Showing posts with label Commission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commission. Show all posts

23 Apr 2012

Wrap up and Result of D Commission

3 weeks ago I have been asked by Iceage Musics Limited company to create ident animation.  It was a kind of one-man-band type of commitment s o I was responsible to coming up with the presentation idea after they gave me guidelines what they want to see in it ( re characters and environment) , designing, producing, animating and making a soundtrack.

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The time was also quite short, only 4 days for everything. So it was least 14 hours a day.. But was worth it! :]


 The project was enjoyable and the pay  too . I totally enjoyed being the director designer and animator of a professional assignment and I could totally see myself doing something similar in the future :]

4 Apr 2012

"D" Comission : Set design and shot Set-ups

During the second day of the production for 'D' Event's Ident I've worked out set design and staging.

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and today, started animating some of the characters, here is a snipet of clown scene:


In theory tomorrow should be the last day and by the end of it I should have a rendered and edited roughly 10 second long sequence . Hope that will happen :]

26 May 2010

DVD Template Design


I found creating the dvd cover desing so refreshing and fun :)
Just tried to create something from the material I have created already ( drawn/rendered images) but in a way ... presenting only a metaphor of what the animation is about and not completely giving away the "secret".
And yeah, I found that the more logos you use the smarter the template looks :D

24 May 2010

Dope Sheets for Slime Mold Life Cycle Animation




This is the first project that dope sheets appeared to me of vital importance. SInce picking first experience in constructing animation in maya, everything can get so confusing so fast. As you can tell from the quality of the sheets printed, I used them ( and still using ) alot. To actually use dope sheets was probably the best idea I had regarding project management.

Maya progress: Working on Final Scene





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(examples of developmental stage)
Today I almost finished the last scene which is the midle one in animation - The Gathering
and Transformation of Slime Mold (lighting is left). There were quite few changes in the way I originally planed to construct the animation. First of all, I didn't use animated textures I was prepared- about 500 frames of of colour, specular and bump animated sequences, with the timing matched to each other ... The problem was that it just looked awful on the mesh - stretches in various places ect. I'd have had lots of problems to solve... And really, there's enough confusion already - whit very complex shots of continuous camera movement, where a fluid transformation has to be expressed : / But fortunately I had a very successful discussion with Simon Holand today; he suggested another solution how to create the changing texture that both would look great and save loads of working, rendering time. Thanks again for that Simon!

I animated textures inside Maya! :) By playing around with fractal textures settings and doing so for colour, specular and bump I came with quite successful results. In fact, I'm not ashamed to say, it looked way better then what I was prepared: D

the movement from cell field gathering to a slime mold and subsequently slime mold transforming to a fruiting body has to be continuous I used .. 4 different objects turning their visibilities on/off accordingly in the timeline.

But this again required the textures to seamlessly mold into each other (since the texture is also "transforming" )

I used Blend node to combine two huge shaders: animated "gathering" (cell field growing into slime mold) and the "transformation" shader - a liquid-like transparent and solid texture. I was reaching for seamless blend from one look of the slime mold to another.

This was the geeky part: D

But the more important was to watch carefully the timing. The animation is hugely indebted to music and the pace of animation relies on the pace of sound track. The absolutely vital reference for that was the pre-viz. I counted the time twice: first how long an action/transformation takes in my blocked-out animation (the pre-viz) secondly the intervals between the important notes in the soundtrack.

19 May 2010

Animation Test: The Last Scene



First of all, I haven't finished the animation, I just stated doing it from the end to the beginning :)
Its a test of render and settings, because it was beginning to be hard to understand how it's going to look, because renders of still shots couldn't show how fluid the lighting will change or the bump map (all the setting were key framed). I had to animate this settings because a) there is a "secret" hidden from viewers then revealed, b) there's a huge contrast of scale and its showed in ongoing camera movement.

I don’t know.. It’s too bright. I might fix it in After Effects or rerender it... I used spot light rig from Alan's bonus tutorials, but I guess the angle has to be shifted, or yet other types of lights, because now it's looking flat... :/
Also , there should be an illusion of amoebas moving slightly , at least while the camera is relevantly close to them and wee still are aware of separate units of amoebas. I’ll definitely discuss that in aftereffects lesson.

So. . . lots to be fixed.



The sequence here is very glitchy, sorry for that :/

17 May 2010

Render tests






Today I worked with the final scene of spore falling down and camera revealing the scale. The majority of the time I spent reaching for the final looks and animating the relevantly simple actions amoebas take.
The chalanging bit was to compostit light, texture and object layers into a seemlesly into single unit.
As I see it now, this was particularly true to this scene since there is a"secret" (the true scale in wich action happens) which I thoroughly was trying to hide till the very end of animation :D

By the way, these examples are really just tests.. it takes a looong time to wate while one example is baked, so I just put it here the developmental examples

13 May 2010

"Fixed" Pre-viz

This version of pre-viz shows alternative shot structure. This time there's more fluid camera moves and continuity of the shot instead of cutts . I think... this works best so far... but its hard to see it objectively.

10 May 2010

After Effect classes: Combining layers

First practices in after effects. The task was to combine separate layers of video material in to a seamless whole. The Process shown here illustrates how a certain kind of gasses try to clean poisoned lungs ( if I recall the explanation correctly ) .

