Final show ideas

I struggled to think of anything interesting to do fro my final show, until I watched other people present their ideas to class. This gave me a better picture of what sort of content to include.

I want to make something interesting and engaging, which will make more people want to look at my work which is the ultimate aim of the final show.

I first thought of making a doll sized house that is run-down and sort of dilapidated, the window will either be knocked out or see-through. some of my work will be painted on the walls of the house along with figures littered around the house. I think this will be a good final show piece as it will invite people to look inside the house, so it will be engaging in that sense. also if i decorate the outside of the house well it will also be eye-catching.

I will also have to decorate the outside of the house accordingly. here are a few rough sketches of my idea:

E4 Stinger

E4 Stinger

I found this project on the whole very enjoyable as a whole, this is mainly due to the amount of time we had to do it in, which made the work load much more bearable. This meant I could spend more time editing, and setting up my ideas to make a quality final animation. However because the project ran for 7 months it was hard to keep a good structure with what I was doing, as I had other modules and briefs to do during the 7 months. Even though I wrote up a good time plan, I dint manage to follow it to the last detail. I think this was down to the fact I had so long to complete my animation and my ideas kept changing, or I found things to improve on. This meant that the ideas I was currently working took priority over what was down on the time sheet. Overall I don’t think this affected the quality of my animation as I still completed all the tasks I had set myself at the beginning of the project, albeit at a different time.

A lot of this project was learning new methods and techniques especially when it came to setting up the scene and environment. During the making of the main wall, I could get the wall to look right. I wanted the graffiti on the wall to look real, so I tried applying a bump map to it to try and make the texture of the wall come through, but this didn’t work. The method I was currently using meant I had to layer up each plane with a different bit of graffiti on, this was making the wall look to jumbled up and littering the materials browser, so not only was it not working aesthetically it was not working practically. I decided to create the wall texture as a whole on Photoshop. This meant layering up the different graffiti on the wall before importing it into cinema 4d. this also meant that I could use the bump map of the wall without any graffiti on make the texture come through the graffiti making it look more realistic. It also solved the problem of the material browser being clogged up, because now the wall only required on texture instead of 15 or so.

Due to the nature of this project, I could look at it a month down the line and decide I want to change something, this was the case when I decided to change the scene and try and add more objects to it, as I thought it looked too ‘flat’. To help add depth to it I modelled 2 buildings to sit around the main wall, I also added little things like lamp posts and an air conditioning unit. Little objects like this made the scene look more realistic and fuller. After a Crit it was suggested I add more grime to the walls, this was a good method of hiding the joins between the walls and the floor, it also added to the theme of a grimy urban area.

My strengths for this project was certainly the 3D modelling as I found it quite fun to make the various items and props. I also enjoyed putting the tutorials on mograph to the test especially when it came to making the E4 logos fall. There was a lot of problem solving involved trying to make that part of the scene. This was mainly due to the fact I couldn’t control the time at which the logos fell. I tried moving them up further to delay the time it took for them to land. But by the time they did land it wasn’t in the desired place. I got around this by making a new scene just as the last scene stopped. This meant I would have to edit the two scenes together but this was a very good solution to the problem as it didn’t add that much extra time on the post production side of things. There was also a few problems with the amount of logos that dropped, I couldn’t seem to have enough fall. I had currently used the grid layout with the mograph clone tool. So I decided to change it to linier, this meant the logos would appear in a vertical line instead. I then copied about 6 lines worth of E4 logos next to each other, they all dropped at the same time improving the amount of logos and resulting in a much better effect and end result.

Overall this project didn’t throw to many problems at me and I found the work load extremely manageable. I even managed to complete another live brief during the time of this one. However I do think I could have improved on my time management. If I stuck to a good strict time plan I think I could have finished this project a lot earlier. On the other had though because this project ran for so long it allowed my ideas to evolve and improve in to what I think is a very good animation as it combines good 3D modelling with pose to pose animation. The next thing for me to do know is upload it to the E4 stinger website and hope for the best.

Blu-tack group project

This is a post that should have gone up a few months ago...here it is anyway.
Today we were given a task to follow the blu-tack movie maker brief in groups and come up worth a stop-motion animation. our task was made more challenging when we were given only 2 1/2 hours to complete our concept ideas and start to film our first ideas. overall I found this task very interesting as I was working in a good group, where we each had a good input. I was quite pleased with the end result and idea we came up with. at the end of the task we had to present our animation to the rest of the group and try and sell it. Here is the animation:

Showreel

I got round to making my short show reel. I am quite happy with the result and ave also uploaded it to the FdAnimation you tube account.

Branding

For my brand/logo I wanted to design something nice and simple, I had some ideas of doing in completely in black and white. However I also wanted it to be interesting and not plain, saw some images I liked mainly because of the colour scheme and also because of the content:





I find the style of these images very interesting as some are very detailed and well structured, they are also eye-catching, even though they are in black and white. I want mine to be as noticeable and to include the same levels of detail and structure.

