Narrative Project: The Last Week

Last week of studio experience just past away and here is the last update on activitys done throughout the time.

The week was busy with getting the last animations ( the ones which involved toymaker's character) done.
There were quite a few of them :
toymaker in production line scenes

The scene of Toymaker meeting  his creation :

When Animation was completed , I've concentrated on postproduction, that is compositting and editting.
Main changes done in after effects were to achieve a certain look and feel , whether it meant to add noise, increase exposure, animate glow. All the scenes had their colours tweaked, most of the time ading 4 colour gradient to add some variety in other wise quit simple looking scenes ( such as marching army shadow on field etc.)

Heavy editting is what our project relied uppon from the very beginning, and that is where I found myself for .. 3 days. Weird enough, towards the end of editting each time  I'd have a headache, what isn't usual to me at all , so perhaps  these subliminal shots and  speedy sequences really do effect somehow :D

Here is a taster of the final product, a teaser trailer :




Appart from that it was time to wrap the project up, so here are the designs of DVD cover and DVD disc:

Ant the actual painting suggests the story of film itself. The toy which was created to bring happynes and joy and  was an inactive shell, got invaded by alien content and became  lost and  threatening monster.

There will be one last post, an overview of the project and the trailer itself :)

Studio Project Progress

 The latest achievement is to have scientist textured and ready to be copied for different scenes.

I did bare in mind which parts needed most of attention as they are seen the most of time or in a close up in our trailer. For example, majority of time we see scientist's chest and neck.

So the first scene with toymaker performing was 'there is a plan' scene. Where he is in a military base and analyses  ways to shut down alien toy.

Just a note, textures were created by Bob, cup by Earl. I've gathered those elemnts and created lighting, other details to create an atmospheric setting.

Aside to that I've finished the quit demanding scene of meteor's impact on dumpster and its content. I chose to animate each and every element in the waist disposal. The result is here as follows:




Since we are pretty much in postproduction stage I 've started preparing for ideas our group had in mind .
I took another, more in-depth look in our  referencing trailer of Super 8 . It was unbelievable to see what makers have "hidden" in them..


For example, the research showed the 1min 30 sec long trailer had 6 sequences of subliminal cuts. That is usually between 4 to 6 different and very abstract images per frame. This as I found adds to confusion also stresses out  and creates impact.
Similarly I thought to try and use this cinematic technique in our trailer in its post production. So these are  the following  images I've created  for subliminal cuts, one of which is alien's eye itself.

Soon more to come. Watch this space.

Dream Island...

For this artwork to be born I had to merge myself with a very dreamy mood. I was thinking about what ever  beautiful the whole time of painting ( about 1 and a half days) and found that this was a way to go into a very festive mood as well , (New Years tomorow!)  :)

This time I went for a new method, and so it started from designin separate props.  I've design Ivan's house, sails, wind-mills, lanterns, "trees"  before going into the whole concept of the Island.

When I was designing his house I tried to bring concepts of nesting-box, Chinese Lantern and incorporate elements from Ivan's design itself, so that the audience gets the feeling of the house  actually is bird's home. Also all the ideas had to flow into a  hand-crafted construct. I imagined, a kid had built it ( you should notice hand prints on the house).

Sails are another element in the island. Here is the variation I used.

These are "trees" a surreal element which adds to the flavour of Dream island, since it's not as logical element ( like sails, wind-mills  or nesting-box).  The design is almost entirely taken from my previous graphics work Pixie.

There were some "touches" to fynalise the composition or direct attention in my  sketch. And today I found the obvious solution wind-mills. It suits the mood, shape and theme perfectly. Also in later stages of animation it will serve as that aditional little element which brings  Island to life.

So as posted previously everything started from composition resolution

 

With this chosen composition a more detailed sketch was resolved.

By starting from background I  roughed in  main shapes.

Then brought all the elements I had worked out before and placed it according to sketch.

Then textures...

Lighting, shadows, layering,  tweaking, ect.

In the second half of the whole painting process my  main concern was to direct attention corectly. Because theres so much happening here, it's so easy to be overwhelmed by fancy style. House should stand out. Also I don't know if I succseded, but didn't want the Island to feel completely flat, rather as i there is a cosy space just in the center.
I'm still not sure if all this is working, because, quite obviously it doesn't follow the rule, less is more :D And who knows, maybe it should...
Island is a symbol of dreams come true so  I tried to make it rich...

World of Ivan: Thumbnails of 3 Environments

So over the time I had in trains, airplanes, while waiting here and there, I drew out the ideas of environment for my transcription project.

First, here are the sketches I did in summer:

A sketch of flow,  shapes, colours and textures I felt for this project:

A background mountain ( Mountain-monster)

Composition solutions and ideas for substance of the Dream Island:

So in continuation I did some more sketching:

I started on solving more acurately  the flow and composition of the island. Each element represents seperate layers .

