CGNetworks Feature :: Production Coverage Andy Murdock: Lots of Robots
Paul Hellard, 31 January 2005
About Andy Murdock
Close scrutiny of Murdock's career sees him perfecting the art of pursuing the work he loves. His personal project, ‘Lots of Robots' (LOR) has developed out of this same yearning. While studying at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1987, Murdock learned a lot about filmmaking, sound design, sculpture and painting. When oil painting didn't produce enough paid work, he landed a job in a recording studio, engineering albums and demo tapes.
After a few years trying to make a living off the kindness of wanna-be rock stars, Andy had a play on the first color Macintosh and became involved in computer graphics. “I did a few jobs using the very first desktop 3D programs, like Swivel 3D, Electric Image and StrataVision“, Murdock laughs, “I then ended up finding work on the first Microsoft Encarta edition and a few video games.“
This led to jobs at Mondo Media, PDI and Xaos. Recently, he's done James Bond games, E3 and TV commercial material for the Lord of the Rings games, also a recreation of a Blade Runner environment for the Sci-Fi Museum in Seattle. But, Andy admits he likes to work on 3D characters that he doesn't have to see blown up. “Some of my favorite work is educational and scientific 3D animation. I had a chance visit to Hayden Planetarium's Space Theater at the New York Museum of Natural History and was blown away by the dome show, so I hope to find some of that work in the future.“
Lots of Robots
LOR is a creation myth. A story about the relationship of the creator with the beings he creates. The creator's name is LOR, and in the next installment of LOR, we get to meet him. The story begins with the birth of the first human-like creature and its journey to meet its maker.
The baby character is one of the first human type critters to be made for LOR. He has a few imperfections, and this will probably disappoint the Creator character. He also has some redeeming qualities and these are a big part of the story. The creator's expectations and disappointments with his creation, and the choices and judgments he makes will form this very interesting relationship.
Murdock is fascinated that in nature, a fawn can drop out of its mother's womb and just get up and start running around, while a human baby cannot. As the movie shows, the first human baby creature is flawed with malformed limbs, yet he has abilities and instincts that help him overcome obstacles. The LOR Creator character also commands a menagerie of small robots he made to help him with his tasks as well as serve as prototypes for animal designs.
“I have a wealth of scenes ranging from vaguely developed to highly detailed“, says Murdock. “When it's time to actually animate a scene and build environments, I refine the script to flow from the previous sequences into the new scene. Depending on the mood and energy level that I leave off with, I need to tweak and rewrite in order to keep the process dynamic and fluid. When I began the project in 2001, I started with the hummingbird flower-sucking shot, and started to think of this new world. I knew I wanted to make a creation myth, but that was all I knew. Now the story has taken shape and is unfolding. I use a common start up file for After Effects that contains all the color and picture effects. So each render set gets the same treatment. This keeps the new sequences matching the rest .“
“A lot happened in my life between the last two releases“, he concedes. “I got married, moved house, and I was continuing to pick up contract animation work. Andy and his new wife Holly Karmanocky spend evenings dreaming up projects, marketing ideas and are together refining his LOR story. “Having Holly to share ideas with me“, explains Murdock, “has made the abundance of LOR story possibilities that much richer, and at the same time more focused.“
Getting a team together and releasing the LOR complete in a couple of years is a Murdock goal. “There are some really fantastic artists out there that I would love to work with", he says. “What matters the most to me is that I get this story made, not so much that I do it all myself.“
“Other contract animation work typically takes up half my working time. Jobs come in fast and intense. Usually I'll work for a month or two at a time and then have the same amount of time free to work on LOR. When I'm working on a contract, that's all I do, I don't work on LOR. Mostly because of the fact that the render farm or render garden is queued up with the contract job and I just like to focus on one job at a time.“
