Inspiration is dwindling



Its pretty much what the title says, my enthusuasm for this course has just slumped another notch due to the fact that another lecturer didnt turn up to a lesson today which I'm pretty sure it was on because:


1: it was clearly stated in the timetable that it would be on.
2:No email was sent saying it was canceled
3: A hell of a lot of people turned up to be dissapointed yet again


Not even an appology-email for all us good peeps who wasted our time showing interest, I'm pretty much fed up of all this unorganized 'learning' and constantly complaining to the lecturers about it. For a lot of people that was £3 parking/bus fair and £2 fuel and in my case missing work that could have earned me some cha-ching - never mind, I think I will only go into uni now on a 'whatever' basis. what a waste of MY money and time.


However! on the bright side I managed to get back early and do some work, which means I have had time to do some texturing, building the rest of my goodies and almost finalizing my nano-fighter. I will provide only 2 renders of my current work so you can all see my progress, here you go.

'Remember to click on the images to get a nice big picture'























'A nice shiny Bog fit for the queen herself to take a dump in' - me thinks the stall walls need recolouring though and the loo is a bit small.





















'Ooooh thats sexy, Germs beware!' - the almost complete but untextured Nano-fighter.


I am very impressed with the lighting features in the new 3D's max 2009 - I am also very pleased about the rendering times of my images (bathroom took about 20 seconds and the nano-fighter took about 6) my progress is only slowed by my slow demoralising crawl through this course, if only they could make it more interesting... prehaps a nice field day out for the Animation students or maybe just some form of inspirational action (hint,hint, nudge,nudge, wink,wink,) hell knows we need it.

Good 'old' Vista



Just an update on my progress so far:



hmmm... so far (and currently as I write this) I am reinstalling all my applications for Windows Visa because I had to completely reinstall it due to an update that disalowed my entire machine to funtion for 15 minutes every time I restarted it (pretty annoying). I spent about 3 days with the technical support team who eventually said 'sorry the only way to fix it is to upgrade windows' oh and by the way (my mobile phone company said) 'Here's a £15 bill for ya on top of that, the toll free number you dialled was charged at your normal rate without even you first hehehe, gotcha! $chaching$'



Fortunately though I'm not that angry, after emailing Microsoft and telling them I wasnt forking out £300 for the upgrade from windows premium edition to ultimate edition, that they owed me for the phone bill and the fact they couldnt fix the problem they very generously just gave me an entire retail version of the Windows Vista Ultimate edition (32 and 64 bit dvd's!!!) with a brand new serial code to boot free of charge, woohoo!



This has however put me behind schedule a bit on my projects so it's not that great.

If anyone needs a fully liscenced version of windows vista home premium (32 and 64 bit dvd's) drop me a line as I'm selling my old one.



Lets hope all goes well with this version and that I run into no more problems .



Oh yeah, its a bit random but I've had time to play with the cloth modifier whilst all my goodies where re-installing - check this baby out.

Simulated client:

So far so good, I am doing quite well with this project regards to time is involved. Basically I have all the basic models set down that are ready to be refined. I will put a few images below just to show some of my progress.

'I am quite happy about the new lighting features in 3Ds Max 2009'

Of course the Nano-fighter is not complete yet and neither is the bathroom - both have yet to be made from roughs to fully developed models then texturized, I am now in the process of creating wings for the 'plane' and eventually spruce it up a bit more as it will be the main highlight of the project. there are some examples below of the 'wings in the making' 

Thats all the updates for now as I am quite anxious to continue updating the models.

A bit of final information on the 'Odd Couple' Project

Firstly I shall give details of what I rendered and if it satisfied the brief.

My Non-final clip ran to approximately 2:30 minutes

The first render was a Pal, .Mov file - the reason this was done is because it streams extremely well over the internet with great quality and sound (which turned out to be 260MB) and may be used in the future.

the second was specifically for the brief - A 720x576 DVAVI 25FPS file, the sound quality was 16000hz (standard) the file size was 440MB and the picture quality was not as good as the .Mov file , however it was observed that the sound was 'slightly' better. I have no idea how a 5 minute animation is going to fit onto a 750 MB CD as the brief states.

