The Waiting Room: Introduction

This project is a short film poking fun at the differences between the old and new rigs in MAYA. It is set in hardware storage as if the two rigs are waiting to be loaded by the MAYA user. Therefore, a strong look of futuristic/technology is needed. However, it is also at the request of the director for the scene to extremely minimalist avoiding any distraction from the characters and acting which creates the challenge of this project.

This is the brief layout agreed between me and Chaitan earlier in the year.

As you can see, there is one door, one light, two beds/benches, two shelves and then a sign on top of the door to display when the characters need to be loaded which isn't overly obvious in this render. In terms of modelling, Chaitan wants animation themed props. So this could included wooden mannequins, animation books and he's suggested a spare part for one of the rigs to place on the shelves. Op top of this, replacing the cylinders with chains to add extra detail to the scene. Other than this, all detail is to be added through texturing as shown in the pre-viz below:

Although this will serve as the main inspiration for the project, it has also been said that a brighter, sterilised, hospital feel would be more appropriate and maybe spotlights instead of one main light source to avoid shadows in the top corners of the scene.

Yesterday was spent creating the props as shown below:

The lighting has been changed to spot lights. All that remains now is to add the texture - which is todays job!

After that it is perfecting the lighting which may prove an issue with the spotlights, but time will tell!

You can see the progress from the director's point of view through Chaitan's blog at:
http://chaitan-joshi.blogspot.co.uk/