MONSTRO!

Hey everyone! I've mentioned this before, and showed some in progress tests before. But now the full film is up and running online after making it's rounds in the festival circuit! Feel free to check it out below!

¡MONSTRO! from Chris Romano on Vimeo.

As I've said before, this was produced at Side Effects Software, and was done completely in Houdini. I was an animator on it, and designed the simple face rig system, as well as did a number of asset management things.

Here is the official description from vimeo:

¡MONSTRO!  

imdb.com/title/tt3733992 

The new film by Christopher Romano, with Executive Producer Kim Davidson.... A rickety scientific expedition ventures down the Amazon River to a dark lagoon, in search of a mythic Creature! But the Creature, it seems, has a less than mythic agenda! MONSTRO! is a horror story. A love story. A ribald comedy!MONSTRO! at facebook.com/monstro2014, twitter.com/toonlets, and instagram.com/toonlets. And check out sidefx.com to learn more about Houdini 3D animation tools!MONSTRO©2014 Christopher Romano and Side Effects Software. All Rights Reserved.version 1.2 

toonlets.tumblr.com

-Evan

MONSTRO! Early Tests

Last time, I mentioned I would try to dig up some of my animation tests from the upcoming short film 'MONSTRO!'which is directed by Christopher Romano.

Well I've went ahead and done exactly that! Below are some early and rough animation tests I did when exploring our Houdini pipeline. I was figuring out how to best set up shots, as well as doing some major rig-wrecking. None of these are particularly incredible, and as you will see I didn't even have clothed models or textures to work with yet, but it was a fun exploratory time. If nothing else, it will help give you an idea of how I spent most of my internship a number of years ago. Well...most of it, anyway.

First up, we have the first animation test done for 'MONSTRO!' I was exploring the process of animating characters in Houdini while also assessing the first pass of the body rig, which was based on the Houdini auto rigging tools. There wasn't a face system yet, which I ended up having to develop later. I was also making sure to test out ways of having characters interact with props and the environment in Houdini. This test was animated in 12 fps to test a stop-motion style look, which was being explored for the film:





Next, we have a lipsync test. This was done to test out the first pass of the face rig I developed. I was seeing how far I could get with extremely limited controls, and to get a better idea of what necessities were still needed in the system. The face rig was a limited blend-shape based rig, using CHOPs expressions to mimic a 'set-driven-key' type of behavior (for those familiar with Maya), and some fancy SHOP network magic to add in some asymmetry. The audio is Pappy O'Daniel from 'O Brother Where Art Thou?'





After that, I thought I'd post this weird cloth sim animation test. It was created to have something to test parameters on, for a first-pass DOPs/CHOPs based cloth rig system. Obviously these particular settings don't work very well, but I also should have expected that due to how pushed the animation was :) It was fun to go really goofy with it.





And finally, after getting a working body rig, and developing and improving the face rig system, I went ahead and did a full body dialogue test to see how well the character would hold up when acting.
The rig is pretty limited, so this test was more to see how far I could push it, and to explore ways to get some more traditional animation concepts in there. The goal was to make it convincing despite the limitations. The audio is Ray Stantz from 'Ghostbusters.'





Welp, I hope you've enjoyed these goofy little tests. For more, be sure to check out the MONSTRO! channel on vimeo. Also keep your eye open for when 'MONSTRO!' comes to a town near you! You can also keep up with the film on facebook and twitter, if you so desire.

This is probably it from me on this subject, at least until the final film appears online, which I will be sure to post when it is released publicly.

-Evan

MONSTRO!

Shameless plug time! Three years ago, when I first made the move across-country to California, it was to start an internship animating on a short film. That film is finally coming out! It starts the festival circuit this week, and you should check it out if you have the opportunity.

The film is called MONSTRO! and it's written and directed by Christopher Romano as a part of a joint project with Side Effects Software (PSSST! That's the HOUDINI guys!). In premise, it's a comedic animated spoof of the classic Universal Monster movie, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, but there are plenty of surprises. It's quite silly and fun.


MONSTRO! ... TRAILER 01 from Chris Romano on Vimeo.

This project means a lot to me because it is really the first time I was working on a CG project outside of school, and the first time I actually got paid to animate, and play around in CG. The people behind the film put a lot of faith in me by offering me an internship when I was some 2700 miles away, since I was willing to do character animation in Houdini (That's right, pretty much everything except for modeling was done in Houdini for this project). That internship was a HUGE step in launching me on my career path, and I couldn't thank my friends and former coworkers enough for helping me make that happen.

But enough sentiment - for the film, I was brought in essentially for character animation. I was given a lot of freedom to experiment with different animation styles before the production started. I spent a lot of time with the first few characters, particularly these two:

 

I did a number of animation tests helping to define and develop their movement styles and personalities (which I may post soon, if I can dig them up). I believe the final film only has one short series of shots that are my final animation, but I ultimately ended up setting up a lot of the pipeline, and designed the face rigs, since there wasn't really any out-of-the-box or established ways to work with faces in Houdini (Most if not all the rigging specific tools, including the auto rigs, are very body-centric). So I learned a heck of a lot and had a lot of fun working on this project.

Anyway, keep your eye out for it. You can find the festival schedule here, so if it's in your area, you should go see it. Also you should be sure to 'like' and 'follow' it to help get the word out there!

-Evan