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.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
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.
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.
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.
(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
Thursday, January 10, 2008
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 :)
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 :)
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Creating a possible disappointment:
I have been working on my character which has to be presented on Wednesday, Of course as you would know if you have been reading my blog my character is a sort of devil thing. I hope I can get away with it this time as last time in school art class I drew a similar character I was instantly branded a satanist by the teacher (the joys of school in South Africa) - anyways, lets hope that doesn't happen again lol. I referenced the image I hand drew to create this character, I then wacked a few colours on him, gave him some awesome teeth and some funky eyebrows to help show expession
all
has gone pretty well until I started with morph target. Let me explain : To get the eyebrows and get the in I had to up the amount of vertexes. Later I had to create teeth and create a smoothing effect for them so they would'nt look blocky and this also applied to the eyebrow which was also a solid block. after that I decided 'right, time to animate this bugger... what was it Andy taught us again, AH!! yes of course, morph targets' It was easy to create eyebrow expressions and morph the eyelids but when it came to the mouth I found that I had made so many damned polygons that it took ages to change the mouth, the fact teeth where morphing and changing shape didn't help but fortunately 'Soft selection' saved the day. after creating loads of these morph targets and linking them all I found that I was unable to link the eyes I had set to express anger (it consisted of 2 parts and didn't morph correctly) also I noticed my system was starting to respond slowly when I attempted to do this (which is pretty strange as it has 4 gig of ram , a 1 gig graphics card and AMD Daul core 3.2ghz Black addition CPU - In short, this shouldn't happen... ever!) 
I found out that the reason was because I was trying to trick the eyeball and the eyelid (last 3 to right hand side) to morph to something that had a FFD4 modifier on which it did not like at all. If I wanted this affect I would have to do this manually. I continued to make more clones of the body and made many, many expressions.
I then started to rig the character using the sheets that I had obtained from Andy Loves lesson, I ran into no serious problems at all and when I did I just reflected back on the sheets. I will not explain the process of how I rigged the character, I will just display a screenshot of the final setup. (click on it for a better look)
It was now time to animate, but first to put in the sound - I had great problems with the sound because 3d max would not import a 8 bit mono track (Dungeon keeps voice file) so I had to rune it through Quebase, convert it to stereo before it would work... to make matters worse the sound would only start from the very beginning of the time line and would not move further along the timeline to start at a different point, this was (mind the expression) a pain in the ass to correct, I had to search many forums to find the answer (eventually found it here ) - it involved opening a window called the dop
e sheet and then easily sliding the track along to the desired point.
All I really did then was add a box at the bottom of 'his' feet - added a bitmap material ( which was a screenshot of a stage I made for my first Identities project called 'Mr pickles and the lost coin'using Hammer editor for half life 2)to my materials library and dragged it onto the box.
After that I just animated the beast... Tip: before you start rendering always set your output file size to PAL (yes it's there). I then popped a few lights in to give me suttle shadows and then rendered it. to a AVI file... Which I hope will work :)
I have been working on my character which has to be presented on Wednesday, Of course as you would know if you have been reading my blog my character is a sort of devil thing. I hope I can get away with it this time as last time in school art class I drew a similar character I was instantly branded a satanist by the teacher (the joys of school in South Africa) - anyways, lets hope that doesn't happen again lol. I referenced the image I hand drew to create this character, I then wacked a few colours on him, gave him some awesome teeth and some funky eyebrows to help show expession
all
has gone pretty well until I started with morph target. Let me explain : To get the eyebrows and get the in I had to up the amount of vertexes. Later I had to create teeth and create a smoothing effect for them so they would'nt look blocky and this also applied to the eyebrow which was also a solid block. after that I decided 'right, time to animate this bugger... what was it Andy taught us again, AH!! yes of course, morph targets' It was easy to create eyebrow expressions and morph the eyelids but when it came to the mouth I found that I had made so many damned polygons that it took ages to change the mouth, the fact teeth where morphing and changing shape didn't help but fortunately 'Soft selection' saved the day. after creating loads of these morph targets and linking them all I found that I was unable to link the eyes I had set to express anger (it consisted of 2 parts and didn't morph correctly) also I noticed my system was starting to respond slowly when I attempted to do this (which is pretty strange as it has 4 gig of ram , a 1 gig graphics card and AMD Daul core 3.2ghz Black addition CPU - In short, this shouldn't happen... ever!) 