- Production information can be found in past Journal posts - not much has changed just further animation of character and realization of how many bugs where present - which will be explained below.

- There was some problems with textures - for instance if you look at Thomas turners hair you will notice it moves out of place when he moves. I tried to correct this with using local Coordinates and World coordinates in 3D max but to no avail. Any feedback on how to fix this problem will be appreciated.

- Textures on areas where chunks where cut out for doors and windows had very noticeable texture variatons - this was fixed by erecting new walls and 'covering the old ones with them.

You will have to click on the picture to enlarge it, only then will you see the distortion clearly.


- trying to make a cockroach with a SplineIkSolver spine ended in disaster as it refused to be resized even with bone tools active. eventually had to settle for a normal IKHI Solver spine which worked fine but did not work as naturally.

- Timing without a dope sheet was a bit difficult but acceptable - seeing as though I was not working in a team.

- I have found that it is very difficult to work on an animation (even if only 5 minutes) is very difficult and is much more suited to a team, it can be difficult to push oneself but if you have other people working with you there is no choice but to get it done in time so the next person can get their part done (in an ideal world that is)

My own review of my work:

I believe my animation could have been better with music possibly but I did not have time to make any. it could have been better if my timing was more honed, the story is great (full of action, short but you get to know the main character well and even the cockroach even though you only see him/her for a few seconds) - the scenery is good but could be improved. The characters are ok but have obvious faults. ie - Thomas turners ankles look broken (because of improper bone placement) and his hair moves with the scenery and not with his actual head. The cockroach looks pretty good but could do with more development.

The lighting was very well done for my first attempt and looks very good in all the scenes (So I think but you are welcome to challenge me on that when I post the clip soon)

Sounds to acquire:

1. Pop -done

2. Voice of narrator

3. ‘hello’ mumble -Done

4. Thunder -done

5. Background talk mumble-Done

6. Background agree mumble-Done

7. Dishes being washed tinkle = maybe water running -done

8. Sigh mumble -Done

9. Fire or explosion sound -done

10. Smile mumble ‘heeee’-Done

11. Dunno mumble-Done

12. Kettle switch on = maybe water - Done

13. Cup tinkle -done

14. Grrrr mumble-Done

15. ‘Eeek’ roach-Done

16. Hand thud -Done

17. Slip -Done

18. Woah mumble-Done

19. Boing -Done

20. Breaking, thumping , shattering -Done

21. Boom- glass explode(shatter)

22. Give up mumble-Done

23. Book soft tap -Done

24. Book thud -Done

25. Squash -Done

26. Eeeaw roach-Done

27. Vent crashing open –Done sort of

28. Lots of stuff falling out – grain? -Done

29. Nooo mumbled-Done

Props to acquire:

1. Vent -Done

2. Cabbages -* No got weeds, spade and vegetables instead

3. Hosepipe -done

4. Plate with buiscuits -done

5. Cup -done

6. Window -Done

7. Kettle –done sort of

8. Crumb -Done

9. Better roach

10. Picture- **

11. wood chunk - Done

12. catapult stuff - Done

13. random junk – Done almost

14. *look for burn overlays

15. Glass -Done

Final Script for Odd Couple

Int – Living room/kitchen

(Paragraph is narrated whilst Thomas Turner goes about his daily business)

Narrator

Thomas Turner is a slightly obsessive , wound up, widowed, mid 60 year old English fellow who enjoys having quite nights in front of the television watching the news and sports channels, he prefers comfortable clothes like jeans and a plain shirt with a small overcoat. He is quite a friendly fellow but not overly chatty, preferring to speak about daily news and finding out what is going on in his local area. He lives in a semi-detached house alone; he quite likes the privacy but still misses his wife who passed away a number of years ago in a fluke double lightning strike event. He takes pride in his minimalistic furnished home but is sometimes a little too much of an obsessive neat freak. He noticed this when one of his friends came around for a visit and strangely he couldn’t wait for them to leave so that he could wash their tea cup and plate that had biscuits on, put it back in place and then vacuum the whole room which he had been in. He is not fond of having dogs or cats in his house as they leave fur but can tolerate this; however he despises insects – once he had a minor ant infestation that he took care of with a can of gas, lighter fluid and a few matches. After setting fire to a small portion of his kitchen he still used an entire can of ant poison (which took the whole nights to slowly drip into the hole) to make sure the nest was eradicated (which unknowing to him missed the ant nest completely and went through a old pipe leading straight to his prize cabbage patch and destroying 80% of his crop) - you will be happy to know the ants escaped the initial inferno and poisoning then decided to move next door away from this half crazed fellow. Thomas Turner is his own worst enemy.

