Anyway, I want to share with you some of the key shots and scenes where I directly used the comic as storyboards in RESTLESS SLEEP. It all started with this scene for Part Two: Agitation:
Here’s how it translated to animation:
Next, we have the werewolf transformation itself. In the case of the original scene, it starts while she’s having a nightmare about waking up in a hospital, and then the scene shifts back to her bedroom. For the sake of simplicity, I just kept the setting the same in the animated version, but used some of the same basic shots for the film as a starting point.
Now, from here we veer off into brand new territory. I added a new of new shots on the fly to complete the rest of the transformation. Here’s how Kate’s full werewolf transformation looks in the film:
However, this scene ends with a shot taken from the last panel from this page in Part Three: Emergence:
Another scene I wanted to animate from the very start was the X-Files style opening scene where James Wilson meets his untimely demise. Of course, I altered the ending to have it be Kate’s beast instead of Major Bryant’s lion form. Again for simplicity’s sake.
And here’s how it appears in the film:
Next, there’s a few shots from Kate’s nightmare at the end of Part One: Equilibrium. Again, I’ve cut out the other elements of the scene, and loop back to theme of her attacking Beast form in her dreams to end the sequence.
And here’s how the nightmare turned out in the film:
The final scene begins with an almost a shot-for-shot interpretation of the final page of Part One: Equilibrium. However, I made one major change where I gave Kate a smartphone, so her conversation with Mike could happen via text. At the time, I had no voice actors lined up, so I used the texting conceit to convey the only dialogue in the film.
Here’s how it plays out in animated form:
I almost used the second part of this scene as the beginning. There’s just a couple of odds and ends shots that I pulled directly from the comic in these. First, we have Kate examining herself in the mirror:
Conversely, the opening scene where they find the body was actually the last scene I animate, since it was easily the most complicated. Originally, I was going to end the film with her finding the body and passing out. Here’s a couple of shots in the opening scene taken from the opening of Part Two: Agitation:
The title of the new film—Restless Sleep—actually comes from a drawing in my sketchbook that I did way back in 2002. I imagined her tossing and turning in her sleep in the lead-up to transforming for the first time. You can see it right there in the upper left hand corner.
However, with the completion of Equilibrium and the launch of ModernTales.com, I got wrapped up with working on continuing the story instead of focusing on this side project. And so “Restless Sleep” got put in the drawer, and only existed as a series of pages in my sketchbook for 20 years.
So, when I started playing with 3D last year, knowing that I wanted to animate Kate’s metamorphosis, this story immediately sprang to mind. The project started with a smaller scope—just animate the transformation and her going out the window into the night. And set it all to some music. But obviously I got a bit more ambitious, and it turned into the final film you see today!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the film, and if you did, please consider sharing it with your friends!</p<
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Based on the cult werewolf detective comic series PARADIGM SHIFT, classic werewolf tale meets paranormal mystery in this new animated short!
Detective Kate McAllister is in for a rough night. While investigating a strange murder, she discovers she has a connection to the killer that is stronger than she could possibly imagine!
PARADIGM SHIFT—Restless Sleep is my first animated film. It as was created in Blender with characters rigged using DAZ Studio’s Genesis 8 platform. Composited in Adobe After Effects and edited in Adobe Premiere. I also composed and performed the music using Apple’s Logic Pro. The whole project took me just over a year to complete.
Sound design by Alexander Danner (www.twentysevenletters.com) and voices provided by Alexander Danner and Jordan Stillman.
Additional assets provided by:
DAZ 3D:
Catara by D.Master
Everyday 2 by Aeon Soul
Flak Vest by The AntFarm
Genesis Starter Essentials by DAZ Originals
Genesis 3 Male by DAZ Originals
Genesis 8 Female by DAZ Originals
Genesis 8 Male by DAZ Originals
Genesis 8 Starter Essentials by DAZ Originals
Genesis 8 Female Mega Wardrobe by outoftouch
Girls Baseball Style Jacket by DAZ Originals + fefecoolyellow
The Guy 7 by DAZ Originals
H&C Police uniform by IH Kang
HnC Leather Jacket Outfit by IH Kang
H&C Business Suit A by IH Kang
H&C Weekend Casual Suit by IH Kang
H&C Dress Shirt Outfit by IH Kang
Jax for the Guy 7 by DAZ Originals + Jessaii
Killian for the Guy 7 by DAZ Originals + Jessaii
Michael 4 Skeleton by DAZ Originals
Michael 4 Internal Organs by DAZ Originals + noggin + shaunahowell
Police Officer Outfit by Toyen
Riviera Noon Outfit by DAZ Originals + 4blueyes
Torn Clothes by smay
3D WAREHOUSE:
1998 Honda Civic LX by Cartoon + Comotor
2000 Chevy Impala by Paul B. + bmrct + csi guy
2005 Honda Accord by Kevin N.
2002 Dodge Neon Sedan by Paul B.
Chevy Z71 Suburban by Kyle
Chicago CTA Elevated Train by W P.