I remembered a nice drawing of a revolver that I used for my morph project in year 1 which would fit in nicely with my current ideas. So I scanned the image and imported it into Illustrator where I went over the line work, to make it stronger and more bold. I can't really remember how it came about but I decided to mirror the guns which led to my final design of adding nice patterns and a sugar skull from the day of the dead festival in Mexico. I drew out the design of the skull in pencil then imported it into illustrator where I went over the line work in a similar process to the gun. I had to think of a name for my brand, I thought six shooter would be a fitting name due to the content of the brand and also because I like the film:). Anyway here is my design:

Work Placement-Novak Colletive

This post is a bit late, but here it is anyway:)

I managed to get on a work experience placement for a week with an exciting production company called the Novak Collective. “The Novak Collective comprises three innovative, professional and diverse art organisations based in North East England. They work seamlessly on a project by project basis and through their individual talents offer a well rounded and highly varied skill set. The three businesses are: NAME, Preamptive and Retina Glitch” here is my diary of the week I was on the placement.

Monday 19^th April 2010

My first day went as well as it could, everyone was very welcoming and friendly which easy my nerves. I had to wait for Karl before I could start any work because he was there a week before and had already been given the task. When he arrives he explained what we had to do. Novak were given a job to do a live gig using their own music synced to 3D animations. They gave us a 2minute song which was a remix of Krs-1’s Sound of the police. Because Karl had already been there a week he had made a start, and came up with a concept, and had made about 40 seconds worth of animation in 3D. for the rest of the song we were going design and create a street scene with a police car driving down it moving to the beat of the song using a mo-graph sound effecter in Cinema 4D. So I made a start on straight away. Overall I really enjoyed the first day as everyone in the studio was very friendly and made me feel at ease throughout. I also thought it gave me a good insight into how a good business set up worked as throughout the day they were all making calls securing new gigs and new jobs via their large contact base. Which was so big because when they all worked in their separate businesses they each built up a good contact base, so combined it was even bigger. I finished the first day at 6pm.

Tuesday 20^th April 2010

I started the second day more focused on what we had to do as I had already been introduced to everyone and knew what I had to do. I started collecting textures and building up my scene in cinema 4D. The basics of it was to create a long road (long enough to take over a minute to get from one end to another), with a camera attached to the front of it. The layout of the scene would mainly be build up using 2D buildings laid out in such a way it made it look 3D. Before I knew it the day had already finished.

Wednesday 21^st April 2010

Today it was pretty much the same set up as yesterday, as I already knew what I was doing I just got on with it. However today I was working more closely with Karl and we were exchanging ideas between us more on how to improve our scene. We were also taught how to use the 3D svi plug-in, and how to get the best results. We also had to try and get the scene pretty much finished because we had to have it ready by Friday. I spent most of today collecting images of people and cutting them out on photoshop, so I could later add them to the scene to add another depth of “3Dness” However we kept thinking of new improvements like adding pigeons and newspapers flying around. Again we finished today at 6pm.

Thursday 22^nd April 2010

Today we knew we had to get all our animations complete so we had all of Friday to edit the scenes together and make sure it is all in sync to the music. I concentrated on the street scene while Karl tried to fix a few problems with the scenes he had made. There were a few issues with the colours splitting too much and he had to fix this. We managed to finish our animations off and had to render them, as they were fairly big animations we left them to render over night.

Friday 23^rd April 2010

We had a bit of a shock today coming in expecting our render to have finished. It had only got as far as 120 frames when there was over 800 to render out. We worked out that it was going to take over 5 full days to render, which of course was out of the question. So we had to find a new method of how to render. Kieth who looked after us suggested we render it out using lower pixel amounts, this drastically cut down the render time but the quality was really poor. He said we could hand it in looking how it did as a sort of provisional animation, as they knew what it looked like. So we would arrange a date out of our work experience to set of the render and come back when its done and edit it all together.

Overall I found this work placement extremely enjoyable on many different levels, I felt I got on with the rest of the people very well and fitted in with the work vibe. I also found it useful as it gave me the opportunity to gain experience and understand how the industry is, and what makes a successful business. I also had the chance to talk to them about how there business was set up first and how they got to where they were. Even though we didn’t get our final render completed the experience gained was vital and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

Here is a link to their website: http://www.novakcollective.com/wordpress/

Videos

I have been looking at a lot of music videos from the group the N.A.S.A project, because they all seem to be amazing. The majority that I like are directed by Syd Garon and Paul Griswold, here are a two I really like:

