Latvian Komedie Minute
Meet Vlad. Star of the Latvian Komedie Minute and once voted as his senor class clown. Enjoy as he regales you with the latest barn-burners from Latvia.
The Latvian Komedie Minute was another attempt at producing short form CG content. This time taking advantage of my experience integrating CG with Live action plates.
Using my Makerbot Replicator 2 3D printer I built and shot a miniature set and placed Vlad into it.
Breakdown
Co-Creator/Director, Built miniature set, Oversaw shooting of the miniature set, Tracking, Modeling, Texturing, Shading, Lighting, and Comp
Mocking out what I wanted the set for the short to look like in Autodesk Maya was first. Accuracy in this process was very important so everything was real-world scale and meticulously measured based on the table dimensions. I put an initial camera in to test out positioning and what focal lengths I’d be shooting with. This way I would know how much I needed to build and what would be in or out of frame.
Using the sliced geometry outlines from the scene in Maya I traced it onto the foam-core.Then using the foam-cutter trimmed the foam down to the correct shape and size. Here I am in my cramped office cutting away. Once the cutting was done I was able to recreate the mocked-up scene from 3D.
Using a battery powered foam cutter I trimmed the set pieces to fit the final shape I mocked out in Maya. Then I glued the pieces together and used plaster mesh to make one seamless ground.
Once the plaster dried it was time to paint the set. This was just an undercoat as most of the set would be covered by foliage. The paint was then coated with a thin layer of clear glue and the static grass was placed.
The final set.
