The Rendering: As it should have looked (first time).

So after mucking up with the renders first time, they were finally done (with a lot of help/fixing from Kieran).

Just a few steps in the process.

Some of the layers (after being re-rendered).

AO

Depth

Eagle AO

                                                                        Eagle Translucence
                                                 

ID Pass

Subsurface Scatter

River Diffuse

Indirect

Sunlight

Early compositing look dev

No textures, quick lights, bare minimum render passes... just playing around really.

Dragon Progress

Still lots to do, but here's an update. Ignore any texture/shading issues.

Modelling Progress

Modelling progress, still blocking out most of the body and wings, but you get the idea. 

Final Dragon Design.

The rendering isn't quite as good as the first test, but it's more just to post the model. Ignore any shading/texture errors.

Paper Dragon Head Turnaround

Shows off the paper much better than the previous render. Please excuse the dire modelling.

Full screen and HD for best effect.

   

Dragon Concepts

Here's what I was thinking for the tone/look of the dragon, it's a little rushed but you get the idea. He's an evil, greedy, badass... which I tried to reflect.

We should try to pay close attention to the overall shapes and shilouette of the dragon, as that's pretty much all we see until the money shot at the end. Most of the details will probably get lost, and the overall body shape is far more important than the head.... but I drew a bunch of heads.

The middle/left one is the only one I'm particularly fond of... it's got  slight eagle look to it, which I reckon would add a nice touch. 

Dragon Head Video

Not as effective at showing off the shading as I'd hoped to be honest, I think a full turnaround would work a lot better. If you look at the back of the head near the base of the horns, you can get a decent idea of how the light penetrates the paper.

Paper feel test.

Trying to experiment with the modelling/texturing/rendering to get the correct feel for the paper... which is made up of lots of subtle but important features.

I used procedurally generated textures and bump maps on a tweaked automatic UV, which I think is pretty successful and would save a LOT of time. The only downside to this is that in order to apply any displacement maps for detailed paper wrinkles/tears etc, we'd need to fully UV the model which would be difficult and time consuming.

I'm rendering a 40 frame video at the moment to show how the light interacts with the paper. I'll post that when I can.

Animatic V1.0

Here's the initial draft of the animatic. The timing needs tightened up a bit and some of the visuals clarified, but the gist is there! 30 seconds definitely isn't as long as it used to be.