Slime Mold Neighbour Glow Worm

This is absolutely amazing.

When I chose the environment and the lighting, colour palette, I accidentally came across the glow worms in caves. The feel and the colour match perfectly to what I imagine! Its also going to be a good source of reference.

Just to make it clear, I'm not going away from our main task, quit the oppositely, I want to make the slime mold more interesting.

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.

Thumbnail storyboard for the lifecycle of a slime mold ( asexual reproduction)

I think I'm going for more stylized interpretation of the process.
Even though it would be stylized, I try to keep the scientific data accurate.

I thought to give myself rules, that would narrow the range of possibilities this animation could be heading for.

Everything takes place in a cave ( one of the environments slime slugs can be found)
Caves are dark, relevantly silent place (I'd imagine hearing water drips and wind blowing perhaps )

As I read in John C. Landlot's article there are rare species of slime molds that are different from terrestrial ones, at the same time the same scenario applies to them just for example the formation of the fruiting body can look differently etc.

But how to show the process in a dark cave?
lets say the scientist's come along and are about to investigate it, dyctiostelids. They would be lighting ''the scene'' where the life cycle takes place.


And yesterday, I wrote a letter with dozen silly questions to P. Klappa about this process, mainly asking for details I didn't found info about in both, articles or videos.

One of the ( not to greatly smart) questions was could the sample of amoebas be coloured so it would be easier to observe them without affecting the process.
He said yes.





Just to make a clue how it might be looking:

Its just a hint what's in my head.

But how its going to look will be more clear from my concept drawings. So far I just need feedback is the story and the direction I'm heading clear. Good's and bad's about it

Understanding Cellular Slime Mold/ Dictyostelida

Research carried out for purposes of  art related project

For al those who said nothing is clear, maybe this post will help.

The cellular slime molds (Dictyostelida) straddle the line between individuality and multicellularity.

How they move?

­­Slime molds feed and move via pseudopodia, like amoeba, Pseudopodia - A temporary projection of the cytoplasm, or of certain unicellular organisms, especially amoebas.

Most cellular slime molds lack flagellated stages(long, threadlike appendage)

Defining a Dictiostelid cellular slime molds

http://www.caves.org/pub/journal/PDF/V68/v68n1-Landolt.pdf

OHN C. LANDOLT
Dictyostelid cellular slime molds (dictyostelids) are singlecelled,

eukaryotic,( A cell with a membrane-bound nucleus.)

phagotrophic ( feed by ingesting/swallowing particulate organic carbon or intact [whole] cells )
bacterivores (free-living, generally heterotrophic [an organism that obtains its energy through consuming other organisms] organisms, )

move and feed in an amoeboid manner: by temporarily projecting cytoplasm.

Exclusively microscopic, which obtain energy and nutrients from the consumption of bacteria. present in terrestrial (earth) ecosystems.

These organisms represent a normal component of the

microflora in soils (earth, dirt) and apparently play a role in maintaining

the natural balance that exists between bacteria and other

microorganisms in the soil environment.
The Life Cycle of a Dictyostelium slime mold:

(The asexual reproduction)

(there also are myxomycetes and protostelids slime molds, but we are given dictiostelium slime mold life cycle)

The dominant stage in a cellular slime mold is the haploid stage.

For most of their life cycle, dictyostelids exist as independent, amoeboid cells (myxamoebae) that

feed upon bacteria,

grow,
and multiply by binary (double ) fission (splitting)

When the available food supply within a given microsite becomes depleted, numerous myxamoebae aggregate to form a structure called a pseudoplasmodium,

Within each cell maintains its individual integrity (wholesomness)

aggregate consists of up to 100,000 cells

The multicellular aggregate secretes material that forms a sheath around the entire structure, which forms a tower of cells.

the absence of light the tower topples and migrates as a single organism, The slug resembles a blob of petroleum jelly, leaving a trail of slime as it migrates.

As the fruiting body forms, the cells differentiate into a base, stalk, and apical mass containing encapsulated spores

the pseudoplasmodium then produces one or more fruiting bodies (sorocarps) bearing spores ( see previous video)

Fruiting bodies may take the shape of tiny goblets, globes, plumes

Under favorable conditions, the spores germinate (grow) to release myxamoebae (the same singe cell of the migragting colony)

and the life cycle begins anew.

Wher are they found :

Dictyostelids are most abundant in the surface humus layer of forest soils

Few studies have associated dictyostelids with caves

Few of the species Found in caves:

Dictyostelium caveatum

Dictyostelium mucoroides

Dictyostelium rosarium

Dictyostelium Giganteum

Dictyostelium aureo-stipes,

Dictyostelium . purpureum

Least common:

Dictyostelium citrinum,

Dictyostelium macrocephalum

Dictyostelium polycephalum

( the given species are examples from caves , there are lots more of dictyuostelium species )

Depending upon the particular cave, samples ranged in texture from powdery dry dust or gravel (stones) to very wet clay mud.

