I think there might be some confusion about what was rendered as cgi and what wasn't. Technically, only the four airplane exterior shots (two in the beginning and two near the end,) were set up, animated and rendered in LightWave 3D. My intention was to cel shade the airplane but I didn't have time to set this up properly. Instead, I used a stepped gradient in the diffuse channel and basic edge outlines to get a 'semi-cel-shaded' look. Then I enhanced the outline in comp by beefing up the alpha channel. The background is a just a quick Photoshop painting of sky and clouds, which I knocked out and re-used for nearly all the scenes in the show, both 2D and 3D scenes. That's pretty much it. Rendering these four scenes took only a few minutes each on a singe computer--we didn't even need to fire up the render farm for this.
Everything else was set up and animated in Anime Studio Pro 9.5.
The backgrounds were painted by Alisa in Photoshop using found photographs from an actual 727 and composite images from a flight simulator as visual reference. I specifically wanted to feature a 727 interior within reasonable accuracy but the problem was that photographic reference did not exist for the camera angles depicted in my storyboard. The approach we took was the easiest, quickest and cheapest way we could think of to do it, and Alisa had all the background paintings done within a couple of weeks. She created the paintings in layers (i.e., sky, cabin, seats, galley, cockpit, etc.) Because Anime Studio Pro recognizes Photoshop layers, I was able to import them as individual ASP layers, which made it really easy to achieve parallax and DOF effects. (I think this is what's being confused as CGI, but these effects are really just simple multi-plane tricks using flat still images in ASP.) The seats in all the shots were animated using only the layer transformation tools in ASP. (Yes, there are a lot of layers in the wide shot of the passenger cabin.)
The cityscapes were handled the same way: we used Google Earth to find the aerial views of Los Angeles that matched what I sketched in the storyboard, and created layered paintings in Photoshop based on the screen caps.
A couple of shots were broken out from ASP using Layer Comps (another awesome feature!,) which were then assembled in Digital Fusion. This was to get specific lighting effects that I couldn't get from ASP alone. The POV shot of the plane flying into the Library Tower in downtown LA is a good example. (Oh, wait--I almost forgot--the 'split-flap' title animation was completely created in Fusion. I guess that was the one other exception besides the airplane shots that wasn't done in ASP.)
None of the characters are cgi of course--just rigged with bones for general body and hair animations and Smart Bones to drive a few morphs (like Toullie's scarf and jacket.) Faces and hands used Switch Layers. The tricky bit was that some scenes required bones to transition to frame-by-frame and back to bones, or have them work simultaneously in the same character. Being able to keyframe the visibility of layers made this possible. The image of Sergeant in the second airplane shot (the cgi scene,) was drawn in Anime Studio and mapped to a transparent polygon.
Have I mentioned how much I like ASP's dynamics engine? The secondary animation on the push cart and the items on the cart was purely an afterthought. I did this only after I learned out how easy it would be to setup using ASP's dynamics.
I'm not saying that making 'Scareplane' was easy work (it wasn't!), but it really wasn't difficult work either. That's because we front loaded the project with a lot of careful planning to make sure things moved along quickly and smoothly once we entered full production mode. IMO, preproduction is the most important stage in any production, if you intend to get things done quickly and inexpensively. (Especially if you also have a day job and a family to raise.)
So, anyway, the use of cgi was actually fairly minimal in the project and used mainly because it saved me a lot of time and trouble for a few relatively straightforward shots. Also, I didn't want to spend a lot of time with 3D because my goal in this project was to learn how to use the 2D tools in ASP.
If I'm not too busy and if enough people are interested, I was thinking of putting together a 'walk-through' video to show the setups for some of the shots. If there's anything in particular you'd like to see, let me know.
G.
Has a very satisfying whimsical/morbid imaginative feel that reminds me a little of old "calvin & hobbes" adventures. Would like to see more of your work, thanks for sharing.
