Noah

That next week, we wrapped up the pre-flood people with good ol' Noah. Enoch had Methuselah, and Methuselah had Lamech before God took Enoch. Not long after that, Lamech had a son. He called him Noah, saying “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall brings us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” (Gen. 5:29) That seems to have happened in Gen. 8:21.

Man had become extremely corrupt in God's sight, and He determined to destroy the earth. He told Noah to make an ark. The flood He was bringing would destroy everything on earth, but He would establish His covenant with Noah and his family. Here's how Noah responded: Noah obeyed.

Noah's obedience was pretty important, wouldn't you say? I'm personally very grateful he decided to listen to what God told him to do and do it. Things have a funny tendancy of working out better that way.

The other thing I wanted the guys in my group to pay attention to is this word covenant. It shows up a lot. In Noah's story, God made two. The first was protecting Noah and his family in the Flood. The second was that He would never again destroy all the earth with a flood. God set a rainbow as the sign of this covenant. I like the way the Bible words it, “I have set My bow in the cloud...” (Gen. 9:13a). It's not just any bow, it's His bow. When I read Revelation 4:3, I find a rainbow surrounding the throne, and I remember this story.

So, let's see what this obedience of Noah's probably looked like. Hint: It looks like a lot of hard work. Here's a quick animation cycle of a character hammering a nail into the ark. I set all the curves on “cycle post-infinity,” so it's going to take him a while.

*Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

Enoch

The next guy listed in Hebrews 11 is Enoch. Originally, I planned to skip him, but one of the other leaders needed a catch-up week with her group, so he ended up on the schedule for the other groups.

Enoch was a part of the line descending from Seth, the son Adam and Eve considered a replacement for Abel. When Seth became a father, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. Four generations later, Enoch was born. When Enoch's son Methuselah was born, Enoch walked with God for 300 years, and then God took him. Enoch never died (quite the contrast after talking about Abel).

What stood out to me when I was preparing this one is the legacy of faithfulness it seems Enoch was a part of. His great, great grandfather, Seth, definitely seemed to live by faith, as Seth's older brother Abel had. The generations between Seth and Enoch also probably lived by faith—all of them were still around when Enoch came on the scene. It reminded me of the examples my parents and grandparents set for me, and the examples I and the other leaders try to set for these kids.

The night Enoch was supposed to be covered was pretty rough. It gets that way sometimes. I'll spare you the details, but it meant only two guys heard about Enoch. These two are the smallest and youngest guys in the age group. They are also the biggest leaders. They are good examples for the rest of us, myself included, so I told them Enoch's story, challenged them to continue walking by faith, and we all went home.

Enoch's life is defined by the verb “walk,” so instead of a sketch, I figured I ought to do a walk cycle (good practice). The important parts of Enoch's “walk” are the parts that can't be animated, of course, but this slow, leisurely stroll should suffice. I had the rig walk off-screen so, like Enoch, at the end of his walk....he's gone. 

         *Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

Cain & Abel

Cain and Abel's story is where the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin suddenly become horrifically real. At the appropriate time, each brought his offering to sacrifice to the Lord. Cain gave a portion of his produce; Abel gave the firstborn of his flock. God accepted Abel's sacrifice but not Cain's.

I explained it to the kids this way: if you have one hundred dogs, and you are going to give one of them to the Lord, do you choose the one that sleeps in your bed at night? That's essentially what Abel did. His outward actions demonstrate his inward heart attitude.

Cain's heart attitude, on the other hand, went from bad to worse. Not only was his sacrifice rejected, but he let sin take a hold of him, became enraged, and killed his brother. What a shock that must have been! Death is horrible now, when we're used to it—but Adam and Eve had never seen it before. It's horrible now, when children are burying their parents—but these parents buried their child. For the first time, Abel's name made sense: “Vapor”—that's all it was. I brought a can of air freshener to use as a visual aid for the kids (best smelling lesson ever, by the way): “Life is like [squirt] a vapor....did you miss it? Here it comes again [squirt]. That quick [squirt]. -That's how long Abel had to live by faith....[squirt]....That long.”

Abel made it count. His name is first on the list of men and women who lived by faith (and first on the list of men and women killed or tortured for their faith). His sacrifice of his firstborn lamb points forward to the time when God would send His Lamb to be the sacrifice for all our sins.

This sketch is in a bit of a different style for me and not the exact moment I expected myself to depict. Anticipation...

Adam

Kind of got off to a shaky start with this first lesson. I think I had a tough time trying to figure out what to say about Adam. Adam isn't on that list in Hebrews 11 of men and women who lived by faith. The chapter skips him and starts with his son Abel. I think that made it a bit more difficult.

