Did any other people work on it with you?

With the exception of the music, "Kicker" was completely produced by just me. But I would not have finished it without the discussions with and advice from friends and the people on the Newtek forum. Everyone who I thank in the credits has made a valuable contribution to the film. The music was composed by my flatmate at the time, Patrick Spitzer, and was arranged by him and myself.

On one hand, being the only one responsible for the film was great because I was completely in charge of every aspect of the film. But sometimes, when important decisions had to be made, this responsibility felt like a heavy burden, for example to decide when to leave the surfaces as they were and move onto a new phase. Having had to do this, though, was one of the most valuable lessons.

Another negative aspect of working alone was the impact on my social life. For those eighteen months I was so devoted to getting the film done that I hardly went out on weekends anymore and people stopped calling me, knowing my answer would be "Sorry, you know... my film...", anyway. Luckily this "decline" wasn't irreversible.

For the Missouri video, how did you map the singer's face to the block for his head?

Putting the faces on building block was the initial idea that I had for the video. I had the singer perform the song in front of a bluescreen filming his head from in front and then from the sides. He had to keep his head still and yet try be fairly expressive. This combination proved to be rather difficult but we (or rather he) succeeded on the third take.

I then used Eyeon's DFX+ for keying and to stabilise the video even more. The additional stabilising was necessary because otherwise his moves would have conflicted with my animation of the singer's block head.

Now I had an image sequence that was in synch with the music that I could use as a texture. The problem that occurred here was that no matter how the block figure would turn its head the singer would naturally always look straight at you which was rather irritating to say the least. The solution was pretty simple, though: I added a gradient that would make the texture more and less visible according to how much it faced the camera. Even though it's just a small thing I remember it as being one of the best moments of the production, because all of a sudden it looked right.

(QuickTime - 17.7 MB)

Did you use other band members for the other faces?

Yes, we had a big bluescreen session in the studio that I rented. Everyone of the three other band members appears in the video. One is the girl's boyfriend and the other two are the guys talking while the singer passes them. Then there's the girl and of course I couldn't resist putting myself in as well. I'm the guy walking behind the singer when he runs from his house. But even at TV resolution one would be hard pressed to recognise me.

When I planned the video I thought I could have everyone show facial expressions that would fit into the plot. I even filmed everyone, going "Ok, smile! Great. Now you're sad. No, no, you can look much sadder than this...". Unfortunately I did not have the time to include these gems of amateur acting into the video.

Is the Missouri video all your own work as well?

Yes, once again it was just me who produced it. It took me about eight weeks full time to get it done from concept to delivery. Still, this project, too, required a lot of learning. This time it was bluescreen-keying, rigging and walk-/run-cycles. Well, at least I learned it the hard way which will make me appreciate LightWave [8] even more, I guess.

What are you working on now?

I'm currently working on the story for a new animated short film, but it's still in its very early stages.

Besides this I want to add scientific visualisation to my portfolio. This will be my top priority for the next couple of weeks, trying to gradually move from web-based projects as my main source of income towards CGI projects.

What have you got for our dear readers then Marc?

It's the model of the Kicker table complete with textures and Darktree shaders (which everyone can use with the free Simbiont plug-in). The 22 players were in a separate file, but I have included just one player with endomorphs and shaders as well. This should enable everyone to produce "Kicker 2 - Overtime".

Users might have to point LightWave to the darktree directory for shaders. Also, all the layers and surfaces have German names. But, hey, maybe people will even pick up a few words...

Windows

Zip

487 KB - PC only

For non-commercial use only

Wow! Thanks Marc. Should anyone be brave enough to try and create a sequel to Kicker, we want to see it! You can see more of Marc's work at his website.