To give one particular example of cellular slime mold, I chose D. Caveantum

The spectacular D. Caveatum (Dictyostelium caveatum)

D.caveatum is a member of the dictiostelids , ( "slime moulds" or "social amoebae"). It consists of a single cell and its rather unassuming amoeba-like appearance hides the fact that it is a predator par excellence. it has highly effective ways of killing its prey - other very closely related social amoebae.

If a group of 10,000 D.discoideum cells is invaded by even a single D.caveatum one, they are doomed. The lone invader eventually eats the other species, using their cells as fuel to produce its own fruiting bodies.

After 48 hours, only D.caveatum remains.

single D.caveatum can consume a group of tens of thousands of other amoebae, before it can form a fruiting body.

The signaling to gather into a colony

Spiral geometry of a signal transmitter in an amoeba population (Dictyostelium discoideum) leads to chemotactic movements of cells in direction of the spiral core.

And this is the video illustrating the process from signalling to the gathering to migrating colony

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.

Great Art

If I see something special.. I save it and simply call it great art :D
decided to just put it here as it is what inspires me also motivates to get better at .. well, drawing, maya, observation, anything..
I wish someday to do something similar :)

Wardobe story: The Lascivious Umbrella

Wardrobe Story: Set Design

This is perhaps how the environment would look like and where all the performance of the Umbrella happen in the actual animation ( and this could be the moment before doors closes to leave them alone just saying to justify the lighting).

Maya Tutorials: Intro to Animation Continued: Walk Cycles

This time Everything arranged in a way for me to do all the walk cycle at one time in these few days. Having missed the very first class when the intro to rigging and animation took place I found it tuf to catch up, to understand the basics from other classes where we moved forward . SO the first walk cycle mechanics took me 6 hours to do, and you can see the quite crappy result of that. But following the progression of 4, then 2 hours, today the last one, the double bounce happy walk cycle took me 1.5 hour :D so I'm pretty happy. Learned alot . Also I was expecting something more painful from animating it in Maya, but as also others have shared, I found it fun :) ( I guess it looks like that after the rigging, which, gladly I did before the animations :D )

P.S. All the riggs are in one older post.

Lasciviouc Umbrella Animatic (with sound)

I cant get rid of that tune (Flying Neutrinos (Blast from the past) - Mr. Zoot Suit) so hopefully it at least works for the animation :)

Lascivious Walkcycle

The task was to draw animation of a walk cycle having the characteristics of our object given. SO mine was lascivious walk cycle.

The walk is unnatural - the shoulder and the hand moves together with the same side leg ( whereas in our natural walk they are opposing to keep the balanced walking) and sticking out pelvis out also.

I imagined the walking person firmly taking the step and then dragging the other leg almost with out lifting it form the ground.

So sorry for the quality... :/

3 days, (almost) 30 seconds

It was now three days of straight drawing from 9 a. m. to 11 p. m and so far I have about (only?) 30 seconds..

Do others go the same pace? ...

Also I have decided to do my animation totally in Photoshop, what I was am and will be doing for this animation . I chose to do so thinking it might help save some time from the redrawing the still parts. Yes, when it comes to redrawing the stillness it takes only Ctrl+C and Ctlr+V but the whole bunch of other things come with wonders of Photoshop also - like the layer management or saving each frame separately.

But it's not like I'm moaning here.

I learned and still am learning a whole lot, like for examples the keyboard shortcuts, scripts and actions. Scary but I find myself sometimes not thinking in sentences but in shortcut combinations ( oh, this is wrong, I need to Ctrl+Z this then Ctrls+Shift+D and Ctrl+T and it's gonna be better , meaning I need to undo the action, reselect that part and transform it again so its gonna work well :D )

Again. Scary.

In general, no, I see now it doesn’t help me save time but it gives just to say for example more freedom to make readjustments right away you've played the animation and find it not satisfying.

Hope our labor will be evident in our animations :)

Dope sheet - handy, time and energy saving tool

After reading about the huge benefits of dopesheet in The

Fundamentals of Animation I decided to make well...something similar. Because, since it it the first animation I think my head needs some help.
Dope sheets help to plan actions, their timing, camera movements and the synchronization of soundtrack in the most organized way.
Since our task is to produce only one-layered animation, with no backgrounds or to many element interacting the dope sheet is also less complicated.
My biggest hopes here are that it will help a sometimes scatterbrain me not to overcrowd my head by planning the animation in advance.

