CREW!

I'd like to introduce our crew for Zohar HaNegev:

Melissa Davidson

environment modeler

Melissa Davidson grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she developed a love of art very early on in life. She would eventually earn a degree in computer animation at Humber College in Toronto. Since then she has been working freelance on a number of projects including providing art direction and animation consulting on a couple of indie video games which will be released later on this year.

Melissa's Website

Di Ye

environment modeler

Born in China, with a degree in International Business, Di Ye made her way to San Francisco in 2008. Over there she has been pursuing her MFA degree in Visual Effects at Academy of Art University.

Di's Blog 

Eric Montero

texture artist

An accomplished painter, draftsman and animator. Eric Montero was one of the few to be awarded a full scholarship to the Vancouver Film School in 2004. A master of anatomy and body dynamics, this modern renaissance man practices theatre acting and operates a dentist clinic in his spare time.

Eric's Website

Michael Fallik

director, creator, lighting and rendering

Born and raised in Israel, Michael Fallik trained at the Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv, Vancouver Film School in Canada, and is currently studying for his master’s degree in animation at the University of Southern California. He has worked as a storyboard artist and cinematic director in Singapore, and has animated and directed twelve animated shorts, including the award winning The Heart Collector in 2005. In 2007 he was awarded a certificate of merit at the Annie awards for contribution to the ASIFA Animation Archive in Burbank, California.

Michael's Website

There are still spaces open. For more information, see http://www.michaelfallik.com/city/crew.html

Layouts

The second run of the layouts are complete. Modeling starts today.

Below are the layouts of the three sections, without any text. Click to play each quicktime.

Zohar HaNegev Overview

 

Zohar HaNegev Top Floors

  

Zohar HaNegev  Lower Warrens

 

Official Website & Jobs

Zohar HaNegev's official website is now live at http://www.michaelfallik.com/city/.

We are also looking for environment modelers to help out with the project. Work is paid.
For more information please click here.

Pictures of Yaffo

A few more pictures from the weekend, from the port city of Yaffo (Jaffa). More than other cities, Yaffo embodies the combination of the ancient, the rather new and and augmented. The city itself is dived into two sectors:

Ancient Yaffo

Modern Yaffo

Auto-Iris

The film is meant to be carried by it's environment. Since it would be rather still, the lion's share of the movement will be from the camera and from the light. I've set my brother's camera to Auto-Iris, which means the camera adjusts to the light automatically, not unlike the way our eyes work. When a bright spot takes up most of the frame, everything else becomes dark. When the light switches off, the eye adjusts itself to the darkness.

Below are some simple reference videos that I've taken in my home in Israel. I will later attempt to simulate these lighting effects, whenever a window is opened or a light is switched on and light floods into the the dark abandoned room. Sans the purple streaks.

Reference Photographs

In the past few weeks, I traveled to several cities in Israel, taking photographs of the architecture that I would like to reference in the film. Below are just a few of the photographs from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Jerusalem

 Photographs by Michael Fallik

Tel Aviv

Photographs by Michael Fallik

Inspiration Strikes

My hopes with this project was that after creating several short and seemingly unrelated animation sequences, that an overall theme would naturally form which will allow me to create a single cohesive piece of work.

This cohesion came sooner than expected, not more than a few hours after I finished shooting a short reference scene for the first sequence.

Kowloon – The Walled City

Image taken from The Dry Facts

More than a month ago, I stumbled upon a book named City of Darkness - Life in Kowloon City. The book records the history of this now demolished Hong Kong city, accompanied by candid resident interviews and simply unbelievable photographs.

Looking at the images, I immediately drew parallels to the 60s architecture in Tel Aviv, and imagined the possibility of constructing a Kowloon style city with Tel Aviv's structural design and perhaps even some of Jerusalem or Jaffa's ancient construction style. A concept or story was missing at the time and I didn't feel like following the project on visual merit alone.

After returning for a visit in my homeland of Israel, several weeks ago, the mentioned concept came together. Thanks to a very special muse.

The concept in one Paragraph

The film is seen entirely from a first person perspective. The viewer is taken on a journey through a fictional abandoned city in the Negev – the desert of southern Israel -- following a mysterious cicerone, who occasionally reminisces over the little stories and happenings that once took place in this completely unregulated and organic urban environment. As the cicerone speaks and the viewer witnesses... the tale of the city unravels.