Rogue One Meets Doctor Who (Temp Score Found?)

Posted on May 17, 2017 by David Gian-Cursio

The score over the climactic sequence of “Rogue One” always reminded me of something. I tried laying over “The Life and Death of Amy Pond,” from the end of the Doctor Who episode “The Pandorica Opens,” and the pacing and tone matched pretty well. I suspect it may have been the temp score for the sequence.

You can see the waveforms for both tracks here; the film track, “Your Father Would Be Proud” is on top, with “The Life and Death of Amy Pond” is on the bottom. Also, I did slightly adjust the speed (about 1% faster or slower, I can’t remember) of the music so it would hit a couple beats slightly more precisely.

100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 42

Posted on September 18, 2016 by David Gian-Cursio

I had a feeling that this Star Destroyer might be happier in linear color system. It looks like I was right. Unfortunately, it wasn’t particularly happy with rendering at a higher resolution, though.

100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 35

Posted on September 11, 2016 by David Gian-Cursio

Having run the numbers earlier, I decided to go with a portrait-oriented Star Wars image to mix things up a bit. I also spent too much time screwing around with the Borg Cube model to do anything very elaborate.

Just before I ran the render, I remembered that this is a scene that takes place at Tatooine, so I added a second key light to represent the second sun, with a 60/40 split between them as far as lighting goes. They’re also different sizes, so one set of shadows is sharper than the other set.

100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 3

Posted on August 10, 2016 by David Gian-Cursio

And now, my first tiny render.

It’s probably not a coincidence that with my rendering fewer images, I haven’t developed a feel for render times using Lightwave’s new(ish) quality options. So far, I’ve worked on these pictures in the evening, rendered them overnight, and done the post-processing the following day. I ended up completely whiffing on my set-up when I started running the final image. Too many motion blur passes, and I also decided to throw in some global illumination just to give it that “This model was shot with plenty of fill light” motion-control look. When I got up and saw the render was nowhere near finished, I canceled it, reduced the resolution, cut down on the MB passes, and replaced the GI with a wacky constellation of spinning distant lights (which I believe was put up for download by Kat Myers originally) so I could get this out in a couple of hours. Continue reading →

There Are a Lot of Command Ships

Posted on April 9, 2016 by David Gian-Cursio

A few days ago, the first teaser for the first Star Wars anthology movie, Rogue One, dropped.

There’s one shot in particular I’d like to talk about. You can probably guess what the shot is from my specialty, given how little space-stuff was in the trailer. First, some background.

Two Star Destroyers, both alike in dignity…¹As it happens the angle of the Star Destroyer shot in the Rogue One trailer is almost identical to the angle of the second shot in Return of the Jedi, so there’s a great comparison between the three-footer-inspired design and the eight-and-a-half foot miniature.

Continue reading →

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References
↑1	As it happens the angle of the Star Destroyer shot in the Rogue One trailer is almost identical to the angle of the second shot in Return of the Jedi, so there’s a great comparison between the three-footer-inspired design and the eight-and-a-half foot miniature.