That difficulty, combined with the fact that it was the first night back, made the lesson long and labored, but somehow it resonated with these kids (mostly boys). Adam failed to take responsibility for himself and his family, twice. He failed when he and his wife ate the fruit God told them not to eat. Then Adam failed again when God called him to answer for his actions, and he passed the blame. In the words of one young fellow in my group, “Adam should have been a man.” The consequences of Adam's sin brought sin and death to all mankind. It affected Adam's children far more than I'm sure he could have imagined. One child murdered another. I'm not sure it could get worse.

Of course, no lesson on Adam would be complete without the Gospel. Sin enters the world, and death by sin, then God points Adam and Eve forward to the day when Christ would provide the way of salvation (see Genesis 3:15). This NT verse puts it nicely: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (I Cor. 15:22)

When I thought about drawing Adam, I definitely wanted to convey the sorrow and the impact of his sin. So here he is, presumably after a hard day of work, wiping the sweat off his brow—or maybe those are tears, perhaps some of both. I think I drew him a bit too gaunt and stiff, but thinking about it, I'm sure he was exactly that in those early days after the Fall. Adam also looks kind of shaky to me—just like the lesson about him was. Maybe God will use this drawing like He used that lesson.

New Year, New Post

Every year, I pack up the car and drive home for Christmas. Home happens to be 1,000 miles away, so I find I have a lot of time to spend with God and pray. I also get a lot of time to think about the year behind me and plan the year ahead of me. It is always a profound blessing. This time, most of what I thought about was this blog. It is challenging to regularly post compelling Bible animation, especially since animation takes a considerable amount of time, and Biblical subject matter requires a considerable amount of care.

There are a lot of different things involved in the process of doing Biblical animation that could also serve an independent purpose. One of them is character studies. I've been doing a lot of those lately. I'm interested in how these people thought and acted—their hopes, their fears, their strengths, their weaknesses. I'm most interested in how they lived by faith and served God....or how they didn't. Their lives are examples for us—challenges to live for Christ.

This is a great challenge. The age group of the ministry I'm involved with at my church thought so too when planning out this year's lessons. The ministry serves the kids in the neighborhood around my church. Our idea was based on Hebrews 11, where we have a list of men and women who lived by faith and were examples for us. We decided to talk about these men and women who lived by faith and throw in a few that didn't—let the kids discern the difference. It has made a difference in them and in us, their leaders.

This is a Biblical animation blog, so I'd like to add some artwork to the character studies. It's been refreshing to spend a few hours studying a person and turning it into a 15 minute lesson—immediate application. This is such a difference from the couple of years I usually spend studying one guy and the people around him (like Nebuchadnezzar). It's also quite beneficial, though it will definitely be less in depth.

When that ministry started up last fall, we began by talking about Adam. My plan is to share some of what I learned, what we talked about with the kids, the things that resonated with them, and add some artwork to it as well. Character sketches are the most obvious thing to add to character studies. Beyond that....we'll see what happens.

The most important part of each lesson with the kids is to point them toward Christ through that person's story. That's also the most important part of this blog.

So, Happy New Year! I hope this year is off to a great start for you. I hope it's even better by the end, and if this blog can be a part of that, well, then it'll be even better for me too.

Biblical Concept Art - Amalekite Soldiers

I haven't forgotten about this blog--I've just been sneaking around working on stuff, not feeling ready to reveal it all just yet.

This time around, I've taken a much slower pace. One reason is I'm not doing this for school, or even for a client, so I can slow down and make sure I do it right.

Outside of the realm of Nebuchadnezzar, you have to do a lot more detailed research. At the same time, I've been growing as an artist, as a Christian, and as a student of the Word, so I'm looking more intently at things I breezed past and missed before.

THE AMALEKITES

Continuing the recent trend, here is some concept art about another Gentile nation: the Amalekites.

The Amalekites are perhaps the most despised group of Canaanites, because they were the first to attack Israel. Every time the Bible mentions an Amalekite, that Amalekite is doing evil.

When God states that He will utterly destroy a nation, finding reference is quite literally impossible! So, you just have to make something up, and that's exactly what I did.

It seems weird depicting a nation that God set Himself so strongly against, but it is necessary to depict the stories they're in. In my mind, this nation, like so many others, serves the purpose of revealing something about the Israelites and about God in His dealing with them. He didn't want these guys left in the Promised Land to reek havoc and destruction on His people.

When think of the Amalekites, I think of my own sin. It is destructive like the Amalekites were, and I am foolish for not always viewing it that way.


However, when I see such a despicable and wicked people group, I also think of God's overpowering mercy. My Bible reads that the blood of Christ will ransom people from every tribe and tongue and nation (Rev. 5:9). "Every" includes the Amalekites.


