Sketching and speed painting

Some sketches of to-be-developed ideas, some speed painting, studies of people character

 

 

Self Promotion: Litle Tiny Books

Yesterday I got my first set of printed ‘portfolios’, little 6 side booklets. I chose to publish some of the concept art, character designs and stills from animations emphasising the diversity in style and thinking. I tried creating a clear booklet for both, professionals as well as people who don’t have a clue about digital arts. I’m hoping to hand these out to people I’ll meet in upcoming summer when being part at various activities and while hitchhiking/couch surfing. the layout and organization can be seen here: JJ Jolanta Jasiulionyte Portfolio Leaflet

Ivan the Bird, Continuing:

Before my work placement starts in past two weeks I continued on working on the animation. Dream Island is taking shape and colour. A lot is still left to be done: detailed texturing and lighting also some rethinking of the environment, mainly to make it suite the very last shots of animation. But I’m not concerned with that yet as I’d do polishing to the camera views.

test/base texturing:

The island works when seen from a distance. With refined texturing , added animation (windmills, cloth simulations) and lighting I think it would do its job

As for animating. I’ve pushed it for 20 more seconds .  The reached bit was the first culmination in the story, when Ivan supposedly is about to reach the Island. The pace of editing asks for many shots so… those 30 seconds have 16 camera views. Thinks tend to be quite confusing with cameras in postproduction as each has its own ‘name’  and two separate render layers to be stitched (AO and Master layers) together

I guess now I'll have a two weeks break from the project as I'm going to Picassopictures to do work placement. But who nows, I was  thinking to take  files with me and if at times it seemed not too busy I could work on this :] 

PicassoPictures, A Company Profile; Part 1:

  

PICASSO PICTURES is one of the UK’s leading independent animation production companies representing a diverse range of directing and design talents. It has a reputation for producing original and highly creative work. 

Therefore the research into company’s profile will be aiming to look into it’s talents, their outstanding directors, profiles. 

As Inga Johnson, a producer for PicassoPictures,  during the visit at UCA pointed out, the works Tokyoplastic's delivered is what studio is most proud of. The founders of Tokyoplastics are Sam Lanyon Jones, background in photography and Andrew Cope, industrial designer. 

Jaded Expression Magazine describes them: “Animation is at its most imaginative and original height. In the same vein as their imagination, there is no line drawn between the mediums of art that they work in”. One of significant examples would be the Drummachine, which won awards and achievements in film festivals all around the world, most notably the people's choice winner of best animation at the 2004 Sundance film festival. 

The animation evolved as a symbiosis between the music and the visuals, a composition of both animation and sound.
 

The other example is of MTV flower, an animated abstract structural growth:


MTV - Flower from tokyoplastic on Vimeo.

Other examples of their work iclude Nokia Pop vs DJ, Nokia Lips VS Mind Reader, Toyota Chase and others
More of profiles on creative crue are comming soon.

High-Rez Modeling: Torso

Encouraged to Take on the Opportunities: First Showreel

Couple of weeks ago I met a filmmaker, documentaries he is making,  and next day a scriptwritter for commercials (what then he sends to CGI companys)  and both seperately gave same piece of advice. I simply said I'm a student, gave some insight to our course and that some of us are having work placements in various places also in London. Both of them strongly adviced to not miss this chance and let people you meet know what you do and who you are because you never know...

Basically this guy David Shillinglaw gives his view on how to create opportunity and fuel the focus needed to succeed as an artist,  an interview to Fidgit box. He  summarizes much clearly what I'm talking about and what those two professionals basically said:



Mini Fidgit: Just Do It from Fidgit Box on Vimeo.

 
So yesterday I sat down for couple hours and stitched my own first showoreel . I purposefully  haven't referenced anything  much, just put all the best bits of work done in past few years. I found it very useful  to also show to my nan and aunts, who think I'm going to be an art manager or something  and simply don't understand what CG artist means or what they do :D 
It was nice and easy to play around and reorganize the stuff you've done already :] 

Modeling High-rez Head

High rezolution head model was made using same model reference images as  for games character . The final model seems to resemble original person better in this case . There was more freedom to bring in the details to the character as in the case of modeling for games, geometry had to be very limited.

Facial features:

 The Ear (part one):

And the head:

Transcription Crit: Project's Work; Entry 1

As it was said on the crit, The animation isn't finisedas a product. However, arguably, what has been achieved in ten weeks frame is pretty satisfying.
Like the bird himself, the 'mish-mash' of the story is presented in the following video:

The Making Of:

Here I present the first part of Making of, a visual document of the pipeline of Transcription Porject.
When The animation is finished, the document will include all the character design behind and the rest of project's development after the deadline.


The Making of Ivan the Bird Part 1

Mental Ray: Caustics, Physical Sun, Portal Lights, HDR Image Based Lighting,

Caustics:

Mental Ray Shaders:

Physical Sun and Sky

Shadow Sampling and Softening in Physical Sun and Sky:

Portal Lights:

HDR image based lighting:

Technical Paper on Mechanical Bird's Rig

I wrote on the most challenging technical part of transcription project, Mechanical Bird's rig.
The paper covers methods and solutions for rigging. it is also very illustrated as , no secret, rigging with its terminology quit easily and quickly seems to be over too complicated.


