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When www.p-mmlive.co.uk/ approached Hot Knife to create an on-screen character to guide and enhance their website we jumped at the chance because this is what we love to do !

Certain design variations were disregarded at this stage before we started to build in 3D.
This un-rigged 3d version enabled us to concentrate on the surface properties and colouring of the fella before moving onto the animation stage.

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Before we could start animating though we had to rig the character, this is the process of building ‘bones’ and controls that made the character move and ultimately brought it to life.

Once the rig and character had been developed  we started to block out the animation and review these with the client, again relying on client feedback until everyone’s happy to go to the rendering stage.

The final animations can be seen in place on P&MM’s website, which we also produced http://www.p-mmlive.co.uk/

This is a simple example of 3D compositing here at Hot Knife. We were approached to extend stock footage from a 4:3 format to a modern delivery format of 16:9 and include a second pirate ship firing at the original.

While a new pirate ship is being built in 3D, as above, our compositors start work on the footage.
We first extend and duplicate the existing backplate footage to a modern 16:9 format.

We then start blocking out the shot by including the computer generated ship in the footage. This immediately gives the client something to feedback on so they can start making decisions about the shot such as position and movement of the ship. We go through several revisions of this before finalising the motion of the ship.

Several revisions are then done by adding texture to the model, lighting, a wet-look to the ship, several particle system to emulate water spraying from the bow.
Before adding mist, background lightning, cannon fire and smoke and a final colour grading to help seat in all together in one shot.