One Amalekite, perhaps more--perhaps many, many, many more--will stand among the ransomed multitudes and forever worship the Lamb who's blood has secured their pardon...

...And perhaps inform me this design wasn't even close.

Bible Concept Art - Philistine Soldier

Here's a little concept art created from my ongoing Biblical animation project, which is still yet to be revealed. This is my concept for a generic Philistine soldier. Most of my inspiration came from depictions of Philistines on Egyptian reliefs.

I think it would be a lot of fun to animate this soldier. They seem like they would move and fight a lot like a typical Greek soldier. This soldier would also be carrying a spear, which, for whatever reason, wasn't depicted in this particular image (probably to showcase the sword design).

Philistines are an important people group to be familiar with to understand the events in the Old Testament. They were constant enemies, oppressors, and even seducers of Israel, and many men of faith rose up by faith to face them.

According to my research, they were also rather short. Well....most of them, anyway....but that is a story for another time...

Nebuchadnezzar Film Online!

Well, after all this time, you're finally going to get to see Nebuchadnezzar. I added the film to my website today. Check it out here: http://danielanimation.com/animations.html . Many thanks to all the people who helped with this project, and I look forward to whatever future Biblical animation projects the Lord has in mind to bring my way.

Enjoy the film, and check out the other new additions to this website.

New Website Online!

I'm pleased to report that my newly designed website is now online. The new address is the same as the old: http://danielanimation.com/. Check it out, let me know if you have any valuable feedback, and enjoy!

Nebuchadnezzar is not on the new website for its launch, but look for it in the not-to-distant future. The focus of this iteration of the website is to attract clients for freelance work, but I am continuing to work on Biblical animation in my spare time, and I even hope to eventually develop my business progressively more and more towards the place where I can do Biblical animation full time.

Thank you for sticking with this blog during the time when there's not a lot of new Biblical animation work being posted. As I mentioned in the previous post, that is soon to change. Look forward to this upcoming project. It takes my Biblical animation to a whole new level.

The Story of the Pachitope

I’m sure that you’ve noticed the little animal I’ve got in my demo reel, but may not know what it is. This animal does not belong to any Bible story, or even to the animal kingdom itself for that matter, yet there’s something to him that makes me think that maybe, just maybe, he does in fact belong in this blog.

So, you’re probably asking, “What is it anyway?” I don’t know either; I made it without really having any plan or reference. When I asked my high school biology teacher to figure out what it should be called, he wrote back that it appeared to him to be a combination between an elephant, a rabbit, and a deer or antelope. Thus, he figured: PACHiderm, rabbIT, antelOPE = PACHITOPE. That’s the story of how the pachitope got it’s name, now for the story of how the pachitope came to be:

Here is the one and only one place where the pachitope has anything to do with Nebuchadnezzar: this story took place somewhere in the middle of making my senior film. One day, in my art history class, the professor chose to show us a seriously disturbing film that I still don’t understand, and don’t ever intend to understand—it was probably an experiment in film’s potential as a torture device. This film reminded me of the worst experience of my life in quite a strong manner. That was more than enough to give me an unbelievably bad day, for sure. Later that evening, I had already decided not to do any homework for at least the rest of the night, all things considered, yet, somehow, I had this strong, inexplicable desire to be productive. In my strange logic, I figured I could justify doing something so long as it wasn’t homework, after all I was supposedly taking the night off.

So I sat down at the computer, launched Maya, and within 2 or 3 hours, I had modeled this creature. Again, no plan, no reference, no intention of actually doing anything serious that would ever be worth anything, but God saw something different. (I think there was one sketch that I made during the earlier part of that class that looks like an earlier version of this thing.) I also did fear that I’d never be able to look at this thing without remembering the really bad experience of that day, but, again, God saw something different. The next morning I worked on UV mapping him, and then set him aside. Over the course of my time home for all the holidays (SCAD’s schedule is really awesome, allowing you to go home before Thanksgiving and not getting back in session until after New Year’s), I found him again and resumed this project. I textured him and started rigging him. My professor in my portfolio class saw him among my other work and really took a liking to him. Now, this little unintentional creation is my logo for all the stuff that gets send/shown to prospective employers. So far, I haven’t met one person who doesn’t like this little guy—if you find one let me know. There just seems to be something about him.

So what is the thing that God apparently saw with this pachitope that makes it so special? Well, I can only think of one thing (though it does seem to have some pretty solid appeal from a design standpoint). We all have trials, we all have storms which come and start raging in our lives—storms that, as the disciples thought, are too big to handle—and you’d be right, many of these are God-sized storms. That’s why you need to allow God to come and deal with them. He comes to the front of the boat, says, “Peace be still,” and you can kiss that storm goodbye, even if the tough circumstances themselves still remain. Also, if you belong to Christ, all things work together for your benefit, remember this (Romans 8:28). Had there been no storm for me, I can safely say there would be no pachitope either. We've got to just hold out for all the pachitopes of our trials. And that’s the story of the pachitope.