I wanted to solve the very abstract idea of the Island, to build a  dream-like but  still realistic enough landscape.

Another Idea came, to sugest the reason Ivan is so attracted to that Island. For it has a built tree-house, which fits perfectly as new home to Ivan. It is A center also a focal center of the Island  (Black is see-through holes/windows in the house which allow the light to go through).

 

So after giving some thought here is the sketch which I'm thinking to now push forward and resolve it to one of the concepts.

The flat and illustrative-looking perspetive is chosen because the idea is it will be the only perspective  shown to the audience.

 

As for he environment in which everything starts, the garage workshop, it was pretty much straight forward from the very start, especially after some research.

When Ivan leaves the garage and still is not aware of the dream island he is in the backyard. A.. rough sketch for that.

Studio Project Progress

For some time now I haven't blogged about progress recently. All focus now is on Void canvas Studio Project.
So first o some Playblasts of  scenes I worked on:




We have Scale of Monstrocity Shot for only couple of frames, but  to add some elements in it I've animated a cable being "electrified" ( it will be glowing) and cut to fall by  a supposed monster lurking in the desolate city.







Test Renders of what was shown in the brief sequence:

For the past time I'm working with scenes seperately by making reajustmens on texturing, lighting, geometry or anything lese.

So from Factory's  establishing shot  this is what is left for the previously seen Abandoned toy scene:

Anyways, here is the set readjusted:

Only main box is missing... :)

Also I went to preparing the toymaker fully by adding facial blend shapes and texturing the character.
Currently I'm experiencing some problems which I've described in our studio project. But it seems its not much of a deal, so I'm solving them as I go.

Transparent face was/is one of the problems.. :D

 

More decent renders should come soon.

Car Modeling: part 13 and 14

Character's Pipeline in Maya: Facial Rig

Weight lift Animation: Key Poses and Inbetweens

A professional approach to animating a character was presented last week. When having an idea of an action to be animated, it is vital to find appropriate reference, which you then analyze, edit and stylize.

When uni was shut I found the files of weight lifting video and character in my uca and figured its another homework task, much like lip synch, where we had to build animation ourselves. So I gave it a go and animated weightlifting using the first rig.

The result is as follows. ( refinement needed)

But when we came back Alan actually had tutorial prepared, presenting gnomon way of animating. So I gave it another go. So far this video is a result of key poses and in-betweens.



I  believe there will be a refinement stage and tips for thatin third week's tutorials. Because I would continue on refining the animation...Only that it is time to bring our own characters to life :/

Character's Pipeline in Maya: Facial Rig

I found dealing the  facial rig lot easier. Only that if there were any mess left from body rig it came  kicking in the but when rigging the head. I learned great lessons... things I found of less importance ( like thoroughly naming and organizing the scene) came to make life a lot easier and the task done quickly if everything was done as supposed to …

I have to admit this rig doesn’t function perfectly, due to without even me noticing I did some mistakes...

But I’m glad, as Alan said, it does get easier and with our studio project character, the toy maker, I had no problems at all. I’m looking forward to transcription project where rigging might even be one of the enjoyable stages of character’s pipeline :D

The Mist – Frank Darabont ( 2007)

To first associate the film with it’s context, it drives on the very formulaic plot used "Night of the Living Dead" ( George Romero, 1968)   to "30 Days of Night" ( David Slade, 2007)

  

“Combine (1) a mysterious threat that attacks a town, and (2) a group of townspeople who take refuge together, and you have a formula apparently able to generate any number of horror movies” ( Roger Ebbert; 2007)

It was  a true experience because of film being well crafted in many aspects: script, camera work, character construction, mice-en-scene.

Perhaps Most interesting aspect of film’s stylistic was shot motion. Camera never seemed to stop, still it wasn’t an irritating type of camera work. Rather it created fluidity.  It readjusted itself, the composition of a shot, by repositioning, refocusing  to the point of interest , by zooming just slightly  .

 It feels the camera was imagined to be as a living viewer rather than a tool of reporting films reality. It feels like it made the distance between film’s reality and audience that much smaller, in other words, there was a lot more engagement.

This technique then is very helpful, since reaching for audience’s engagement with fictional plot is that much harder. Perhaps the idea was even further explored in  Cloverfield (Matt Reeves;2008) where entire film is meant to look  filmed with personal handheld camera.

It was a pleasure to experience  the well though film, where no tiny details  like shot of a character’s glance, a gesture, road sign,  didn’t hold its share of meaning. Or that no CG elements steal any  extra time just to be shown off.   It feels like all the ends tidied up into a whole.