Creating an outside environment in Maya.

Last night I decided to create an environment in Maya with a grassy terrain. Using both bump mapping and fur, I achieved a nice looking shot. I rendered it using Mental Ray.

Creating a particle system in Maya

Irrelevant to the course, however this is evidence of further research in both software and animation physics. I taught myself how to create a water fountain from an emitter in Maya.

Drawing a face

Creating and launching new website for projects.

I have launched http://www.doughnutstudios.com. which is a website for my personal projects. The website is still in development, but I thought it would be a good idea to create a 'hub' for my work.

Getting an online job with Aniboom

I recently applied for a job at Aniboom, which involved sending them a show reel of my work to date. I got a position, and I now have the opportunity to create work for possible clients. This is a very exciting opportunity for me, and I will update asap.

http://www.aniboom.com/

Research of early Pixar shorts

I have started researching early Pixar films to get a better understanding of more simple modelling and rendering, to both inspire and help me with Maya. I've always been a huge fan of their early work, as it was way ahead of its time and stunned people visually and emotionally. The two I have looked at are 'Tin Toy' from 1987 and 'Knick Knack' from 1989. Their simple and both professional charm creates a masterpiece which has stood the test of time, and still looks great. These two films both one awards when released, and rightly so.

Knick Knack - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuJasJ5uHGU

Tin Toy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_n6KT9nukU

Edit of young carers project

Courtney and I have edited together a shortened version of the video archives from the carers project. We picked out what we thought was interesting moments, and complied them into a single edit.

Awareness of space and scale in 3D modelling

Character designs on paper

Here are my rough sketches and ideas for my two character for my carers project. They are two Teddy bears, one being the younger sibling, who is cute and scruffy. The older one is cleaner, but strict.

Fur in Maya

I have added fur to the bears to give them a much more realistic look. This was achieved in Maya - and as you can see both bears have different fur attributes to separate their look and feel. The bigger bear is a clean new bear, and the smaller bear is very old and quite fragile.

Character designs in Maya

Below are pre rendered character designs for my two bears:

Working in Maya, and creating my first project.

In the last couple of weeks, I have picked up Autodesk Maya again, and taught myself the foundations of 3D animation, and have started to work on my own project. So far, I am pleased with it, and perhaps somehow I could incorporate it in to my carers project. 

Changing my character design dramatically

I have thought about my character design, and whilst experimenting at home, I have recently developed two character designs in Maya which I would prefer to use. This therefore changes my outlook on the project from a surreal manner to a cute and colourful CGI look.

Carer project - Character design concept.

We have been designing concepts for character designs for our carer project. This is simply conceptual and may not reflect our final piece. I decided to give the drawing a rough and depressive feel, reflecting the mood of the sound clip of  the interview. 

Introduction to negative space

In our life drawing class today, not only were we introduced to a new skill, I managed to overcome my fear of trying a new style. It's all too easy sometimes to stick within your comfort zone, but I learnt a lot, and I'm glad I just went for it. Photo to be uploaded soon!

Journey on paper.

Human life drawing

Here are my two final life drawings from our life drawing classes. I used a different range of materials to achieve both looks. The one on the left was drawn with pencils, whilst the one on the right was drawn with charcoal

Soundscape - Audio to Video.

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Questions and Research.

I have taken an interest in surreal types of animation, ranging from different methods of animations, and I want to know; what contributes to a films mise en scene, and various other questions:

• What other animators are out there producing surreal work, and could I perhaps study their work for both inspiration and theory practice?

• How do various countries receive surreal filmography? Do some cultures and nationalities perhaps find it more vulgar and offensive than others? If so, which countries should I research?

• What methods of animation are there to create these pieces? Apart from the 3 main ones: cell animation, CGI and stop motion.

• Where do these animators look for inspiration? Perhaps past events, personal thoughts, or even inspiration from other pieces of work.

• Where would they submit or contribute their work? Film festivals, online websites, show reels?

• What do animators or writers base their work on? Imaginative surrealism or perhaps satirical, political, religious etc. 

These questions tie in with the research I have done about surrealism and its roots. Like most animation, it takes a lot of inspiration from past artists, and this is clearly evident in surrealism

 Melting Clocks - Salvador Dali

Surrealism actually started of as a cultural movement in the early 1920s that consisted of ‘group members’ who would create visual artworks and even writings that were often non sequitur, and give a surprise, due to the ‘at the time’ groundbreaking way of delivering arts. Despite a lot of peoples ‘snobbish’ approach to the surreal movement, their members regarded “that their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost”

The movement essentially started in Paris, however from the 1920s onwards, surrealism caught on with many more countries and eventually spread worldwide, and since then has had a huge impact on many different platforms of the arts including: filmography, music, visual arts and even the way people look at politics and social theory.

Research on the 'Uncanny Valley Theory;

Timeline of key points in animation history

We have been asked to develop a time line to show key points in the progression of animation, and show examples of films and why they revolutionised the industry for the better, and worse. 