9 May 2010

Pre-Viz for Slime Mold Life Cycle



There are few changes ( for insatnce at the very end you'd see no cross disolves) just to see what works better. I no longer can see it objectively,but hope the line of action is clear.

7 May 2010

To hang a slime mold upside down or to spin the camera?

Since now it is clear from the animatic, that there is the confusion with the line of action, I need to fix it.

But I also see two ways of fixing it.

One is to make the slime mold, fruit hang dawn as if from a real ceiling. But there would be problems with composition, since what works now might be entirely wrong when the panels are flipped. Yet still this would be an option in order to make the line of action clear

Or we could make the camera rotate to mach what's actually seen in animatic. For instance from the establishing shot the camera would actually pan and rotate at the same time to make the "upside down" view normal. And just before releasing the spores it again would rotate to "world's point of view" ( a made up term of mine.. :/) and we'd then see a jump cut of spores falling down.

I'm constructing pre-viz now so this is a good time to decide which approach to choose.
Since now it is clear from the animatic, that there is the confusion with the line of action, I need to fix it.

6 May 2010

Animatic for the Life cycle of a Slime Mold




The Animatic is a useful reference for the timing of animation later on in the stage of production. Though there will be changes.

Most importantly, this was the first time I started thinking about soundtrack so early ( before it was always considered only as a final touch). Now it is clear how much it can influence the later construction of animation as well as how much easier it is to imagine the action with the help of music.

Hopefully this piece of soundtrack ( from V for Vendetta (DIr. Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, 2005)) works.



1 May 2010

Concept Art




As I mentioned previously, at the very beginning I chose Caves as one of the places where slime molds can be found. And what this gave me was a further research about this environment and , most importantly, the lighting. See-through slime molds in dark caves are lighten by glow worms, their neighbors.

So this is First 3 concept drawing of what I imagine the Animation is going to look like.
Maybe it’s going to be less textured (if it's going to destract from the slime mold transformation), so far what I notice. I'll see.

29 Apr 2010

Slime molds...





























Today I read a good new, that we can look to other types of slime molds ( myxomycetes, protostelids, not only dyctiostelids) so I had a look around.


What i found was a variety of them. One might look alien to another. There's a variety of shapes and textures as well as colours.


One interesting fact, Hieronymus Boch in his Garden of earthly Delights depicted 22 different slime molds ( try to find it!)


Also I looked at concept art of others. But just to see whats out there, not relating it with my work.




27 Apr 2010

The Ways to Interpret Human Body: Fantastic Voyage, Nucleus, Futurama

At the time of the previous project (Unit 5: Animation), I've come across Nucleus company's animation and was just blown away, by the fascinating interpretation of biological processes they made.

Briefly about the company, Nucleus Medical Media is a U.S. business that creates and licenses medical illustrations and animations.
To add more, the company welcomes students showing their own interpretations and transcriptions of biological projects:
For a free proposal on your next medical project of any size, contact the company with the largest staff of graduate-degreed medical animators in the world. (for more information as well as for many more other animations: http://catalog.nucleusinc.com/nucleusindex.php?)








The animations try to convey scientific data as accurately as possible.
It might be said the audiences might vary from relatively young pupils to scientist's themselves. The process they are showing is never overwhelmed with environmental details, if it doesn;t contribute to the explanation ( like when they show spline structure) or oppositely, we see tiniest dusts and micro particles if that's taking a part in the scenario.

Also it seems that the artistic side isn't forgotten. To name in particular, lighting of the scenes or composition.

Another interesting aspect is the use of music and how it doesn't distract from the scientific side of the process, oppositely makes it more appealing to watch.

The way Company represents the scientific data, in a way, gives the cinematic qualities.

This is particularly true in Fantastic Voyage (Dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966).








How human body could look from inside were successfully interpreted by combining both, the scientific and cinematic sides. As there was written in the beginning of the film, it is hugely indebted to scientists' help.
the other side came from artist's mastery: the lighting, the use of colour as well as textures were impressive and believable.

Also, not to forget the soundtrack and sound effects.

Particular sound effects were chosen for different spaces of inside of human body.
For instance if the scientist ship was getting closer to the hart we'd be hear low frequencies.

But not always sound effects were heard. Sometimes it was mainly music. It depended from the story (where the sound had to be understood as a warning, no music covered it)

The film was awarded for Best Color Art Direction, Special Visual Effects and nominated for Best Color Cinematography, Editing, Sound Effects .
The use of these techniques made the transcription an exciting experience to see.

Other example how the human body was interpreted in mass media could be FUTURAMA ( season 3, episode 4)





Fry's ( one of the main character) body was interpreted as a factory, where worms and bacterias were the employees, that tried to improve his physical data.

The bacterias were given personifications of people . For example, there were lasy bacteria-workers or the king-bacteria responsible for the coherence in the system.

Unit 6: Commission.

The last unit of the year asks us to respond to a brief in a professional manner. We are given a task to make a 2 minute long animation of one biological process. The animation should transcribe the complex scenario accurately as well as dynamically. It has to be targeted to a specific audience so its asked to explore the ways how to convey scientific data engagingly to different audiences.



In other words (those of the brief), we are asked to demonstrate the ability to interpret, transcribe and represent complex ideas in engaging and dynamic ways.



Peter Klappa - biologist from the University of Kent, introduced the four scenarios: How the cell developed, other three were the life of: slime mold; mushroom, fern.




After choosing one scenario and the target-audience, then goes the research

of the topic ant the market.