(Run time approx – 1 minute and 41 seconds)

After introduction

Scene 2 – int Living room

Thomas Turner sits in front of his television watching the latest sports news, he takes a kernel of popcorn and eats it. There is a faint scurrying noise coming from near his rug, he does not hear this the first time but the second wave of scurrying attracts his attention.

Thomas

Hmmm?

Thomas gets up and goes to the nearby light switch; he flicks it on and surveys the now lit area. Something is looking at him but he is unaware of it, he shrugs* his shoulders and goes into the kitchen. The thing (cockroach) that was looking at him follows.

Scene 3 – int kitchen:

Thomas Turner goes to his kettle* and switches* it on, he then bends down and gets a cup* out of his cupboard*(open/close) – as he is gets up he sees the cockroach on the counter holding a crumb, he instantly gets angry.

Thomas

Grrrrrrr!

Cockroach

(fright)(Squeaky) Aaaaaah!

The cockroach drops the crumb and jumps in surprise, it bolts for cover just as Thomas tries to squash it with his first, he misses. The creature bolts off the desk and into the living room, Thomas runs after it but slips on the well polished floor; he eventually gets to his feet and follows.

Scene 4 – int living room

Thomas bursts into the living room; he stops and surveys the area but cannot see the cockroach anywhere in sight. The cockroach is in front of a picture* (possibly childs drawing of him with his grandkids) mimicking one of the people in the picture, Thomas walks past and does not notice, just as he does the insect jumps off the table and scurries away, Thomas hears this and attacks.

Scene 5 Ext – House

You can see Thomas’s house and hear repeated smashing noises after a while a title fades in (20 minutes later) and you can still hear smashing; suddenly there is an explosion which blows out the windows.

Scene 6: int living room

Thomas is on the floor, his house is a wreck and the Cockroach is taunting him by blowing raspberries at him.

Cockroach

PFFFFFFFF!!

Thomas has a glass in his hand, he wants to throw it at the creature but is sure he will miss and gives up

Thomas

(Sighs)

He drops it but hits a small plank nearby which launches a piece of wood up to the top of the bookshelf which intern sends a book tumbling down on the cockroach and squashes it. Thomas is relieved and gets up, it’s all over and he is victorious. He looks around at his destroyed house sadly, he will have to start cleaning up soon. There is a rumble coming from a nearby air vent, he goes closer to inspect, the noise starts again... loads of cockroaches burst out of the air vent and cover poor Thomas as he screams

Thomas

Noooooooo!

The NeverEnding story:

I watched a brilliant movie the other day that I haven't seen since I was a small kid. I'm not too sure how many of you out there have watched it but if you haven't then definitely give it a look, it beats the living crap out of most modern day fantasy movies and it was made in 1984! This is a Movie made from a German book and was originally called 'Unendliche Geschichte, Die' - which basically translated mean the NeverEnding Story. it was written in Michael Ende (the novel that is) . the Movie was directed by Wolfgang Petersen and of course additional credits go to Herman Weigel and Robert Easton for additional dialogue and writing for the movie


It's all about a boy who end up in a book store because he is running away from bullies and meets a man who is reading a 'special' book - so he says anyways, the Kid sort of pinched the book but leaves a note behind saying he will return it.

He eventually gets round to reading the book and finds out that it's all about a boy called Atreyu and his quest to save his word called Phantasia from 'The nothing'. The story gets really interesting and he meets many strange creatures and goes to many beautiful places (the scenery in this movie is amazing) I was really impressed with the special effects and the clever ways they made the characters (Remember they where using puppets back then) - I think Collin Arthur was the special effects supervisor and sculptor. I really wish that I can create something like this in the future using modern day technology. all the scenes are perfectly lit and produce the exact mood that it's supposed to. I also hope that maybe one day I can learn to draw well enough to express such scenes in my head as the course I'm on at the moment (which is an art course and has everything to do with expressing ideas, creating character and scenes, even understanding what colours and textures to use and especially learning how to express lighting correctly) does not have our own art teacher, yep thats right for £9000 a year still don't have our own art class, resources or teacher... we can still learn by sneaking into other students classes though.