A New Year, A New Post

It certainly has been far too long since I’ve posted anything new. Since the last post, I finished my degree, graduated, and have been unleashed on the job market, which is definitely less than ideal at present, but God is good and reigns over even this difficult time. Over this time in looking for work, I’ve spent time further developing the skills I developed in college, which has been a good use of time as it also increases the chances of finding work. I update my website with these new things, so visit there to see all sorts of new artwork I may not necessarily post here.

As a result of the Lord’s working and people finding my website, I have gotten contacted by individuals who want me to produce Christian animation for them. These things are still in the works at the moment, so be praying, but God has worked to this effect.

The future of this blog will probably combine stories that arise in the process of producing Christian animation and might include some posts on animation-related things that are important to the process somehow. I will definitely try to post more regularly as time allows.

Demo Reel

For prospective employers, I have temporarily put my demo reel at the top of this site. Scroll down to view the actual content of the blog. Thank you.

I now have my website online: http://danielanimation.com/. It's still pretty new, so I'm going to be continually working on improving it, fixing issues, etc.,

I have updated this post with the current version of my reel, but it seems to be having some issues. You can also view my reel and it's shorter version at my website. Please do so, especially if you are having issues viewing the reel here on Blogger.

As of March 12th, I have finished all of my classes for my BFA degree! Now time for some sleep...

Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to wish all of you a Merry Christmas!

\…and yes, that is Nebuchadnezzar dressed up like Santa Claus. I guess the wisemen are getting coal this year—haha. I couldn’t resist having a bit of fun here. Interestingly enough, it may very well be that those wisemen were of Nebuchadnezzar’s nationality. The Chaldeans and Babylonians were astronomers and astrologers, who studied the stars to the point where they could determine what day of the year it was by gazing at the night sky, just like God predicted when He commanded the stars into existence, “…let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years…” (Gen. 1:14). The wisemen, in particular, studied them religiously, as they advised kings by seeking for signs and omens among the stars, though all the while missing the One who created the stars—well, that is, until this one star shone in the East…

Long, long ago, God humbled the proud Nebuchadnezzar, even to the point of insanity, in order to break him for his own sake so that he might come to know God. 600 or so years later Christ, being God, choose to humble Himself, even to the point of death, breaking Himself—not for His sake—but for ours, that we might come to know Him.

This Christmas, remember that the same God who gave Nebuchadnezzar all his glory and took it all away in order to establish Nebuchadnezzar is the same God who set aside His own glory and came to earth to be with lowly man. He has given us the invitation to come to know Him and someday sit at His table, paying the full price Himself.

Faithfulness & Finishing

The film is finished! (-apart from a number of tweaks and fixes, of course.) This fall has been a whirlwind of activity, as I had to have the film finished for class. Having just passed through all of that, I can't help but remember where I was one year ago--before I even created this blog. That fall, God put this desire in my heart, causing me to reason that this was what I needed to do and that was the time I needed to learn how to do it. I had no idea what I was doing all term, and everybody (including me) knew it, yet God had purposed this and planned out several things that kept me at it.

God put the spotlight on Nebuchadnezzar early on--actually having me do a project in an earlier class on him. Before long, my secular professor became fixated on the character of Nebuchadnezzar--thinking that he was too interesting to pass up. Another big encouragement was from godly individuals at the church that I had just started going to that term. More godly people from that church, including the pastor, have continued to be encouraging. Actually, God also had three individuals at that church fill some critical parts in the production. I decided put the Lord in the credits under "Special Thanks to..." mainly because He's done so much I couldn't figure out any other single spot to put Him. I can't thank Him enough for all of that, or for how much my skill and ability have grown just working with His guidance.

These pictures you see are frames from the actual film, though some may be enhanced later when I fix a few things. I do want to point out a few things about these frames, as God has continued to bless and be faithful. First of all, as you can see, Neb has a brand new bed, and it's a much more fitting bed for royalty. A Christian game design major who I met and befriended this term textured it for me. The lighting here is one of the things I'm going to work on to try and enhance. I'm trying to strike a nice balance between the soft orange glow of the candles and the soft blue of the moonlight coming in through the windows. At the moment the lighting is a bit inconsistent.

