Taylor James Toy Train Ident

[Dave_Wortley]

Here is a short ident we made for ourselves, all modeled, textured and shaded in 3dsmax with Vray 2. It has been rendered in stereo but we haven't finished the stereo comp yet. (There are a few objects from a model collection used, but main key assets were all produced here)

http://www.taylorjames.com/project/toy-train/

[glorybound]

very cool! I saw some flickering in the beginning, but other than that, nice and clean.

[Chris]

Wow. Only crit would be the connect four chips should be/look plastic with a textured edge.

[sandykoufax]

wow! so nice animation!!

[deflix]

Technically its a nice clean piece. Unfortunately I think you have missed the point of an ident which is an underlying narrative or idea. The collapsing blocks at the end feels strange, as does the truncated track, both of which hint at a narrative that never manifests. The Audio is also far too formulaic especially the piano - tired and overdone. Considering all the work that went into the scene you have the perfect platform for creating a memorable piece with an identifiable anchor and idea behind it. Sorry to be so critical but I feel this could become something really great with only a small amount of additional work and thought.

[m_hinks]

Jesus Jim, it was an inhouse project, for fun as much as showing off and promoting the company. Sometimes over criticising is not helpful!

Good as always for TJ, and Dave.

[deflix]

Jesus Jim, it was an inhouse project, for fun as much as showing off and promoting the company. Sometimes over criticising is not helpful!

Good as always for TJ, and Dave.

Hmmm not sure I agree otherwise why post stuff.

Its a compliment in many ways. The technical quality is so high i find it frustrating that there isn't more punch and meaning in the piece. (The TJ logo is nice but too subtle.)

I would call it constructive feedback rather then over criticism.

Im not Jim Carrey by the way (thats just my quote)

[m_hinks]

lol, yes I did wonder Mr Carrey!!

I agree about the logo too. Just sometimes I read so many comments on here that if I had posted and recieved the same feedback, I'd not bother!

[Frubes]

Constructive criticism is always appreciated deflix so thanks very much, it's not a problem

As a bit of a back story, this started life as a project that 2 of our interns did at the start of the year. When looking back on their result i saw a lot of potential in the work they had done, it just needed some more polish. The texturing was excellent and it had a lot of character which was something very different than what is displayed in our current portfolio. I decided to spend my own time developing it to do justice to the work they had put in. As Dave mentioned, much of the work is there, i just honed the shaders and lighting and did the compositing work. I would have loved to have refined the animation and narrative more, not to mention done some proper sound (totally bodged on my part) but much of it was done in my spare time, of which i don't have much! This production was about 2 weeks of work in total with just myself and another compositor part time.

With that being said i totally take on bored what you said. For the time spent on it im very happy with the result. Every project we do is always an evolution of our process and creative development so any feedback always goes towards the next project

[AJ Jefferies]

I agree with pretty much everything deflix says. It looks absolutely lovely - the shot through the books is wonderful but given all that effort and polish that's gone into it the pacing and payoff fall a little flat. I think just taking out the inexplicably falling blocks at the end would be a huge help as it distracts from the logo reveal and doesn't really add anything. Once again, as deflix said it's only because it looks so good that these things stand out at all.

One tiny (tiny) technical crit is that jigsaw section in the train tracks looks low poly which might have been your intention but both of us here noticed it straight away

[peterguthrie]

very nice Dave, and good to meet you last night!

[Dave_Wortley]

Thanks guys I can't take much credit I'm afraid, I was involved purely from a supervising role with the interns version, the excellent train model was modeled and textured by our interns at the end of their 3 month internship. Mark saw the potential in what they had made and wanted to push the lighting and just make something that looked visually appealing. So well done to our interns and Mark, I can promise you in stereo it looks rather nice!

Nice to meet you also Peter.

[Frubes]

Lighting / Comp behind the scenes

For anyone interested here's a behind the scenes of my lighting/comp workflow for one of the shots.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/58697046?title=0&amp

[glorybound]

very interested, thanks.

For anyone interested here's a behind the scenes of my lighting/comp workflow for one of the shots.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/58697046?title=0&amp

[elivnA]

Very nice, great materials, overall good quality. I agree about the ideas being a bit vague.
And one more thing: the grain of the wood on the sides of the rail pieces should be running lengthwise, instead of being vertical.