I found out that the reason was because I was trying to trick the eyeball and the eyelid (last 3 to right hand side) to morph to something that had a FFD4 modifier on which it did not like at all. If I wanted this affect I would have to do this manually. I continued to make more clones of the body and made many, many expressions.I then started to rig the character using the sheets that I had obtained from Andy Loves lesson, I ran into no serious problems at all and when I did I just reflected back on the sheets. I will not explain the process of how I rigged the character, I will just display a screenshot of the final setup. (click on it for a better look)
It was now time to animate, but first to put in the sound - I had great problems with the sound because 3d max would not import a 8 bit mono track (Dungeon keeps voice file) so I had to rune it through Quebase, convert it to stereo before it would work... to make matters worse the sound would only start from the very beginning of the time line and would not move further along the timeline to start at a different point, this was (mind the expression) a pain in the ass to correct, I had to search many forums to find the answer (eventually found it here ) - it involved opening a window called the dop
e sheet and then easily sliding the track along to the desired point.All I really did then was add a box at the bottom of 'his' feet - added a bitmap material ( which was a screenshot of a stage I made for my first Identities project called 'Mr pickles and the lost coin'using Hammer editor for half life 2)to my materials library and dragged it onto the box.
After that I just animated the beast... Tip: before you start rendering always set your output file size to PAL (yes it's there). I then popped a few lights in to give me suttle shadows and then rendered it. to a AVI file... Which I hope will work :)
Friday, December 07, 2007
Lip Syncing
I have been experimenting with the lip syncing model Andy gave us and produced this short clip. I found it harder to achieve on my computer as my sound card was too quick and got each an every small sound (making it very confusing) instead of having a longer, more recognizable sound on the university computers which believe it or not made it a hell of a lot easier. I am quite happy with the fact that this is my first lip sync clip I have ever done... of course there is a few times when I could have made the lips move at certain times to produce a better illusion it was actually speaking but had so many key frames in at different points that it became quite confusing, this has taught me to try keep all the actions all at the same point on the time line instead of scattered randomly. Anyways here we go, hope you like the result
Thanks to Andy Love for the great and already rigged cats head
I have been experimenting with the lip syncing model Andy gave us and produced this short clip. I found it harder to achieve on my computer as my sound card was too quick and got each an every small sound (making it very confusing) instead of having a longer, more recognizable sound on the university computers which believe it or not made it a hell of a lot easier. I am quite happy with the fact that this is my first lip sync clip I have ever done... of course there is a few times when I could have made the lips move at certain times to produce a better illusion it was actually speaking but had so many key frames in at different points that it became quite confusing, this has taught me to try keep all the actions all at the same point on the time line instead of scattered randomly. Anyways here we go, hope you like the result
Thanks to Andy Love for the great and already rigged cats head
Monday, November 26, 2007
Art Gallery adventure
We set out to Waterstones to attend a display of 'Nancy Farmer's' work, after reaching the 4th story that is. I was not aware hoe much artists actually earn until I saw the price tags... approx £250 a pop and also sometimes up to £1.5k per painting. The amount of detail that went into this persons work was quite impressive - on first inspection I suspected it was water colours and later after looking on her website confirmed this (Well, thats about all I learned to do on the art course I took over the last holiday), This person uses a technique where she wets the paper, allows it to expand, then tapes it to an easle and waits for it to dry again... the reason? so when she paints on it again with water colours the paper wont 'puff' up as it normally would. before painting though everything is done in pencil (with some pretty damn impressive detail) - I liked Nancy's effort and dedication (as she has done a lot of these detailed paintings) but unfortunately the style and content was not my taste, don't get me wrong as there where very impressive paintings there but they didn't really make me feel anything - I guess the only pixies and mythical creatures I appreciate are the ones on computer games that I can go toe-to-toe with. Anyways, here is some of her work - I hope you enjoy it more than myself
Click here for her website - you may also be interested to know she is a member of 'The Guild of Erotic Artists'
We set out to Waterstones to attend a display of 'Nancy Farmer's' work, after reaching the 4th story that is. I was not aware hoe much artists actually earn until I saw the price tags... approx £250 a pop and also sometimes up to £1.5k per painting. The amount of detail that went into this persons work was quite impressive - on first inspection I suspected it was water colours and later after looking on her website confirmed this (Well, thats about all I learned to do on the art course I took over the last holiday), This person uses a technique where she wets the paper, allows it to expand, then tapes it to an easle and waits for it to dry again... the reason? so when she paints on it again with water colours the paper wont 'puff' up as it normally would. before painting though everything is done in pencil (with some pretty damn impressive detail) - I liked Nancy's effort and dedication (as she has done a lot of these detailed paintings) but unfortunately the style and content was not my taste, don't get me wrong as there where very impressive paintings there but they didn't really make me feel anything - I guess the only pixies and mythical creatures I appreciate are the ones on computer games that I can go toe-to-toe with. Anyways, here is some of her work - I hope you enjoy it more than myself
Click here for her website - you may also be interested to know she is a member of 'The Guild of Erotic Artists'
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Video Editing lookup:
I have been looking around on the internet to try and find something that is professionally done but yet you can see how the shots are planned out and where the editing has been sneakily used (but not too sneakily or we wouldnt see it) - I uncovered this gem here
You can clearly see in the first few shots how editing has been used to create a specific effect - when he is getting ready the camera shots have been continued from specific 'Powerful' points (for instance, you dont see him walking to a table , getting his shoes, seperating them, undoing the straps, putting his foot in and then only strapping them on again... You just see him with his foot in, closing the strap with passion - Giggidy!)
