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Olivier Michon
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How did you get involved in Thalassa expedition? |
After a first collaboration in 2009 for a series of documentaries called “Maps of the Great explorers”, Grand Angle Distributions asked me to continue the adventure with a 12 episodes series called “Heritage and enigmas of the Marine World”. Following this first season, a second one was produced in 2010.
Each episode is made like an investigation; it explores the myths and legends of the oceans that History left unresolved.
The angle used was historical. Each episode tells the story of a ship (big liner or small trawler) or an incident, linked one way or another to the ocean.
I created 40 to 50 seconds of 3D images (in HD) per episode, mainly a defining moment of the ship…most of the time the moment it disappeared.
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How much time did this work take?
The first Season was made in 8 months, and the second in only 4 months, for the same amount of work.
Work was really intense, modeling was the only work we could prepare in advance. Most of the time, the animation part could only be done after shooting, even sometimes during editing.
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What was your working process?
In order to collect as much documents as we could to make a good representation of the subjects and before even beginning modeling, an important and meticulous work of research was essential. Most of the time, we could find pictures, bad quality ones, but also sketches and rarely detailed blueprints.
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For the rest, depending on the content the director got during shooting and depending on the narrative angle chosen, we decided together what we would design, trying to stay coherent, especially with the production and rendering time.
What software did you use for this project and for what purpose?
For this project, LightWave’s Node Editor was definitely a huge advantage to define the shaders, sometimes complex one, and to give this style to the render. The advanced camera capabilities helped a lot to create good images distortion in the under-water scenes, similar to what we can see in some video games.
For some part, like the seabed, I used Modo, especially for its sculpting tools. I also used some plug-in, available for free. This is another LIghtWave advantage: a dynamic and altruist community.
First I used DPKit, Denis Pontonnier plug-ins (dpont), I can’t work without it now. Hard to give an example of what it can do as it offers a wide range of capabilities.
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Olivier Michon |
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