Piczo my Penguin-Live Brief

I have also been working on the piczo my penguin brief as a side project because I felt I didn't have enough illustration in my portfolio. I first thought of my idea for it a while ago but I hadn't got round to creating it due to other projects and work commitments. Anyway my basic idea for this book cover was to use the theme of playing cards. so I drew out my design in pencil first based on the queen of hearts, but instead of it being the queen it would be Alice. I altered the colour scheme to blue and white to help readers identify Alice as its the same colours she wears, I also included the bottle of potion she drinks to alter her size. I used illustrator to go over the line work to give it a more quality finish and coloured it up using photoshop, I also tried to give the card a 'used' look by overlaying different textures. Here is my book cover:

Live Brief- Blu-tack Advert

This project has been quite a challenge for me, mainly because stop-motion has got to be one of the most tedious forms of animating especially if you are using blu-tack as the main material. It sticks to everything making it virtually impossible to animate. However it was on the whole pretty fun as I got to test out the new software and cameras. Which improved the quality of the last stop motion animation by miles. It allowed me to adjust pretty much anything which resulted in incredibly sharp pictures. I encountered a few problems when I had to settle on one idea, and every time i did i thought of new ideas or different ways to film it. this meant that i was wasting time and due to the time intensive nature of stop motion animation it wasn't the best of way to go about things. It meant that I had only one week before hand in so I spent the last few days solidly working on the animation. Overall it looks good, however I know that if I planned my time better I would have had more time to create more of a professional animations. so this is something I need to work on for next time, if I plan my time better I should end up with a better animation. I have uploaded this video to the Blu-tack website and it has appeared on their showcase page.Anyway here it is:

GreyScale Gorilla Tutorials

To help increase my knowledge and skill on Cinema 4D I have finished a few tutorials of Greyscalegorilla.com mainly learning how to grasp and understand Mograph. Here is a few that I have completed:

I've been really lazy these past few months and haven't uploaded my last two projects or updated my blog, so over the next few days i will become a recluse until it is up to date.

AD202

AD 202

I have found this project quite exciting as a whole as the final animation was something I have never done before, actually building a working animation puppet and a set from scratch has been a new and valuable experience. I have learned new compositing methods that will help me with future projects and work, and learning to utilise digital techniques. It was also new to be working in a group and sharing responsibilities.

However this project wasn’t a smooth as I thought it would be and if I'm honest it was a bit of a non-starter for our group. This was due to a number of different reasons but mainly due to the lack of communication between ourselves at the start of the project. It did however get better towards the end when we only had a week left. I felt this was too late.

I believe if we had set up a solid time plan at the start and shared out the tasks, we wouldn’t of had so many issues. In the end we did get it all done and I think have a good animation as result.

Other issues we had involved the puppet. It wasn’t as stable as we had hoped and it was becoming increasing tedious and difficult to animate so I had to strip the clothes of and reinforce the legs with more wire, I then wrapped electrical tape tightly. It seemed to do the trick.

Overall I thought the final animation was good considering the issues we came across, the only part I don’t really like is the bit where the live action scene comes in. I thought we should have filmed it using the puppet but we had run out of time and other groups needed to use the camera. I feel our group has used digital application well, especially during editing. We also used digital media to help build the set. A good example of this is when we made the wallpaper, we first found influences of the style we wanted on the internet and created our own using Photoshop. We the cut it in to thin strips and mounted them on to our wall which created the effect of real wallpaper.

Our main point for improvements lies in our organisation and handling of the production process. I felt it was a bit uncontrolled and everyone was doing their own thing at times which wasn’t very useful as we were wasting time on things that weren’t important to this project. If we followed a good strict time plan I feel our animation would have been that slight bit better and neater in parts as we would have had more time to film and edit it.

Another part we could have improved on was the sound. As the quality of it wasn’t that good and it showed. I feel if we had good quality sound recordings it would have raised the quality level of the animation. We had to use microphones built into our laptops for the majority of the sound we used. If we thought about it more we could have hired a microphone or found a better one. As the ones we used weren’t sensitive enough and we ended up with a lot low quality sound effects.

Pixelation

In today’s lesson we learnt about pixilation as a possible filming technique. It is very similar to stop-motion but instead of using puppets actors and actresses are used. Some notable examples of pixilation are a short film by the Bolex Brothers called The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, and the music video to Radiohead’s ‘There There’.

Anyway we were split up into groups and given the task to film our own short pixilation video. We came up with the idea of turning a group of chairs into a car and driving through ‘Shoe country’.

We used Frame Thief to capture our video frame by frame. Overall it was quite simple for me as all I had to do was shuffle forwards for every shot. However towards the final scene Alex (who was filming) had to capture each frame and hold a shoe while moving it forwards each time, in the end we had to enlist the help of Lynsey. We also had to tie string to the boots and move them in such a way to give the effect they were walking, which was fairly difficult as the boots kept spinning around. Overall I found the lesson enjoyable as we could experiment with different ideas. The result was good to considering we only had two hours to film it: