Huesos Rig Test

I started testing the facial rig for Huesos. Most of his animation will be driven by the face, so it will be the most complex part of the rig, specially fir his huge eye brow and his big eyes, that will be very flexible to achieve cartoony expressions:

I used lattices and clusters for this test, and it worked but I think I will use joints for the eyes, and I will still use some non linear deformers for the cheeks and the mouth.

I will expand the character a bit more later.

Fernando.

Huesos

Huesos is the name of the agent, it means bones. After naming him I realized that his name in English would be agent bones, but I won’t add james to it, it will just be cheesy, I will stick with Huesos!

His personality is kind of specific, he is like a rockstart, he is confident, fast, mean, skilled, like a james bond with a huge ego. He is the character that I have developed the most, and I already started doing some 3D models for him, the head I think is pretty much finished:

I’m working on the body, but that will be a later post, the design is getting tricky atter a few days of modelling!! 

Cheers, 

Fernando

The characters

As I mentioned before there will be two main characters, the old man and the agent. I will probably have a kid at the beginning, to trigger the story of the old man, but that’s still in process so I won’t touch on that for now. I might also have some people walking on the streets of the town, to keep it real... On the technical side of this: I will only create the two main characters, I won’t even think about the other ones, I will probably borrow a kid from somebody who has already made one for another film, or just use a free rig. For the people on the street, I might do the same, but I will probably use morpheus dressed up; some people already did some of that work for me, and it’s awesome!

Check their blog: http://ecmwp.blogspot.mx/

Morpheus is free to use, as long as I mention Josh Burton, the creator, on the credits, or I might ask his permission directly... but I will still have to research more about copyright and commercial use. for now I will focus on the main two characters, the worst it can happen is that I model an extra character, or morph my old man.. or use sound to fake everything I can’t do visually. In the end sound will probably do some magic anyway!!

Fernando

The Story

The story, specially the plot is still in development, but the whole idea will be based on a saying, which I don’t know if it’s mexican but I learned it as a child and it is always there whenever I have to make a decision, in spanish it reads “más vale maña que fuerza” and it means that it is better to be smart than strong, it basically talks about being tricky and finding smart ways to solve things instead of rushing and going violent.

The story involves two characters, an old man and a skeleton which will be my version of a grim reaper, inspired on all the history I wrote about before. The skeleton is part of an agency that is in charged of the dead of the living ones, they make all of the paper work for people to die, for whatever reason, when their time is up, they have to sign the deal with the agency. The skeleton is the best of all of the agents, he is fast, smart and mean, he uses modern technology and is always dressed elegantly, like a catrín, but with the skills of a bad-ass secret agent. The old man lives in a small town, inspired in what we call in Mexico “magic towns”, he is quiet, cute and humble, but very very smart.

.... Now the actual story..

The story starts when the skeleton gets the mission to kill the old man, and when the skeleton sees the man he decides to have fun with him as he sees him as an easy target. The skeleton wants to kill the old man with a game, or a trick, something fun, but he didn’t know that the old man is smart enough to avoid his trickery. The skeleton’s ego is compromised now and he takes the challenge of killing the old man in the most awesome and cool way possible... In the end the skeleton will be forced to learn a lesson of humbleness and smartness, realizing that “más vale maña que fuerza”.

Any comments, or name ideas for the old man will be appreciated! (The skeleton is already named)

Fernando

The History

I knew since I started thinking about a grad project that it was going to be related to Mexico, and I knew it was going to reference some of Mexico’s most significant historical and cultural events. As I kept thinking about different ideas the project became huge and I realized I wouldn’t have time to finish it within one year, at least not at the level I want it to be, so I decided to make it more superficial to make it doable, short and entertaining, but without getting rid of the cultural background that I wanted to include. In the end I chose the theme of the day of the dead and all of the history and tradition that goes around it. I’ve always been interested in the idea of dead, I’m not sure why, maybe because honouring it is part of my traditions, even though I don’t do it that much... So, I don’t completely know the reasons why I am attracted to dead, but I am, and it inspired this whole project. 

