We hope this email finds you well.

It has been two long years since our last update. Much has changed but one thing remains the same; our commitment to completing the film we originally envisioned.

For those who happened to visit our site recently, you may have noticed that we styled our update section into a blog format. Here we will publish informal updates. For more official updates we will still use our mailing list.

For the past two years, our core team remained small as Yaron and Sheng-Fang worked mostly full time on Summer Breeze. Tami did sporadic work on costume design and texturing. Our choreographer Charlotte Griffin contributed a huge amount of time and effort, helping us develop characters and story. Our composer Max Surla delivered our 1960s styled music score.

Just prior to the SIGGRAPH2006 convention we had some of our friends working with us on a part-time, voluntary base. WeiChing Yu did plenty of animation, Alen Lai took care of lighting and Jina Lee painted Summer Breeze style textures.

We are most grateful for this generous support.

Last but most importantly, we would like to thank all of you for your patience and belief in Summer Breeze.

ShengFang and Yaron

We spent the past year blocking, animating and working our cameras, as well as further developing our characters and environments and adding more props. Our biggest effort went into deepening our characters, looking for little gestures and behaviors that will enrich their performance and tell us more about who they are. Charlotte, our choreographer, was instrumental in this process.

On the environment front the biggest achievement is probably the village hotel and Ed’s room. We have been working and reworking this one from the very start, never able to get it right. Finally this year we managed to come out with a villa we are completely happy with — In other words, we finally have the Italian hotel where we would love to reserve a room for ourselves : )

So, what can you expect for this year? New shots, new environments and, most excitingly, new - previously unexposed - characters. By August we expect to have six minutes of the film fully rendered. At that time we also plan to release five posters featuring our six main characters.

We hope you will stay tuned — Please check our site from time to time, because until SIGGRAPH, that’s where the new things are going to be visible. Please be in touch, we would love to hear from you!

First of all, thanks to so many of you, old and new friends, who stopped by our site and emailed us regarding the film. It’s been a year since our last update, we are still working full-time on Summer Breeze in NYC. Here is a brief overview of the passed year:

DELAYS ON THE PROJECT

Summer Breeze is a much bigger project than we understood when we started it. Both artistically and technically it proved frustratingly harder than we had ever imagined.

With the kind understanding from all of our supporters, we are able to continue the production and have the chance to bring it to a successful completion the way it was originally envisioned.

Summer Breeze is scheduled now to be completed by early 2005.

IN PRODUCTION

Three main characters, Sara, Flora and Ed were completed. And three secondary characters, Nino, Bruno and Fiona were added to the film. All of them now have skin textures, full body rig and facial set-up.

Originally we planed to use a simple color for the skin shader. However, the moment we put the fully-textured clothes on our characters, they simply demanded that the same treatment will be given to their skin.

With the help of Mark Piretti from Blue Sky Studios we completed in May the facial expressions set-up. Yaron set up the rig, ShengFang worked on the blend shapes and Wei-Ching did the test animations. Thank you Mark for your time.

Another great help, and not a moment too soon, was Jason Osipa’s great new facial rigging book "Stop Staring". Thank you Jason for putting your book on the shelves just on time!

Our hero car, a Karmann Ghia, is now modeled. Rigged for driving any irregular surface, it is ready to climb the steep streets of Sara’s village.

Work on the village continues, with many more corners modeled and textured. Tami expended her part in the 3D production and designed one of the sets. Ran Sariel worked from Israel on some of the modeling.

Rick Hankins, a physics graduate student from The University of Texas at Austin helped us since last September to work on some dynamic systems remotely.

Alen Lai, our old SVA classmate and a very dear friend, spent a lot of his summer weekends with us, helping with production management, matte painting and lighting.

Charlotte Griffin, our busy choreographer, continued working with us from North Carolina. She recorded some of the motion references and brought them with her to us in May. During her one-week stay in NYC, she performed more motion and worked side by side with Yaron on the animation.

