Prop creation

Clothes (and swords, and staves, and...) make the man.

To deliver the necessary visual "punch" for a pitch to investors, I want to show as much of the design esthetics as possible, both with imagery and with tangible props (as every Prop Manager will tell you, "Props make the show").

The second big challenge was getting animation to be believable. Now that was a killer. I have a whole new, well-earned respect for the animators of yesteryear! After years of brute force animation by hand, I fell upon Motion Capture, and again, it was a game-changer.

Body and Facial Motion Capture finally gave me a lighting fast way to bring 3D geometry to life. Of course, there were only the Carnegie-Mellon motion capture tests available for free (which fit my budget well), so I began working first with body motion capture rigging in 3D geometry.

Reallusion iClone brought that together for me again, in a package I could afford, and suddenly, body and facial motion began to look convincing! This was huge! I worked feverishly toward understanding how to fit motion capture into my workflow.

I soon progressed (ok, it was 2 years) to creating one or more characters in a day. Convincing characters, the kind necessary for digital doubles and animatics. Now The Sword of the Watch characters were coming together in glorious 3D!