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Grim Fandango Stop Motion Animation Project


pixyfrog

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Dear fellow Grim Fandango fans,

 

A couple of month ago, I have undertaken a fan-art GF stop motion animation project. My aim is just to do a re-make of the intro cut-scene of the game. However, these 3 little minutes of animation are likely to take a lot of time to deliver: the day-job tends to get in the way, and, as you will see in my production blog, there are actually a lot of moving parts to bring together. The project is in its set-building and puppet-making phase and, realistically, I don't expect the shooting to start before March 2012.

 

I have already enrolled some talented help from this fine GF fan base, and will certainly solicit this fine community for help and feed-back.

 

standuparmaturemanny.png

 

Manny%2527s%2BArmature250.png

 

3Dfaces_500pixwide.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...
This is going to be excellent! It looks very professional too, do you do this sort of thing for a living?

 

Thanks for showing behind the scenes with the blog as well, very cool. :)

 

I wish I could do this for a living, and get paid for having so much fun! halas no! this is pure, unpaid and costly, hobby.

 

Hey cplhenshaw, I am glad you left a note on this thread because I wanted to contact you! I have been using your object viewer (most of Manny's and Celso's shots displayed on my production blog comes from you software). First I wanted to thank you for this little wonder that I am putting at best use!

 

I wondered if you knew a trick to export dumped 3DO files into .OBJ files which I could use in a 3D editor. I have found, in a thread somewhere, a utility aptly named 3do2obj.exe which is supposed to do the trick, but it does not seem to work as intended in my environment. the .Obj file (or at least its txt content) is apparently generated but in the prompt line and I have no idea how to make it dump its output in a .Obj file, be it of the .txt or the binary kind.

 

Since you seem to be the expert in this dark science... I thought you would have an idea...

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I've been working on a tool you can get here

3dostuff.zip

 

To use it, for example on the file mannysuit.3do, you would type at a command line:

 

3doobj mannysuit.3do manny.obj

 

and it should output a manny.obj and a manny.mtl file, ready to go.

 

Some of the files from the later half of the game however involve some extra rotations which I haven't accounted for, so they might come out garbled.

 

Alternatively, if you have the program Blender, I've exported most of the characters already, which you can download here and and here.

 

Let me know how you get on.

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Thank you. Thank you for keeping the game alive through this brilliant project. It always puts a smile on my face to see that other people love this game just as much as me. And I am always surprised by the passion it engenders in its fans.

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Yes, you are right, the other approach is to have "stick-on" mouth, separate from the jaw-chin part which stays in one part with the rest of the head. But these tend to result in protruding mouth-lips like with Aardman animation studio (Chicken Run, Wallace & Grommit). To stay closer to the model, I wanted to have a more "flat" partially inset in the Jaw... This jaw-replacement technique is used by many recent stop-motion animation (Coraline), but it is harder. I hope I will not regret my choice.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Thanks you all for your nice words. An happy 2012 to the GF community.

 

Yes, this takes skill and talent paired with patience and persistence. Big respect. A potential problem is that Tim Burton might steal your idea. :)

 

I think one day, Peter Jackson will wake up and realize that he NEEDS a stop-mo movie in portfolio. That would be a Director worthy of a Grim Fandango big screen adaptation! Right Manny?

IMG_9297_500.jpg

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Pixyfrog, I wouldn't worry too much about getting sued. The way I see it, LucasArts is a company whose products we love but still just a company, meaning that the guys on top who are calling the shots are people whose primary concern is turning profit. Financially, GF doesn't mean anything to the company anymore and there are no signs (afaik) that it will, so this can't hurt them. On the other hand, projects like yours are free marketing for the brand. Projects that help keep interest in their old games alive can only positively affect the interest in company's current products. I think as far as you're not making any profit yourself, you're in the clear. A potential problem is that they might sell the rights to Tim Burton. :)

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Have you considered talking about your project at Adventure Gamers?

 

Thanks for the link VampireNaomi. I did not know this site... looks great. Glad to see that GF ended up as the No1 adventure game in their top 100 adventure game of all time! Tempting to drop a post in there to introduce my project but it's just "...your apearance... it's, well, a little intimidating". maybe later, when I have more to show..

 

Pixyfrog, I wouldn't worry too much about getting sued. <...> A potential problem is that they might sell the rights to Tim Burton. :)

 

Not so worried to be honest, neither about copyright issue (like you, I think this project firmly stand on firmly in "fair use" territory), nor - unfortunately - about Tim Burton revisiting for a 3rd time a stop motion movie with skeletons in it.

 

Assuming that LucasArt was amenable to grant rights, and that some production house had sufficient influence and resources to seek it, two very big assumptions, I think that someone such as Henry Selick from Laika would have a better motive and claim: They have made a name from themselves with Coraline and would probably be a credible contender to court "the powers that be".

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guess what Manny's busy doing on this shot...]

 

I've been looking at that picture off and on since you posted it and finally I'm ready to announce...that I'm giving up. I have absolutely no idea what Manny is supposed to be doing (only that he seems to be enjoying himself maybe a little too much). Spill.

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