I was planning on writing a post about gamma correcting Mental Ray so it renders out in correct linear color space but that post would be more involved and I am currently swamped with lighting a full trailer by myself with the due date coming up fast. Thus, here is another story.After giving up on Tiger Tails, this was the story that I had decided on doing. Inspired by La Luna and Le Maison en Petits Cubes. One small environment, one main character and one sub character. While in the character design class, I took advantage of the assignments and refined my main character further and even ended up building a maquette. In the end I decided against doing my own project as I preferred to work on multiple collaboratives and as a texturing and lighting artist I would have long breaks inbetween as I wait for modeling, rigging, animation, and dynamics to be done. I still do love the story and maybe I can make this short film in the future.

The main character, Reo, is an old star miner who has lost his wife, Vera, and is now nearing the end of his own. Reo has a small house on a small planet where large geodes grow. His work consists of hitting his hammer at the geodes which forms stars and the impact causes the stars to fly off into space, thus shooting stars. As Reo comes home from his work he recalls his past with his wife. Before going in the house, Reo makes sure to wipe his boots on the doormat first to remove the stardust so as not to track it through the house. After Reo hangs up his vest, he wipes clean the stardust on the hairclip that he has attached to his vest, a present he had once given to Vera and she had worn on a daily basis. Reo makes his way to his chair and sits down to take a smoke. As he puffs away he recalls his last moments beside his wife as she laid on her bed with her last words of always being together in each others’ hearts. Reo gradually turns white and glows and goes supernova. As the particles of Reo float and swirl around in space, joining into a stream of other star particles, another series of particles twirls around Reo’s particles. They are Vera’s particles and as they gradually gain form, Reo and Vera gradually consolidate back into physical beings and once again land on a little planet with a little house. They take each others’ hands and walk towards their new life together again.

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