Thanks mostly to a well-known movie sequel, 2006 unofficially became "the year of the pirate". It was hard to go anywhere without being bombarded with pirate-related themes, whether it be Talk like a pirate day, Pirates vs. Ninjas themes at conventions or the pirate philosophy of yin and yarrgh, pirates were everywhere. Sometimes though, something would emerge that couldn't be traced back to the movie, but to the classic pirate adventures of old. Isaac Botkin's Men O' War project is one such example. Inspired by the likes of Douglas Fairbanks and the LEGO Pirates theme of construction toys, Isaac and his family produced a short film that has been spreading across the internet. We recently spent some time talking with Isaac about how this project came to be.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your history with 3D?
I got started in video before moving into 3D, and so I learned camera work, practical lighting and basic editing right off the bat while helping out in my dad's Washington DC production house (benefits of a home-school education). Immediately after getting into 3D animation I took a break to work on some 2D projects. Since then, I've bounced back and forth between live-action, effects, and animation work in the States and New Zealand. My main specialties with LightWave have been as a modeler, character animator and effects TD. From about 2001-2003 I worked off and on as a supervising animator with Huhu Studios on a number of television programs, but since then I've mostly been working on documentaries and doing various consulting jobs. I've been forced to use Maya and 3DS now and again, and I really like Zbrush, but LightWave is my tool of choice.

How were you first introduced to LightWave 3D?
When I was thirteen my father bought the Video Toaster 4000, and after fooling around with Toasterpaint and the Character Generator for a few weeks on TV commercials, I clicked the mysterious "3D" button and plunged into the most complicated world I'd ever seen. I think I had to call NewTek's tech support line once a week for several months, but I had been bitten by the animation bug, and now, twelve years of trial and error later, I have a much better idea of what I'm doing. Also, LightWave has progressed a lot since version 3.0, but I still miss my Amiga.

What feature of LightWave do you like the most?
The render engine, specifically how it handles light. Not only am I comfortable and familiar with it, but I think it really gives a nice, cinematic look. I appreciate the newer lighting tools immensely and also the benefits of having a reasonably plugin-friendly architecture.

Are there any plug-ins you use on a regular basis?
These days, there really aren't. Three years ago, when I was with Huhu Studios, we used project:messiah for all of our character work, and there were usually multiple Steve Worley plug-ins in every shot! However, LightWave's native rigging and deformation tools have advanced a great deal since then, and at the moment my 3D workload is pretty light, so I don't use that many - apart from a lot of the default or project-specific ones.

Where are you currently working?
My brothers and I have started a production company in the last few months and we're still pulling things together. Lately I've been doing a lot of videography and color correction.

Where did the idea for Men O' War come from?
I was preparing to teach some classes at the San Antonio Film Academy, which is attached to a short film festival. Since most of the students were interested in making shorts, I figured a neat lecture could run through the making of a short, showing all the stages, from storyboard to final edit. Since it had been a long time since I'd done any real animation, I decided it should be animated. I thought a simple project could be encouraging, in a you-can-do-it-yourself kind of way, so I set a timeframe of one month, and decided that it would be a family-only project. It was only then, after I'd worked out the boring pragmatic stuff that we sat down and brainstormed a story. The script itself was written in only two days, I'm sorry to admit.

Did 2006 being the "year of the pirate" affect on your subject decision?
Not really. I was more influenced by the old Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn swashbucklers than any recent films, but I have to admit that my reasons for choosing that particular genre were almost totally pragmatic. A naval battle requires only one ocean plane and two ships: much less modeling and rendering than a story involving the town, medieval, or space sets. However, the island turned out well and proved that terrain isn't actually that hard to do, so perhaps we'll try something a bit more ambitious if we revisit this medium...

What made you decide on the 3D/LEGO style?
Part of it had to do with the previous years' students; there had been some very imaginative and ambitious stop motion shorts submitted, some using LEGO pieces. It looked like fun, and besides, with that tight deadline, I figured that a plastic-y style might simplify the rendering... and rigid characters might simplify the animation. There was another advantage in that there are several LEGO-CAD programs that allowed my younger brothers (13 and 11-years-old) to model the ships, which let me stick to layout, animation, and lighting.

Did the LEGO choice present any particular challenges?
There was some difficulty in getting the final ships from the CAD programs into LightWave, but fortunately the LightWave community is made up of thousands of very helpful and ingenious people, and I was able to find a free LScript that handled it automatically. Apart from that, everything was very simple. Modeler's excellent polygonal modeling tools were very helpful, and I was able to get some nice lighting with a very simple setup that only required a few seconds a frame.

Can you tell us more about LEGO/CAD and the LightWave conversion tools?
There are a number of tools and part libraries on LDraw.org. The software basically lets you build with LEGO parts. Joern Thiemann's LDraw2LWS program exports a LightWave scene with all the individual LDraw brick objects positioned properly. I loaded that scene into Modeler using D-Storm's Load Objects From Scene plug-in to get the full model. There was a fair amount of cleanup and optimization, but it gave me an authentic-looking model built from only official pieces.

