The Life Cycle of Slime Mold

The Making of SLime Mold Life Cycle

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

Developemnt of Visual Identity

This is what thoughts I had about my visual identity. ( the presentation is way under acceptable quality, sorry for that :/ ...deadlines... :/)

But what I actually thought was to Choose an abstract version of my initial, the black version with no eyeballs imposed :D and simply ajust the colour each time I need to put this "signature".

There was an idea, ( which might become true) to scan my own finger print and then shape J simbol using all-mighty photoshop.
But this idea.. appeared somewhat ... generic .
So far I feel comortable with the one of abstract initial..

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.

After effects: Faking 3D

Using only 5 different photos of clouds and folowing Pete's tutorial, today many of us created a sequence that looks 3d despite the fact we used only flat pictures.
camera with certain options created in after effects helpd to create paralax motion between the camera and layered pictures. By ading ajustment layers all the information was combined ito a seemless whole.
An interesting lesson.

Life Drawing: Human Figure in Perspective

This session the task was to represent human figure in perspective , again, using all the techniques tought, like using negative space, mesuring proportions with a pencil, visualizing conecting lines to get the direction, blocking in the shapes first and so on. After continuous practising sessions like that get easier ans easier to understand the perspective, as well as life drawing model shapes. 

to see more of  lifedrawing by J.J. *Jolanta Jasiulionyte* go here

A very usefull site for those who are selfteaching  is posemaniacs

 
Also, please consider following my blog, full of creative visuals, CGI and reflective writings on film, animation and art theory.
Cheers!

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 :/

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

Pre-viz #4

"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.

Life Drawing: Understanding the complexities of perspective

After a litle brake we got a male model in life drawing with different body shapes in reliance to the previous model.
The task after a quick warm up was to capture forms in perspective using methods we learned from previous sessions ( mark making, measuring, relating shapes with negative space etc.)
We were given ruffly about 2 hours to draw it.
First half of that hour was only mark making, there were only strait lines and dots on the sheet, after understanding how the shape worked I began to draw out the values of the body.
Though, as I agree with Chris Hunt, still many issues are evident in the work.
But enjoyed it anyway :)

Maya classes: Visual effects and Skinning

This week's tutorials were teaching Smooth Binding & Weight Painting as well as how to use wire deformers.

Editing weights by painting them on mesh rather than typing values in component editor was more clear because the editing process was represented visually in gray scale.

The tutorial with wire deforms seemed particularly useful. I immediately saw how it could be used for the modeling/animation projects. It is easy to transform and animate the model but at the same time it adds complexity to the rig.

Looking forward to applying what I've learned :)

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 ) .

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.

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.

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.

Maya Classes, week 1: Intro to Visual Effects and Skinning

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.