Cohen the Barbarian was angry. Angry that he never died in battle, angry that the world had forgotten him, and angry that his knees were starting to play up in the cold. He was also angry that his faithful mount had been gifted the ability of magical speech. The horse was insisting that they had made a wrong turn back at Splice. He was also angry that the horse was probably right. This was not how it was supposed to end for the barbarian. This was not how the Discworld’s greatest hero imagined it at all... - - - - - - - - - - - - TROLL BRIDGE is an short film based on the story by celebrated fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett. All money raised goes back into the production. Pre-orders made on the understanding pledge fulfilment will occur once the film festival circuit has completed, and no later than a year from the TROLL BRIDGE premiere date. We’ve commenced submitting to festivals and will update this page once we have something scheduled. Currency in US Dollars.
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Hey guys, this is just an intermittent update for those not following us on Facebook or Twitter or the other internet what-have-yous. The test screening at the International Discworld Convention in Manchester went excellent and while we were over there we were fortunate enough to be invited back to Pratchett Towers to screen it for the man himself. I think it's safe to say we’re pretty happy with the way the test screening was received all round. :)
Since returning, we've been back at the grindstone resolving some of the issues that were brought up, as well as continuing to build and refine the assets and work we have.
In other news, there has been a lot of talk recently in the media about crowdfunding campaigns falling through and Kickstarter revising their terms and condition to help protect backers. Just to clear the air we absolutely agree and support these new conditions laid out.
http://www.industryleadersmagazine.com/popular-crowdfunding-destination-kickstarter-updates-terms-conditions/
Honestly – and to be fair – we thought these were the conditions anyway. Our personal take on this, is that any campaign that has fallen through the gaps and HASN’T done everything they can do to make things right - are destroying the entire crowdfunding movement for everyone. For us - this is a legitimate business model and we want to see crowdfunding exist well into the future. This means (for our part) being as awesome as we can and being absolutely clear on anything and everything we do.
With that said… here some stuff we’ve been working on! Note, none of these images are finalised, but we’re pretty happy with the progress of them.
No! Music first, and then images. ;) Maybe enjoy the music whilst looking at the images? This is our opening music track by our wonderfully talented composer Jure Peternel. :)
And now some work-in-progress shots from the film:
Brand new eyeballs for Mica:
Matte painting work by Dave Tipper visualising what it looks like over the edge of Death Bridge:
And a random secret shot which we won't confirm or deny is anything in particular:
None of these images are finalised, but we think we're getting pretty close. We obviously have a whole swag of other stuff we'd love to show you from other areas of the film... but... well, we should save some stuff for the next update! ;)
As a bonus though we've started rolling out our poetry pledges! These two have been released publicly with permission from their new owners (and we reckon you'd enjoy them too):
And for now - that's it!
We've just restructured our pipeline management (with over 100 people crewing post-production and over 500 shots - you need a good pipeline), so we'll be able to get back to our schedule charts soon.
Thanks you for your patience! And as always: can't wait to finish this film up for you all!
Click here for larger version.
Character art by Guillaume Bonnet.
Bang! Schedule Report back out into the arena!
We've had to reconfigure the way we measure some of the data at the back-end, so you may notice a slight shift on some of those tasks. We’ll be getting a few of these out leading up to the DWCON screening – so (if you're coming) you'll walk into that room knowing exactly what you will be getting yourself in for. Truthfully, we wanted to be much further along than we currently are, but with about three usable weeks remaining, hopefully we still have some surprises up our collective sleeves.
The interesting thing to remember when looking at this, is that even though we have assets at 100%, it doesn't mean that further alterations aren't occurring on the sidelines. The bridge for example requires tweaking with each shot, and the Mica rig will probably continually be improved upon up until we finish. 100% in these instances means that the asset meets its awesome quota, enabling progression to the next level and subsequent boss battle.
And no – we aren't as far along as we would like to be for the WIP screening. We considered shifting the date for an instance of a second – but then Daniel had a nervous breakdown and started weeping uncontrollably while muttering about shot order and something about his pilgrimage.
He’s currently sitting outside, staring at the night sky and complaining about the pixel count.
So we proceed! And with vigor, enthusiasm, and fresh strength! Just be sure to embrace this (if you'r coming) as the work in progress it is. You’ll need to use your imagination on the missing bits, and we’ll be sure to be completely transparent with you all on how many missing bits there actually are.
In other news, today we just hit 100 people working on this film in post-production, and that number has been building each week! It’s a lot of work to get through – but we have a massive and talented team to slug through it all and ensure we have lots of awesome bits for the con and beyond!
Can’t wait to get it in front of you all and show you all a good time!
Hey guys!
We have a few issues we're trying to resolve with the work flow, so we've temporarily halted the Schedule Reports until we can get that sorted. In the meantime however, we'd thought we'd give you a visual update on our leading troll.
And boy is he handsome...
Below are some images of the work in progress that has gone into Mica (spoilers below). Although we had a functional model of him from the last iteration of the film, we've had to rebuild him from the ground up taking into account the new 2K resolution we shot in (originally we shot in DV), and the major software / hardware jumps we've had over the past eleven years.
And all this work has been overseen by just one man.
Christian Bloch is an extremely talented VES Award Winning VFX artist residing in LA, who has been involved with the project since our very early days of inception. Breathing life into Mica has been completely his responsibility, and we're extremely proud and fortunate to have him involved with the project. Clearly he is also a massive Discworld fan.
Although the troll model and rigging is still being refined, please enjoy some of the work in progress pictures and videos below. A visual history of the character thus far, if you will. We'll resume our Schedule Reporting shortly. :)
Rigging commences...
Size testing...
We'll get some higher resolution images of these up via the usual social media channels tomorrow. The sizing here really does them no justice.
Oh yeah... Snowgum Films also turned eleven on the 18th of March in a move that completely took us by surprise. Eleven years marked from our first day location scouting for this film. Eleven years spent with some of the best and most hard working cast, crew and supporters we could ever hope to meet.
We love you all!
Click here for larger version.
Character art by Guillaume Bonnet.
Some date shifts and a DWCON announcement. Once we finish the rigging - things will get interesting. Rigging is a term used to describe the process of preparing the a character for animation. Imagine an internal skeleton that you can shift about in a 3D environment... which in turn shifts the body of the character attached to it like a puppet. By manipulating the rig, you generate animation.
Once we have a rig completed, you can expect to start seeing the finalised model for that rig. At the moment the CG models kind of look like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. Interesting to look at - but not a lot of character.
When you first see these guys, we want to blow you away.
Mica looks to be first off the line for this process - so not very long now for his reveal.
Next Schedule Report: April 22nd.
I suspect you'll hear from us before then though. ;)