Another thing I'd like to point out is an addition to the rig that my assistant animator (one of the individuals from my church) came up with. He noted that when people are dreaming you can see their eyes darting back and forth in REM sleep, even while closed. All I needed to make this work was allow the eyelids to rotate left and right, instead of just up and down. This isn't that noticeable when he's moving all around in his sleep, but adds a nice touch.

I made a slight addition to the dream so when the stone enters the scene, the sky darkens, referencing Matthew 24:29. Even though that detail wasn't actually mentioned, it seems reasonable that Neb would perhaps not have mentioned that if it did. The only real light in the scene during this part is the super bright light coming from behind the stone.

I ended up having a challenge I didn't anticipate with the visual effects for the statue's destruction. My visual effects guy found himself so bogged down with work that he was unable to do it. He told me this around midterm time, and, by the grace of God, I was able to figure out how to do particle effects with Maya in less than a week. The VFX guy's reaction to the effects shot was "you've got to show me how to do that sometime." This frame is from the start of the visual effects. It cuts to show the whole statue being vaporized and blown away in the wind. As an added bonus, the statue seems to turn towards the direction the stone was coming from--as if it is giving honor to the Lord in its final moment.

At the end of the term, I watched as the music that my music guy composed (he's also from my church) and the visual part of the film synced up near perfectly without us actually doing the necessary work to make it that in sync. As he said, "God did that." I then watched as another person from my church and another friend of mine came to record some of the brass parts of the music. Again, things happened that leave you with no other choice than to say, "God did that," (and the people He put on all these tasks did excellent). Later, I showed the film to the professor who taught me how to animate, who also happens to be a Christian. He gave me great advice on what to fix and expressed interest in wanting to see me do the next part of the story--the one with all the other characters I modeled. God puts nothing to waste--I was wondering were those guys would come back into the picture.

This definitely isn't the end of this blog, nor is it the end of my pursuit of Biblical animation. Stay tuned for more.
:)

Rigging by Faith (Which Sure Beats Doing it by Plain, Dumb Luck)

It’s been a while since my last post—that’s because I’ve been rigging this whole time, and if you notice in my last post, I had been rigging then too. Rigging is the process of making your character model ready to animate. You have to add in all the moving parts and make sure that the right parts of the model move with the right parts of the little digital skeleton you make.

I started the rigging in my Senior I class, in the spring. I then had to keep working on it at home all summer long. I ran into several weird problems along the way. On one occasion, I had finished the part of the rigging process I like the least, and then I noticed a problem with the file. This particular version of the rig would fatally crash Maya unless I loaded a previous version first. Well, that’s just weird. I chose to set the rigging aside and work on texturing, which is what my last post is all about. Finally I started working on the rig again, choosing to go back to the previous version and losing all the work on that part I so dreaded. Since then, problems have arisen almost constantly. I can’t even recall how many problems I’ve had, or how many times I didn’t think I could get past this stage of making the film. Here it is; this is where faith comes in to save the day. I began seriously praying before and during times when I would work on the rig. When I ran into problems, like I did the other night with another rigging issue, I had no choice but to go to the LORD. I finally said, “Well, LORD, this is Your project; You take care of this problem in Your time and in Your way.” That worked. One week ago, I finally finished rigging (with the exception of a small handful of issues that came up, like the one the other night). Naturally, guess who got the glory for getting me here? This picture you see here is the one I made as I finished the rigging, and I think that pretty much explains it.

Did I mention that God has blessed a lot during the rigging? Even with all of the issues that set me back? Well, let me point out a few cool little features on the rig. I put together a little rigging demo/thing for the body. Understand that Nebuchadnezzar’s robe will be animated later using cloth FX, which is why I turned off that layer. That’s also the reason why I’m not terribly concerned about the bunching/pinching at some of the joints—maybe I should be, I don’t know.

Well, from that you can see that he moves okay, that he has an independently rotating hip, and that his signet ring moves with his ring finger, but the really cool stuff is in the facial rigging. He can’t make any vocal/phonetic mouth shapes, and his lower lip is stuck to his jawbone, but he can still be expressive—and his mustache moves with his mouth, too. The tongue moves independently, the beard and “mullet” have controls for secondary motion, and the unibrow has controls for its various key spots. My favorite spot, though, is the eyes I can move them all around, move them independently, and control the upper and lower eyelid for each eye. Finally, my all time favorite control is the ability to dilate and constrict his pupils, which I believe will add volumes to the animation.

After the rigging was finished, I moved on to rework the animatic a bit. I intended just to add a bit of what I called “animatic blocking,” posing the character just enough to help the animatic make sense. As I worked my way through the film, I got more and more carried away. Finally, I got to the last shot in the dream sequence. At this point, the stone that struck the statue has been growing into this mountain that would encompass the whole earth, and Nebuchadnezzar is losing his footing on the shifting ground.

