Step-by-Step
"Mirror" was born of a desire to explore human beauty in all it strange forms through the surreal medium of black-and-white computer graphics. "Mirror" was an organic creation, and was not storyboarded per se; instead, the film was created one shot at a time, often undergoing story shifts and revisions en route. Not the most efficient method of filmmaking, but quite an exciting and challenging one.
A door stacked on 2 transcans makes the perfect desk!
"Mirror" was created on a trio of home-built computers - all Pentium II based running Windows 98 and 2000 with RAM varying from 128 to 384 and megahertz varying from 133 to 350. Alias/Wavefront’s Maya was used for the 3-D. Adobe AfterEffects was used for compositing. Photoshop was utilized for texture painting and frame touch-up.
A sample of the 20-odd "flesh" textures employed.
Models were built freehand. Textures were painted from scratch or derived from photographs taken and scanned for that purpose. The lead character, a virtual woman by the name of Stacia Fals, was brought to life with a series of complex spline surfaces and hierarchied lattice deformers. Surface and deformer points were keyframe animated at 24 frames-per-second.
Clockwise, from upper left: Patch layout; Deformation lattices; Final render; Flat-shaded test render
"Mirror" was cut with DDClip - non-linear, non-destructive video editing shareware that was able to import .avi movie and .wav sound files. Sound effects were captured with an inexpensive tape recorder, dumped onto a PC and cleaned up with Sound Forge. The music was composed with Melody Assistant - music composition shareware that allows the user to create custom instruments and drag notes around virtual sheet music.
At 3 minutes, "Mirror" required just over 4000 final frames. These were kept relatively small at 720x540 pixels. DVFilm, based in Austin, Texas, did a fine job shooting the jpeg frames out to 35mm motion picture stock. Monaco Labs in San Francisco did the film-to-tape transfer.