On later scenes we see where scene props (Does a puff of steam count as a prop?) need editing to create the effect intended. The lighting was also very well done in this clip - it remained dark and eery (like all famous batman movies) yet you could clearly see what was going on.
I found a nice example of a lighting technique in 'Cracking animation - Peter lord & Brian Sibley' - here are a few photocopies.
Please feel free to click on the pictures to enlarge them and get a better view.
All is explained in the black and white pic.
I shall now wrap it up and say this look into editing has wanted me to play around with lighting more... and how fortunate am I that the animation lecture today was about creating lighting. lucky, lucky , lucky - I must definitely be a sign.
I have been looking around on the internet to try and find something that is professionally done but yet you can see how the shots are planned out and where the editing has been sneakily used (but not too sneakily or we wouldnt see it) - I uncovered this gem here
You can clearly see in the first few shots how editing has been used to create a specific effect - when he is getting ready the camera shots have been continued from specific 'Powerful' points (for instance, you dont see him walking to a table , getting his shoes, seperating them, undoing the straps, putting his foot in and then only strapping them on again... You just see him with his foot in, closing the strap with passion - Giggidy!)
On later scenes we see where scene props (Does a puff of steam count as a prop?) need editing to create the effect intended. The lighting was also very well done in this clip - it remained dark and eery (like all famous batman movies) yet you could clearly see what was going on.
I found a nice example of a lighting technique in 'Cracking animation - Peter lord & Brian Sibley' - here are a few photocopies.
Please feel free to click on the pictures to enlarge them and get a better view.
All is explained in the black and white pic.
I shall now wrap it up and say this look into editing has wanted me to play around with lighting more... and how fortunate am I that the animation lecture today was about creating lighting. lucky, lucky , lucky - I must definitely be a sign.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Start of a character
I have now started the development of my character for my 30 second animation due by Christmas. this started out by a quick doodle drawing I did. Just a basic concept of an idea that definately needed improving upon to even become slighly usable.the character looked pretty evil (due to the fact he had serpent eyes) but needed to represent the human form more in terms of body. I decided I would like my character to be chubby (sort of like a little chubby dwarf like thingy) so I started to look for those types of forms
I then started to look for this form and found it in a book called 'How to paint and draw children' by Viola French - I chose this book as I was pretty sure that a Toddlers form was what I was looking for in terms of body proportions but to my surprise found that the 1 year old form was better (Much more chubby like the fat little drawf thingy I was trying to create) I put the two together an bam!!! here's what I got
Of course this character did not look 'Stunning' but the chubbiness and body is just fine - of course the fingers, feet and legs need refining along with a whole overhaul of the face but the basic concept is there. I now had something to work with.I was browsing on the internet and found a way to import your drawing into 3D max and work with them, I did a little test and the result can be seen below... pretty cool little tip. I will be using this process to create my character when I have enough time to do so, unfortunately I'm quite a busy little fellow as of lately so I expect to attempt this in a day or two.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Walk Cycle
Here we have two example of the walk cycle I did from the exercise sheets provided by Andy Love, of course we had to do the movement ourselves but the rigging was all done to the specifications of the worksheet (and a well written one indeed) I hope to incorporate this with the hand rig and then the face morphs to finish my character I am in the process of creating.