In this shot, Nebuchadnezzar starts falling, and the camera follows him as he falls, until he snaps awake in his bed. I really didn’t have much of an idea what I was going to do here, until it just happened like that. Thinking about it a day or two later, I realized that Nebuchadnezzar was physically falling at about the point in the vision where he would be falling in a slightly different sense. That type of symbolism is really my kind of thing—except I didn’t plan it to work out like that. So, again, this tells me that God is still an active participant in this project. Finally, at this point, I can actually see it coming together and working as a film, which excites me to no end. The fact remains that I still have no idea what God’s plan is for this film, but I don’t have to—I just know the God who has a plan for it, and that’s enough.

Glazed Bricks, Ancient Dragons, & Royal Eyeballs, Oh My!

I've been continuing to work on texturing. My attention turned to Nebuchadnezzar's bedroom. The Neo-Babylonian empire under his reign rebuilt Babylon, and became famous for their barrel vaults and glazed, blue bricks. They created mosaic-like reliefs (wall sculpture) in the bricks. The most famous example is the Ishtar Gate, which inspired my depiction of Nebuchadnezzar's bedroom.

The Ishtar Gate has several animals depicted on it. One is a lion, another is a ram (both important animals in Babylonian culture and mythology). The other is an unusual beast, a dragon. If you bring your thoughts back to Genesis and the Fall, then take a closer look at this particular animal, you may see that it's essentially a snake with legs. Now, add this to the fact that this dragon, known as a "mushushu" is the symbol of Marduk, the chief god in Babylonian religion and the patron god of Nebuchadnezzar--hence why I put it over his bed.

Nebuchadnezzar faithfully served this god, even naming his son and eventual successor "Amel-marduk" (man of Marduk). Again, playing with the same thing as I was with the wise man, even with the symbol of his god guarding his bed, he could not avoid the dream and vision from the LORD.

I believe that God used his own religion to draw Nebuchadnezzar to Himself. One of the cornerstones of Babylonian mythology is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was a mighty kind like Nebuchadnezzar. At certain times, Gilgamesh had dreams/visions given to him from the gods. These visions usually meant something really bad was about to happen--like his partner's death. Without a doubt, Nebuchadnezzar knew this story and considered it the night he had the dream. In contrast with the myth, the reality was that the one true God had something wonderful for Nebuchadnezzar. Eventually, King Nebuchadnezzar turned from worshiping Marduk to worshiping the one true God.

It has been said many times that the "eyes are the gateway to the soul." If that's the case, then much of Nebuchadnezzar's character is defined by his eyes. So far, he's been kind of bland in that department, but not any more. I decided to give him brown eyes--an obvious choice given his ethnicity. However, I wasn't satisfied to leave them pure brown. The Greek word for "rainbow" is "iris." Appropriately named, that part of the eye--the window to the soul--must be the bright window dressings, so I decided to put a bit of a "rainbow" of color into the eye--mainly, blue and green. Following the progress along from left to right, top to bottom, I kept working on the eye until I was mostly satisfied with the color. Then I moved on to the bump map, which can be seen best in the image at center, bottom. The finished eye can be seen below.

Then, of course, I put them into Nebuchadnezzar's head (that just sounds fun). Here is the textured Nebuchadnezzar with his new set of eyes--all the better to see with. I think the irises might need to be darkened a bit, as his skin tone seems to match them a bit much.

Hopefully everything will get straightened out with my computer, and I'll be able to work on the rigging again. This would be the "oh my!" section of the post, since the summer is quickly drawing to a close. All in all, though, I'm amazed at all of what God's had in store for this summer. I couldn't have fit anything else in if I had tried; it's another blessing to add to the list.

Texturing, Tiny Freckles, & Some Quick Anatomy Studies

I've been working on the rigging part of the production most of the summer so far. Rigging is the process of taking the model and making it ready for animation. This is the most difficult part of the whole process, yet, again, as God continues to bless this project, this section has also gone relatively smoothly--much easier than I expected. I have nearly completed the point weighting , which is a very substantial part of the rigging process. Then Maya started having some issues, and the file won't open without having a fatal error and crashing Maya, however, I think that the problem is due to Windows Vista's incompatibility with most software. Right now, I have my old Photoshop on the computer, so I've put a temporary hold on the rigging process and am focusing on the texturing for a pleasant change.

There are many maps to make when texturing, I started with the most obvious: the color map. Having next to no experience with texturing people, I just went at it. I started thinking too much about skin and began to look up medical anatomy stuff to learn about the veins beneath the surface of the skin. I put many of these in and then muted them down so they look like they're under the skin. If you look closely, you might be able to see a few, especially in the hands.