I have taken a few screenshots of some of the locations and characters - hope it persuades you to take a look at the actual movie, you will not regret it.



You can buy a new copy for a £10 or a used one for under a Fiver on www.Amazon.co.uk It's also a great movie to watch with the girlfreind.

Some Very useful links

Greetings

Thanks to my third year friend for providing the following links - these links are to sites that can potentially provide final year projects, you will notice that some of the closing dates are soon but should not be put off as they will 'probably' have new projects for next year... here they are. I am putting them up for my own personal use (so I don't forget) but don't mind if everyone browses through them.

http://www.dandad.org/education/student-awards/ - D&AD

http://www.mandy.com/1/filmtvjobs.cfm?jt=zzz - Mandy

http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/ - CwJobs (industry job website.

http://www.europrix.org/ - Euro student awards

Oh yeah and here's a very good link for animation students who want to study movement, there is a whole library of things moving, from planes to horses running - its also free to watch.
http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/Customer/index.aspx

Some Multimedia - a game inside a game?

I have been very busy this holiday visiting relatives so I have not been able to focus on much work. I did however manage to complete my final script, get my scanner to work and create something with a multimedia approach to it. you may be asking, what is this magical, mysterious multimedia thing - Well it's a game inside a game.

I have always been interested in level design in games and always try to push things to the limits in the - for instance one I put 100 explosive barrels in a half life two map with a zombie in the middle of them. all it took was a few bullets into one of the barrels to set off the chain reaction which inevitably crashed my computer (but I bet that zombie was blown to smithereens hehehe) - this time I went for something more simple, I dug out an old classic by the name of Starcraft and thought of a fun game to make. Initially starcraft is a strategy game where you have to mine rescources, build a base, produce units and attack opposite factions. however the map editor is pretty flexible and allows a person to do anything he\she really wishes.There is a lot of maps already out there where a team of people have to defend so it is not a totally original idea but non the less a lot of aspects are. here are a few screen shots of the map in construction.

The idea of the game is that a swarm of enemy units spawn at a specific place and attempt to reach the middle/bottom of the map (they have to follow the platforms) - these units cannot atack, they just fly blindly to their destination, this might sound like a walk in the park but all enemy units are exceptionally harder to kill than normal. The players have to attempt to stop these creatures from reaching their goal by buying defensive units that can shoot them down. the people in the middle far end sides will have to be more experienced players at times in case other people 'leak' (are unsuccessful in killing enemy units and letting them slip by). as an added bonus people can swap a certain amount of units for a 'super unit' which does extreme amounts of damage. also if a person in the game is not doing so well you have the option of transferring money to their account.Thats the whole thing really.






Please remember to click on the images to enlarge them.
I hope to be releasing this map on the internet soon on the South American server and attempt to track the amount of games per hour are played after it's initial release (this however may not be 100% accurate and may take a while as some people prefer not to host maps and only play join games) - I may need to take two samples and do a rough calculation of how many games are played each day.

You may be wondering why I chose to do this as a multimedia project. Firstly it incorporates design (level design and game design) - next it also incorporates a lot of logistical problem solving (Believe it or not but there are 100's of lines of code in this map just to make it function correctly that is not added by the game!), You also work with layers and functions in the map editor. And lastly, I can play it when I'm finished with a group of people and kick some invading alien ass Woohoo!! - I guess that can also count as interactivity.

