The Starfish Ninja

Pistol Shrimp

2012-01-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

Today one of my students introduced me to the Pistol Shrimp. These guys have a big claw that builds up pressure and then snaps shut so fast that they blast water at a victim fast enough to atomize the water and create a bubble as hot as the surface as the sun that shoots out at 60 mph! Apparently Mantis Shrimp do something similar. I wouldn't have believed it if you described it to me, so check out the video below.

This first video has some wonderful dramatized sound effects.

Thanks, Pat, you can bet there will be one of these babies in the show. Amazing!

Desktop Bkg - Tanked

2011-11-27T21:40:00.001-08:00

Desktop Background - 1920 x 1080 .jpg

For those of you eagerly awaiting, here's an image for your desktop, in full HD!!! Show your support and download away.

Chugging along...

2011-11-21T13:13:00.001-08:00

The trailer is in a great place now. We're pretty much done with all animation, and it came out great! Lighting and compositing is our main focus now, and we're making steady progress in all areas.

Above is an in-progress preview of one shot, animated by Elissa Peterson, lit and comped by Christopher Tichenor, crab rigging by David Suroviec, crab textures by Janine LaBar, particulate matter by Christopher Lee.

I can't wait to share all we've been working on. Stay tuned!

Progress Update!

2011-08-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

So after a couple years of focusing my energy on my family and paid work (with little to no progress on this project) I'm happy to say that in a couple months all visual elements should be finished for the teaser trailer!

(color key from teaser trailer)

I will be directing the Group Project class at Ex'pression College in the coming term where the students will focus on building assets, shading, animating, lighting, and compositing the final piece. This should mean great things for the quality of the project overall and I'm excited to get started. I'll post the highlights on this blog once the class is under way. As soon as I find a composer and get this thing all edited together, look for the trailer here on this blog in the coming months.

So to the exactly six people who follow this blog, stay tuned. It's gonna happen. It's gonna be awesome.

Progress Update

2009-12-15T00:35:00.000-08:00

Here's a screencap of a compositing test from the other day to prove that I'm still working on the trailer.
This month I have a good bit more time than usual to focus on this project, which is enjoyable. I've just about finished the first shot's animation (several schools of fish) and am doing a few test renders of the ocean surface and lightning flashes to find my workflow for this project. I have animation done for a few other shots, and a whole lot of in-progress ones, so I look forward to it all coming together a bit more this month. Anyway, let's hope for more regular updates in the coming weeks!

Starfish Ninja spotted in Golden Gate Park

2009-10-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago, my wife and I took our son to the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, where I was secretly doing research for this project. Underneath the rain forest is the aquarium where I snapped the below photos. They have a tank where you can reach in and "pet" the starfish and sea urchins. Little Joe didn't have any interest in reaching into the tank. When I took a look at what was just beneath the surface, I understood why.

Aaaaand we're back.

2009-10-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

Hey, sorry for the lack of posts recently. I've been busy with a couple of other projects, one of which is a video game I worked on...College Lacrosse 2010 for X-Box. But that project has wrapped, so I'm back to working on this trailer, and excited to be back.

To give you something more to look at, I present you...the Giant Squid. Pretty much every underwater action flick needs a huge, bad-ass giant squid. And given that our hero starfish is about 1/10 the size of the squid's eye, should make for an interesting match.

P.S. This isn't an actual render, just a screencap of the model from Maya with a quick paint-over in photoshop. It'll look much nicer in the trailer.

That's all for today, I'm getting another post ready which I'll fire out in a few days. Until then...wha-cha!

Fishies!

2009-04-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

And even more proof that I'm working on this thing! Here are some fish I just finished. I'll be throwing them in the background of a few shots so they don't need much detail. Fun little guys. I enjoy imagining what voices they'd have. What do you hear?

Anemenemeny

2009-04-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

early anenome test

I've been hesitating to rig these anenomies, due to all the joints needed for the tendrils. And then yesterday the new Blender release candidate went online, which presented a solution.

Etch-A-Ton: Blender's armature sketching feature

There's a fantastic new feature called Etch-a-Ton that allows the user to draw joints onto a model, and it places the joints correctly inside the volume of the mesh. Since I'm animating this project in Maya, I laid out the joints and exported the models and bones as a .fbx, which I could bring into Maya, ready for rigging. Check out these videos to see some of the other neat uses for this feature such as rig retargeting.

Auto Fish Rig test

2009-02-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

A while back I was experimenting on setting up simple fish rigs to put in the background of a few shots in the trailer. I was looking for a setup where I would only have to pull a single control around to animate the whole fish. This would make them very fast to animate to an acceptable level so I can spend my time polishing the character animation. The preliminary results do leave something to desired, but I thought I'd share my first proof of concept.

For the more technical readers, the fish's deformation is driven by sets of dynamic hair curves generated in maya. Those curves drive spline IKs on the joints to which the meshes are skinned. Once the trailer is released, I'll take some time to go more into a few of the interesting rigs that Dave Suroviec and I designed for this project.

