Hello
fellow Transformer fans!!!
Well
July 2007 is only a couple months away and the new transformer
movie is
almost here. My dream company Industrial Lights and Magic (I
hope to one day work there) did the effects for the film and
I can't wait to see what ILM has done (still need to go buy a
tent and
an Optimus Prime voice changing helmet to wear while I wait in
line for
the premiere). I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to land
some type of
job working on the new film. I came really REALLY
close (high point for me was meeting the animation supervisor
for the
Jurassic Park films), but never managed to get final call back.
Anyhow...I thought people would like to see some of
my attempts at doing animations to get the movie people's attention and some of
the other Transformer projects from my past that fell through. The
newest animation being TransZ here. Let's go through the timeline.
May
19, 2007
or
or
Like
it? Give Joe and I an email, we'd love to get some feedback (since neither of us got paid to do
this, your nice comments will be our payment ;) ).
Joe Mangione veritech100@earthlink.net
- modeling, lighting, texturing, rendering, compositing.
Michael
Smith Mike@TheMichaelSmith.com -
design, modeling, rigging, animation.
Check
out my Don Murphy (Transformers movie producer) message board thread here.
Caution, the language there can be harsh
K
Here it is, the latest and greatest of my transformer creations. I teamed
up with the talented Joe Mangione to pull this one off. I was a big fan of
Joe's while we were both working at Super 78, it's funny, we're both computer artists, but Joe's amazing at
all the stuff in computer animation that I'm not. Joe's also a big
Transformer fan, it seemed a perfect team to do a Transformer animation.
Why
did you choose the Z as the car you may ask. Joe
actually owns a souped-up Nissan 350Z that looks just like the one from the Fast
and the Furious (I swear it has so many gadgets the dashboard looks like Darth
Vader's bathroom). I had seen this picture on his desktop one day:
I
thought he had taken a picture of his car and put it on his desktop, but it
turned out it was a rendering of a 3D model. Amazing.
We
did this animation in our spare time (which neither of us had much of). I worked at night
and weekends in the late summer/early fall of `07. Joe worked
whenever he could. I got inspired by driving to downtown Los Angeles and
seeing the vehicles they were using to shoot the Transformers movie
(unfortunately they kept Optimus under a tarp).
Where
did we shoot it? It's
Santa Monica Blvd in front of Super 78 in North Hollywood, I drove all around
Hollywood trying to find a better street where the big Hollywood sign would be
visible in the background (it's behind the Cimarron building in this animation),
but I never found a street I liked any better (and was clear enough of traffic).
I
just wanted to mention too, that the whole thing was rendered and composited on
Joe's little laptop. Can you imagine that a few years ago?
Technology is amazing!
Hopefully
I'll add some more pictures and some making of stuff soon.
Edit:
Here we go, Joe sent me some of his test renders from while he was working on
stuff...(Just click the thumbnails below for a bigger picture)
August
25, 2004
Well, that's quite a
jump isn't it, 3 years ago. Back before the movie had
received the "greenlight"
by the studios. Seems like it was forever ago now.
Dreamworks
2
Anyways on this day 3
years ago I received an email from Dreamworks Pictures from the executive
running point on the Transformers movie.
He said he might have
an "interesting" opportunity for me.
I don't think I've
ever been so excited in my life.
So after talking with
him a bit, it turned out he was looking for a
small "proof of concept"
animation (Yay! I'd love to do another transformer animation...and if I
was actually getting paid, maybe I could do it the way I've always wanted it
done).
I was SO excited, I
sat at the art desk and quickly started drawing up some thumbnails for a
storyboard. Here's the never before seen storyreel I came up with for
our idea (keep in mind, they were just thumbnails and not works of art.
Plus we were pretty unclear as to what should happen at the end of the
animation when I made
this.)...
Fellow Team 52 member,
Thuan Do was so excited, he starting modeling the car we were going to use for
of little animation.
I even started
concepting what the robot would look like...
While we were doing
the fun stuff, fellow Team 52 member Carl Coss was busy typing up budgets and estimates,
you know, all the boring
stuff. :p
Anyhow, in the middle
of all this....THIS hit the web from The Embassy:
Pretty sure it was
exactly what Dreamworks was looking for concept wise. I'm not sure if it
was the reason or not, but we never heard back from them again.
