Welcome to the Project

Remember when all Morpheus wore was that gray leotard? Let's get him into something a little more comfortable.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Some People to Thank and a Hint of What's Next.

What an incredible five weeks it’s been. We started ECMWP as a group project in February, and April 1st marked the last day of class. This group project was an incredible success, owed entirely to the hard work and dedication of the talented students involved:

Ruby Bhattacharya, Natalia Falciglia, Josue Mora, Joe Oliveira, Les Roy, Logan Penciu, Tony Sumimoto-Ercanbrack, Jacob Van Leeuwn, Catie Vercammen-Grandjean

Thank you all so much. I am thrilled and fortunate that I had such a great group with the perfect diversity of skills. Cookie points for you all.

Special thanks to Andrew Schlussel, Rodney Brett, Miwa Kozuki, Matt Mann, Marcus Day, Corey Jones, and Davy Weinman

Finally, a huge heartfelt thank you to Josh Burton for making the Morpheus rig in the first place. It was Josh’s generous spirit, giving “Morphy” away for free, that inspired me to start this project.

As you can see by the blog postings, the students covered a lot of ground: They established the artistic style of the project. They set the standards of quality for any work to be included in the archive. The students determined best working practices and technical parameters. They built our first set of assets to completion. The students were able to generate all of our initial animation and marketing material. On top of all that, they made a really cool t-shirt to commemorate the entire project. If you check out the “Project Guide” tab you’ll see a summary of everything we accomplished together.

So what is next? ECMWP is moving into a slower, volunteer phase. While I’d love to run it as a group project again, it’s hard to know when the stars will align again. Until then, my plan is to continue recruiting students to expand the wardrobe in their free time. I’m pleased that a few of my group project gang have already expressed an interest in doing so. Have I mentioned how much they rock?

I’ll have to volunteer in my free time to organize the assets and get them ready for distribution. Matt Mann is setting up the website side of the project. Official release date is planned for the San Diego Comic-Con in July 21. I hope to send finished assets out on a “use at own risk” basis to get some beta testing. I’m thinking, I’ll post the finished asset list soon and have folks request them on the blog. Watch here for the beta pre-release.

Keep following the blog and tell your friends in the animation community to do the same.

- Dave Latour

1 comment:

erica said...

Excellent! I can't wait to use Morpheus with a variety of clothing for future 11-Second Club entries. Please keep us informed as to when we'll be able to try out the various costumes. Thanks so much for organizing this project!