With the face, I remembered something I read in an illustration book at Border's years ago. The author divided the face up into thirds vertically, and labeled each one with a dominant color (top down: yellow, red, and blue). So, I applied that here. By the way, this is Nebuchadnezzar without any hair, in case you were wondering.

I went on from the veins to realize that skin has lots of tiny imperfections that give it character. I added tiny freckles all over his body, then really tiny freckles--even freckles that are lighter than the skin tone. This added so much, and I was fairly pleased, especially with the chest area here. There's a nice-looking vein on the inside edge of one of the pectoral muscles, just below the collarbone, but it's so faint now that I can't even see it most of the time. This also show's Neb's tan line. Most of this detail here won't be visible in the actual film, but this has been a great learning experience.

The hands and arms are the most crucial parts of the body to texture (other than the face, of course), and I found these a bit more difficult considering that the pair I have are very different then the ones that Nebuchadnezzar would have had, so I Googled images to find Middle-Eastern men (preferably approximately 30, like Neb in my story) and stared at their hands. This is the result. I noticed slight redness in the skin around the nail, and a slight bluish tint from the lighter flesh tone in the palm in the nails themselves.

The tough part of this for me is figuring out the balance in Nebuchadnezzar's life, between tan-producing outdoor activities and non-tan-producing indoor activities--between skin-roughening physical activities and skin-softening mental/social activities. Neb was a powerful ancient king, which demands a lot of both. Anyway, I think I was able to get at least some of that balance right. Oh, and I have found one source that suggested that his bathing rituals were basically to have slaves poor a sort of detergent rinse over him. I forgot about that, but it may make a difference in his skin.

Feel free to critique or make suggestions; it will help. Also, it's long overdue, but thanks to all of you for all of your prayers regarding this project. They truly make a difference.

Progress Update

I haven't posted anything new in a while, mainly because finals hit, and then packing and going home for the summer. Fortunately I now have Maya at home, so I can keep working and will do so throughout the summer. Here's what's been happening since the last post:

The last weekend of classes I created a 3D animatic (moving the camera around in the environment to make a really rough version of the film, even though there's little or no animation yet). This animatic ended up being drastically different than the 2D one I did in Concept Development. I kept a few things that worked, but I've known for a while that it needed work.

I discovered around Thanksgiving/Christmas that the film "Meet Joe Black" has a lot of good cinematography, and a story which, in part, is almost perfectly similar to Nebuchadnezzar's situation. This film shows a powerful man who comes face to face with Death, and has to come to terms with it as the one thing he can't control. Anyway, so with this film as reference, I chose to cut out all the narration and just head straight into the heart of the story without introduction. I figured if that's what worked in a 3 hour movie, that'd work in a 60-90 second short.

So the animatic starts with the camera entering Neb's bedroom, where he is sleeping. The camera creeps up to him, and somehow, unconsciously, he senses the camera's presence and turns away from it. The camera gets obnoxious, breaks the "180 rule" and jumps to the other side--to get back in his face. This happens again, and finally, the camera climbs over him, and looks down from above. He opens his eyes, and as he does so, you find that you are in his dream with him. The massive statue shimmers in the sunlight, as Neb is blown away by its splendor. Then Nebuchadnezzar sees something in the distance--a stone, cut out without hands, rolling towards the statue at a fast pace. The stone strikes the statue at its feet and the whole statue is crushed to dust. Neb is utterly overwhelmed as he witnesses all of this, and then the stone begins to grow. He braces himself as it swells to become a great mountain....and then he wakes up--film ends.

I ended up cutting out every character other than Nebuchadnezzar himself. That makes things easier, though I kind of feel weird having done all of that work on the other characters. The film in its current state is the best case scenario. I had hoped that I could make it so it acts as a complete short in and of itself, a trailer for a bigger piece, and a scene in that potential bigger piece, and that is exactly what I've got. Praise the Lord! He has done some much on this project, and it has been a blessing to me just to be working on it.

These images are examples of how the lighting will look; the final lighting will be better, but this at least shows where things are headed. I am also going to texture the models, so that will enhance the look even further.

Wardrobe, Props, Mouths, and Some Manly Jewelry (well not really that manly)

So, I, figuring naked Bible characters wouldn’t have much of an audience, decided to model some clothes for my characters. Logical next step, I would think.
















Anyway, so I started with Nebuchadnezzar, he being the only character whose clothes I actually have full reference for from ancient sculpture. If you Google “Nabonidus,” look at the images that come up, and you should see a carving of a guy that looks remarkably like my Nebuchadnezzar. This Nabonidus was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire. (He was the king who ruled when the regent Belshazzar saw the writing on the wall and lost the empire to Darius the Mede). I intend to have decorations like the ones on the robe textured into Neb’s robe. As for the ring on Neb’s finger, I figured, how effective could a king be without a signet ring? So, I gave him one. The signet ring’s seal will be textured in, probably as the dragon/serpent that Neb seemed to be so fond of.
