Anyways, heres the first one.
And the Second view is from behind, wish I had tweaked his/her butt to look better (it's all about the sexy bums)
I also found a nice demo reel of character walk cycles and actions which you can view below
And another one with decent facial animations, I suspect these to have been done in Maya
Here we have two example of the walk cycle I did from the exercise sheets provided by Andy Love, of course we had to do the movement ourselves but the rigging was all done to the specifications of the worksheet (and a well written one indeed) I hope to incorporate this with the hand rig and then the face morphs to finish my character I am in the process of creating.
Anyways, heres the first one.
And the Second view is from behind, wish I had tweaked his/her butt to look better (it's all about the sexy bums)
I also found a nice demo reel of character walk cycles and actions which you can view below
And another one with decent facial animations, I suspect these to have been done in Maya
Friday, November 02, 2007
Comments of 'Holding pattern' clips
This has been a very interesting exercise, this task was the commetns we had to make on (firstly) what the character did to illuminate his/her character? and what the 'film maker' did to illuminate his/her character?
Team - Lez, Sherry (sorry didnt catch the rest)
Actor
- Looks around a lot, always looks uncomfortable
-always wearing a suit, looks out of place.
-does not speak making him seem more out of place
-always looking in dictionary and various books for words
Film
- lots of cuts
- excellent use of camera angles
-Fantastic use of lighting in every scene
Team - Cat, Alex (sorry didnt catch the rest)
Actor
-looks slighly out of place
-Constantly sitting and observing
Team
-lots of far away shot making the character seem distant
(Most shots I found to be a little bit too long)
Team - Glyn, Holly and Dave
Actor
-wears good realistic clothing
-acts appropriately in all situation
- is a bit sneaky
Film
-Music rises and dips at appropriate times
(I found the sounds to be overpowering at most point)
Team - Adrian, Emily , Zaid and Richard
(My favourite one)
Actor
-Acts very out of place
-Really like the comedy
-Acting was very good
-Actor made the clothes work well and to his advantage
Film
-Good props
-Highlighted immigration (used newspaper to highlight this) 0- which gave a clear explanation of what was going on.
-Again, really like the comedy
-Football scene was really well done
-Like the little sub plot with the Family tree on the internet
-Music was very fitting
-Very good use of camera angles
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And there we have it. I would just like to congradulate Adrian, Emily, Zaid and Richard again for a very well done piece of work. I think it matched the professionality of of Lez's group (who has the benifit of Lez's years of experience) and I really enjoyed how you made the character out of place while using comedy.
This has been a very interesting exercise, this task was the commetns we had to make on (firstly) what the character did to illuminate his/her character? and what the 'film maker' did to illuminate his/her character?
Team - Lez, Sherry (sorry didnt catch the rest)
Actor
- Looks around a lot, always looks uncomfortable
-always wearing a suit, looks out of place.
-does not speak making him seem more out of place
-always looking in dictionary and various books for words
Film
- lots of cuts
- excellent use of camera angles
-Fantastic use of lighting in every scene
Team - Cat, Alex (sorry didnt catch the rest)
Actor
-looks slighly out of place
-Constantly sitting and observing
Team
-lots of far away shot making the character seem distant
(Most shots I found to be a little bit too long)
Team - Glyn, Holly and Dave
Actor
-wears good realistic clothing
-acts appropriately in all situation
- is a bit sneaky
Film
-Music rises and dips at appropriate times
(I found the sounds to be overpowering at most point)
Team - Adrian, Emily , Zaid and Richard
(My favourite one)
Actor
-Acts very out of place
-Really like the comedy
-Acting was very good
-Actor made the clothes work well and to his advantage
Film
-Good props
-Highlighted immigration (used newspaper to highlight this) 0- which gave a clear explanation of what was going on.
-Again, really like the comedy
-Football scene was really well done
-Like the little sub plot with the Family tree on the internet
-Music was very fitting
-Very good use of camera angles
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And there we have it. I would just like to congradulate Adrian, Emily, Zaid and Richard again for a very well done piece of work. I think it matched the professionality of of Lez's group (who has the benifit of Lez's years of experience) and I really enjoyed how you made the character out of place while using comedy.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
3D Character:
This was a very good exercise and has been the only one that has really interested me so far this year in this course, in fact its the only one that has stopped me from transferring. The idea was to create a cartoony 'cat' or some other 'creature' using 3D Max. I found this to be a fun and useful exercise. Here is what I produced.
