Update #2 on (mostly) completed animated scenes

Some good progress has been made since my inital post on this subject, but this time I'd like to share some production stills that give a little more insight into what the scenes are about:

SCENE 1

"I don't know James, I think that's taking it a bit too far..." - Felix Leiter

Yes, it's Bond and Felix Leiter! Clearly having a heated conversation in a hotel room, which happens to be Bond's luxury suite in the Whyte House. 

In my original visualisation of the scene, Bond was still wearing the three-piece black suit he wears during his visit to Slumber Inc in the original film. You can see this in this test image I created before animating the scene:

But I later decided to have Bond just wear his shirt and tie for the final scene as it seemed more appropriate for the mood that the characters were in. Also, Bond is going to change into his white dinner jacket for the Casino scenes so it makes sense to show that he's going to change out of the black suit!

On a side note, you may notice the background paintings on the walls behind Felix and Bond. These are a deliberate stylistic choice to reflect the theme of The Whyte House hotel.

Obviously we can see in the original film some subtle details reflecting the way the Hotel themes its areas around different US Presidents (hence the "Lincoln Lounge" where Shady Tree does his comedy act being an obvious reference to Abraham Lincoln). 

My intention here was to extend the theme slightly by showing paintings of battles from both the American War of Independence and the American Civil War (both events involved a famous US President!) to suggest there are multiple hotel suites in the Whyte House that are designed this way.

SCENE 2

"Say, why don't we go someplace and have a drink?
" - Plenty O'Toole

This is a new sequence taking place directly after the original film's famous Casino sequence set in the Whyte House gambling halls where Bond meets Plenty O'Toole. Now the original scenes were shot at the Riviera Hotel and Casino (which was torn down in 2016) so I looked at some reference photographs of that hotel's hallways to inspire the set you see here.

Fountains, pillars, a patterned floor and even a nicely textured wall seemed to do the trick, but just to make sure that it still seemed a part of the Whyte House I added a white ceiling and some white walls near the stairs and the lift you see in this still:

SCENE 3

Tiffany: "You say you're some kind of secret agent?"

Bond: "Oh, just a civil servant."

In my last post on this subject I showed that I'd recreated the Bridal Suite from the original film to redo the sequence where Felix Leiter visits Bond and Tiffany after the Las Vegas car chase. The same set was re-used for this scene where our two lead characters have a personal chat about each other, albeit with slightly more moody yet intimate lighting.

One of the challenges with this sequence was selling the characters' emotions without overdoing them. My script gave a fair bit of detail on this but I decided to focus heavily on as many gestures as possible throughout their conversation. 

Their posture, where their eyes move and especially their facial expressions had to change whenever the tone shifted, but I was also careful to ensure none of these details went out of character. Take Bond for example: I was adamant that the emotion he shows had to be subtle yet noticeable. In the words of On Her Majesty's Secret Service director Peter Hunt; "James Bond doesn't cry!".

SCENE 4

This scene is pretty short but a more recent addition to the fan-edit that does not actually appear in my script. It's based off some deleted footage that's not found anywhere on any home media release but does kind of appear in a few documentaries, including the BBC's Looking For Mr Bond, which can be found online. It's shot from behind the film crew in 4:3 however, and not taken directly from the film cameras themselves.

From what I can tell it's a scene showing Bond and the CIA (now accompanied by Willard Whyte!) returning to the Whyte Tectronics facility and meeting Tom (played by the late Shane Rimmer). In the original film this footage seems to have been removed in the edit and starts the scene at a different point.

But I thought it looked pretty neat so I plan to reinsert it via this animated version into my fan-edit. Here's the current version of it if you're interested, also including a reaction from Sean Connery to the cameraman after the end of the take:

New 'Production Stills' - Sean Connery preparing for his return to the role of James Bond in 1971...

Recently I've been playing around with the character model for Sean Connery as James Bond, and I thought I'd try making some 'production stills' based around Connery's preparation for returning to the series one last time....

Re-creating Blofeld's Oil Rig - Story of the process!

One of my biggest goals with this project is of course having to create a large number of sets for the animated scenes to take place in. By far one of the most difficult ones is the exterior of Blofeld's Oil Rig, which appeared in the climax of the original Diamonds Are Forever film.

To begin with, I used this diagram sketch found online as a guide to the overall layout. Anything that wasn't on it I could always go back and look at the film to check details.

Next, I spent months attempting to re-create the Rig in the modelling software Sketchup - it wasn't as difficult as it sounds as Sketchup's 3D Warehouse contained plenty of 3D assets that I could either use or modify to work with my model.

What you see here is the result of all that work:

Naturally it's not a 100% re-creation as there are several minor details of which I had no idea of how to replicate (mostly small bits of machinery that I don't know the name of) but it didn't matter as the model looked great and suitable enough to stage some action on.

However, by far the main challenge with this set was actually getting it into Moviestorm. You see, there's a limit of about 21000 polygons in a model that the software will accept if you're trying to import a Sketchup model into it.

Not only that, but it needs to be an older file type to the current version of Sketchup, so I had to dig up an older version just to get the correct file type.

Since the model as a whole totals to over Five-Hundred Thousand polygons, I knew it would be impossible to convert the whole thing. 

So what was the solution? Simple - break it up into individual pieces like a Lego set and import them one at a time. That way once I had all the pieces in Moviestorm I could re-build the Oil Rig in much less time.

And this here is the final result:

As you can see, it's mostly the same as the Sketchup model. Some parts didn't make it through the rendering process but there were plenty of substitutes in Moviestorm that made up for them. The only real casualty was the Rig's main body, which lost part of its geometry on an edge so I had to fill it in.

But finally, it's all complete and ready for some key scenes in the finale to be animated. Till then!

Updated suit character models for James Bond

A while ago you may remember the video I posted where I gave a quick sneak-peak at the various character models I've created for James Bond in the animated scenes.

Well now I've actually gone and updated two of those models in order to make them look better and more accurate to the versions seen in the film. To compare them I've placed them alongside production stills (from Thunderballs.org) which show off the original suits.

The white ivory dinner jacket

As you can see, Bond is not wearing a waistcoat in the original. The only reason he's wearing one in the fan-edit character model is due to the limited character models available in Moviestorm. All I could do was change the textures to make the jacket and waistcoat white. Same applies to this next suit...

The black and burgundy dinner jacket

Yet again, Bond never had a black waistcoat in the film for this suit! Alas, I haven't yet managed to find a way to put the red rose he wears during his confrontation with Blofeld in the Penthouse on the model. It's still a work in progress.

That's all for now folks. Next time I post something I hope to give you a proper behind the scenes look into the making of one of the animated scenes. Till then!