This article is about the making of The Undertals pre-production and we have also included some production tips which we hope will be useful to our readers.

Production Focus

(Fig. 1: final production image of the Undertals)

The Undertals 01		The Undertals 02

The purpose of creating the Undertals was to have a pre-production package to present to eventual investors and producers in order to establish a co-production opportunity and produce “The Undertals” as a television series.

• The first thing we did was to define the scope of the task and set some objectives, some of which were the following:
• Target Group: we decided to aim for a rather wide audience group of ages 5 to 12 while still making the series accessible to other ages.
• Target Quality: although the objective was to create a series for broadcast it needed to be on par with or have a better visual quality than some of the works seen in the international markets.
• Feasible Project: while aiming for a high-quality visual we also had to design and plan for a very tight production schedule and high output that could create the necessary material in a tight deadline.

Tip No. 1: The scope of your project is crucial to creating a high standard of work. Never stop planning and try to foresee and plan as many details of your project as possible. Some of the most important steps are the project scope, file-naming convention and your project directory structure. We have tried several combinations of these and we are still optimizing them for every project.

Tip No. 2: Put everything on paper. We tend to think that we will remember where we put our files and what we named the. Believe me your memory will not retain 80% of what you are doing in two weeks (and I’m being optimistic!). Write it down and if you are collaborating with a group try to create processes that would allow them to write down what they have done about the project. Word, Excel and Project or whatever software you tend to use are your friends; USE THEM.

With these goals in mind we started the task of research and look development by looking at a lot of children’s series and gauge the visuals and storylines they had. We also scoured the internet for images of environments and characters that we felt were unique and could be close to our style.

(Fig. 2: samples of images from the internet)

After that came the writing stage; we wrote extensively trying to flesh out ideas and come up with a story that would please us, writing a story, script, and synopsis as well as character and environment descriptions. With this information in hand we were ready to start production.

Tip No. 3: Even if you are working alone the writing stage should not be omitted. What is important in this process is that even if you are not a great writer just sitting down and trying to shape your story or characters will help you in finding ideas and inspiration that would not have been possible if you just started sketching or modeling. Writing will create questions in your mind and finding answers to these questions will make your project more robust.

We provided our 3D artists with detailed descriptions of our characters and environments and went through a series of sketches, probably 3 to 4 revisions for each object. Although we wanted the concept designs to be very inspiring we knew that we did not need to make them perfect since it would be easier to finalize them in 3D. Storyboards were also created in this stage since we were planning on creating a trailer for the series.

Tip No. 4: After each stage of production is completed create a preview of that stage. Benefits: you will have a making of your project, you will know exactly what assets have been created and at what stage they are, and you can show it to colleagues and friends for feedback.

(Fig. 3: intermediary sketches of characters and environments)

Dogholoo sketches	Mooboland sketch
Preliminary island sketch	Preliminary island sketch

(Fig. 4: final sketches of characters and environments)

Topol color concept

Dogholoo color concept

Before this production we had had a few problems with our production pipeline and our file and asset management, so we decided to define a clearer process and a better file and folder naming convention. We some material on the web concerning pipeline definition and file-naming conventions and although they were just a few articles, it really helped us on making some decisions.

Since we were working in Maya we needed to use the Maya project folders system as much as possible to prevent breaking links between assets and references. We also decided to use file-referencing, which we had already used extensively in Softimage successfully, but was rather new to us in Maya. The filing system we decided on finally, with great help from different forums was based on the following system:

Most of the names are self-explanatory except for Library and Build. The library is in fact a container for finished assets such as models, shading, rigs, etc which will be referenced into the different shots. The build folder contains works in progress of our assets and the Shots folder will contain all the shots in subfolders (shot001, shot002, …) each in turn containing folders for animation, effects, …. Each of these folders will in turn be a Maya project containing specific data for that process (for example “effects”).

The production started with the modeling process where the main emphasis was on feasibility; we needed to have believable models with minute details but we couldn’t allow the meshes to get too heavy since in a series production you don’t have the time to animate very dense meshes. We even decided to forego certain features such as displacement which we believed was not crucial to our models’ visuals in this project. The creatures and their environment were modeled in Maya and some of the details were done in ZBrush but we tried to keep these simple.