-Not the greatest of characters but a good first experiment, More work would have been done on this character but there was not enough time to do so as we where given four other projects to do at the same time as this one, making finding time to complete improve on the project I actually enjoyed very difficult.
The only problem I had was when I tried to turbosmooth the character, odd holes appeared at the side of it's ears and the face sort of went into itself. the face part did not make the character look particularly bad but it was technically wrong and would have played hell if I tried to develop the character further. I chose the shiny metal skin to check for errors on the background, it worked nicely.
One feature I managed to refine was to give this 'creature' a mighty fun butt. Important stuff first I always say... I am looking forward to practicing making some more character on my own time when we have finished with all the other work we where given in one shot. I am finding this course to be slightly frustrating at the moment because of disorganization on my part and the university.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Holding Pattern
We have been given a script and told to create a short 5 or so minute movie with it, the script is called 'Holding Pattern' and is basically a small snapshot of a foreign person (Romanian) life in Britain. I have checked YouTube for clips with the same name and came up with two that use the same script... however one of them uses a French person instead of a Romanian. here they are
This one is the French version of the same script, I did not find this one as interesting as the second version I found (can be found below this clip) - however I did like the little change to the script and the fact that this person was telling his story through a letter he was writing to his mom, very good improvisation.
Although this clip was not shot with greater detail to lighting (as the one above has) I felt the shots where really well done and gave a very good 'feel' to the movie, the music suited pretty well but the thing I would of incorporated from the last one was a way to 'steer' the story better (by writing the letter and telling the story better instead of just a few random shots without a narrative) - the thing that I was also impressed with about this movie was that I recognized most of the locations in these shots and thus giving me a pretty clear picture of how it would look if we used these locations and also showed me the types of props they used which could definitely be beneficial when picking ours ... thanks guys.
We have been given a script and told to create a short 5 or so minute movie with it, the script is called 'Holding Pattern' and is basically a small snapshot of a foreign person (Romanian) life in Britain. I have checked YouTube for clips with the same name and came up with two that use the same script... however one of them uses a French person instead of a Romanian. here they are
This one is the French version of the same script, I did not find this one as interesting as the second version I found (can be found below this clip) - however I did like the little change to the script and the fact that this person was telling his story through a letter he was writing to his mom, very good improvisation.
Although this clip was not shot with greater detail to lighting (as the one above has) I felt the shots where really well done and gave a very good 'feel' to the movie, the music suited pretty well but the thing I would of incorporated from the last one was a way to 'steer' the story better (by writing the letter and telling the story better instead of just a few random shots without a narrative) - the thing that I was also impressed with about this movie was that I recognized most of the locations in these shots and thus giving me a pretty clear picture of how it would look if we used these locations and also showed me the types of props they used which could definitely be beneficial when picking ours ... thanks guys.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Thanks to Hannah Berry for emailing this list of 'The reason's why Joolzs gave us the exercise about taking an already written script and turning it into a quick clip' Also thanks to the whole group for contributing to this list.
- -So people can learn to analyse a text.
- -Look at other peoples’ work.
- -Learn to work as a team.
- -Make up own ideas to add to the script.
- -Try different things with the cameras.
- -Practice with different equipment.
- -Try to interpret other peoples’ work.
- -So we can experience following and writing a script.
- -Learn to deconstruct a script.
- -Learn what a script looks like.
- -Start to understand the process of scripting.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Analyzing a short clip exercise
We have been asked to analyze a short clip and give our general impression of what the director or creators intended
So where to begin?
-The clip starts with a medium close up shot - the characters steps are heavy, reinforcing the fact that he not only looks big but is also one bulky fellow (by the way he walks you can also instantly asses the person in question is male) - the camera movement is quite unprofessional and goes in & out of focus from
time to time throughout the movie as the character changes position. the character is seated and the camera angle + rooms which is quite and has florescent lighting gives the mood that this person is being interviewed. the distance does change once during the interview (when he is examining his gun) - the shot 'Medium shot' (and silence) makes the person watching seem as though they are examining the characters natural behaviors when alone (a bit like a wild life documentary).
