As the schedule starts to get close, we recently realized that we are not going to be able to finish on time. We now have finished animation for less than a third of the film, and we only have about six weeks to go before all animation has to be locked, so that we can get all the final renders out on time. Weeks are going by with a few shots coming out here and there, which is not going to cut it.
Continuing in the current series of posts about “Outsider” perspectives of the Peach project, here is eight year old Australian gal India, giving her special views and comments.
India and her mum Cathy have spent the last month in and around Amsterdam annoying Campbell and the Peach crew as much as humanly possible.
At the end of the video is a special “Hi” to India’s Connect-4 Guru Martin (aka Theeth) who spent some time down under with Campbell and family.
It’s a couple of months before the premier and there are lots of things to do. Not only the most obvious (finishing final animation) but also finishing scene construction and render preparation so that the first of the finished shots can be shipped off to the render farm. A simple calculation revealed that at the current animation pace the project won’t be finished in time, so four external animators have been found and hopefully with their help the timeline will become reasonable again.
Some well known animation studios are now using approximate global illumination in feature films: Pixar used ambient occlusion in Ratatouille, Dreamworks used single bounce indirect lighting in Shrek 2, ILM used ambient occlusion in Pirates of the Carribean 2 & 3. So I looked for an ambient occlusion method that was reasonably simple to implement, and still fast enough to handle the high poly scenes we are dealing with.
During the last week Nathan had a friend over; Aaron. Aaron just left today with a signed t-shirt from the whole Peach team. Be aware this is a collectors item. The one and only :)
I’ve been teaching the guys and girls here how to play the renowned Dutch student card game “Toepen”, which doesn’t have winners, but only losers. Obviously – since it’s a student game – the loser has to get everyone drinks. Here in the institute we have free drinks, so we made up penalties for each round… and I’ve lost the round with as a penalty to make a blog post with a silly picture!
So here it is; the New Years Eve crew (minus Andy who takes the picture, and Enrico + William + Brecht who celebrate it at home) and with Campbell’s girls Cathy and India. On behalf of everyone: happy new year and let’s make it a great 2008!
well here i am again, and the characters are finally completed! as a peachy xmas holiday present we decided to publish some posters / wallpapers to decorate your desktop!