Odd Couple character treatment:

Thomas Turner is a slightly obsessive , wound up, widowed, mid 60 year old English fellow who enjoys having quite nights in front of the television watching the news and sports channels, he prefers comfortable clothes like jeans and a plain shirt with a small overcoat. He is quite a friendly fellow but not overly chatty, preferring to speak about daily news and find out what is going on in his local area. He lives in a semi-detached house alone; he quite likes the privacy but still misses his wife who passed away a number of years ago in a fluke double lightning strike event. He takes pride in his minimalistic furnished home but is sometimes a little too much of an obsessive neat freak. He noticed this when one of his friends came around for a visit and strangely he couldn’t wait for them to leave so that he could wash their tea cup and plate that had biscuits on, put it back in place and then vacuum the whole room which he had been in. He is not fond of having dogs or cats in his house as they leave fur but can tolerate this, however he despises insects – once he had a minor ant infestation that he took care of with a can of gas, lighter fluid and a few matches. After setting fire to a small portion of his kitchen he still used an entire can of ant poison (which took the entire nights to slowly drip into the hole) to make sure the nest was eradicated ( which unknowing to him missed the ant nest completely and went through a old pipe leading straight to his prize cabbage patch and destroying 80% of his crop) - you will be happy to know the ants escaped the initial inferno and poisoning then decided to move next door away from this half crazed fellow . Thomas Turner is his own worst enemy.

He was born in a family of two boys and one girl, him being the youngest son, his dad was an ex soldier ( Rank of drill sergeant) who lived a full and health life and Thomas’s mom worked in a bank as a cashier later on in life at the age of 46 – they had known each other from school.

Thomas and wife has produced two children, a boy and a girl – the girl being the eldest by two years. His son is the manager of a ‘Frankie and Bennies’ Restaurant and his daughter is into interior decorating – they are both successful in their careers. They stay in contact with Thomas at least once a week but do not tend to visit very often as their careers and families don’t leave them much time to do so, they are a loving and tight family.

Press Release

Hear all about it, the trailer for the new 'odd couple' theme is said to arrive shortly on the 12 of march 2008 - one thing is to be said, you wouldn't want to miss this one for all the tea in china and another thing is for sure... it's going to be a hit.

Bodypaint


I have been trying to make my life easier by using a quicker tools to paint onto a character rather than going through the whole UV unwrap process, I did find a pretty damn nifty program called Bodypaint. it is very easy to import your character directly into this program as it unwraps it for you and then paint onto it there and then whilst you can see your 3d model, hell you can even paint directly onto your 3d model . it takes very few processes and wont leave any seam marks at all. I did however find that if I wanted to create bump map you would still have to stretch realign the UV map but I couldnt be bothered to learn how to do it again in another program, at least not now as I have a big project on the go. It's definitely worth a look though and could save your hide in the future if you have the time to learn how to use it - It only took me about 1 hour of playing around with it and looking through a few tutorials online to get a basic of it (it's basically Photoshop but with 3D).


Heres an example me playing around with it.



...Oh and here's a link for the free Demo version if you want.

Character designs:

Well... I wish I could say that I am as satisfied with my characters as I am with my 'sets' so far, I have got a few good process pictures which I will provide below and maybe comment on a few.


This is my characters model process, basically it all started with a hand drawn image that was scanned in and projected onto three panels (boxes) - I started out with a cylinder and the rest is... well... history.











Heres a little test with symmetry on












...and the almost complete version which I'm no impressed with at all and may even consider creating a whole new one over the holidays

Here is a close up of the face, I have decided to use individual teeth instead of extruding them out of the skull as I think this will give me more control and realism. I have also added a raytrace reflection to the eyes to give more realism (I also need a reflection of fire in his eyes for one of my scenes)

The model now needs 'skinning; however I have wasted the better part of a week trying to find a better was of UV unwrapping instead of the traditional way - You can read all about this above this post.

A bit of set design:

I have been quite busy lately designing the set for my 'Odd couple animation' and am finding it to be very entertaining and the fact that it is going smoothly I am finding quite surprising. here are two render's... the first is the kitchen so far and the second is the living room, these are not complete yet as I'm still texturing objects, walls and also scaling everything to the right size but the majority is done. I am also happy with the render times - remember to click on the images to get a bigger picture


I am pretty impressed with the results so far, I cannot however take all the credit for the props design as I pinched a few from a website called 'Turbo squid' - the link can be found here, I was confident that I could create these models and possibly better than some but thought it would be a waste of time in doing so, after all more time not modeling gives me plenty more time to work on lighting and animation.

