Yanni Syracopoulos, an animator from the Vancouver Film School has sent us
an email asking for help. He’s created a 3D model of a jet resembling Starscream,
and wants to know what to call it. Here’s his email, see if you can help him.
We’ve downloaded the movie file (15 meg) and it’s well worth a look!

You can email your comments to Yanni here.

To all who are excited about the upcoming live action flick,

my name is Yanni Syracopoulos, I am a student (nearing graduation) at the
Vancouver Film School where I have been studying visual effects for film and
television. Being a die hard fan of the transformers mythology I decided to
bring to life, in my own rendition, (I apologize for any possible grammatical
errors) a live action "variant" of the classic Deceptacon character,
Starscream.

My approach and execution was to purchase a scale Revel Monogram of an modern
F-15 Eagle and build it in Alias’s Maya 3d software. I downloaded reference
blueprints and schematics of the F-15 Eagle and studied its design to decide
what features of the F-15 would make the most convincing body parts. Along
with my arsenal of F-15 reference (which included pic’s, video footage, the
scale model, and blue prints) I studied the numerous references of Starscream
that I had consolidated. (note, thanx to Golden Age Collectibles for all of
your help) After constructing the F-15 within Maya, I was ready to build the
robot. I cut up the pieces of the jet and laid them out within the viewport
the same way that they would sit on the character himself. From there I reverted
back to my design bible and began constructing the inner workings and "gak"
to fill in the inbetweens. On the layout of the F-15 pieces I tried to keep
as many of the visual identifiers that made Starscream Starscream (such as
the two large air intake towers that sat on both of his shoulders, the fusilage
that would rotate down on to his chest, and his rear wings which came out
of the sides from the feet {based on the toys design}). After that I constructed
a character rig made up of Hierarchial joints and locators that would allow
for a simple, yet not so simple and at many times chaotic, trasformation process.
I made it work. With three months left in production, I am still unwrapping
the geometry (man is it time consuming), tweaking the rig for further functionality
(such as walk and run cycles, and acting {however I left the head static since
my leica board did not call for any lip sync animation}), soon to be animating
within my bg plages, lighting the shots, compositing it all together, and
rendering out the finale for my graduation edit session.

So far the response that I have recieved has been outstanding. My fellow
students and peers seem very excited about the completion of this project,
and everyone in class 3d42, 3d43, and 3d44 have provided outstanding advice
and critique. Along with a great response so far from my classmates I have
also recieved valuable input (both positive and negative) from my mentors
at the school, half of whom were responsible for bringing to life the many
3d characters seen in Transformers Beast Wars from Mainframe Entertainment
(and you could imagine how difficult that would be to please them).

However, I have been advised by many that since my variant of this classic
character is not exactly identical to the 1980’s cartoon, comic, or toy character
that it may be a wise decision not to title it "Starscream" or "Starscream
Variant" due to a fear that it could possibly be deemed "off model".
Stuck on this decision I have made up my mind to leave it up to the many Transformers
fans across the world to decide for me. With plenty of time for everyone to
provide their input I am in search of a sound decision. My email address is
3d43yanni@vfs.com and would very much appreciate anyone and everyones opinion
whether it be positive or otherwise. Should I or should I not call it "Starscream
Variant"? I am pretty sure that since there are international copyright
laws guarding Hasbro’s Starscream name that it would be in mine, as well as
the schools (vfs) best interests not to title it Starscream. If Starscream
Variant is too cheezy or downright absurd please let me know and I will respectfully
honor the opinions. Also if you know of a better name please let me know because
as of right now it is "Untitled". Thanx guys, and if you have any
other questions regarding my piece please let me know.

The animation can be found accessed via my public ftp folder at

www.vfs.com/~3d43yanni/starscream_live_variant.avi
(Use right click and ‘save target as’)

its about 12 mgbs (so without high speed it may take a bit) and you will
need the DivX codec in order to view it in its avi format.

www.divx.com

Sincerely,

Yanni Syracopoulos

3d43 vfs student