Glock 17 by CFD 9437
Honda Element by ZXT
Lamp#1 by Graham
Maple Nightstand by archangel
Toyota Corolla Sedan by Joce
Unmarked Cars by Paul B.
Wooden Bookcase by waveydavey
3D Textures.me:
Brick Wall 012 by Katsukagi
HDRMaps:
Gdansk Shipyard Buildings (modified) by HDRMaps.com (CC-BY)
Enjoy!
]]>Here’s a quick peek at what it’s like to work on this project inside of Blender3D.
One of the things that made Restless Sleep possible was the ability to preview the final look in real time, thanks to Blender’s EEVEE engine (and some beefy GPU hardware.) This minimized the amount of time I needed to spend creating test renders and allowed me to make artistic decisions on the fly.
Animating Kate herself involved something called a character “rig” or “armature”. This was the most time-consuming thing to create in the entire project, since it had to transform into her werewolf form. It consists of several different parts, starting with the 3D objects or “meshes” that create the basic shape of the character. In Kate’s case, she’s made up of five basic objects: her body (the most complex and detailed of all the meshes), her hair, her upper and lower teeth (which are separate objects for reasons), her eyelashes (also separate for reasons). There are clothing objects as well which change from scene to scene.
Next, is an object made up of what are called “bones”. These are the literal controllers that move the objects. Each bone corresponds to some of the polygons that make up each object’s mesh, and therefore allow the character to be posed and moved around. Luckily this process was mostly automated for me, since I used the Genesis 8 character base from DAZ Studio.
All I had to do was modify the existing model to match Kate’s character design. However, for the hair, I was on my own. I learned how to “rig” with her hair.
First, I created a chain of bones for each section of her hair I wanted to animate—bangs, front, back, left, right and center.
Next, I had to “weight paint” the mesh so each bone would affect a specific part of the hair. Below is an example of the “heat map” of part of her bangs that corresponds to the bone directly underneath it. The blue represents area where the bone has no effect at all, with colors transitioning from green to yellow to red for areas where the bone has the most effect. While this can be done automatically, I ended up “painting” each strand by hand to get the smoothest results when her hair moves.
Lastly, I set up “IK chains” for each strand of hair, so I could control them by moving a target object around. “IK” stands for “Inverse Kinematics”, which is the method 3D programs use to move bones so they rotate as a group to point to a specific target. The round balls in the rig are the targets for each part of the hair. Here’s how it looks in practice
The final step is textures! Since I want to mimic the look of classic hand-drawn animation, that meant two things: cel shading and outlines. I achieved the first through tweaking the materials. Mainly, I tell Blender to do a hard cutoff between the light and dark areas of the figure, which creates the “cel-shaded” look. The shadows are then applied in a way that darkens the image map on the figure, in this case using a dark blue, which matches the shadow color in the rest of the set. Unfortunately, I had to set this manually for every new scene if the shadow colors change. For instance, the shadows in the night scenes are a deep blue, while those in the daylight shots are different. I had to implement this for every material on every object I wanted to be cel shaded. Kate’s body alone has over a dozen materials, but most of the other objects only have one or two. Thankfully, once I had one I liked, I could just copy and paste the settings into the others.
The second thing that needed to happen to perfect the look was the outlines. There are two ways to achieve this in Blender. The first one I used is called “Freestyle”, which draws outlines over the model during the rendering process. It achieves a nice, consistent look, but the downside is it’s very slow, taking sometimes over 5 minutes per frame to calculate. However, since it could only use one processor core at a time, it meant I could do other things on my computer while it rendered in the background. I rendered about half of the film using Freestyle.
The second method involves using a 3D object called “Grease Pencil” which actually creates a the outlines as an object in front of the camera when paired with a modifier called “Line Art”. Grease Pencil lines also have a number of significant advantages. First, they render very quickly. Second, they can calculate were objects intersect and draw line there. Third, they can be previewed right in the Blender workspace. The only real downside is that they have to be “baked” or pre-calculated into the scene before you can render them as a separate output layer (to be composited later), so there a few hoops you have to jump through before the scene is ready to render. Also, I didn’t discover how to use them until I was over halfway through the film, so in order to use it, I had to rework the scene, which was okay since I ended up doing that for a good chunk of the film anyway. The only other downside was that the Grease Pencils engine treated the eyes and eyelashes differently than Freestyle, so they required more touchup in the compositing stage, which was also a little annoying. But overall they were definitely worth the trouble!
Once Kate was fully set up, I could begin animating her! After creating the test transformations, I created a test scene to see how I could integrate her into an actual 3D set and animate her in a way that would be convincing, if not realistic. I chose a set I had originally created in SketchUp for the comic—her bedroom. After importing the objects into Blender, I fleshed out the room to match the comic a little more closely, including learning how to create cloth simulations to create the drapes, pillows, and sheets on bed. Here’s a quick look at the finished set:
And here’s what it looks like when the lights go off (or rather “on” since this was the actual lighting for the set.)
