The Making of Roadkill Redemption

SO much went into making RR, I thought I’d do a little behind-the-scenes treatment.  There’s easily enough content to fill up several posts, but I’m stuffing it all into one big fat one.  Now you can binge through a year of my work in one fell swoop.   Yeh.

Before going any further, please watch the actual final film.  This is SPOILER territory and you don’t want your first impressions besmirched by all the raw source material.  

Story:

You can see the full animatic in my latest story reel.  It’s patched together pretty roughly but it served as a very helpful roadmap.

Story Reel Spring 2013 from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

Vis Dev:

Never ended up making trees... telephone poles work just as well

The first rendered model profiles

Animation:

I knew I REALLY wanted to make a hybrid for my thesis film.  I designed the story to lend itself to multiple animation mediums.  The mix of 2D and 3D metaphysically separates the characters and displaces their existential realities.  The mortal realm is grounded in CG- while the raccoon ghost defies the constraints of this dimension and flows ever-freely in his own 2D ghosty world.  He is a pure-energy embodiment, the soul of a no-longer-living-thing, and shouldn’t be confined to a “rig” in any sense anyway.   

So that’s basically my rationale for the whole 2D/3D thing.  It was very difficult to pull off but also a lot more fun. 

Anyhow, here’s all the embarrassing video reference I could find (the rarely seen but all-too necessary part of every animated film- lovingly recorded on my cruddy macbook cam... with catchy music thrown in...)

Video Reference for Roadkill Redemption from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

I like animating things that perpetuate between normality and going stylistically off model.  Too much of this can be poison, but just enough of it is the REASON I love the animation medium.  In real life, you can’t break the face of a live actor to get that panicked, open-mouthed expression that pulls the jaw a foot out of it’s hinges.  I wanted Leah to be as expressive as my actual drawings.  This meant extra blendshapes and the utilization of those sweet, sweet nonlinear deformers.  (God bless em’)

Here are some expressions that go by really fast in the film- nonlinear deformers and excessive blend shaping all up in here: 

And a bunch of random screen grabs for scrapbook filler:

         

Good times.

my dorm in the heat of crunchtime (not too bad actually)

unused spoof movie poster idea: Rosemary's Baby (ROADmary's baby?)

Ya'll drive safely now.

Roadkill Redemption

Roadkill Redemption from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

Without further ado, my thesis film

I'm gonna get you, sucka

Lolly child from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

first world problems

It Lives!

Hiya folks.  

I know, I know… I know.  It’s been a while...  

Things got a little crazy last semester and A LOT has happened since.  For one, my thesis film is DONE.  I can’t say when it’ll go public, but when it does, y’all should totally watch it.    

my spoof movie poster (a Ringling tradition)

...and a still from the film

In other news, I’ve graduated Ringling, moved to California, and started a freelance gig at Blur, storyboarding for The Goon.  So life is pretty neat right now.  I’ve got a few small projects in the works and now that I’m not tied down to thesis, this blog will get the partial love it so deserves. So stick around maybe because more stuff will come.  Oh yes it will.

Junior LipSync Assignments

Hey everyone.  This is what I worked on when I WASN"T doing prepro.  I sort of ran out of time for these but... eh.  Here they are for now.  Behold: Lipsync and Take Two (with special guest rig, Kendra Phillips)

So Emotional

This is my emotions exercise (the thing we do before the actual dialogue test) using the rig I built of myself.  For class we had to show the whole body and then the head by itself in the other half of the frame.  I animated to the camera, so any jaw drag or hair bounce translates as a distracting rupture to the head-only render.  Plus you can see where I may have... strategically cheated.  Some things aren't meant to be seen from certain angles haha.  When I make my actual reel, I'll probably just include the full body render- In the meantime you can cover half the screen with your palm, mousepad, or pet cat.  Thanks :)

Push/Pull Part 2

My naturally exaggerated second push/pull exercise- ~Its wacky~

Push/Pull part 1

My slightly exaggerated, "natural" push/pull assignment.

  

Coming Soon...

My Push/Pull character.

The other CA projects

I decided to put all my other CA projects into one heaping post- and here they are:

This was my simple polygon character from the first semester.  It was modeled, rigged, and animated with LOVE.  Originally, this little guy did a jump where his spoon was slightly airborne, but I decided to cut it.

Ahh, Robie.  you wonderfully annoying, bucktooth trashcan of a midget robot.  We all had to model this weird thing using nurbs.  It was MIND-NURBING (sorry for that)

This is the first part of our texturing/lighting assignment.  The clip is of a cemetery at daybreak while the still image beneath it is the night scene.  We were all given the same cemetery set to texture and light.  Yeeee.

The second part of the assignment, was to light and texture a still life with fruit.  And um yeah... painting textures and lighting and what-not.  It was delicious.

Sit Stand

H’okaay so….This is the reason I haven’t posted anything in two months- but now summer time is here and I’m gonna’ get all up in the posting like whoa.  You don’t even know it.  You just. Don’t.  Know. (haha watch me post like 2 things before slacking off again)  A-HEMM!

            ANYHOW- This is my SitStand assignment for Computer Animation II.  We had to design, model, and rig up a character and then animate it sitting and standing in a custom environment we also built.  When I get the chance, I’d like to go in and seriously re-work parts of the animation and maybe even color-correct some stuff. As it stands (and sits) I call it a work in progress.  Also, I threw in some process work from my portfolio for good measure.  But yeah, this little doozey was quite the endeavor.

Quadfecta

Quadfecta from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.


Our first assignment of the new semester was to complete four basic animation exercises with a character rig provided by the school. weeeee!

Barnacle Sass

Barnacle Sass from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

Theres A LOT of other stuff that needs fixin' and postin' but I choose to put it all off for now. Instead I'll show this rough dialogue test I made for the 11 second club.  Its too bad I missed the deadline by just a few minutes- had fun though.

Dialogue Test

Gahhd Beckay from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

D-D-Dialogue test!  I could noodle with this for another month, but its time to MOVE ON... maybe i'll pick at it later.  Sorry for the audio delay.  Its the video transfer process or something.  I swear the sync was perfect in MonkeyJam.

Due to the scraggly nature of this test, I would recommend viewing it as SMALL as possible.  Thanks
~the sloppy artist

Pantomime

Pantomime from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.


Who can resist the charms of a fat hive hanging from a tree?  The answer is NO ONE (especially compulsive children with a taste for whimsy and wonder)

CA Ball Bounce

Ball Bounce from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

Quad Cycles

Bunny Runny from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.



Dawg Walk from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

See Jessica Run

Sexy Runaway Cycle from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

Snoots

Character design!! We all picked animal names from a hat and I got the elephant shrew! Finding the proper name was tricky. I mean, what can you call an elephant shrew? Some of my ideas included Fu Manshrew, Freddy Shrewger, Shrewby Doo, Shrewbert, and Gaylord...... "Snoots" it was!

Pleasure and Consequence from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

Flour Power

This lil' flour sack doesn't play by the rules...

The Last Temptation of Mr. Floursack from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.

first jump from Karl Hadrika on Vimeo.