Fallen Art by Tomek Baginski

Fallen Art is an animated short by Tomek Baginski, polish director. His previous works include The Cathedral (2002).

The action takes place in the military base, where soldiers who lost their minds or are no longer wanted by the Army are sent to be expended. There Sergent Al,  Photographer Dr. Friedriech and mentaly lost general A atempts to create wholy different art.





The highly stilised world of animation plays as yet another tool to tell the story : anomalous and grotesque style is like a reflection of the story being told. But at the same time its soft and rich blue-brown colour pallete and smoky warm  lighting adds to the appeal.  As reviewers of World Wide Cinema Festival notices, it is like the director took two illustrators Dave McKean's and Bill Sienkiewicz's  style and brought a new one in this film.

Illustration examples of Dave McKean:

Illustrations of Bill Sienkiewicz's:

But there would be many other aspects at wich the animation stands out, to give an example, character design, camera moves and editting or the main idea behind it. In over all this short film, to my mind, is one of the best examples of such kind and is worth analysing.

The Art of Ivan the Bird

Yesterday I've ordered a book  The art of Ivan the Bird to be made using Bob Books  services. At the beginning I didn't know  what to start from , but the website offered to download a program wich helped to organize the layout and other details of the book.

I do understand its not gonna be perfect since this was my very first book evber published :D But  I've concentrated on forming an argument ant highlighting the main points of  the creative jorney I've taken in this project. So hopefully the book will clearly express it, but no doubts, there are things to be critisized . . :D

I won't upload th pages since it's much like what's here on the blog. Only one thing missing though,  the 3 side view of the finished Bird model. 

Presenting Ivan

I wrote before that I want to present Ivan as if he is captured in animation and its not just him in bland background, but in his environment. Also the picture serves as a peace of concept art for future development.

The idea for the environment isn't new. A month or so ago I've posted some sketches, one of wich captured the proportions, composition and shapes for the environment depicted here. But what happens in the place is what really directed the design. Initially this  it is where ship models are built and  tested in the lake. So we can see shelters made out of sails, or half of the ship deck used as arbour and so on. 

First Glimpses at Ivan

Today I layed all the textures and set up base materials and really got the chance for the first time to see how Ivan, the bird made out of various unused model parts, looks.
I am happy that the outcome is so much like the concept drawing. Again I got to realise how a good resolution of design in the  stage of preproduction  saves time/energy/sanity throughout all other stages.

There's still some tweaking left to do, for example to add bump and specular maps. Maya..  also started complicating things.. I think the problems are caused by the load of textures.

Texturing in progress

Sorry for the delay yesterday :) won't do it again guys :D

Texturing Ivan

The week befor I was busy with UV layout, this week I started texturing and hopefully the Bird, (which has a name now :D , Ivan) will be finished.

Examples of UV layouts

I took Phil's advice to paint the textures in a traditional way so there would be a feeling that the Bird is actually hand made. So after having layed out the UV's I printed out all the maps and used aqua paints, pencils to create base textures.

Example of painted base textures

But still I'm importing it all to photoshop to tweak some bits and add some more detail.

Example of Bird textures

I'm not rushing the process,also it is going slow because I can't help myself enjoying the summer :D All those trips to have and friends to visit are really taking some time, but I'm quit optimistic to see Ivan finished and book released before the deadline of this  summer project   :)

Modeling is finished!

Today I've finished modeling the bird. At the very end I made sure the outcome is as close to the original drawings as it could be, since I really enjoyed the feeling and proportions captured in concept drawings. No its time for all the rest that's waiting.

Work in Progress: Bird's Model

Bird's Model Sheet

This is what I have so far.  Few things like bird's wings and.. well nothing else really, is left to model and I'm good to go for UV mapping. Since I haven't layed them as I was modeling. I left myself the freedom to change things without thinking to readjust the UV map.

I think/hope/pray  this week UV's will be layed out and the texturing also done :D  And I'll be ready to work with  book layout wonders as well as final images of bird presentation. I hope to draw the environment, put the bird in it and present it as a fully resolved still image of a supposed animation.

SO far I'm really happy I have taken this task seriously because I had the luxury to take all the time I needed to solve modeling problems, watch tutorials etc. I'll be so much more confident this year.

Well.. less talking then :)

Bird's Design: Blocking out Essential Shapes

It's bin a while since I've posted, I have to repeat myself here again. But finally things have sorted out and I could work with my summer project...again.

Blocking out Essential Shapes

I started sculpting the bird, trying to follow the guidelines of my 2d drawings thoroughly. And so far I see these designs were the most detailed ones I made so far. I can see the benefits immediately. instead of having to solve technical problems I would need to make creative decisions constantly. I don't know if it could slow up the process more, than the lack of technical skills already've done it...

