Two more shots done, two more checkboxes checked. (Shot 3 was left on the cutting room floor a while back.) Up until a few days ago, my mood regarding this pair of shots was just as gloomy as last time. I’d taken over a month to turn around a mere 15-second sequence, and shot 2, a tight closeup of a hand, looked awful. It highlighted numerous poor modeling and rigging choices made two years ago, and there was no way to fix them now—not without a complete rebuild of the hands.

Still, I did what I could, creating a new pose slider for the thumb, re-weighting the wrist and reworking the webbing between the fingers to fix an annoying pop on the pinky caused by a five-point patch. It was a slow process requiring countless test renders, but in the end the little changes made a big difference. The final result’s still pretty bland, as shots go, but that’s a welcome improvement over “wince-inducing.”

View movie: Shots 1-2 + 4

Shot 1 held few surprises animation-wise, just a lot of layers to deal with, but I did try to work the gradients and blooms in the compositing stage. This shot is probably among the best so far, coloring-wise.

I may try to do shot 6 next. Might as well hit all the dripping-liquid effects in one go.