SKARAMOOSH COMPLETE GRAPHICS FOR C4 SERIES

SKARAMOOSH have announced that they have completed all graphic work, animation, compositing and onlining, for the forthcoming Channel 4 series ‘Empires of Stone’.
The series traces the history of the Acropolis, the Colosseum and the Great Wall of China. With up to eight people working on the project at any one time, more than 20 minutes of animation was created over a period of nine months.
The shots created include the graphic reconstruction of the interior and exterior of all these structures as well as populating the Colosseum with gladiators, beasts and a crowd of 40,000 to reconstruct the Colosseum games as they would have been seen at the time.
Led by Penny Holton and Sebastian Read, the 3D team built all three structures, the Acropolis, the Colosseum and the Great Wall in Softimage 3D based on an enormous amount of reference material.
Taking reference from a number of different sources, including specialist books, artists impressions and experts in their fields the team believe they have built the structures as accurately as possible.
In addition to the animation for the programmes, Colosseum also includes a number of live action composite shots.
Having filled the Colosseum with bloody gladiator fights and a variety of animals, it was felt one crucial ingredient was missing - the crowd. A day was spent in the blue screen studio at First Post with a crowd of willing helpers and a glut of different costumes ranging from slaves to senators supplied by Angels.
Back at Skaramoosh the hard work began – the CG creation of the crowd. Once the best shots had been chosen from the rushes a key was created for the blue screen and the people were then reduced in size in order to be able to ‘sit’ them properly within the 3D colosseum. At this stage Softimage was utilised to construct a series of animated textures from the keyed crowds, these were then placed within the stadium, rendered and taken back into Illusion and composited into the final sequence.
Both Acropolis and Colosseum were onlined, and the footage treated, with effects added at Skaramoosh by John Cryer using Avid DS. (CD)