With the constant plea for film-makers to create local content with international appeal, one animator is moving forward with products geared for that wider market.

Michael Webb is a US-trained software engineer who has parlayed his expertise and love for movies into creating content with a very Jamaican storyline.

Based in Manchester, Webb is currently working on the pilot for an animated series called A Witch at Rose Hall. It is his take on the Annie Palmer story, the much talked about 18th century mistress of the Rose Hall plantation in St James. The pilot is slated to be 15 minutes long and Webb is almost halfway there, having completed seven minutes of what he says is a very time-consuming process.

“If you are watching an animated production from overseas, what you see is more powerful images, more visual effects, and that is what I’m doing with this production. Jamaican audiences should like it because it has a number of local references, and internationally, in the same way that we have taken to Harry Potter and Disney projects, they should be drawn into the story and the quality of the work. We must not only create local productions, but local productions that can be marketed abroad and possibly earn some form of revenue.”

Webb explains that his project uses photo-realistic animation, paying attention to finer details such as skin texture, hair, clothing and movement. The images are three dimensional and made with a camera-tracking software that he has created, which combines visual basics with a 3D camera to simulate movement which is then transformed into animation. He said some aspects of the production have to be shot with human actors and then transformed into the characters.

“The process of creating the work involves first modelling the character to decide exactly what I want this character to be. This is then sculpted in 3D using a software called Maya. Character colouring is the next step and this involves using a composite of actual people to bring character to life. Then there is rigging, which involves putting the bones into the character. Then there is motion capture, which combines the character with movement,” states Webb.

He points out that this is all painstaking work and as a result, the seven minutes of the pilot has taken him three months; but based on the work he has put in, the remainder of the project should be ready in a few weeks as an international company has already shown interest in the project.