For the island, I built a simple volcanic shape and used Rob and Alexx's Legoizer to turn it into blocks. It worked so well that I moved the camera a lot closer than I'd planned, and couldn't resist building a brick sculpture of a skull, which I blew up with particle effects for the finale.

What was the schedule for the Men O' War project?
We ended up working for five weeks, so only one week over. Pre-production was fast, and the final sound mix and compositing edit was simple, so the bulk of the time was spent animating all the shots and composing the score.

How many people worked on the Men O' War project?
Eight altogether, mostly my siblings. I did the storyboarding and animation. David did all the sound effects and foley. Anna, Elizabeth, and Ben composed, arranged, and performed the score. Luke and Noah each built one of the ships. We all contributed to the acting, but ended up needing help from our uncle, a professional voice artist, who played three characters by himself. I've posted breakdowns of all these stages on my blog: www.Outside-Hollywood.com

How has the internet exposure affected you and the Men O' War project?
It's been great. After I posted the animation on my blog, I started posting making-of articles on how we handled each step. None of them were in-depth tutorials, but I uploaded the storyboards, an animatic, a rough animation, and then the final composited footage, and a lot of readers wrote to say how helpful that was. Also, everyone seems to like the film. It's not very polished, and the story isn't strong, but I think it's still a fun, nostalgic adventure. And even the stop-motion folks, who chide me for "cheating" everything, seemed to enjoy seeing things that are hard to do with miniatures, like birds, jungles, waterfalls, and ocean waves, animated with individual blocks.

Have you considered entering Men O' War in any animation festivals?
No. This is a simple project, and while I'm proud of how it turned out, I know we could have done a much better job if we'd ignored some of our self-imposed restrictions and done things to the full extent that LightWave would have allowed. This is not my best work. The animation could have been much better, the poly counts could have been higher, and radiosity would have been a big help to my cartoony plastic lighting. With a longer production schedule, it could have been a photo-real representation of scratched and dented plastic blocks, better emulating that stop-motion look. As it is, this is just a fun family project designed to inspire young filmmakers and beginning animators. Also, the unlikely event of winning a cash prize with copyrighted LEGO characters could have been legally troublesome.

Have you had any feedback from, or confrontations with, LEGO?
After numerous queries to an email address I found hidden on their corporate website, I finally got one letter back. It didn't say much, except that I couldn't sell the film, couldn't use the LEGO logo, couldn't use any of their franchise sets, and so forth. They did, however, commend me on using an original and non-copyright-infringing score. I think that's the closest thing to an official nod that I'll get, but there are so many "brick films" on the internet unchallenged by legal action that I think they must like, or at least tolerate, fan films. I just hope that some of the old-school designers behind the original LEGO Pirates theme saw it.

Have the recent changes in LightWave impacted the way you work?
Yes; partly due to cheaper RAM and faster video cards, but also because of LightWave's more efficient organizational tools. I remember animating scenes in pieces just to keep the frame-rate at a usable level and then stitching them back together in notepad for rendering, or using "find/replace" to change subdivision levels across dozens of objects. Now the Scene Manager automates a lot of resource-saving options by letting me adjust things in batches. The few "crowd scenes" in Men O' War were animated in minutes by copying and pasting motion clips back and forth between different characters.

Are there any new features of LightWave v9 you've found particularly useful?
Men O' War was all done in LightWave 8.5. I don't actually have a project that requires LightWave v9 yet, but I'm sure looking forward to node-based texturing.

Do you have a "LightWave tip or trick" others might find helpful?
In addition to the always fantastic and continually useful spinning light trick? Well, if I'm modeling something from scratch (unlike LEGO pieces) I make UVs for almost everything. Then I bake a basic GI lighting pass from an even skydome into a diffuse map, and that gives me a grime or ambient occlusion effect for free. It's also a great base to work on when painting the other texture maps. I'm also a firm believer in multi-pass rendering, but that's not exactly a trick...

What's next for Isaac Botkin?
Difficult to say... I have multiple projects in various stages of development. At the moment I'm working on two documentaries that our company is producing, neither of which (unfortunately) contain animation. After that I'll continue to raise funds for some personal projects, and in the meantime I'm doing some painting and a lot of writing and the regular freelance jobs. Like everyone in this business I have a lot of scripts and features are my ultimate goal, but until that time comes, I'm open to just about anything.

Do you have any advice for someone new to the 3D industry?
Learn techniques, not tools; this will help you walk the fine line between diversification and specialization. More important than that, however, is personal character. Employers want to see resourcefulness, which is more of a virtue than a mere skill. Develop it first, and then never stop learning.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Isaac!

To learn more about the Men O' War project, visit Isaac's Botkin's website at: www.Outside-Hollywood.com