I am still not too sure on how to cut holes into my walls ( You will notice a giant block on the right hand side of the kitchen sticking in the wall) in a stage design program I am used to called 'Hammer editor' the technique of making room for a door is making a block the size of your door, moving it into the wall and then cutting the hole with the block... it seems it's not that simple with 3D's max however I'm sure Andy will have a solution.

The good 'old walker'

Ah yes the good old walker, thank you very much Andy for the recap it was invaluable for practice and also to realize how much time it is going to take to create the 'odd couple' animation (means I gotta get my ass into gear and stop partying) - here is the walker cycle I did, I admit the character plummets into darkness a bit toward the end, this is what I wanted however. I added some sounds to make it more realistic (sounds found here) - as my third year friend Todd Gledhill said 'if you going to do it good, you may as well do it right and if u want to do it crap then do it crap' , I did want to do it with raytracing on the surrounding box too, however the estimates render time was 7 hours compared to 10 minutes for this render (without the raytrace on the box but with the raytrace on the character)- anyways, I enjoyed the result and I hope you do to. here it is.





Heres a shot of a fully raytraced image - click on it to get the full size of it. not that much of a difference eh?... well... I'm lying there, the reflections of lighting are much smoother, the feet are not fully on the ground (something I fixed later) and the characters legs are also reflected but I still didn't think it was worth the 7 hour render, I should have cheated and made the box rusty, henceforth no reflection... Ian ur a genius hehehe!!

Visit to a museum:



I went to a museam a while back in Stoke on Trent and had a quick 'nose' around - after all it was free and there is nothing better to be heard or saw by a student than the word 'Free'... accept 'Free alchol!' (crowd boo's)

Uhum... well I better get back to the museum story I guess. There where some really interesting artifacts dated back to when Stoke-on-Trent was actually a thriving city, mostly specialising in decorated ceramics (some really expensive stuff like Spode for instance) - however it was soon cheaper to import ceramics from China and thus it became almost non profictable for Stoke-on-Trent to continue producing thier fine wares... quite a pity.

However that is a bit of a letdown to Stoke-on-Trent's past, two of the other things I found out was that the Captain of the Titanic (E.J Smith) was Born here and so was the famous inventor(R J Mitchell) of the 'Spitfire' fighter plane which they have on display at the museum, it is the Mk XVI Spitfire (type 361) which was designed to be a low altitude fighter

it was an interesting visit and I reccomend that if you are even in Stoke-on-Trent (Hopefully you never have to) you should visit the museum and also possibly the scate park.

Some character study

I have been looking for some interesting examples of violent animation comedy for my 'Odd Couple' project, I looked at a few examples of Tom and Jerry which seemed to fit in rather nicely apart from the fact that there is never any standoff in my animation. I did however come across some pretty interesting but also rather 'disturbing' dark comedy on my search - some short animations titled ' happy tree friends'. at first I thought it was a children's cartoon but something in the back of my head told me that I had heard the name before.

I have posted a few below for anyone who is interested in watching - please be aware though that you may not enjoy the content or even find it remotely funny.

UI have been looking out for some good animations and found a some very interesting ones.

here's the first link to

Fallen art

My apologies for not being able to provide a picture.

the second is called Gopher broke



and the third is called Gentleman's Duel - enjoy

Quick Scene Analysis:

Here is a scene from Stargate Atlantis season 4 - episode 13 - you can find the link to the episode here - The time for the scene I am writing about is 6:50. - you may also find this link useful for looking up types of camera shots.

Scene starts with Commander Carter and
Radak in a lift (Low MCA shot), the only lighting is a rectangular shaped 'box' light found above and to the right of the characters, it provides comfortable and not very bright florescent lighting. the two are staring at a control panel found at the left of the screen,
Radak is directly in front of this panel and examining it closely.

Commander Carter:

Quarantine lock down.

Radak:
looks worried
(sigh) Yes

Camera pans right as Commander Carter looks at another digital screen panel displaying a schematic of the city from 'birds eye view'

Commander Carter:
well I don't know why communications would be effected.


Radak:
hesitates, raises eyebrows in a pose to explain
(sigh)
Well... Rodney did say he was going to modify some of the ancient protocols...

(Camera focuses on Commander carter CU shot)

...Must have made a mistake... made the security measures too aggressive?


