BlackCherry Vissi d'arte Blog Part II

A digital animatic was created to serve as a timing reference for the actual capture session. This allowed for synchronization of the timing of the mo-cap and the initial storyboard animatic ensuring everything would synch up with the musical score.

For mo-cap services BlackCherry turned to Seneca College and mo-cap supervisor Michael Irwin. All the groundwork and rehearsal time made for a very smooth and quick session. The entire animation was captured in about 3.5 hours. Cleanup was however another story.

“This was a part of the process we were really concerned about,” said Garcia. “All of our research indicated the cleanup could be a black hole of time.” In the end the cleanup process, while time consuming, didn’t prove to be too much of a technical hurdle. “Motionbuilder helped a lot with getting us through this process,” said Garcia. “Once we wrapped our heads around the new tools and FBX I/O issues things went pretty smoothly.” “It’s great now because we have a fully integrated mo-cap approach in our pipeline.”

BlackCherry relied on the traditional keyframe approach for all the additional animation. Facial and hand animation as well as additional tweaks to body motion were added as animation layers. Reference stills were created to allow for lighting conform on a scene-by-scene basis. Rendering was approached using standard multi-pass methods using the Maya software renderer and the C4D render engine. Compositing and assembly were done using Adobe After Effects. As with all projects the team was tweaking small aspects of the final product right up until final assembly. “One great thing for us was having James Gardner come on board at BlackCherry,” said Seck. “Jim is VP Production but he has an extensive background in audio post. His sound design really brought some scenes to life and Jim was a huge help in optimizing the final music and sound mix.”

“This was our second large scale short and this one was all completed in-house,” said Seck. “Having these two projects under our belt has really given us the opportunity to tune our pipeline. I think we are more than ready to tackle one of the larger series or feature concepts we’ve been developing. I can't say enough about how much creativity everyone in the team brought to this project, not to mention Kathleen Radke's vocal performance, it was stellar. I'm really looking forward to us sinking our teeth into our next project."

BlackCherry Digital Media Inc. provides 3D animation, visual fx and interactive design services to film, broadcast and corporate clients requiring the highest level of creativity and innovation. We use state of the art tools to create next-generation content that can be delivered for high definition broadcast, web or mobile platforms.

Our world class team of artists and animators is young, connected and ready to deliver. We have the flexibility and capability to scale quickly to manage projects of any size, from 30 second spots to series and feature length. We deliver cost effective solutions on time, on budget and beyond your expectations.