10Monkeys -Delirium Tremens : is a group project of ten guys for the MA. We had 10 weeks to produce a short animation peice. My role in the group was environment modelling and Lighting/rendering.

For this blog , I would like to show you the scenes I was responsible for and some background work for those scenes. The finished animation is first, then the breakdown.

The film is about Al's experience. He lives in a world where everyone is the same, but there is another world that can be accessed through a weird machine. The machine is frightening so nobody wants to go into it..until Al puts his hand up..then the machine sucks him up and he is transported to the weird world. It is a surreal world where things dont really make sense. However when Al is there he has his head taken by a strange diamond guy, who offers him a different head in return. Al fights for his own head back but is ejected from the machine. When he is returned to his own world his head has been swapped. Seeing that he is now different the other people think this is a good thing and all now want to go into the machine.
The reasoning behind the film is loosly a metaphor for the internet and how when we go online we can all become can become something or someone else. We also have access to so much information that we can also change our views and perspective, altering the way we think. The internet is a strange and weird other worldly place.

Scenes I did the lighting for:

Sucked up the tube: For this scene it was important to get an inside a living organism type feel. I looked at the lighting for The fantastic voyage (1966) which used lots of pink and orange rim lights.

Inner Machine: this scene is the big reveal shot. Here I had to light not only the scene but also the individual characters with animation. This was a challenge as this was the first time I had tried lighting.

Diamond Guy reveal: This scene was also an important scene as it is the first time we see the diamond guy. It was important to give a strong sense of how the diamond guy influences the inner world environment. I did this by colouring the rim lights on Al's head to match the diamond guys head, to create drama I used a pinkish red rim light on the back of Al's head and body.

Al & Diamond struggle:This scene had to be quite a dark scene in the sense that the story had taken a darker twist. I wanted to have strong under lighting highlighting the underside of the tendral and the mushroom, Also i wanted the feeling that the only light in the scene was a reflection from the diamond head.

Al's return with on lookers: Here the important thing was to balance the forground and background, the guys faces and the machine in the background. the lighting on the guys had to feel like it was shaded light..like they were in the shadow of the machine.

3d model: The Inner machine Environment.

The Inner machine Was my first ever attempt at modelling in 3d. I had only 2 weeks to get to grips with the tools and build the model.

The pre-production:

This was the most creative and enjoyable part of the project. The whole dynamic of the 10 Monkeys was a collective of artists bring there own ideas to the proccess. It was a melting pot of ideas bouncing off each of the members...sometimes in radical tangents and we had many discussions and debates. It was important to go through this and even though at times it felt like we were going in circles, it was still very crucial in bringing together our comman purpose.

Here you can see one of our brain storming sessions. Basically we all went away and produced drawings that we felt fitted the theme and then we would put them all up on the wall and start trying to mix the images and partner them up into some kind of narrative.

Some concept drawings that I drew, that where adapted to the final animation.

Cinematography:

After modelling the environment, Alan Serra and I then began locking down the camera shots as per the story board. This helped the animators to locate the correct points on the environment model to organise the scene they were working on. We then printed out the scenes and form a second storyboard. The director and animators then used this storyboard to make the final choices for action etc.