From this experiment, I learned the basics of posing and timing needed to create an animation. I also learned I needed to light the background and the characters separately, since the lighting that worked one didn’t always work for the other. I also figured out how to move the camera between frames so I could string several shots into a single scene. Here’s what the full test looked like:
After creating this, I knew had the tools I needed to tackle a full animated short.
]]>I’m proud to announce that I finally have a release date for Restless Sleep! I’m hosting a local premiere at Back Beat Brewing here in Beverly, MA at 7pm EST on Tuesday June 27th!
In addition to the film showing, I’ll be doing live, behind the scenes demos on how I made the movie, along with a Q&A. I’ll also have books and prints in tow for a signing. Plus there will be excellent beer on tap! Back Beat specializes in English-style bitters and cask ales. I’m a huge fan!
Film will post to YouTube @ 7:30pm!
But if you can’t join us that night, I’ll be live-streaming the event on my YouTube channel, too. The film will drop at the same time we show it in person, and you can join in the demos and Q&A afterwards!
Watch the trailer here:
]]>Chicago has always been a character on its own in Paradigm Shift. So, when I embarked on creating an animated version of PS, it meant I needed to bring the Windy City to life as well!!
I started with Kate’s apartment building. Using photos I had taken as reference, I modeled the architecture by hand, and then used my photos for the textures and materials.
Next, I needed to create a version of the back alley where poor James Wilson meets his untimely end. Using a model of the El tracks I modeled while creating the cover to The Art of Paradigm Shift, I built up a street scene based on the backgrounds in the opening scene. To create the buildings, I created modular sections of walls with various windows, doors, and brick colors which I then copied and pasted in various patterns to quickly build up the street. I then added various details to the buildings that would be closest to the camera. The cars are free models downloaded from SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse.
Lastly, I needed to create a 3D version of the Chicago skyline. To achieve this, I ended up using something called “procedural” buildings, which were automatically generated using a set of modular building pieces, kinda like LEGO bricks. Thanks to a tutorial by Kammerbild on YouTube, I developed a customized engine that could quickly generate new buildings of any size by plugging in the height, width, and depth, and customize the look by swapping out vertical and horizontal stripes. I can even turn the lights on and off at random. By using a couple of different sets of pieces, I could build up the entire skyline and have enough variation to create a useable matte painting that I then pasted into the background of my sets.
]]>If you’re still curious about some of the technical details, and want to learn how to do something like this yourself, here’s some links to the tutorials I used:
The answer is 3D. While I would dearly love to see Paradigm Shift animated in a traditional hand-drawn style, the truth is that it is far too labor-intensive for me to do by myself. Perhaps one day I will be lucky enough to work with a studio full of professional animators to bring that dream to life, but in the meantime I’m relying on a tool that is much more accessible to me: the amazingly powerful, FREEl open source animation program BLENDER.
The trick was creating a version of Kate that could actually be animated in the first place. Creating and “rigging” a 3D character is really complex process. And frankly, it’s still not one that I could do from scratch. Thankfully, this is 2023, and there are a TON of resources out there for someone who’s just starting out.
In this case, I turned to another free program DAZ Studio, which has been offering fully rigged 3D human characters for FREE for over a decade. I ended up modifying one of their Genesis 8 Female models to create Kate. But it was a fairly long learning process. In fact, I when I first started out, all I wanted to do was see if I could make a more “human” version of Kate that would be able to transform into her werewolf form.
Once I had a working werewolf transformation up and running in DAZ, the next step was to figure out how to make Kate look more like an anime character. I started by looking (and purchasing) a few anime-esque character mods for the Genesis 8 model, then it was back to Blender to fine tune them into a recognizable version of Kate.
This whole process took about two months. I spent the first month or so figuring out how to get the transformable version working in DAZ Studio, then another week or so to make the “anime” version. Then once I got her moved over to Blender using the DAZ to Blender Bridge, it was a couple of weeks to create these test animations.
]]>I’m calling it Restless Sleep, and I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am to be working on it! I love comics, but I can now tell you that I love making animation even more. This project has me firing on all cylinders in the best possible way by bringing all the skillsets I have to bear on it—writing, design, illustration, 3D, computer & programming skills, video editing, and music!
Bringing my characters to life through animation has been a lifelong dream, and now I have the time and technology to actually do it! It all started when I started poking around with Blender during a fit of writer’s block, and with the help from free and paid models from DAZ Studio, before I knew it, I had a fully posable and transformable version of Kate, just begging to be brought to life! And even better, using Blender’s powerful shader engine I could make her look like an actual cel-shaded cartoon.
It’s about 7 minutes long, including a werewolf transformation sequence I’ve always wanted to see animated. I’m currently in the final stages of post-production on the film. I’m hoping to have it finished and ready to release this summer. Where and when are still up in the air, but there will be an online release at the very least.
In the coming weeks and months I plan to give you some behind the scenes looks into the creative process behind bringing Kate and friends to the screen!
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