The Vindigo
This was a really quick and dirty project completed in 11 days. I challenged myself not to get bogged down. I also forced myself to use a digital character even though the Wendigo character would have been easy to create as a puppet. Here is the film and notes on how it was made.
What is a Vindigo/Wendigo?
"In Algonquian folklore, the wendigo or windigo is a mythical cannibal monster or evil spirit native to the northern forests of the Atlantic Coast and Great Lakes Region of both the United States and Canada. The wendigo may appear as a monster with some characteristics of a human, or as a spirit who has possessed a human being and made them become monstrous. "
Wikipedia Entry
Wikipedia Entry
The Wendigo also shows up an amazing story by Algernon Blackwood.
Story Boards
The story boards for this project were easy. It just fell into place.
The Creature
I had a pretty clear idea of how the creature should look. A large man with dark (purplish) skin wearing filthy furs and a deer skull mask covering his face. Or is it a mask? I built, animated and rendered the character in Blender. The basic forms were 3d sculpted rather than traditionally modeled. The skull was textured using Blenders texture paint mode allowing painting directly onto geometry. The layers of fur cloak were modeled the same way and then a hair particle effect was added to simulate the fur. Then a skeleton was added allowing the creature to be animated. This was a simple rig since I knew I wasn't going to be animating much beyond some simple arm movements.
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This last image shows the shader being used to control blending between a raw bright specular and the diffuse map used on the skull as it was being painted.
The Wendigo model took 2 whole days to create start to finish. The character in my previous project took about 2 weeks, so I guess I'm learning :-) |
The Icon
Gear
Yet again I barely used my nice camera. The 5DMkII is an amazing camera but its also very heavy. Too heavy for my camera slider for instance. It also has a lot of controls, which is another way of saying there are a lot of ways to screw up.
I used a banged up Sony Nex5n for most of the shots in the woods. Overall I want to like this camera, but it generally lets me down. The sensor is a dirt magnet and the lack of autoexposure/focus lock when shooting video is a pain. I've heard the newer versions are better in both respects. With that said, most of the shooting fell to my Sony HandyCam. Its a basic model from about six years ago, its light, has full manual control, excellent battery life and is expendable enough to do all kinds of crazy things with. The picture isn't the sharpest but for this project where I aged the output with some noise and color shenanigans it didn't really matter.
My slider is from Neewer and cost about $40 on amazon. With a light camera you can mount the slider track on a single tripod as long as you are careful. Handy if you need to hike it down into the woods.
All the editing was done in Vegas 14 with some audio processing using Sound Forge.
I'm tempted to lash out on a really nice camcorder for my next project. Do they even still make camcorders? :-0
I used a banged up Sony Nex5n for most of the shots in the woods. Overall I want to like this camera, but it generally lets me down. The sensor is a dirt magnet and the lack of autoexposure/focus lock when shooting video is a pain. I've heard the newer versions are better in both respects. With that said, most of the shooting fell to my Sony HandyCam. Its a basic model from about six years ago, its light, has full manual control, excellent battery life and is expendable enough to do all kinds of crazy things with. The picture isn't the sharpest but for this project where I aged the output with some noise and color shenanigans it didn't really matter.
My slider is from Neewer and cost about $40 on amazon. With a light camera you can mount the slider track on a single tripod as long as you are careful. Handy if you need to hike it down into the woods.
All the editing was done in Vegas 14 with some audio processing using Sound Forge.
I'm tempted to lash out on a really nice camcorder for my next project. Do they even still make camcorders? :-0
Location, Location, Location...
The Russian orthodox church and grave yard used in the film are part of Fort Ross, an actual Russian fur trading camp in Sonoma county. Its a fantastic little park in gorgeous part of the world and you should visit. It's not haunted by cannibalistic ghost monsters, I promise. Just don't be there when the sun goes down.
The woods were shot in Portola Valley Redwoods an Los Trancos Park.
The woods were shot in Portola Valley Redwoods an Los Trancos Park.