of you to. I came up with a title, but I want to wait til later - it might spoil it.
The contest is put on by ALICE radio. I figured, "What the heck?"

So, I decided to create original art - mostly because of copyright concerns about my project from last year. I like that ghost too much to let go. Even if it's just for promotional purposes. I need to ask the radio station the details about them having rights to this new project.
So I was so excited about the whole thing, that I even did an internet search on some scary music loops that I want to use in my short.

Here's some teaser shots about the work in progress. The first image above is the latest render. I used the lighting and sky as my starting point to save some time. The newest tools in Lightwave 3D are better than last year. I might try and simplify the textures and maybe stylize it some. The image below is blocked out- I found some old houses on the internet to get this one. In the last image, I am starting the final construction on the shape. I am creating patches to model the house. By doing so, I can have my walls curve and I can exaggerate the form a little: