Production for "Limited Edition"

COSC 3P98 - Final Project
By: Jessica Socha and Rick Ignatczyk

View The Production (AVI) 22 MB

Introduction

Blood and tears went into the creation of the music video for the newest boy-band out of J Block: Limited Edition starring Rylan X, Eric Y and Mario Z. Our goal for this project was to do something that would be both fun to make and fun to watch. That stated, we thought it would be amusing to model the characters after some of our friends (with their permission of course). Picture this: computer geeks in bellbottoms and platforms busting a move to the King of Pop: Michael Jackson. Need more be said?

Tools

Setting

The video takes place in a COSC-discotheque/coffee shop (Java - get it?). We chose this floor because it was appropriate for the band. The background was chosen because it was a dance/disco image and it gave us a chance to let us honour/recognize John Travolta's stunt double (do you recognize him?).

Characters

Rylan
Rylan requested to be a pimp, and we modelled him as such. We gave him a hat, cane and psychedelic clothes. As the coolest member of the band, we let him be the lead singer.


Eric
Eric is the 'bad boy' of the group with his massive fro and beefed up arms.


Mario
Mario is the hardcore programmer of the group, as shown by his typing dance move. We fitted him with a kilt and glasses to fit his crazy yet conservative personality.

Movements

We made much use of the 'pose dots' feature in Poser. It allowed us to set up poses on a generic model, and then later apply them to our characters. Below is a set of poses we used in creating the moonwalk.

Textures

We used textures for the different articles of clothing, and Poser automatically wrapped them onto the figure. The images found below were taken from various websites.

Mario's kilt	Eric's pants	Rylan's pants

Audio

After careful consideration, we choose to use Michael Jackson's Billie Jean as the soundtrack for the video. It was outrageuos enough for a computer science boy band to do. We wanted to make sure when we selected sections of the song to be able to mimic some of Michael Jackson's famous moves (such as the moonwalk).

Production Problems

The biggest and most time consuming hurdle was creating the characters. Figuring out how to use Poser without previous knowledge was frustrating at first. Information was not readily available for us. The most time consuming problem we faced was in trying to make the clothing conform to the characters and stay on them while they moved.
The second largest problem was in making sure the movements matched with the music. After several seconds of animation were complete, they were rendered under low quality setting to make sure the movements were 'N Sync with the music.

Disclaimer

No boys were harmed during the making of this video. The reputations of the people we modelled the characters after are not meant to be slandered. This is all in good fun.
Excessive listening of Billie Jean may result in mental instability and the desire to moonwalk compulsively.