The next shot is a close up of the characters face, this is used to show his expressions more clearly.
and finally coming towards the end we have a nice pan around the character, again zooming in closely to his face to show his ' clearly crazy' expression and then zooming out again to show the destruction he is causing with loud bangs and gun noises which reinforces how volatile the area is.
* This clip is taken from the promotional videos for a game called Team Fortress 2 - developed by Valve*
We have been asked to analyze a short clip and give our general impression of what the director or creators intended
So where to begin?
-The clip starts with a medium close up shot - the characters steps are heavy, reinforcing the fact that he not only looks big but is also one bulky fellow (by the way he walks you can also instantly asses the person in question is male) - the camera movement is quite unprofessional and goes in & out of focus from
time to time throughout the movie as the character changes position. the character is seated and the camera angle + rooms which is quite and has florescent lighting gives the mood that this person is being interviewed. the distance does change once during the interview (when he is examining his gun) - the shot 'Medium shot' (and silence) makes the person watching seem as though they are examining the characters natural behaviors when alone (a bit like a wild life documentary).The next shot is a close up of the characters face, this is used to show his expressions more clearly.
and finally coming towards the end we have a nice pan around the character, again zooming in closely to his face to show his ' clearly crazy' expression and then zooming out again to show the destruction he is causing with loud bangs and gun noises which reinforces how volatile the area is.
* This clip is taken from the promotional videos for a game called Team Fortress 2 - developed by Valve*
Monday, June 11, 2007
3D Max experiment
I Have been experimenting with 3D max lately and am coming along quite well I think, I have been trying my hand at modeling and doing slightly more complex animation animation techniques which at first where quite difficult to understand but later became quite logical. of course I have not mastered the skinning process and am only using basic omni lighting at the moment but with time I am sure that it will become second nature. here are two examples of my most recent work.
the first one I experimented with was a short exercise given to us in a recent lecture. I created this model again but did not look at the sheets (well actually once to get the height and width of the initial block that the exercise was started with) I was really surprised how easy and quick it was to model something in 3D max after only a few lessons. I also used custom omni lighting and a custom' skin' (chosen to look like plastic) henceforth inspiring the name 'Plastic man'
I had fun creating this character and hope to maybe bring it to life in the future by adding a few arm and leg movements... maybe even a face.
The second one I did was a more complex animation technique requiring a 'rig' on the character (some controller handles) to make moving the character less confusing... well it did indeed make the character easier to animate but the initial rigging was a pain at first but after a quick visit to Andy Love it was make clear what I was doing wrong and was corrected promptly. I decided to add a few features on the initial object (which looked like a leg with a giant ball on top) so I added a nose, mouth, two eyes, a pair of ears and some spiky hair with an antenna like one in the center. it turned out O.K and was easy to animate - however there was still some distortion on the bottom of the foot when it came back to its landing position but that can be rectified in the future. I am starting to like this program more and more and am quite sad to hear that we may be converting to Maya next year, however the experience gained here will not be in vain and I may even like Maya more.
I Have been experimenting with 3D max lately and am coming along quite well I think, I have been trying my hand at modeling and doing slightly more complex animation animation techniques which at first where quite difficult to understand but later became quite logical. of course I have not mastered the skinning process and am only using basic omni lighting at the moment but with time I am sure that it will become second nature. here are two examples of my most recent work.
the first one I experimented with was a short exercise given to us in a recent lecture. I created this model again but did not look at the sheets (well actually once to get the height and width of the initial block that the exercise was started with) I was really surprised how easy and quick it was to model something in 3D max after only a few lessons. I also used custom omni lighting and a custom' skin' (chosen to look like plastic) henceforth inspiring the name 'Plastic man'
I had fun creating this character and hope to maybe bring it to life in the future by adding a few arm and leg movements... maybe even a face.
The second one I did was a more complex animation technique requiring a 'rig' on the character (some controller handles) to make moving the character less confusing... well it did indeed make the character easier to animate but the initial rigging was a pain at first but after a quick visit to Andy Love it was make clear what I was doing wrong and was corrected promptly. I decided to add a few features on the initial object (which looked like a leg with a giant ball on top) so I added a nose, mouth, two eyes, a pair of ears and some spiky hair with an antenna like one in the center. it turned out O.K and was easy to animate - however there was still some distortion on the bottom of the foot when it came back to its landing position but that can be rectified in the future. I am starting to like this program more and more and am quite sad to hear that we may be converting to Maya next year, however the experience gained here will not be in vain and I may even like Maya more.
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