Arioch is the coolest, I just have to say. He’s sporting his Assyrian copper/bronze armor with an under-tunic/robe beneath the rows of scale/chain mail of his breastplate. He is wearing chain mail and cloth grieves (leg armor) and doesn’t have gauntlets on his arms, as these apparently were not used. His left arm sports a wood and copper/bronze buckler. His other hand will carry his spear, which is close to the height of an actual Assyrian spear.

This Assyrian flavor to Arioch makes me wonder a bit about his background. Jonah didn’t want to go preach salvation to Ninevah because of the abhorrent atrocities that the Assyrians committed against the Israelites; having seen relief sculpture documenting some of it while doing research, I can see why he hated them so much. My thoughts at the moment are that Arioch grew up there around this but somehow softened and mellowed when he joined the Neo-Babylonians. If I ever get to do the full blown story on Nebuchadnezzar, Arioch will be the guy who silently witnesses all that God is doing, and can’t help but believe as well.
















Wiseman has no reference whatsoever for his outfit, so I had to use all the rest of my research and artistic license to make an educated guess. I gave him this simple robe, but couldn’t stop there. Randomly at 4:30 in the morning, for no apparent reason, decided to keep working and give Wiz the earrings I saw on the lamassu statues (Google it and look at the “extra large images,” you’ll see what I’m referring to). The actually seem to fit him. This got me thinking, “Ah if Wiz was the wise man/sooth sayer/magician/sorcerer/ that he was, wouldn’t he adorn himself with all sorts of jewelry, particularly amulets, and the like to attempt to earn the favor of whatever gods he could?” So, not only did I give him the earrings off of the lamassu (think Mesopotamian version of angels), I also gave him a sun/flower bracelet, and central gold piece of the sun inside a crescent moon, kind of day and night idea with that one. That fits perfectly with Neb and his dream. The problem for Wiz is that he doesn’t know the One who made the day and the night.
















And that brings me to Daniel. Wiz came in to the king with all of his charms and supposed favor-bringing trinklets but failed. Daniel comes in, not with jewelry, trinklets, amulets, or even a hat or beard for that matter, but in the name of the LORD, and that made all the difference. So here is Daniel, with his plain robe, which has a more Israeli flag color scheme, further distinguishing his vastly different ethnicity from the other characters.







Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I also finished the inside of the mouths, which I hadn't done yet. The teeth and gums are compliments of my friend Grant, who also happens to be the guy with the Sprite thing from two posts ago. I tweaked his model to suit my characters and installed a mouth and tongue around it.

Now they're off to the UV mapper then on to texturing and rigging.

"Look Who We've Got Our Hanes on Now"

Well, they’re probably not Hanes, but I figure making an Egyptian loincloth to put on the characters would make viewing their models less grotesque than leaving their bodies as is. I have only modeled one detailed body before this, and the mesh got all complicated and nasty—so nasty that I never decided to rig the model. So, this was going to be a challenge.




















I tried some tutorials, making a couple of attempts this time around and kept going back to the drawing board because they didn't work. Finally, I decided to make a string of polygons around the bottom of the pectoral muscles, then another around the abs, and yet another sloping down off of the hips and going directly into the groin. From here, I added the collarbone and eventually connected all of the parts until there was just one body. Then I started the legs.
















Up until this point in the modeling process, I had been overwhelmed by how evident the Lord’s hand in this has been. I cannot model a face as good as the faces you see on this site. I cannot model a human body well, especially since anatomy/figure drawing is my weakest area as an artist—working on that. I am convinced that God has been the moving force behind my quality surge. He has also blessed with the anatomy/figure drawing in a similar fashion, and some of that is thanks to good friends He’s given me.
















When I did the legs I was frustrated and kind of went, “okay, now this is how I model.” That being said, the Lord then continued His habit of blessing the modeling, and the legs, as you can see, turned out fine. End of the day, the mesh is low-poly (good thing) and the mesh works. My professor was very impressed with the heads, now she’s impressed with the bodies as well. She thought so highly of it that she asked me if I wanted to be a modeler. I think I said something about it just needing to get done. The only part of the body I have left to model is the inside of the mouth.



















From here, it’s on to UV mapping (setup for texturing), then rigging (setup for animation). Well, when you got up this morning, I’d bet you never thought you’d be seeing King Nebuchadnezzar in his undies. If you did think that, you’re probably spending too much time chatting with me.