'Little Nemo' - 1911

1911 - Little Nemo: During the birth of the motion picture era, artists discovered ways to create the illusion of movement, by displaying their illustrations image by image, much like the birth of film. One of these artists was Winsor McCay, who was not the first ever person to make an animation, but was one of the first to become mainstream from his work, and to really kickstart the animation revolution, and without his work and others, I feel animation would not what it is now.

'Little Red Riding Hood - 1922' 

1922 - Disney Presents: Little Red Riding Hood: Disneys rendition of the story 'Little Red Riding Hood' was one of the first ever productions to come from the Walt Disney Studio, and is often considered as Disney's first attempt at animated story telling. What is interesting with this film, is that it was considered to have been lost for many years, and it wasn't until 1998 it had been found in Briton in a London film library. The film was restored for archive, and has since been re released on DVD. The film is 6 minutes long, and is silent.
  

'Jason and the Argonauts - 1963'

1963 - Jason and the Argonauts: During the 1960s, movie developers found it increasingly harder and harder to get their ideas on to the big screen, and actually make it look decent. The infamous ‘skeleton scene’ in Jason and the Argonauts did, and still looks as impressive as ever, and is a fine example of why stop motion animation ages better than CGI animation. Still to this day, scenes such as this and many more from this era can still make people surprised, and somewhat still in suspense because of the quality and time taken to perfect such scenes. 

'Toy Story - 1995'

1995 - Toy Story: Toy story was the first CGI feature film ever made. It was released by Disney and Pixar, and really set a standard for future films, and created a genre of its own. It created a brand new platform to animate with, and opened the door for both copycat studios, and pixar to create films they'd never have imaged possible 5 years + before. Toys were the main focus, as at the time they were far easier to render and much quicker to model. They could also use the characters very easily for merchandise, which in Disneys eyes was 'big win' but they didn't have to worry about that, because when Toy Story premiered back in 1995, it was at the cinema for literally months, gaining the attention of nearly everyone. It was new, fresh and it felt like the future, and made Disney a hell of a lot of money. Some people may feel that the CGI revolution killed animation, and made traditional hand drawn and stop motion forms redundant, but personally I feel it did the opposite. It attracted much larger groups of people to enjoy animation, and to see it for what it really is. 

'Avatar - 2009'

2009 - Avatar: Avatar was a breakthrough in computer visuals, and introduced a huge majority of the world to stereoscopic 3D. Avatar set the standard for both 3D and CG quality, along with strong story making it a memorable and highly credited film. It also created a lot of media buzz, and sky rocketed in movie charts week after week, and managed to maintain a place in most major cinemas for months, eventually becoming the highest grossing film of all time. 

Rotoscoping development

I decided to give the animation a very rough feel.

We have started to look in to rotoscoping and how big a part it plays in animation. Not only have we researched different examples of rotoscoping, but we are developing our own short film based on a video portrait recording we captured recently. I will update the blog accordingly to my progress in development, but as it stands, here is where I am. 

Mise en scène writeup - Crooked Rot: Short Film.

The short film Crooked Rot can only be best described as an experimental short film, combining several different techniques of both animation and effects, to bring together a very unsettling and disturbing piece.

David Firth is often known for his dark approach on his work, and this is by no means lost in Crooked Rot, as this was his first stop motion animation, which enabled him to bring a lot more to his films than his previous 'cell animation' work.

The film begins by showing off some pretty stunning light effects, followed by some eerie opening titles. When the film begins, we see what appears to be a skulls head with a tube inserted in to the back of it, in a dark room, with a halo spinning around. It is obvious that this is the main focus on the shot, and that David Firth wants to welcome you to his unsettling world of weirdness.

The shot continues and comes to a pan across what appears to be a table, with more skulls, and prop hands sitting still, with the halo moving about quickly. Then we start to see some very interesting uses of stop motion animation.

It is obvious that the centre of attention objects are lit up in a dark environment, to give an 'on edge' feel to it, and the use of different camera lenses and different shots, make the film constantly moving about, almost like a jagged feel to it.

David firth has also placed some very unusual, and again unsettling music to work alongside the video, to help build the somewhat disturbing mise en scene. He also uses clever use of Foley, and sound effects to bring the piece to life. 

The film doesn't have any story, plot or characters (to my knowledge) and to me, comes across as an experimental horror animation, combining different effects and different sources of animation, but heavily relying on stop frame.

As far as these sort of films go, it achieved everything it wanted to. It causes a very disturbing atmosphere, and received positive feedback from viewers.

In conclusion, this film's mise en scene clearly portrays a freighting chain of effects, video, sounds and music, and I thought this would be a brilliant piece to talk about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjny4qNy24

Caricature Research

We have been researching different uses of character caricature, and what uses it can have on media, politics and entertainment. We looked at several different examples, including Napoleon taking a slice of the globe, which is a very famous piece of art. It's funny to see how artists can transform someone's face so much, but keep all their characteristics!