Toy Story (1995) - Establishing New Tools to Tell the Story

1995 John Lasseter's Toy Story is the world's first feature-length CGI cartoon, heralding the biggest animation revolution since Steamboat Willie. ( Steamboat Willie is famous for being the first animation with syncronized sound). John Lasseter was the director for the animation.

Company dicided to make the feature-lenght animation about toys after creating an animated short Tin Toy and seeing a potential in developing and producing the idea.

So the story is, as it‘s titeled about Toys. The daily rutine, adventures and lives they experience.
But as it is true to all Pixar aniamtions, regardless the technicall side of it ( wheter it‘s a first-time used computer technology or just generally peace of marvelous CG) the focus is always on th story and the characters, believing that the technical part plays as a tool to convey the idea‘s.

The impact this animation as well as the company created is clearly evident . The production of 3D animation during those 15 years developed and we now get to see other marvelous works such as Monster Inc., Up from the same company, or Shrek, Kung Fu Panda from Dreamworks studio.

ANimatic For the LAscivious Umbrella (2)

Sorry it's not with sound yet. I'm collecting them at the moment. But I Thought it's still worth to put it.
This animatic (there was one before) shows more what actions take place, how characters move in the scene. Also I paid a lot of attention to the timing. I tried to be as accurate as I could. I event counted the seconds and turned it to frames that I'll be drawing now, so at this point animatic was indeed helpful.

Though it shows now what isn't working. I think "peacock dance" will look differently in the real animation.
And of course, any feedback.. :) highly appreciated :)

The Skeleton Dance (1929) and The Silly Symphonies

In 1928 the sound was first applied to animation by Walt Disney who saw the huge potential (Steamboat Willie was the first animation with synchronized sound). It was then suggested not only to use the sound but base entire animation on it.

Subsequently in 1929 The Skeleton Dance was created (entirely by one animator Ub Iwerks)

It‘s an animated short based little on the story, but heavily on the performance, that‘s as mentioned before, is directed by the music/sound.

It was the first of many series of the Silly Symphonies, animated shorts produced by Walt Disney Productions for the next 10 years. Looney Tunes cartoons known today were inspired by the Silly Symphonies.

Hayao Miyazaki

To begin with, Hyao Miyazaki is Japanese animator. And to cut it to the end, he is often titled as god of animation between many world's most famous animators (to give one example, John Lasseter - chief creative officer at Pixar).

According to various sources of information, Miyazaki is perhaps best known for his richly realized fantasy worlds and memorable female characters.

His animation never lacks of realism be it objects and characters we are all familiar with or fantastical creatures and places.

For instance. Haku, the dragon from Spirited Away was animated referencing the behaviors of dog (particularly the way jaws work), snake and a dragon. By applying the different characteristics of movement to the character design Miyazaki together with studio Ghibli produce believable performances.

And when it comes to Myiazaki‘s heroines, they seem never lack nurturance, compation , that are feminine, on the other hand the unfeminine characteristics like active independence and strength in the face of dangers are what‘s considered to make them so remarkable. To dig deeper, Miyazaki at the same time creates female characters that in Japanese culture are widely recognized and defined as Shoujo, and gives new aspects to their personalities thus surprising the audience used to conventional protagonists ( western audience is surprised as well, since it is used to male protagonist that exhibit strength, independence and courage, not female ones).

But in fact, if someone was there to look how he constructs his animations, he would definitely find deep thoughts and meanings, not to mention symbols and clues or traditional elements from Japanese culture. Therefor, it could be concluded, his works become a memorable and rich experience.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

also dubbed as Disney‘s Folly was the first 83 minutes long animated feature that changed the parameters and the format of cartoon. (before that there were mainly only 6-10 minute long animations).It was considered a project insane.

It was also the first animation that released the soundtrack album for the motion picture. To continue even further it was technically brilliants, fascinating techniques, such as realistic, human like animation with the help of the rotoscope and the multiplane camera (special motion picture camera used in the traditional animation process that moves a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and at various distances from one another) to imitate 3D effects.

The film also established relatively new thinking about the personalization of characters. The seven dwarfs all had different characterizations that not only were believable and memorable but also separated each one of them as individuality.

This was the second version of Brother Grimm‘s tale of Snowhite ( the first one being five minute long animation in 1933) except the sexual references or violence, more like a sanitized version of the story.

So the story, as probably well known, is about a girl with a rare beauty called Snowhite, who drives her stepmother jealous for this reason. The girl is sent to the woods to be killed there, but fortunately the Hunstman spares her life and lets her go. She then finds a mysterious house and soon after the seven dwarfs, the owners of the place. The story goes to Snowhite being wickedly fooled and killed by the witch (the stepmother) and finally saved by the prince at the very end.

The film literarily opened doors for the many other animated features, since it reestablished the parameters of the animation and made the what first looked as insanity become a norm so today we have many many animated features.