Tip No. 5: Units! If you skip this part you will regret it later. Define your units and stick to them. Deformations, hair, rigs, dynamics and clothing will all depend on this small issue and if you don’t think about it in the beginning you will suffer the consequences later when you need to resize that rig and it just breaks. Create a unit file where you create a physical ruler as well as a cube representing your unit (1x1x1 m) and place all your characters and other objects in this file to ascertain their size and compare it with the rest of the project.

(Fig. 5: preview of models)

Topol model preview

Dogholoo model preview

Since the look of the Undertals was supposed to be very cartoony but fleshy all the textures were painted by hand and we decided not to use a single ready-made texture. We used Photoshop, ZBrush and BodyPaint 3D to paint our textures.

The next stage we tackled was the character and environment shading. There was an emphasis on simplicity here as well and we tried to avoid certain time and cpu-consuming such as FG, GI and sub-surface scattering but during our tests we came to the conclusion that we were losing quality by avoiding all these technologies. We finally came to the conclusion to use sub-surface scattering for the characters’ skins and FG for the environment since the increased render times were minimal after some tweaking and tests but the rise in quality was quite noticeable.

Tip No. 6: Simplify! Nowadays 3D software has become extremely sophisticated and you have a plethora of wonderful tools at your reach. DO NOT use them all. Just because GI renders are cool you should not try to use them in your project. Always try to use the simplest technology that can provide you with 95% of what you need.

We rendered our assets in several passes, using standard Maya shaders, occlusion and other standard passes and tweaked them extensively in compositing to obtain the look we were trying to obtain; about 30% of the final look was obtained in post-production.

Tip No. 7: Always use the 80/20 rule in your projects. This rule states that 80% of each task should take up 20% of the time and 20% remaining should take up the remaining 80% of your time. What this means is that you should first try and very rapidly give shape to things and keep the bulk of your allocated time for tweaking and working on small but significant details.

During all this we were also trying to improve our current production pipeline and create a more robust workflow. Another objective was to speed up our production by testing new ways of doing things. One of the issues we faced was the rigging of the characters which took about 5 to 7 days for each character and was not an optimal time for us. We tried a few plugins but none of them gave us the control we needed and most of them had small issues or large learning curves which would have been prohibitive for this project.

Tip No. 8: Referencing is your friend. By referencing your files the storage space used by your projects will decrease by an order of magnitude. Proxies and references will allow you to use the correct assets in your shots without having to manually import them into every shot. Although referencing may have a few issues, if done right it can save you a lot of valuable time.

We decided to try scripting the process and were able to speed up some of the rigging issues but we were not able to automate the whole rigging process in a way that would save us a lot of valuable time. This is still one of the sore points in our production and although the rigs we created for the characters were rather thorough, we are still working on automating the rig creation process.

We nevertheless created very sophisticated and complete rigs with squash and stretch, IK/FK switching that used soft bodies and Maya muscle, particularly for their fat bellies, to allow them to be animated easily in spite of their short stature and very short and stout limbs.

Tip No. 9: Try to automate repetitive tasks as much as possible. Your time is extremely valuable; don’t waste it by trying to rename 1505 meshes in Maya. Either learn some scripting or try to ask a friend to write you some code in exchange for a free model or a sample rig, it will be worth your time.

(Fig. 8: movie of rig in action)

We also created some turntables and test animations for the characters

(Fig. 9: images and movies of characters animated)

One of the main parts of this whole process was the compositing process which really gave life to our renders and produced the final look of the Undertals.

(Fig. 11: images of render layers)

Tip No. 10: At the end of your project create a solid archive of your project and delete your rendered passes and any other intermediary files such as incremental saves; this will save you lots of space on your computer. Create a final post-mortem document describing your project outcome, the issues you had, the plugins used and its shortcomings. Write what you will do for your next project to address these issues and read this document at the beginning of each new project.

We are currently creating a one minute trailer for The Undertals which will be ready in a few weeks and we hope to be able to present it to the CG Community in the near future.

Tip No. 11:Self-improvement is vital if you want to become a professional in your field of work. 8 or 9 years ago it was very difficult to find tutorials or learning material anywhere but now the wealth of information you can find on the internet and sites such as Digital Tutors and Gnomon are staggering. Always try to learn new ways of doing things, improve on your processes and optimize your workflow constantly.