Technical paper Mechanical Brds rig

Demoreel element

Finally the video is gathered. It was also a good practice of animating using motion path as in the following weeks I'll be dealing mostly with that kind of animation. It takes longer to animate, as now all body parts are fluid in the air and free to move. But it is much more experimental as it doesn't have to follow sometimes mathematical preciseness a walk cycles ask in order to be tidy and symmetrical.

But back to the demoreel element. The music used was played in Tivan's Sky lantern festival.

Hope you'll enjoy it:

Some Wrap Up Stuff

Its now getting to the  wraping up stage in transcription project so I decided to work on the brief's aspects before the deadline is too close. This post is most dedicated to self and project  promotion.


Demoreel element:

One of the brief's task was to create a showreel element using   the elements of the project. I chose to take the main character  and present it as an animated turnaround.  These are some stills from the soon to be resolved showreel element:

Environment definition:

Also, as I said last week, I saw it neccesary to spend some time on details of the outside scene as before it looked dull even if all the major elements were brought in.
So I thought of bringing in these elements:

 

And so far it seems they really gave that much more to the scene. It is lot livelier to my mind. And, as I did in the first act, the scene will be pushed even further but this time only to specific scene requirements so to compliment the composition of the shot.  

Personal Branding:

Next in line,  is personal branding. I was working on logo designs  from time to time. there were quite some cheesy ideas...  here are some  attempts of past few weeks.

this is one of the cheesy ones I've mentioned... 

Then I came up with an idea to make an elephant from my initials. Well, if you asked me why elephant, I would say only, that they are my favourite animal from , as long as I remember myself and they are said to bring luck as well  :]

However, for some reason the logo didn't feel as personal.. I think it  fails to serve as my initial. 

I gave it another go. Basically the following  example has both of the previous initial design ideas as well as some flavour from the past ones I had. So it actually is a graphical development of my signatures yet still fresh. I felt this is perhaps the strongest ( or closest to me) personal logo.

 

And the business cards, brief asks to produce, would look like that:

Front side:

 

Back side:

 

After 'excercising' with brand logos, and catching the right rithm for  designing, I've also worked on title design which will be used for animation opening sequence also throughout other promotional materials. It did take quite some time in the day as the entire design is one big work on details ( what as some would agree, takes the longest in any work). But as I said it is a rewarding work, as it will be used extenisvely.

So the good rithm stayed and I went on designing the dvd cover and disc templates. I used the idea of demoreel presentation, as it really apealed to me.I like the 'clean' creamy/dreamy aesthetics  in this one, as well as title fits in perfectly. Hopefully it feels a bit like a story-book cover as my entire project's idea was to make a story-bookish world , characters ect.

 

However the templates still need few  renders from act 2 and 3. Also an 'epic' descriptive text.

After finishing work on these designs the feel was perfectly summary and the mood great :]
Hope that's goint to help in the last week ( lets be honest, 3 days actually) before deadline. 

In the mean time soundtrack designs for act ,  demoreel video, maya tutorials,  some animation refining  is still waiting to be finished for Thursday. this week best be the lucky one :D

Dynamics, Displacement and Mental Ray Rendering, week 8

Displacement:

Mental Ray Rendering: Final gather and Global Illumination:

Dynamics : Sequential instancing and Goal

'Painting up' the Scenes

 Last couple of days the time went on 'painting up' and retouching the scenes. Whether it meant building and bringing in last details, or 'painting' the set using  lighting set up for the better final image result.

So to start with, The opening scenes only briefly suggest that Ivan perhaps isn't the only character in the story. As camera pushes through the workshop we notice one another model in the set, also on the notice board next to Ivan there is a worn-of sketch of other mish-mash models.

So I've designed and created the Shiball (she has ship parts and ball) character.

the texturing for this character:

Further I went back to the second environment again . First,  trying to figure out ocean shader . With the help of Simon Holland, I think now it looks far better.

Other  largest elements in the scene was the front modeled trees.

And the scene, after bringing the major elements together now looks like that:

 However if this was a painting I'd say it lack of that last layer of details. And to be specific:  Nests, waist disposals, wind vane on the house, foam for shore line, grass here and there, little statues , something to also cover the contact point of trees and the ground. Just lots of things nobody notices yet it somehow brings  life to the scene.

Few more scenes are ready to be baked after spending that time for lighting, render setting.

Much like with animation, lighting is also getting easier and easier . Through trial, experimenting, reading on tips,  it reaches the point when you are actually getting creative with it in maya , even if it is not as simple as making few brush strokes in photoshop. Light linking is used extensively to emphasize  some of the set's and particularly character's aspects.

Lastly, I think this picture summarizes the work of past few days: the needed other elements are built and  brought in ( outer environment) the lighting is set up, rendering (render settings,  passes and effects) are adjusted.
 

Now I started working on show reel's element, and personal branding. Hopefully these will take no more than few days.