I was not originally scheduled to work on this show (which is why my name does not appear in the credits of this, and other episodes I worked on), but due to some production issues on "Gold Team", "Grey Team" was called in (this became a habit with others teams during production) to help get the show out.  We were working on 104 at the time, and this episode, in many ways I think, helped us better prepare for our own show.

Most of my involvement was primarily in TDing (Technical Directing) final lighting for shots that already had their animation done (Primaries), and adding Special FX to them.  I did get to animate a few shots and completed the TDing on those.  I believe I spent a couple weeks doing all the 101 stuff I was assigned, which really wasn't much time at all.  Welcome to the wonderful world of TV production.

Shot numbers are given whenever possible, and not all the shots I worked on are displayed below.  The accompanying text is a combination of my personal  opinions and admittedly biased memories of this chaotic time in my life; and should be taken as such.   Enjoy.  Hopefully you won't be bored.

The camera pulls back to reveal a very damaged looking SICON base on Pluto.  Worley Labs' awesome Acid software was used to "corrode" the hole I modeled on an episodic variant of the generic Trooper base.  Internal bits of rebar and torn metal, with a subtle flickering volumetric light, helped show the audience that something was terribly wrong, and perhaps, waiting inside.

The animation was the simplest part of this shot, and the camera move was also really easy.  Digging into the model and messing it up for this shot was fun too: it was just getting the supervisor on this show to approve my final lighting and be happy with where he wanted the shadows to fall in the background.  I still don't get what all the obsession was about.  Either a shot communicates with its action and framing, or it doesn't.  Lighting is indeed an issue, but I'm still unconvinced that the background shadows in this shot would have changed how the audience felt about this scene; and ultimately, they're who really matter.

Well, client deadlines count too.

Tanker bugs!  They look like giant potato bugs with really messed up heads.  No offense to our most excellent character team; they had to do whatever the client wanted.  As the production progressed, the client came to better respect members of our character team enough to let them actively make design suggestions and alternations in the show's multitude of bug based critters.

I TD'd a number of related shots where I had to add gun hits to the heads of these guys.  From what I understand, the shots I animated where it shook its head like a dog trying to "shake off" the gunfire, was later redone, since someone at Sony didn't like it.  Oh well.  I thought it was cool, any ways.

With comic "Xena-like" force, the highly volatile stream of Tanker Bug spit blows both the Duck and Marauder suited heroes across the surface of Pluto.  A fun shot, but with the lack of time to finesse and tweak everything, it became a growing source of frustration for me and my fellow animators.   As time went on, people got faster and more rounded in 3rd party solutions to common problems (like dynamic parenting, or particle systems).  Setups evolved as the months went by, and people began to streamline how they worked, and things became far more do-able in the same short period of time.

But in the VERY beginning, it was hell.  Here is the mpeg [0.97 MB] of this early Trooper animation.

Oh, the pain, the pain of it all...

This shot required mixing mocap that had already been directed by Jeff Sheetz, with a cumbersome (and very early) IK setup for the Marauder suit that, well, quite frankly sucked.  The problem with this version, was that it wasn't at all able to bend its knees as dictated by the story boards, so the entire shot was cheated using a foreground character to help cover up the Marauder's non-accomodating lower body.  I'm pretty sure the audience never noticed.

This shot taught me a valuable lesson about having good character setups and props finished and fully TESTED before production begins.  Anything left half done, isn't done enough.  Eventually, this and other problems were corrected and something I refer to as "setup evolution" occurred at the studio.  Within the first few months, we had moved through a number of body revisions, where specific problems with our character setups had been ironed out, or ways to automate certain movements had been refined (fingers or groin flaps on the power suits, for example).  With the combined experience of each member of our character team, we could almost watch on a daily basis, the maturation of our digital heroes.

This scene's mocap was directed by Dan Ritchie.  Here, I added an explosion poly (a simple plane that used an image sequence with transparency, on it), some colorful, dynamic lighting to match the explosion, and rock debris that  blasted up and behind our heroes.  BOOM!

Camera shake is a wonderful thing.  Properly used, it can give the sense of impact or immediacy, that a still camera just doesn't provide.  I think Roughnecks was one of the earliest kid's CG shows that used motion blur on a regular basis (and shadows too).  The action above would have looked less realistic without it, and not drawn our audience into the work as much.

Early production on Roughnecks was almost like being in a kind of battle in itself.  I find as I type this, that much of it happened so fast, most of it has become a blur just over a year later, and it won't probably ever be recaptured fully in type or still images in the way that it actually happened.  There was just too much going on, and so much to learn and do in an incredibly short time frame.  I think in many ways, I've finally had time to heal and recover from the year that taught me so much, on so many levels.  I know many of my fellow comrades understand from where I speak.

But through all the stresses and challenges that faced us daily, everyone learned to band together and find solutions to ever-present production issues.  All the animation teams at Foundation became like their own mini-sqadrons, battling the evils of missing audio, unfinished models, and totally insane production demands.  Work became like home, and the people there became a close knit family.

And through it all, it was clear, these people had a lot to prove to themselves, and the world.  They cared deeply about the show and their part in it.  They made great personal sacrifices to pull it off, and get the work done.  After all, creating an entire CG universe for a 40 episode series, isn't such a simple task.

I salute you all.  Live forever, guys.