The production team consisted of:
Executive Producer and Project Manager: Reza Ghobady
Project Sponsor: Vishka Assayesh
Original Idea: Ali Chenari
Director: Ali Chenari
Character Concepts: Hamed Kamali
Environment Concepts: Kian Kiani
Modelers: Bahram Najand, Faraz Sayadi, Reza Ramezani
Textures: Bahram Najand, Faraz Sayadi
Shading: Faraz Sayadi
Rigging: Faraz Sayadi
Animation: Abed Nattaj, Alireza Shahramfar
Lighting, Rendering, Compositing: Faraz Sayadi

We loved working on this project and hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

You can see some test animations on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/vishkastudio as well as on our CGPortfolio page: http://rezaghobady.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Our website: http://www.vishka.com

Our blog: http://www.vishka.com/blog

I am currently attending MIPCOM 2010, one of the major film markets in the world covering a wide range of industries from animation, broadcast and feature fims, to internet, mobile content and gaming. It is a huge annual event that takes place in one of France’s most beautiful regions near the Mediterranean sea in Cannes, home to the Cannes film festival.

This is the first time that I’m attending this event and I thought it would be a good opportunity to write a series about it that could eventually help other first-timers and would recount some of my personal and business experiences during this trip. I decided to keep these posts flexible andpersonal and just write about the things that I find interesting or helpful. What you will not find here is a professional review of MIPCOM and whether you should attend it or not, because HELL YEAH YOU SHOULD! This is one of the biggest annual events catering to the content production and distribution business and attracts some important heavy weights as well as 13000 companies. This post is rather about my personal experience of the film market. I wanted to call the series ” The Trials and Tribulations of Monsieur Reza at MIPCOM” but I decided against having such a huge title and after reading it once I didn’t even find it funny anymore, so without any further ado I would like to start at the beginning of my journey, the Gare de Lyon in Paris.

This is one of the 5 or 6 principal train stations in Paris that service regional passengers and you can get there by bus, metro or taxi. I decided to take the TGV (Frances high-speed train) to avoid the hassle of taking a taxi to the airport, waiting for an hour at the airport and taking my bloody shoes off everytime I needed to pass through a checkpoint.

Tip no 1: There is a networking event and meeting event for first-timers on the day before the MIPCOM starts about 4 in the afternoon which I didn’t get to in time. Reserve your train ticket online or in one of the main train stations in Paris (if you’re leaving from Paris) and go one day earlier in order to take advantage of this event. It can be very helpful for first-timers and you can even get your badge sooner which will avoid the super long queue on the next morning.

Tip no 2: Pack Light! I didn’t take a lot of clothes except for clean socks and lots of shirts but due to the large amount of brochures that I had and a suitcase the size of a mini-van I had a pretty rough time.. Take one small case like the ones you can take into airplanes, pack in your iPad (preferable with 3G so that you can use it on the train, and not a 5 year old Dell that weighs 25 kilos and an adaptor the size of a George Foreman grill like I did), clean socks, two pairs of shoes (believe me you will walk more than Forest Gump in that place), several clean shirts (take a few summery sleeveless ones, it tends to get hot even in October) and one or two coats. Ditch the tie and wear comfortable shoes.

Tip no.3: There is a small yellow box right in front of the train before you board the train. You need to stick your ticket into it or what the French call “composter les billets”. Lots of people forget to do it and you could get a fine on the train.

Tip no.4: Depending on what time you leave pack a light lunch or dinner or snack if you don’t want to wait at the bar for an hour . A sandwich and a bottle of water will do fine although a bar of chocolate may help you later on in the day; don’t forget it’s a 5 hour ride (5h45 to be exact).

You can read the rest of my adventures and tips in my next post very soon.

Please add any tips, suggestions or experiences you may have had in MIPCOM in the comments. I am sure other people would like to learn from your experiences.

This spot is also being aired on IRIB national TV during the World Cup games transmission.

The spot is a 30 second commercial for PAL D1 diffusion and took approximately two months to complete.

Concepts, storyboards and story reels were done by Kian Kiani. We have included the storyreel so that you can compare it with the final product; as you can see the client changed a lot of details ;-)

Caspian storyboard

There was also some pre-production concepts done by Faraz Shanyar.