We kept half-heartedly
working
on stuff, hoping to still get the go ahead to do our little animation.
Carl and Thuan went to a lowrider show to cast a car. I did this test
with my camcorder and Thuan's 3d model out in my driveway at my apartment...
and we're still
waiting to hear back from Dreamworks and get the go ahead....;)
Here's a little bonus
though, as sort of a test run, Carl Coss took the storyreel I had done and his
trusty camcorder and did a "live action" animatic of the storyreel.
It was just to get an idea of the shots, so that when it came time to actually
shoot the film we'd already have a good idea of what we wanted and how it
would go together. We've never shown this to ANYONE, and it's not
representative of the look of the final animation. But it's dang
hilarious (I think)...
It was the last Team
52 production and stars Carl Coss and Matt Festa (I didn't work on this and
can't take any of the credit unfortunately)...
August
4, 2004
Singapore
Navy
I received an email from
the Singapore Navy recruitment ad people about building a Naval Ship
Transformer. In all honesty it seemed like much too large a project for
me, even with the help of Team 52. A couple weeks later we received the
Dreamworks email and that removed any thought of us doing this project.
I was happy to see this
a while later:
Looks like they got
Eggstory to do their animation. Although they "cheated" much
more than I like to see, I was glad to see it actually got made. Wish I
could've done it for them.
Wonder how many people
signed up thinking they'd get to ride on the big Transformer ship ;).
May
26, 2003
Dreamworks
This was way back, back when talk of a
Transformer movie was still mostly a rumor. Back when the VW transformer animation was still really the
only one on the web. Ah, so long ago...anyways I get this email from the
co-writer/producer of the X-men movies saying he's trying to do a Live Action
Transformers movie!!! He wanted to know if I could send him a better quality
version of my VW Transformer animation and left me his phone number if I had
questions!
Unfortunately I was in the middle of
moving from Phoenix to Northern California, all my stuff was in boxes. I
hadn't even set up my phone yet, much less my workspace and I was starting my
new job at Crystal Dynamics. So I wasn't really able to talk with him,
but I had just finished sending demo reels to a bunch of companies
anyways...what was one more? I sent him the video and that was that...
Two years later someone snuck this
promotional video from the San Diego Comic Convention for the new Transformers
movie onto the internet:
Did I just see Steven Speilberg and
Michael Bay in the same video as my VW transformer??? AMAZING! I
just wish I had
known they were going to show that, I would've liked to see my work on the big screen.
March
27, 2003
MiniCooper
I received an email from
the Mini Cooper ad people about building a Mini Cooper Transformer for an
advertising campaign they were working on. I was so excited by the
possibility, that I immediately started working on it before any sort of
agreement was reached (you'd think I'd learn to wait and get paid before I start
working).
I worked up a budget and
a timeline (man I hate paperwork) of what it would cost and how long it would
take.
I did some quick concept
drawings of 4 different robot designs (that I'm too embarassed to even show
here).
Then it turned into wait
wait wait...
To pass the time I
started modeling the Mini Cooper, I figured that when approval came it would put
me that much further ahead of the game (plus with every transformer I've ever done the
vehicle had been modeled by someone else, this would be the first transformer
that was 100% built by Michael Smith vehicle and all.)
Here's what my Mini
Cooper was looking like:
it isn't 100% finished,
but it is ridiculously over detailed...all modeled by yours truly.
Anyways, I never heard
back from them and it just went away....for awhile. A few months later in
September I got another email taking about reviving it. I got excited
again, but was told they decided to go in another direction and didn't want a
Transformer anymore. So this time it went away for good. A while later
this was released on the web:
So apparently they went with a
robot made of Mini Cooper parts instead of a Transformer and they hired Zoic
Studios to do the work instead of me... :(
I've always wanted to do
the definitive modeled 100% by me Transformer, and I've had every intent on
finishing MY Mini Cooper robot. But for now it just sits on a cd with a
bunch of other unfinished Michael Smith ideas and artwork. Maybe
someday...
June 3, 2002
or
It wasn't the first
transformer I'd ever done, but it was definitely the most infamous.
Well, what can I say
about this animation that I haven't already said?
Oh, here's something
I haven't said before...if you're lucky enough to have gotten the UK
Transformers cartoon season 1,
four disc DVD boxset put out by Maverick back in
September 2002, my VW transformer is on there! On
disc four, just answer all the quiz questions correctly (A,C,C,B,A if you don't
know your Transformer trivia) and you can select the gold Autobot logo to see
the video as many times as you want.