But I have to say the borrowed DVD of Gnomon Workshop tutorials really helped.
I watched through Kevin Hudson's automotive modeling tutorial. Hopefully it's going to help as I imagine :D

Really really hope to do some amazing things with my Bird in near time.. :/

When I'm sad

A peace of brilliantly stylised animation. I particularly enjoy the repetitions, the colour palette but mostly how smart the state of a sad person is portrayed.

Summer Holidays: Sketching out Ideas

There was a solid brake from blog posting, but on the other hand I was busy trying to capture at least some of the ideas I got during my summer holidays, campings and trips . There's clearly a variety of ideas, but after drawing them out of my head I see wich one's still intrigue me and I'd still like to get back to them.


After getting back to Lithuania I met a lot of friends , with those from art school we desided to make a little summer practise like we used to. So this is the panorama from a mound we saw and were drawing.

At the same "summer practice" an element of a ship suggested what is in this drawing.

I discovered othat one of my favourite themes could be ballet. This is not a first time an idea in topic comes.

The idea of a nun-train was inspired while I worked at a UCAS faire. There were plenty of prospective students who we had to advice about the perspectives of studying at UCA. I just couldn't believe of the variety of caracters I saw there :D a group of pupils were ..particularly inspirational :D . But this drawing still.. lacks of the feel and proportions I imagine. But if it were to be developed further , I guess that would be fixed.

Another idea of giant monster formed out of mountain of trees came during a bycicle trip to sanctuary park here in my home country. The sketch captures quite clearly the creature I imagine, but sadly not the mood and environment.

I think this is just a simple abstract, stile practise. Looks more like it served as a meditation :D

The few composition ideas for the birds outter environment.. much development needed clearly :D

This is one of my favourites. The image came just before falling to sleep. But now it looks that it might have been just a flashback of one of my favourite Hayao Miyazaki's films My Neighbour Totoro (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki; 1998). Or maybe not.. Because I visualized a very interesting "Anatomy" of the creature ( for example mouth actually being joint to the .. fur and the skin of the creature).

Next two weeks I'm back at Rocehster to work at summer school. God knows what kind of ideas I'll get after working with 15-16 year olds :D

The Aim and Idea for the Environment

I think with this project I'm more confident to experiment and just see what happens, so what I imagine for environment is very simmilar to one of my previous works I did - a mixed technique true media work I named it pixie (And perhaps you can see her there) but in fact the work is more like abstract environmet - something what I'm looking for .

This is the general feel I think I'll be reaching for, but these next couple of days I'll experiment and see what happens .

Bird's Design Sheet: Front, Back, Side

This is the most resolved design of the bird in his primar stage ( befor becomeing a lantern) Full resolution of how a 3d model would look. Now I'd feel confident modeling it.

Dorje Turnaround

This is the turnaround of Dorje - an object that has a symbolic meaning in Tibetian religion.

As I mentioned previously, this was my first commision. A simple little project, but hey, it's money... :D A good practice as well.

Picking Little Experiences - first "true" Commision

A week ago I got lucky and was asked to prepare a little project - a turnaround of an object.

The turnaround is for a an MA final project presentation . Not a tricky task, I thought at first. And perhaps it isn't at all. But it turned to be a little chalange only just because I thought it's gonna be easy-peasy :D But problems as allways occured from unexpected places.
This object is Dorje. Dorje means "Diamond" and it is a tibetian ritual object . It symbolizes method and activeness and is a representation of male aspects.
This is how it actually looks like:

It supposedly is made out of brass or copper and looks old as well as isn't ideally simetrical. Also there are plenty variations in the level of detail. But in my case the task is to capture the esence - idea, proportions, material etc.

The first attemps were ... good examples of developmental stage :D Not to satisfactory.. at all..


But today I spent around 4-5 hours concentrating only on texturing and lighting . Also thanks to Alan's advice I got rid of the little problem , black dots on the model.
Ater palying around with settings it all started falling to place. Also the lighting here, I found, is hugely important. I think if it looks even a tyniest bit as a metal object, 30 procent of that is because of the suitable lighting, light colours and intensities. So this is what I have so far :


To me .. it feels like a cold and heavy metal... At least it doesn't look like plastic , like befor...

And here are some wireframes as asked :)

A simple little project indeed, but very good for keeping fresh and developing the set of skills we gained this year. I even have a tight dedline :D (this Wednesday)
I'll post the turnaround video when it's rendered and done.