(Birds eye view MS)

Commander Carter bends down and picks up a computer tablet,
Radak moves in place and looks worried.

Commander Carter:

I'm going to try access the Mainframe.

Radak:

Yes but...
(MCU on Commander Carter)
...thats unfortunately all you will be able to do, this tablet has limited RAM and made mainly for read only field diagnostics

(Birds eye view MCU on computer Tablet) - the computer tablet displays a CU of a fine pigeon from a side view

Commander Carter:

Yes well at least we will be able to determine the extent of the lock down.


Radak:

Yes... oh sorry (Radak takes the Tablet from Commander carter - MCU on commander charters face, she smiles and looks interested as Radak explaines) it's one of my pigeons (Radak straightens his glasses) I raise them as a hobby (commander carter Nods) back home.

Commander Carter:
Oh (smiles again)

Radak:
Lets see what we have here

(Commander Carter leans toward Radak and looks down at the Tablet he is holding)

-END OF SCENE-

The reason I chose this scene was because of the fact it had a little hint about the character (Radak) who raised Pigeons back home (Earth), it is somehow interesting but irrelevantly, but also relevant at the same time (it shows some of his character but doesn't really have much point in the scene) I just thought it was clever how they slipped it in there and how much it actually says about the person -ie: he is caring, would probably be a good father, is more passive in nature than violent. and all that from one little five second scene involving a picture of a pigeon.

Movie Analysis (breakedown treatment)

The next exercise that we had to do was to find a movie sort of similar to the one we where doing for MALac (In my case one involving a cult) - I asked around and discovered that there was one called Sunshine (which apparently had some sort of cult agenda to it) I also looked it up on http://www.imdb.com which gives ratings on movies (if I had to watch a movie it may as well be a good one) - the score they gave it was 7.3/10 which is not bad at all - I probably would have given it a 3/10 and still say it was probably a more waste of my time than watching paint dry. it has all the features of a mass produced quicky movie of today, lots of special effects and lots of death & murder (sorry for being so biased but I'm just fed up of watching different movies that are all the same, if that makes sense). The only cult part of the movie was a man (Capt. Pinbacker) who had been stranded on a previous 'save the sun' mission for 7 years and had gone crazy claiming that he had spoken to God and then killing everyone and trying to sabotage the mission which is to save earth by making a sun inside the sun and stop it from dying. somehow this character also gained super human strength despite the fact that he suffered 3rd degree burns to at least 90% of his body. all in all it was just a silly movie trying to be serious - if you get an opportunity to watch it I would probably advise against it but then again you might enjoy this type of movie (or probably not if you have read this as it is basically the whole story in a nutshell) - anyways lets get to the treatment of this movie.

50 years from now the Sun is dying, the reason is a highly stable form of matter has formed making nuclear fission impossible and the problem keeps on growing . the only way for humankind to survive is to attempt to send a special bomb into the heart of the sun and hope the explosion will destroy this substance and henceforth allow the sun to fussion normally once again.

A new crew had been sent to achieve this goal once again as the first mission was a failure, they consist out of a crew of 8. the main character is a genius by the name of Robert Capa who is vital to the destination of the bomb, he always seems to get into trouble with the his fellow cremate Mace. the Crew is subject to many challenges on the way to the sun, the main problem bieng the fact they manage to find the first mission ship by its distress beacon but do not calculate adjustment correctly of the shield blocking the sun from their ship after adjusting trajectory to meet up with this ship . Once they board this vessel they discover the previous crew had killed themselves, they only discover the captain remains alive after he has successfully sabotaged and their docking ring. afterwards there is much self sacrifice amongst the crew members whilst the madman is still loose sabotaging the ship. in the end though he is confronted by Robert and Cassie and is stunned whilst Robert sacrifices himself and initiates the device to explode in the sun and saved the world.


All in all a pretty lame story where everyone dies in the most horrible ways you can imagine with not much real reason for it. I honestly believe a 12 year old could write a better story.

Malac exercise 17/01/08:

The purpose of this exercise was to create a story from the script found below this post. this is the idea we (Gary Mulling and myself) came up with.