Environment concept

by Faraz Shanyar

The spot was directed by Arezoo Ghandi and Faraz Sayyadi was in charge of the animation, shading, lighting, rendering and compositing.

Environment modeling and liquid simulations were all created by Reza Ramezani.

Caspian logo front

Caspian logo perspective

Editing the spot was done by Arezoo Ghandi and Bahram Najand.

We hope you enjoy this post and would appreciate any comments you may have.

Whether you are working as a freelance at home,  a small business or working in a large corporation, the way you handle your responsibilities and your work load has a direct effect on your personal life. Productivity is an important issue during our day to day routines, particularly in the animation and entertainment industries where processes are time-consuming and detail-oriented. Some projects may last up to 3 years and more and the amount of data generated may surpass trillions of bytes. So how can we find a way to enjoy our daily workload, plan for future projects and collaborate effectively in a stress-free manner?

The following is a list of some of the best blogs on personal and professional productivity and although each one of them is geared towards a specific nature of the subject, they all manage to give you a clear roadmap and insights into how to conduct your life with the best use of your time in order to obtain the best results.

Personally I am a firm believer in David Allen’s method called “Getting Things Done” and his book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” but it’s just my personal choice. He has a lot of other very useful stuff he sells on his site which are all geared towards making you more productive.

I have to stress one point and that is there is no magic formula or exact recipe to becoming a productive person and don’t expect to find your way by reading these blogs or books. These sites will give you a lot of useful information, roadmaps and methodologies but in order to make best use of all this info you will need to find the methodology or procedure that suits you most and then tweak it to suit your way of life and most importantly, STICK TO IT!!

1. David Allen’s GTD Times (http://www.gtdtimes.com/)

This blog is mostly geared towards David Allen’s methodology called Getting Things Done based on his world-famous book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” and although the articles may not be that enlightening all the time they provide some great podcasts that explain their method.

1. Freelance Folder (http://freelancefolder.com/)

Great blog for freelance writers, web developers and designers but contains a wealth of information on personal productivity

1. Freelance Switch (http://freelanceswitch.com/)

Very similar to Freelance Folder and a great resource; part of the Envato group that brings you ThemeForest and other great sites.

1. Life Optimizer (http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/)

Life Optimizer is about how to live life to the fullest through personal growth.

1. Marc and Angel Hack Life (http://www.marcandangel.com/)

Lots of practical tips to lead a productive life

1. Productive Flourishing (http://www.productiveflourishing.com/)

This site has very good articles and provides a set of free monthly planners that are very well thought out and useful.

1. Illuminated Mind and Body (http://www.illuminatedmind.net/)
2. Wake Up Later (http://www.wakeuplater.com/)
3. Persuasive (http://www.persuasive.net/)
4. Seth’s Blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/)

And last but not least, Seth Godin’s blog which is more geared towards marketing but does include some productivity tips from time to time and is always a great read.

Hope you enjoy this post and please include any other sites which you think should have been included in this post.

You can check out the festival trailer here: Annecy Animation Festival Trailer.

As some of you may have noticed we have recently changed the layout and look of our blog hoping to make it easier to read and a bit more interactive. We apologize beforehand to our blog,  Twitter and Tumblr readers but it appears that our posts may have been re-posted to these sites due to this change. This usually happens because our blog API automatically posts anything we write on our blog to these sites and every time we change our layout we need update our blog posts to include new images, headers and info.

Apparently these services can’t tell the difference between an update and a new post, or I can’t figure out how to keep them from reposting old blog posts. Nevertheless you see our old posts being regurgitated on Tumbler and probably Twitter.

We apologize for this inconvenience but hope that our new layout will make your journey more pleasing and will provide you with a better reading experience.

We are also increasing our post frequency very soon and hope to be able to post at least 3 times a week, providing you with insight into the animation industry, software news and reviews, WIPs and many other interesting information.

We would appreciate receiving any feedback or issues you may have with the new layout so: Tell Us What You Think!

This is our very first short film created circa 2004. We are aware of its shortcomings and weaknesses but we love it like a first child!

We thought we should post it here for everyone to see just for the fun of it.

You can also view the same video on Vimeo:

We wish a prosperous and happy New Year and Nowruz to all our Iranian compatriots.
Nowruz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the year in Iranian calendar. It is celebrated on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox, which usually occurs on March 21 or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed.

