Jimagination – A promotional video by A.C. Farley

Today, Craig Farley shared a video via his facebook page.

Jimagination (1999) I made this movie for Jim Lawson and Pete Laird to potentially use on a loop at cons or online to promote their Planet Racers comic. They never did use this.

At the time, I was making 3D models of some the Planet Racers bikes and robots for Pete and so it seemed natural to animate them somehow and I w…anted to try out a lot of the stuff I was learning about video editing and compositing 3D models using multilayer workflow. Which means rendering the 3D in separate passes for the lights, reflections and shadows etc., just like the big movie studios do it. I was very precise and measured that hallway and built a 3D model to match it, with lights and all, so that I could ‘catch’ shadows and reflections of the robot in the 3D app and composite them into the live action video.

I also felt that it would be a cool memory of the artist’s studio area at Mirage. Looking at this now, I think I was right about that. That whistling in the movie is what one hears when Jim Lawson is happy and drawing and the radio in the background is stuff Jim used to listen to at work.

Jim told me that when his kids saw this, they were a bit alarmed that the robot was sneaking up on him.

Note: When you’re looking down the hallway… that’s my door, first on the right. Seen in this movie: Jim Lawson, Michael Dooney and Eric Talbot and Lone Wolf Robot.