- We found that there was in fact 4 people in the scene and not 3 as most people perceived, HE, SHE, HERE and MAN... (very clever and cunning Joolz)

*Decide on the story (setting and circumstances) - we came up with 3, the 3rd being our final and 'best' story choice

1 - Comedy : About a guy tied to a chair, the MALac could be a health snack or a mega unhealthy food

2 - SCI FI : Aliens captured this fellow, trying to get information out of him. the MALac could be a torture or mind control device.

3 - Horror : Weird cult is trying to convert a priest (or someone important) by drinking some sort of sacrificial wine (might be blood) and looking for his college, the MALac is an unholy book or relic used to curse or taint a persons soul.

-The next part of the exercise was to take one (1) character and expand his/her character and life story. We chose SHE's character,

-SHE's Character - Very beautiful but evil inside and unafraid of committing bad deeds, she is also very dominating. She is the daughter of the high prophet/priest of this evil cult. She has very high hand-to-hand combat abilities and trains on weekends, she is physically fit, wears size 6 shes and wears sexy clothes (usually with high heals, red or black) when not in the cult (black robes and flat black shoes) she likes lipstick a lot too. she also wears comfortable sportswear from time to time with white sneakers. she tries to blend in as much as possibly outside to avoid suspicion. cool, calculating, sexy but very dangerous.

- Locations - Scene with man and MALac is in the cults HQ basement which is damp, dark with no electrical light fixtures - everything has to be lit by torch or lantern. Medieval passageways & rooms. there is a symbol painted on the wall (which you are meant to notice but not significantly as this helped the 'Main' of the story to find/uncover the cult.

MALac:

(This is the script for a story called MALac writen by our lecturer Joolz and presented in a AV design lecture presented by Deborah Tuck, we where put in groups of two to create a story using this script as it could be anything - the fact the Malac is not a real item ie: it could be anything we desired, from a sandwich to a miniaturized jumbo jet in a briefcase) - let the madness begin.

Fade in from black: white text on black background:

Courage is the belief that there is

something more important than personal safety

Fade to black

Int.Day.Room

HE is sweating. Hard.

SHE stands impassive. Unconcerned.

HE rubs his wrist and we see HE is chained to the chair.

SHE

(Bright. Breezy)

Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?

(smiles)

Never too late to change your mind.

HE

(Afraid)

I swear, I swear. Please. Stop. Please?

SHE

(placing a briefcase in front of the chair)

Shush. Be quite quiet. It will no longer be necessary to lie.

HE

I swear…

HER

Shush, shush.

(popping open the case)

I have here a malac. God it’s beautiful.

Could you hold him please?

MAN steps out of the shadows and forces HE’s hand horizontal.

HE

Don’t. Don’t. I swear.

SHE

(pleased)

MALacs. Now no more shall we part on this path of truth we find ourselves on.

Playing with the MALac in the case, its metallic sheen plays on SHE’s face.

SHE

Pain, enlightening truth. This is what MALac brings.

Shall we continue?

SHE removes the MALac and shutting the case she steps forward.

HE screams.

THE END

Ik chain and movement test:

Indeed I have not created an amazing masterpice over the holidays but instead decided to practice the things I felt needed improving ...a bit of drawing and Ik links in 3d max. I started off by thinking of an exercise to do, we had already done a two legged walk cycle so what better project to attempt than a 4 legged walk cycle

I started by sketching a simple character as can be seen here->
it was logical to attempt diffrent poses of this character which I did not pay too much attention to in detail (sketch wize, however the positions where well thought out) I simply modeled the same creature in 3d max(which can be seen above) and animated it as seen below (exported in PAL) setting, the first one is a front shot of the walk cycle and the second is more of a side shot. I figured out the proper way the character should move by getting on my hands and knees and figuring it out that way (it was just quicker than trying to find something on the internet). I also took this character and decided to practice my hand drawing by adding to this sketch and came up with a scary little bugger which you can see right at the bottom of this blog. I hope to create this character in the future when I learn more advance modeling techniques.





I showed my lecturers (David Downes and Joolz) the top two animations and they said it looked very unstable. upon further study I found that I had indeed made a mistake and this character was not able to logically stay up walking the way it did. I created another walk cycle though though. We all make mistakes and I have learned one (get someone else's opinion before posting stuff on your blog that is supposed to be a finished thing). anyways heres the rectified one :)