GoRocco

This weekend I went to the San Diego Comic-Con to hang out with some friends, but I really went to meet Ray Harryhausen. He was there signing books, DVDs, figures and comics that were for sale. I went first thing in the morning to the booth he was at, and I was amazed that there weren’t more people lined up to meet him.

Harryhausen was one of the handful of heroes to my friends and myself as we made our way into the SFX and animation industries. We used to study his films on super 8 in search of the magic secrets of animation. When I met him, and shook his hand, I was still hoping that some of that magic would rub off. Ray Harryhausen inspired at least two generations of filmmakers with his superhuman efforts; there must be some sort of medal available for a man that animated seven skeletons fighting live actors, in an era when video tap wasn’t even a concept, let alone a reality.

After half the day wandering around the con and having lunch with friends, I went back up to my hotel room to relax, and the next thing I know I’ve got my computer on, with ZBrush loaded, and continued sculpting a CG figure of the Cyclops from 7th Voyage of Sinbad, that I had started earlier in the week. I got so involved with it, that I never did get back down to the convention that day. And by the time I couldn’t see anymore and had to call it a night, I was determined to go back to the Harryhausen booth and buy a DVD just so I could meet him again.

It’s not every day you get to meet a guy that was a one man genre, single-handedly drawing, sculpting and animating virtually every frame of film he ever worked on. And it’s not everyday you get to shake the hand that shook Willis O’Brien’s hand. So I was determined to make the most of it. Unfortunately, I was very much tongue tied, but I was at least able to tell Mr. Harryhausen how much he means to us, and the effect he had in steering us in the directions that we eventually went.

The images posted above are of a work very much in progress, it still needs much more sculpting and detailing before it’s done.

__________________
Regards,
Frank Rocco
GoRocco.com

bicc39

He is truly one of the pioneers in the industry.
Have read of the many hours spent getting just
a few perfect minutes of screen time.
Best of luck with the project.
( Ps how many years young is he now?_)

Davinci990

Man I love that skeleton fight!

Thanks for saying 'hi' n 'thanks' for us.

GoRocco

Hi,

I just looked it up in his book, An Animated Life, and Harryhausen was born June 1920, which makes him 86 whopping years old! And still going... He's currently supervising the colorization of a couple of films that are his favorites, SHE, and Things to Come, among many other projects. I hope I'm still breathing when I'm that age, let alone globe trotting to conventions and such.

__________________
Regards,
Frank Rocco
GoRocco.com

punchatz

Looking good

I had the honor of introducing at an event him when he came to Dallas, great guy.

I also drove him to his hotel, it was all I could do not to wreck. Had dinner with him and his wife. One of the best nights of my life.

The cyclops is from "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" not Jason BTW.

Greg

GoRocco

HA! You must have read my post just as I was editing it. I thought I might have gotten lucky and caught my mistake before anyone pointed it out.

It's funny, even though I watched both of them recently, in my memory those two movies have become one.

__________________
Regards,
Frank Rocco
GoRocco.com

GoRocco

Hi,

After uploading my Maya/Mental Ray renders of my Cyclops model, I noticed that the proportions are off from what it looks like in ZBrush. I know that I must be doing something wrong with the displacement exporting and importing, but this is the best that I could do so far. I also figured that the camera "lens" in Maya is distorting the image a bit, but the proportions are definitely different, most notably the nose of the character is balooning out in the Maya version.

I've been following tutorials, and pipeline pdfs, with little success, but by trial and error, mostly error, I've gotten this far.

At first I made my displacement, and obj export, at level 1, with the Multi Displacement 2 plugin, using the standard quickcode that most people seem to be using for Maya, and enlarging the size to 4096. I was having trouble dialing in the right amount of detail in Maya, boosting the alpha gain, before the ears and such would blow up like baloons.

Next, I tried making the displacement maps manually, using adaptive without the smooth option because it would make the render very soft. The adaptive looked pretty good, but the ears would collapse, with wierd triangulations.

Finally, I tried deleting the first level of geomerty, as I had read that others had success doing it that way, thus making level 2 level 1 now. The result was what I had uploaded earlier, which was pretty close, but still lacking in detail, and having somewhat cartoony proportions.

I've put together comparison images in Zbrush and Maya, hopefully they show up in this post, so you can see the difference. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

By the way, I noticed that I when I tried to upload images using Firefox it didn't work, but when I swithed to IE 7 it worked flawlessly.

__________________
Regards,
Frank Rocco
GoRocco.com

50'sKID

Yes! Someone actually doing Harryhausen! Great work, GoRocco! Cannot wait to see the final. I got to watch a Widescreen King Kong with him in Omaha a few years back and met him afterwards. That theater, one of the few remaining Cineramas, is now gone. But my memories are still alive. How about an Ymir after this? I'll be watching. 50. Oh, here is a little Harryhausen inspired shot I did for a fake Movie Poster. Beast is 10"s of Super Sculpey. Best Regards. 50.

http://

GoRocco

Hi 50's Kid,

I'm a 60's kid, myself.

I love that super sculpey reptile. I'm a big fan of the stuff. On my blog I have some shots of an RC car body I sculpted using super sculpey on top of plaster as a mold for a vacuuform. Not the best way to go about it, but I got a one off out of it, and that's all I really needed...

As for the Ymir, I was really tempted to do that one first, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the Cyclops. It shouldn't be too tuff to retrofit this model to become a Ymir since Cyclops was built on Ymir's original armature. (Thank God he kept the molds even though he decided to cannibalize the armatures for so many of his models!)

I wish I had more time to work on this ZBrush stuff. I love it. I've started taking a class so that I'll be forced to make time to continue doing ZBrush, but I can't make up my mind whether I want to do this guy as my class project, or do one of my original characters. I'm leaning towards doing an original, because there's more potential to actually do something with it than there is if I build someone else's character. So, I'll probably just work on this one when I'm procratinating from doing something else that I should be doing.

Thanks for the comment, and you're right...Laughing Is Good! (That's why I became a cartoonist!)

__________________
Regards,
Frank Rocco
GoRocco.com

50'sKID

Well, Frank, I hope you can find time for more of this. Great Blog and top Toon Work. Very WarnerBrothers-ish. You expand the horizons of ZBC. 50.

GoRocco

I've done a bit more ZBrushing on this guy, but the big breakthrough for me was rigging and posing him in Maya. I used a plugin called The Setup Machine that enabled me to rig the figure in about 15 minutes.

This is exciting, as it's the first figure that I've sculpted, rigged, and is animatable! WooHoo!

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Regards,
Frank Rocco
GoRocco.com

wckedsunny

hey buddy where to get that plugin how muchw ill it cost ?

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GoRocco

Hi,

The Setup Machine plugin for Maya costs $99 US, and can be found at the Anzovin Studios website.

They have a bunch of videos there that demonstrate the workflow, and they have some sample rigs that you can download and check out.

They also have a version for Animation Master.

__________________
Regards,
Frank Rocco
GoRocco.com

Plakkie

Hey Frank,

congrats on the first sculpted and rigged model! And what an inspiring concept for that model. I didn't grew up with Harryhausen, but I've seen his work and although outdated, it still looks great somehow.
Good job on this one, I see you're a fast learner, so go on and make our jaws drop!