And lastly, I added a little widget on the right side of this blog for those of you who actually follow this thing. So I can get a better idea of how many of you are out there, take your clicking finger over to the FOLLOW THIS BLOG link and show your ninja spirit.

The starfish thanks you. And then disappears in a poof of shimmering smoke.

Sets! part 1

2009-02-06T00:28:00.000-08:00

Here it is, probably the most painfully simple set in the trailer. The grass in the test render is a bit overwhelming at this point, but that's what tests are for. So, yeah, go ahead and guess what you think will be happening in this shot, or just wait for the trailer to come out.

And as a side note, some of you may recognize the distant zen rocks from an assignment I did back in college. What can I say, smooth stacked rocks please me.

Desktops

2009-01-25T15:56:00.000-08:00

Remember when .GIFs weren't afraid to show themselves as such? I sure do.

Makes me think back to playing those great Lucas Arts adventure games. Here are some simple desktop backgrounds in all their 8-bit glory.

1024..........1280............1440 widescreen

1024..........1280............1440 widescreen

enjoy!

Color Keys

2009-01-18T14:54:00.000-08:00

Here are a few color keys from the opening sequence of the trailer. Currently I'm working out some issues with the color script, and getting into actual animation, and modeling props and sets as they become necessary. I swear there is some method to this madness. I should have some neat sets to share over the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that!

Shark Week!

2009-01-12T10:25:00.000-08:00

...that's what this week has been for me. I've been taking some time to texture these shark models I whipped up a while back. Here are some quick renders, nothing fancy.

As a young boy there was pretty much no better time to be alive than on shark week. I can remember sneaking out of my bedroom and commando crawling around the house in my footie-pajamas to hide under the kitchen table where I could listen to all the chompin' sharky goodness I could stand...until my parents would find me and put me back to bed. Thank you Discover Channel. Thank you.

Tech Specs

2008-12-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd share some technical stats about the starfish trailer, for those who might be interested. This project will be my first in HD! And while I'm excited to see the final piece in all it's 720p glory (1280 x 720 pixels), I'm curious to see if I end up needing to buy another hard drive to store it. So at 24 fps and about 1 min 40 sec in length, multiplying by 4 for the number of average render passes I expect per shot, it should only take about 10,000 images to make this thing. Hopefully. Ha.

As far as software is concerned, the animation and rendering are being done in Maya, but the bulk of the modeling and texturing is done in Blender because I find that it's faster to model with and the sculpting tools are second only to zbrush. I'm also playing with the idea of compositing the shots in blender as well. To be honest, with all the recent improvements and some great features on the way, I'd probably be doing the whole thing in Blender if I was starting out now. Free software that's good is always a plus. And the whole thing will be edited together in Final Cut Pro on my happy little macbook pro.

Before I forget to post this, I want to share a fun glitch I had a few weeks ago in Maya:

I was pretty psyched that I was able to screen cap it before my computer crashed completely, but for half a minute, I got to see all these brightly colored rays emitting from the starfish. He must have been kicking some serious ass.

If you want to see an early test of caustic lighting check out this post from my secret lab.

That's all for now, stay tuned for more artwork...

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-23T15:59:00.000-08:00

This week's post will be a short one. I hope everyone has a great holiday season this year and a wonderful 2009!

Cheers,
Joe

Preproduction Artwork

2008-12-17T11:16:00.000-08:00

Here are a few studies I did to get a sense for color and atmosphere. The early development process can be a lot of fun because of the endless possibilities. Hope you enjoy!

Ninjas!

2008-12-09T20:44:00.001-08:00

The starfish certainly isn't alone in his underwater world. Here are some other ninjas. Are they friend or foe?

Below is an animation test I did earlier in 2008, ramping up for this trailer and solving technical questions, and most importantly I was beginning to figure out how these ninjas move.

See it larger.

Starfish Sketches

2008-12-05T11:18:00.001-08:00

Long before he existed in 3D, the starfish crept into my sketchbooks and scrap paper, and wiggled his way onto napkins at restaurants. There was a six month period where I was not physically able to sketch anything but doodles of tiny starfish ninjas. Here are a few of those veeery early drawings.

Introduction

2008-11-30T22:28:00.000-08:00

First off, hello, my name is Joe Daniels. And I'm crazy about animated storytelling. I've set up this blog for you to track the progress on my latest personal project...The Starfish Ninja (mock teaser trailer).

Don't want to give too much story away at this point, but it's a fast-paced action/adventure story about the responsibility of awesomeness. The starfish is thrust on a quest that will take him to dry land, distant waters, and the murky depths of the sea.

I see it as Finding Nemo meets Samurai Jack and a bit of Braveheart. Or something like that.

I've been silent about the project as I've been developing it over 2 years of spare time, but no more! Currently, I'm moving steadily toward the animation stage of production on the trailer, so there will be lots to share. Expect weekly updates and behind the scenes junk, or at least related ramblings. So, yeah, stay tuned, subscribe to the rss feed, and get ready for underwater ninja-ness. Wha-cha!

Coming Soon

2008-02-16T21:56:00.000-08:00

A new hero has been born. Look for him in early 2009.