THE INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

Our on-going internship program is a great help to the film production. Annie Chen from SVA worked on cloth simulation and animation since last May, Wei-Ching Yu, just graduated from SVA joined us this February on animation, and Jackie Liao also from SVA worked on the vegetation system in May and June.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING

In March, Professor Steve Rittler of William Paterson University invited us to share our Summer Breeze production experience with his 3D Animation and Storyboarding class students.

In the semester of Spring 2004, Yaron gave a class titled “Advanced Modeling and Rigging Concepts” at the MFA Computer Art Department at the School of Visual Arts, New York.

VOICES

In June, we sent out a “needed" ad for voice talent and got lots of responses. We had the voices recorded at Splash Studios, New York. Our voice talents are Antoinette LaVecchia, Leide Porcu and Jon Morgenthau. Peter Levin from Splash Studios also performed for us in case we need some variations.

SIGGRAPH 2004

Tami, who moved back to Israel this March, is still an active member of the Summer Breeze team, working with us part-time across the Atlantic. She shared new production materials with our supporters at this year’s SIGGRAPH.

At SIGGRAPH, a new supporter was added. Next Limit Technologies committed their RealFlow Software and their support to Summer Breeze.

A STUDIO ON THE MOVE

In July, we were forced to launch a search for a new space for our studio after our landlord informed us that the whole building is to be cleared by the end of August for renovation. Luckily we found a nice place just 5 blocks away from where we are right now and we are moving next week. Our phone number will remain the same.

UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM FAMILY

Our extended commitment to Summer Breeze would not have been possible without our families’ unconditional love and support. It is hard to find the words suitable to express how grateful we are.

Strengthened by the continuous encouragement from our supporters and friends, Summer Breeze continues in NYC.

yours,

ShengFang and Yaron

Summer is very pleasant in NYC so far, and we are wrapping up for SIGGRAPH. Our new trailer will be released in the exhibition, and we are excited to share with you our schedule, and other news:

SIGGRAPH 03

Monday morning Tami Zori will be on a plane to San Diego, heading for SIGGRAPH were she will show off our work, inseparably from the technology which makes it possible.

We prepared a special demo about the cloth simulation work in Summer Breeze as this is a central aspect in our film, and we are overly pleased with the technology we are using for it. The companies who are responsible for the simulator, the processors, the graphic cards and the computers; SyFlex, AMD, NVIDIA and BOXX are including our presentation in their show in SIGGRAPH.

Summer Breeze will also be featured in a banner at the BOXX booth, and in an ad from NVIDIA and HP in the special Electronic Theater addition of CGW magazine!

Please check out our SIGGRAPH schedule, as posted on our front page .

TRAILER RELEASE

Especially for SIGGRAPH, we are releasing the Summer Breeze trailer. If you are going to SIGGRAPH, you will be one of the lucky people who will get to see it first… Look for it at our supporters’ booths: AMD, BOXX Technologies, NVIDIA, SyFlex and Right Hemisphere. If you are not going, worry not! We are having a web release right after the exhibition is over… So stay tuned.

SUMMER BREEZE MUSIC

There will be no trailer without music, and Max Surla had joined us to create it. Max is a professional composer who have composed music for animation and documentary films with such networks as PBS, Lifetime, A&E and Discovery. He will also work with us on the complete film. We are very excited to have Max working with us!

We are also very excited to haveSplash Studios work with us on the sound effects and mix.

GRANT RECEIVED

We were very pleased this month to discover that we are the recipients of the John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund. You can find out more about who supports us and how to support us, here:
http://www.summerfilm.com/support.html
http://www.summerfilm.com/contribution.html

OUR INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

The internship program we have launched this summer was very successful and we plan to continue with it. Annie Chen from SVA worked on cloth simulation and will join Tami Zori in the SIGGRAPH presentation, Arlene Persaud from NYU worked with us on vegetation, Joseph Singer from NYU worked with us on modeling, and Qiao Liou from SVA is working on texturing and modeling and she painted the very blue Summer Breeze skies.

So, until next time, enjoy the breeze…

Summer Breeze