Pyre and other things

Things are shaping up really well for the remainder of the shoot. I've got a new location that's damned near perfect. Thanks to Kim Bradford, Jarril the Shaman now has a home - it's really an antique shop in an old church.


This is of course bright daylight and not dressed for the movie - but it gives you an idea. The table you see in the first picture will be the main area and will be lit only by candles and perhaps a few little glowing ornaments, and will be shot at night. So you'll only get a sense of the clutter in the background. Should be cool.

In Pyre news, there's been some pretty good leaps and bounding type progress made. A small setback was fixed, sort of. First off the actress playing main wife character has moved away, leaving a sad gap in Pyre's harem. Luckily it was filled very quickly - although this fill caused another gap I'm trying to fill. Originally the actress lined up the play the "ugly wife" has some makeup/skin issues - and since she's not really ugly at all she is now moved into the "has to be pretty" role. Did that make sense? I should really draw little pictures to explain some of this stuff.

Three of the four wives has been cast and costumes completely, are enough to make any other harem owning demons jealous. The main wife character, the 88th daughter of Jarrill/Vanya has been filled by Jordan Berzins. She'll have bright yellow eyes and funny demon ears like her mother, as well as some minor facial tattoos. Kim Johnston is the 2nd wife, she'll be sporting some funky little horns and have some spots here and there. And finally as the token Vampire wife, we have Nikkie Gallant.

Sadly enough the 4th "ugly wife", the kind of gag character, is still wide open. I can do without her if I really have no other choice and it won't affect anything, but it would be fun to have her in there.

Still waiting on the location for this, I hope to be able to secure it soon. I'll be emailing my contact at the Delta and see if they've come to a decision of any sort.

And of course finally we have Pyre himself. After all my ranting about issues with designing characters, changing them and blah, blah blah - I finally got it without any doubts. I had a few designs in my head, none fleshed out in anyway - just some vague images. I sat down and try to solid the ideas up a bit and it just came out. And it was perfect. I immediately set to transferring these ideas into the 3D world and it just got better.

With a few little technical issues over and done with, I've finally gotten my first really solid demon design done for the movie. There's still a lot of work to do on him, mainly in the texturing and the body itself. Otherwise I thought I'd post a quick image of how the big guy looks so far.


So far so good. I'm beyond thrilled with the progress on him so far. It's a pretty good omen I think for the rest of the CG characters for the movie. What you're looking at right here is the base model combined with what's called a displacement map and a starting texture. The displacement map is what's giving all the little extra folds and wrinkles in the skin - that would be impossible to model. I'll be working on the texture over the next little while, that'll give him more definition, discoloration here and there, maybe a little tattoo or something, a scar or whatever.

Still left of the CG character front are The Titan (although a good reworking is in progress), the Librarian and finally of course Mal'Vash himself. Mal'Vash I have a basic concept in mind I'm pretty happy with, it's just the details I'm sorting out. The Librarian I'm waffling on. I have some vague ideas, but nothing solid. I really want him to have as much character as Pyre currently does.

Vocally and dialog-wise Pyre and the Librarian are definite characters, it'll be up to the actual 3D model and animation to really sell them as if they were right there onset with the actors. So of course I'm being picky, so far it's paid off.

That's it for now. I've a lot more to work out. some minor rewrites of the scenes. Some props still hung up in manufacturer limbo. A single location still up in the air. A few costumes needed. It's not a lot, but when you're dealing with it all at once it's gets a touch frustrating at times.