Voltaire is alive, at last!

I`ve been working on this project for some months. It was very rewarding, a huge challenge and a great learning experience. We had to create a rat named Volaire to interact with famous comediant Renato Aragão in a 70 minute new year special, broadcasted today (January 1st) at 10:00 PM (Rio de Janeiro local time).

Here goes a small behind the scenes. They show a couple of Voltaire shots that were still WIP.



For those who want to see the whole show, here it is...

 

Alexandre "Thunndro" Areal was ahead of the project, wich means that I had most of the fun and he had to pretend he is an adult and be the responsible person and the project TD.

As usual we came to the project at the early stages of planing and development with the Directors, Marcus Figueiredo and Paulo Aragão. We started choosing the rat species and how he was suposed to look like.

We attended the shooting with the VFX Producer/Supervisor Rafael Ambrosio, who is also a talented 2D and 3D Animator and long time colleague and friend. We had great support from the Directors and unprecedent creative liberty. They really know what they`re doing and how things will impact the audiences.

I`ve modeled Voltaire in Lightwave and rigged in Softimage. Thunndro did the render passes from the base colours to the furr in Softimage`s Mental Ray and we composed the 3D passes in After Effects. He also did all the textures, lighting and colour correction, most of the compositing and managed the final output. He did most of the scene props and digital BGs. Ricardo Nobrega modeled, textured and rendered the inside of the wall for the shot scene.

I`ve also did all the storyboarding and storyreels for the Voltaire scenes and once they were aproved by the Directors, we began animating. For that, we had Sid Ahearne (he finished 63 scenes!!) and Marcelo Merola, experienced Animator and long time co-worker. Pedro Vicente, Paula Gouvea, Jan Habib and Alexandre Martins also Anmated and helped in the compositing. Bernard Machado also joined the compositing at the end of the project.

I thank all of them for their willingness and their talents. Everyone did a great job in every aspect of this show and we at the VFX team could not drop the ball. I believe we didn't. I'm very proud of everyone that helped in bringing Voltaire to life and deeply grateful to the Directors and the great Renato Aragão for believing that we could do it.

I`ve heard it was a great success. Thanks for all the people that watched!