click me to get a closer look click here to get a QT movie

6) The movement you get is so unique how do you get it?

The movement is mostly due to Movie Flo's helmech spline timing and careful placing of the keys. Since Movie Flo is layer based, I stagger some of the layers' keys to prevent all the layers getting switched at once. Movie Flo is also one of the very few warp programs that allows one to bend things along an arc (like bending an arm from its elbow) without the objects' length collapsing along the axis perpendicular to the arc.

Also, MF lets me warp the head or body so that it appears to rock toward and away from us (look closely at DoorTugRach and KissRach and you can see this in action on their heads). QT movies from other morph programs, which are used to animate head expressions and hands, are used in MF layers instead of still art. This still keeps the cel count down and lets me do some really subtle expression changes that would take a long time to draw precisely, but which boost the character's believability.

click me to get a closer look click here to get a QT movie

Also, all the movies are rendered as single frame "ones." I could cheat and render them twice as short then use Boris Continuum Velocity remap or ReelSmartMotionBlur to stretch the movie back out, or just render it in AE at 200% timestretch so it renders as "twos." That can work fine with fast moving animals, as Warners and Disney has proved over many years. But for human characters, I find "twos" animation choppy and unbelievable, especially if a character is moving slowly.

The shakes and vibrations, originally a horribly tedious job in After Effects time remapping, now come from the Boris Continuum Sequencer plugin. The Furious Fred was done the old hard way and took an hour to set up just those stagger keys.

click me to get a closer look click here to get a QT movie

What is nice is that Boris Continuum Sequencer can be combined with Boris Continuum Composite to get part of the character to shake while the rest of it retains normal motion (so DoorTug Rachs' skirt swish can be pretty much unaffected by her upper body shaking).


7) What are some of the render times you are getting?

On a G4-450 MP machine, WalkRach warp renders in 10 minutes and her AE renders are from 1 to 20 minutes, depending on complexity (the Castle walkthrough took 45 minutes). KissRachs' warp render takes 1.5 hours and the AE render (a complex one with numerous effects and camera moves) another 1.5 hours.

DoorTugRach took 30 minutes to warp and 40 minutes to render. Once Boris gets their filters to support MP, the AE render times should improve by 50 - 60%. Sadly, Movie Flo does not support MP, but MP machines sped it up around 10%.


8) Are you animating for a D1 output?

Yes...but I also work at film resolution and smaller sizes. The movies are often rendered in two size formats at the same time...usually D1 and a small test size.

9) How about audio and music?

I got the green light today to mention that William Stromberg, the award winning composer who did the music for TRINITY AND BEYOND, THE ATOMIC BOMB MOVIE, was enthused enough about SAPPHIRES to offer to develop an original piece of music for the one minute pilot.

Considering his considerable movie music writing experience and his work with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, that has been one major incentive for me to try to finish the pilot this year.

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These movies are from Secret of the Sapphires, Kurt Wiley's original production planned as a pilot to be completed sometime in year 2001. They are all ©2000 Kurt Wiley, and are not to be redistributed without permission. If posted on the Internet, the movies must display ©2000 KMW either on an overlay or next to the movie. The backgrounds used for SAPPHIREs' tests, with the exception of the Swamp, are TEMPORARY and used solely to showcase animation and effects. New backgrounds including 3D props will be created for any actual production.