The day of the dead, or Día de Muertos, is one of Mexico’s most popular traditions around the world, and it is specially famous and attractive because of it approach to honouring dead and the people that aren’t in this world anymore. The celebration is colourful, cheerful and playful, and there is a lot of satire about the dead but in a respectful way. The dead is not seen as the end of a person’s life, but as the end of the physical body’s life. The original Aztec believe is that the person’s soul goes to Mictlan, the Aztec underworld,  a peaceful place, home of the souls, where they wait until they assigned day to go back and visit their living loved ones. There are many traditions and iconography that I won’t show here, but I will leave some images as examples: 

These are skulls made out of sugar, and in most place they are made of chocolate too. 

Traditional bread. 

Altars.

One of the most representative icons of Día de los Muertos is the Catrina. 

But there is a big confusions that has changed some traditions. This image, the catrina, was created by José Guadalupe Posada, a cartoonist and illustrator from Aguascalientes who worked with lithography and engraving. He became famous because of his satire of everyday life situations represented with skeletons, as dead people, doing what living people do. He worked at a newspaper doing illustrations for the news and telling them in the form of rhymes, real events, told in an entertaining way, illustrated with these skeletal images: 

Most of these news were tragical events, such as accident, natural disasters, etc. and the intention wasn’t to make fun of them, but telling them in a fun way, using poetry and art, although, as far as I know, the intention of the publication wasn’t to be a piece of art, but a pure and simple newspaper telling the latest events. 

The confusion & the creation of the Catrina

The Catrina started with this publication: 

But its name was never “Catrina”, its original name was “Calavera Garbancera” and it was not meant to be a character, it was also never meant to be the representation of dead. The work, titled “Remate de Calaveras Garbanceras” (Sale of Calaveras Garbanceras) is a critic to indigenous people that used to pretend to be European, more specifically Spanish or French, by dressing with fake jewelry and trying to be fancy; “Garbancera” was a term used to call these people, who sold beans to make a living but tried to act like the higher class. This image was created in 1913, and by 1947 the famous muralist Diego Rivera took the image and incorporated it into his mural “Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central”

Detail from the mural

It was Diego Rivera who made the image famous, and it was also Diego who named it “Catrina”. My personal guess is that he used the word “Catrín”, which is a man dressing elegantly, and added the “a” to make it a female word. After this the image started to become a traditional Mexican icon. 

I don’t have a problem with this confusion, history is made out of mistakes and random events, many of them are wrong and non-existent. I like the fact that we adopted this character as a representation of dead. 

In my film I will be using these ideas, referencing the Catrina in a subtle way, that I will explain later, and taking the idea of satire and fun interpretation of dead. I will also use a modern version of the dead, avoiding seriousness and tradition, but without losing respect to it. 

Why San José?

The name has a personal reason, that I will explain shortly. In Mexico I live in a ranch, in the middle of a small town

The images are a little blurry, but those are the only ones I have right now :(

The stone fence separates four different properties, owned by different people, but last summer I found out that those four were originally together, owned by one person and the whole place was called San José, it was considered a  separate town, next to San Lorenzo, the bigger town. Legally, the place is part of San Lorenzo, but historically it is a separate place, and people say “I’m going to San José”, everybody in San Lorenzo knows it as San José, up to date, people refer to it as a neighbour town, populated by around 10 people, including my family and the neighbours. The current name is “El Jacal”, people also know this name, but whenever I go to San Lorenzo and say that I live in “El Jacal” they say “oh, so you are one of the people from San José”. Historically I have my own town, that has been there for about 100 years, and it is one of the places in the world that I love the most, I wasn’t born there, but I grew up there. 

That is the reason for the name. The film will also have a small town, called, of course, San José. 

Thanks for reading ;)

Fernando

San José

Welcome!

This is the production blog for my thesis film called “San José”.

Please leave comments, complains, feedback, critics, or anything that you want to spend time writing about.. preferably related to the film, although I don’t mind any other topic.

Enjoy!

Fernando