Happy Nowruz from Vishka Studio

The UN’s General Assembly in 2010 recognized the International Day of Nowruz, describing it a spring festival of Persian origin which has been celebrated for over 3,000 years.

Haft Sīn (هفت سین) or the seven ‘S’s is a major tradition of Nowruz. The haft sin table includes seven specific items starting with the letter ‘S’ or Sīn (س) in the Persian alphabet. The items symbolically correspond to seven creations and holy immortals protecting them. The Haft Sin has evolved over time, but has kept its symbolism. Traditionally, families attempt to set as beautiful a Haft Sīn table as they can, as it is not only of traditional and spiritual value, but also noticed by visitors during Nowruzi visitations and is a reflection of their good taste.

Haft-Sin

The Haft Sīn items are:

• sabzeh — wheat, barley or lentil sprouts growing in a dish — symbolizing rebirth
• samanu — a sweet pudding made from wheat germ — symbolizing affluence
• senjed — the dried fruit of the oleaster tree — symbolizing love
• sīr — garlic — symbolizing medicine
• sīb — apples — symbolizing beauty and health
• somaq — sumac berries — symbolizing (the color of) sunrise
• serkeh — vinegar — symbolizing age and patience

Other items on the table may include:

• Sonbol — Hyacinth (plant)
• Sekkeh — Coins — representative of wealth
• traditional Iranian pastries such as baghlava, toot, naan-nokhodchi
• Aajeel — dried nuts, berries and raisins
• lit candles (enlightenment and happiness)
• a mirror (symbolizing cleanness and honesty)
• decorated eggs, sometimes one for each member of the family (fertility)
• a bowl of water with goldfish (life within life, and the sign of Pisces which the sun is leaving)
• rosewater, believed to have magical cleansing powers
• the national colours, for a patriotic touch
• a holy book (e.g., the Avesta, Qur’an, Bible, Torah, or Kitáb-i-Aqdas) and/or a poetry book (almost always either the Shahnama or the Divan of Hafez)

We have recently created a new online presentation for our company using a very cool and free presentation software called Prezi.

I’m sure that most of you have already created or seen presentations on Microsoft Powerpoint but this is far more fun and interactive than the usual boring Powerpoint presentations.

Just go and take a look at our presentation and you’ll see what I mean. In order to get a better feel I suggest you use our presentation in Autoplay and Fullscreen mode (you can find these options by clicking on the “More” option on the lower right hand side of the presentation frame)

The fair started on Tuesday 27^th of October and goes on till the 29^th but next year the date will be moved by a month and it will start in November. The organizers decided, and rightly so, that the show was too adjacent to other important shows like MIPCOM, which is one of the major events of the year.

The exhibition takes place at the Dubai convention and exhibition center or World Trade Center as it is called here. The location is extremely well constructed and planned for all kinds of exhibitions and the organizers are very meticulous about their planning. This venue is in fact comprised of two major events with one obviously being  the Character and Licensing Fair and the other, the Dubai Game Exhibition.

I had attended this same exhibition last year very shortly and the things that were most noticeable were the absence of many important companies from the region. All in all the show was very scarce this year and it appears that the global recession had even touched the character and licensing industry in the region. Although the organizers insisted that the number of characters had tripled this year I didn’t get that impression and it was obvious that the show was not as popular as last year; more about that in the following posts.

Freej is one of the most famous and successful licenses created and launched in the Middle East and last year their stand was impressive boasting a huge and beautifully crafted miniature model of the virtual city the show takes place in. There were Freej memorabilia all around the stand and everywhere else you looked. This year I couldn’t even find their stand; I may have overlooked and may find them tomorrow but their participation is surely not at the same scale this year.

The absence of TV channels was also noticeable. SpaceToon was one of the channels that participated along a few others but this year the only one I have spotted so far is Cartoon Network.

The show also has a conference programme for both Character and Game summit and although the level isn’t that of a Siggraph, the speakers are generally very interesting and choose rather good subjects for their sessions. More on that later….

The most amazing moment came when I saw the Iranian pavilion in the Game Expo with at least 8 companies attending with some games that were far from bad. One of these games called Garshasp is apparently doing very good and has attended several major exhibitions. I wish them and the other companies good luck.

In my next post for this series I’ll go into more details about the companies attending and probably post some pictures too.