Production Update 127: Sidetracked

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Chris Biewer

This week was a little hijacked by a family medical situation, which is why the production update is late this week. I wasn’t able to finish up the last shot I was working on for this scene, but I have the 3D render going for the background. Should be wrapped up in a couple days while I am at work. I’m currently working remotely so I can’t have the render going during the day. The render should be wrapped up before the weekend so this weekend I can wrap everything up for this scene.

I will get more posted up and also the production art I owe you soon when things get resolved. Thanks for understanding!

Production Update 125: Anime Detour, Here I Come!

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Chris Biewer

What a week it has been. I finally caught up on things at the office and was able to dabble in Cosmic Rage work again. I started working on a new shot last week, getting a crowd built and compositing the 3D image sequences into the scene. I have a couple small edits to make and this shot will be wrapped up. I have a few more shots in the scene to get completed but we are back in action 🙂

I enjoyed some time off over the weekend and finally got back into the kitchen to do a bit of cooking and try out some new recipes. Made a fantastic pulled pork dish in a slow cooker that I need to try again in the future.

I even got one of the movies on my “to watch” pile crossed off the list, X-Men Days of Future Past. I know right? Took me this long to get to it.

Since Anime Detour is upcoming I spent some time getting things prepped for the convention. I updated my e-book prototype, in case people want to check it out before or after my panel.

On that same note, I have been updating a few slides to my presentation and brushing up on the content since I haven’t given the presentation over the winter. Really looking forward to seeing how the new additions are going to be received by the attendees.

Feels good to be back blogging and working on Cosmic Rage. If you are at Anime Detour feel free to hit me up.

Twitter: @chrisreanimated

Facebook: facebook.com/officialcosmicrage

Production Update 124: Light at the End of the Tunnel

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Chris Biewer

Been super busy this week working extra hours at work. I didn’t get the chance to crack open Cosmic Rage files to get any work done this week. However, I wanted to let everyone know that after this week, I should be able to get back onto Cosmic Rage in some magnitude, unless there are any unforeseen events. One more week.

Hope you all have checked out some of the production animation. Can’t wait to get more up soon. Thank you all for your patience!

Production Update 123: New Art and Animation

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Chris Biewer

A long, overdue production update but I appreciate your patience! It has been a whirlwind last couple weeks. I worked a lot overtime at the office and when I wasn’t animating I was packing and moving my stuff. In the meantime I was sick for a couple days in there and needed some time to rest up and heal. Also had a mix up with the internet company getting things transferred to the new place, seriously felt like it would have made for a good 13 episode “slice-of-life” anime.

So what all happened in these last two weeks? Well, I didn’t get any Cosmic Rage animation done, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t new goodies to show off 😉 I wrapped up the proposal for the art grant I talked about in some of my previous posts. So, feast your eyes on some of the first animated Cosmic Rage content to be released!

This video is a quick teaser to show how the e-book will work, how I combined animation and text frames for the viewer. The areas for reading will be user controlled, allowing you to turn pages at your own pace.

[vimeo 120329405 w=500 h=281]

Cosmic Rage blends 2D and 3D animation, so in this spot I wanted to take Zeth and show you the process from pencil drawing to final animation. The steps are labeled in the corner.

[vimeo 120442944 w=500 h=375]

After seeing how the characters were treated, I wanted to show off the same process but for environments. Here is the fighting arena as a sample.

[vimeo 120442458 w=500 h=375]

I also went to a WordPress class to gain a better understanding of it and to meet up with some other bloggers in the area. I learned a few new things and looking forward to taking the next step and doing the third class later in March. Plenty of stuff to gear up for and more exciting news coming soon.

Stay tuned for more updates and I promise I won’t be away for that long again!

Production Update 99

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Chris Biewer

About midweek I decided to change the workflow of how I was going to handle this batch of shots. Typically I have been working on one after the other. However, I decided for this next scene I want to work get some of the “pre-work” done first and then go in and focus on each shot. This way instead of jumping back and forth between things, I have spent the majority of the week rendering out backgrounds and render passes so I can have things prepped to animate. I may have to go back in and set up animations in Cinema 4D, the 3D program I use for the backgrounds, but the cameras will be in the area I need them to so it will be a matter of animating the camera moves. I have locators placed in the scenes already for compositing work.

I was able to prepare about 10 shots, I already had some prepared. In total, this scene is composed of 12 shots.

This past week was pretty busy, I had an animation meet up and also attended a local art festival over the weekend. I was a little disappointed since it was more craft based content instead of traditional artwork and such, but it was a good time.

This upcoming week I am attending another local meet up, this one is based on film making. I also am aiming on switching gears a bit this week and getting some more work in on my artist alley artwork for later this fall. Should be able to get back into these shots and get working on them as well!

Production Update 73

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Chris Biewer

The holidays are closing in, which means there are a lot of nice holiday shopping deals. One of which included a nice external hard drive I was able to pick up and use solely as a dedicated drive for Cosmic Rage materials in case the worst should happen.

Last week the render for the main scene was completed, however, I did mess up a setting for the depth pass I needed so I got one of those rendered out without having to render out the entire scene again. This took only one night so it didn’t set me back too much at all. I also took a little time away from the computer just to unwind a bit.

This week I also started compositing the scene as well. With a new depth pass I was able to get everything in the scene set up. I did run into a small snag though, I realized I never colored and shaded the people that are going to populate this scene. The reason that happened is because I had their files in a different folder, the Master Content folder. So this week I will be going through those and finishing up inking some of them as well as coloring and shading them as well. I am hoping to get that completed this week, I do have to travel one night and also finish up some holiday shopping.

That’s not all though! I also started messing around with the final output for the first episode. While I want to push Cosmic Rage out to several different platforms when the time comes, I do want a mobile version for phones and e-readers. So I am dabbling in seeing if I can make an e-book with auto playing videos and pages for the user to read through for dialogue. Since I am not familiar with some of the e-book publishing methods and such this will be a little bit of a slower process but I decided to start working on that so it is not a problem at the end. I also like to read through it as I go to make sure the story is still coming together as I like.

Stay Tuned for more updates! I am still working on a post for later this week, it may be a manga review!

Production Update 70

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Chris Biewer

The holiday week is here, which means it’s crunch time on some of the projects I have been working on. While I am pretty much wrapped up with one, I did inherit a little bit of extra work this week for a friend, which means I didn’t get the texturing done I wanted to this week, but my friend needed some help and I couldn’t say no to that. I hope you all can understand that.

The holiday is acting as a deadline for the projects so they need to be wrapped up in a few days. I put in quite a bit of time in on them this weekend to ensure that they will be done. Pretty excited about one that I wrapped up today, and really looking forward to working on the friend project, which I hope to have done on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The holiday will be a good day to relax and enjoy good food and family as a break. Since everything will be done before the weekend, I plan on getting all sorts of Cosmic Rage work done over the weekend and have artwork and details next week for you. I won’t let you down this week! Speaking of which, obviously since the holiday is on Thursday, I will probably push back the Thursday posting to Friday.

Again i apologize for not sticking to my post last week of new production art, however I will do my best to make it up to you in next weeks Production Update. Enjoy the holiday!