So there, my fan
animation actually made it on a legitimate Transformers DVD. Amazing.
Unfortunately I
couldn't get my animation on the American DVD set due to Volkswagon not giving me
permission (although later I believe they would have reconsidered, but by then
it was too late).
March 14, 1998
Just to prove that every computer artist had to start somewhere, I
thought I'd post my original Art Institute of Phoenix demo tape. 9
months earlier I had no idea what even the name of a computer animation
package was. This was back in the good old days, before Beast Wars
had even come out. You'll have to excuse the crappy transfer quality
as all I have is a VHS version and I had no good way of getting it on my
computer. So here it is, the first transformer I ever did....heck
the first thing I ever did in computer animation...
Just a warning if you
watch it...you can't get your 3 minutes back ;)
And there you have it,
almost all the transformer work I've done over the past few years. Thank
you for taking the time to check out my artwork. I hope it was, at least,
a little entertaining and you had fun.
Wow, you made it all the
way to the very bottom of this webpage! You sir deserve a BONUS animation!
Shhhhhh! Here's a
little secret....I don't know if you've seen or remember that fake Industrial
Light and Magic
Transformer movie footage that circulated the web back in 2005.
Well....tee hee hee....that
was me.
Don't tell anyone ;)
K, this one's not in
chronological order, but it came after my second contact with Dreamworks above.
Here's a cleaner version
of the video from my never finished Transformer fan film. It stars a buddy of mine from High School, Mike McLaughlin:
Okay, let me
explain...back in January `05,
everyone was abuzz with excitement for the Transformers movie. No one had
yet seen what Michael Bay and the boys at ILM were cooking up. I had given up on
the fan film I had been working on, but I had invested a lot of
work into some cool stuff that I never got to show people. Now at the
time, I was
still getting emails from fans of the VW transformer, so I had already
received lots of kudos for my work from Transformer fans. I figured I didn't have to take credit again for my
work (plus I figured most of the hardcore fans would think I did the animation
anyways, which they did). I had also recently watched a movie called
"Full Frontal" (if you haven't seen it, I'm not surprised, I don't
think anyone did....or should) that had
this scene with Brad Pitt and Blair Underwood:
Recognize the film
strips on the sides? The director used the film strips as a device to show
that they were filming a movie in the movie, if you follow. I thought it
was funny....why would you see the film strips on the sides??? Oh, cause
they're shooting a movie....genius!
The scene
was set for an internet hoax.
So I put my animation
together with the film strip on the sides and then got out my camcorder and
filmed it playing on my computer screen. The robot is not even finished,
it's not textured...just colored pieces of geometry. Anyhow, the result looked like this:
There's also this cool
slow motion version someone made and posted
on youTube here.
Which I
anonymously emailed to some Transformers fan sites...and the rest is, as
they say, history. The reaction was so good, one of the producers of the Transformer movie
even had to post on his message board that it was fake, he wrote:
"So
I get 50 + emails today...and phone calls...and we are all glad you are
excited...it means a lot to us."
But...
"NONE of our test footage [from the 'Transformers movie] has been leaked yet. We'd tell you if it had. We'd leak it if it was ready and interesting. Sorry, IT IS ALL A FAKE. In some cases a very good fake. But a fake nonetheless.
But...
"NONE of our test footage [from the 'Transformers movie] has been leaked yet. We'd tell you if it had. We'd leak it if it was ready and interesting. Sorry, IT IS ALL A FAKE. In some cases a very good fake. But a fake nonetheless.
I think it was pretty successful at generating a
little more buzz for the movie. At the very least it gave us fans some
entertainment on the forums debating it's authenticity while we waited for the real stuff.
My
only regret is
putting "Property of ILM" on the clip. I was trying to add some
believability that it was actually Transformer movie footage and thus
add to the
hoax (cripes the robot doesn't even have metal textures, even my VW
Transformer had textures!). But I should have let people guess where it
came from, I think it would have added to the "mystery" of the clip.
Gotta love the
internet...
Anyways.
That's it for my hard drive spring cleaning. Now it's time to
format this computer and go wait in line for the Transformers movie!
I hope it does
well...so I can try to work on the SEQUEL!!! ;)
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