Official Martian Gothic movie website

Martian Gothic 1

Martian Gothic part 1 is the first stop motion movie ever made by me. I didn't knen the basics of stop-motion well so that's why I choose the shoot the entirely movie at 6 frames per second. It was simple to work with and fast to animate.
Over two day's I've shoot all the shots for the movie and started with recording the voices and editing.
I've used a webcam for filming it was a Logitech Quickcam Pro 3000, it was the best webcam in that time, it was mid of 2002 and those webcams were completle new and high-end.
Originally the movie was shoot on a resolution of 640/480 but it is released on 320/160.

Filming in the corridors was probably the most difficult. The narrow corridors where your hand just fits, but only without shaky hands. Personally I think I've done a job well animating in those corridors. Exept for the figs they should not slide but walk, but I realy had no idea what was the best movement to animate walking figs.
The effects are poor, for example the original opening sequence is replaced with a more ugly shot.

The still on the left is the one that is being used in the movie, the right one looks much more nicer, I like this one very much, it's my fafourite shot. The reason why it was not used in the movie was because it was shoot at a resolution of 320/240. A day after I shoot this sequence I've bought a new cam and so I decided to go on with the new cam at 640/480 because I was more sure of better results. But insteed of that, I saw that it was very dissapointing at all.

Martian Gothic 2

The second part supposed to have more vfx, but it had only a nice cgi intro sequence and that was all. The rendering's where fast done cos the movie resolution setting was 320/136. My first attempt on the cinevision aspect ration 2.35:1. The apspect was nice a nice choice I think.
I feel that there is not much to say about the effects or any other related topics on making this part.

For chromakeying I choose a blue background which was a good choice.

I was pretty happy with the chromakeying results in this part. All these shots were very carefully prepared and tested over and over again till I got the result that would satisfact me. I didn't used After Effect for this but I just did that in Premiere. I'm not a real fan of AE and besides that Premiere is much better in chromakeying.

Martian Gothic 3

For the first time a movie shoot with my new system. I've used a MiniDv cam and my brand new comp which I wanted to buy since October 2002 and had finally arrived in March 2003. This was also my first trail on 15 fps animating. It looks good and smooth but it cost a lot of time before you got a second recorded.

Since June 2002 I was thinking about which effects will be included in part 3. There were many good ideas but mostly of then were to complicated to do. For example I got an idea where you saw the crew onboard their spaceschip, the crew was supposed to floath in there. Zero gravity was what I really wanted to show in the movie. So after many months figuring out how it should be shoot I've decided to skip the effect. But not totally, in the beginnig of the movie you see this shot.

The background was made in 3ds Max 4.2. The left image shows the models in wire frame, in the middle you see the unmapped shapes. The final render with all textures and shadow lights had satistafacted me. The foreground was shoot with a miniDv camera. These cam's do have a high quality pixelage, so such shots should be created with no problem, but it was not that easy. I get still to much reflection, I kept the fig so far as I could from the backdrop. It looks good but not the way as I had it in my head.

The opening of the movie supposed to start in the past. A group of local villagers is at work near the mountains. When they look up in the sky they notice a strange object raising up the mountains.

For the begining I knew that this will be a multi layer shot. The background is in my fafourite proggie.
The foreground I shot not with a bluescreen, I didn't wanne chromakeying, cos I wanted to compose the whole shot in 3ds max and win some time, but mostly I wanted to have an optimal result which could be only reached by doing this in split sceen. So I've made a masker and could make the frame transparent.
The fire effect in the foreground I've generated also in max.

For the movie I had only two lamps, I like to work with a small amount of lights, cos you save much place and heat, especialy in the summer. I'm a fan of boucing the light.

I've placed one lamp behing the grey minifig, that way I received good backlight. With a piece of white paper which I've placed in front of the fig I've made nice soft front light. My second lamp I've pointed on the overall of the set and gained a nice natural atmospheric light.
Normal light sheme should be build from three lamps. You need one for front light, this can be front a overall of the set. Backlight is a must for video or film, cos you produce 2d images. With backlight you create a depht in the image and gain a 3d look. The third lamp you use as infill light, make sure that this one is producing less more light as the front light.

Rotoscoping in the movie was very easy, but it wouldn't be if I did know how to do it in 3ds Max. Max is my primary software for doing vfx. I don't like AE cos it looks so confusing for me. However it's a proggie made for such things. In Max you can do the same things you only have to know how and have some more time is spare.

The glowing effect is a standart plug-in in Max. I used three poly's and placed them carefull over the grey buttons. I gave them red colour with the glowing effect and animated when they will appear in frame.

The final sequence was totally made in Max. I was pretty sure that it was not possible to create with conventional methods.

The nice thing to know about this shot is that it was rendered in two day's on a 2400Mhz machine. 700 frames long shot with 12 passes, depth of field. The final result has made me quiet happy and become one of my most fafourite sequences that I've made during my brickfilms carriere, especially when the cams reach this stage.

CGI is becoming more populiar medium of creating sequences in movies. The software is geting cheaper and easier to use, but still you need put lot's of hours or days or even months on getting the result you want to reach. This shot took me someting like a week. watching it over and ove again and making the improvements. I just took my time.
What is cgi actually? CGI stands for "Computer Generated Imagery". Mostly you see 2d images made in a 3d modeling proggie. It is easy to make a shape, for example a box and rotate it the way you want. You can dicide it size, colour and movement by clicking with yours mice. But this making of goes not about what is cgi but how it was intergrated in the movie.

Well that's all what I want to reveal about making Martian Gothic Trilogy. I know I keep always my files saved well. Maybe soon I'll write here more about some effects.
Thanks for your attention.