Cover Designs

Book Covers:

DVD Cover :

CD Print design:

CAPC stands for Commercial Application of Photography for Creatives

It is a course run by Tonic at UCA and is an opportunity to have 15 lectures over 3 months. It is teaching the basics of photography for commercial application: product promotion, glamour portraits, fashion shoot .
More importantly, it is teaching  camera settings, use of lighting equipment, shooting indoors and outdoors etc.
One of this program's requirements is to keep notes and research for later evidence, which is nothing new for the CG course student. Therefore I'll be using this blog for storing the notes on lectures and progress. 

I'm  very much looking forward to these couple of hours a week, for the program is suiting my major project's brief: animated presentation of human character , which will benefit from getting some knowledge of  body presentation , studio lighting setups and so on.

Lecture 1/15: Introduction to Pre-history and Early Years of Photography:
 Interesting history of man's fascination watching image of reality instead of the reality itself and the attempt to create such system to capture the present.

One of the more interesting points was camera obscura - a light phenomenon to recreate the full image of the world if it is passing through a tiny hole. For example if all the windows were to be covered and only one small dot allows the light through, you would get the full view of outside two times bigger and upside down:

Or the daguerreotype photography, an early method for taking pictures at 1838. They would use a silver plate, which is reflecting as a mirror and  with special chemicals on, to expose to light and have someone sit in front of it for good 18 minutes for the image to 'bake in' and stay there. Every time the silver plate is exposed to light, it is at the same time reflecting and exposing the photographed image. The quality if it is somewhat very special, and the person feels almost alive in the picture.

More of such images can be seen at museum of the moving image

Other interesting topic was cameras.

Impressive SLR  camera Zenit, being an old pre-second world war creation still better than most of the digital cameras we have today.

And introduction to Haselblad camera phenomena. Swedish Haselblad cameras being so phenomenally good, that they are the only ones taken for NASA's flight to the Moon. Very surprisingly UCA too, has such cameras

Classes in the future should have some more hands-on experience.

Character Lighting Progress 1

Placing characters for each shot required setting up unique lighting systems disregarding already existing lighting for the environment. . Each character is modeled by ‘Rembrandt short’, illumination, reflective and rim lights. Other effects, such as overall glow for eyes or entire body was also carefully controlled. Aiming for beautiful results even f the scenes yet had no dynamics or other postproduction effects is assuring for impactful frames at the end. 

 

December's Sketchbook

Pretty thin, I can say, but it’s  cause I’m knee deep in 3d production, which is nowhere close to 2d stuff.

So this month had some life drawing of middle aged female and an older man.  Other things include random doodling and some  thoughts on my next character project – Baltic pixie. 

 

WW Video Compilation and Soundtrack Update

This video shows the update of both, the soundtrack done by Dave Keefe and of animated scenes I have worked on lately. Hopefully we’ll be able to discuss if all of them are working and what should be changed, when we meet on Monday.

The Showcase

*The Wolves Within*

Amerindian Wolves - Virtue and Vice

A Character Presentation

The Makinf of Character Design for the Wolves Within

*Ivan The Bird*


Animated Short

Ivan The Bird Character Presentation

Production Video

Colour Keys for Ivan The Bird

Dream Island; Concept Art for Ivan The Bird

The Workshop: Concept for Ivan the Bird animation

  

Ivan for Ivan the Bird 

Ivan explores the outside world; Render Still from Ivan the Bird

Ivan is about to wake up; Render Still from Ivan the Bird

Ivan Watches The Dream Island; Render Still from Ivan the Bird

The Making of Animated Short IVAN the BIRD

Evil Wolf's 3D Concept

the same routine follows again: I bring  3d render of evil wolf and a maquet environment to photoshop and play with things there to make some nice visual representation. Hopefully the "infinite" space is clearly drawn where  his "steam" goes.

 The Progress :

 I have developed the environment  in relatively good detail, but then had to take it back to bring up some theatrical lighting. Possibly these concepts can serve for our animation lighting ideas.

And that would be it from my side :] Time for some proper Christmas holidays :] Family finaly comes at my totaly empty student halls :D
Wish you merry Christmas! :]

Headmoore Painting

Im on holidays for both uni and work, so I finally got to finish this old idea. I got it actually... a year ago, while visiting friend in Amsterdam. Now it kind of fascinates me, that I captured it pretty close to the original vision. Some already noted that this piece seems unlikely to my style. Something fresh then, I guess...

Execution was very quick, everything seemed to fall into places withought much of trouble.But then again, it is only a sketchy painting. I guess the Italian approach of "working" in the head and thinking about an idea was what helped :D To create the feeling a driving decision was colour palette choise of 3 colours , two complimentary green and purple, and one which sits directly in the middle of them - bright yellow.

Good Wolf's 3D Concept

I have read a while ago about this new approach artists are using for creating beautiful .. 3D Concepts. It involves making anything from making a quick 3D maquet to resolved 3d models and bringing them later to photoshop to push the visual idea there. This is my first attempt, the 3D concept of Good wolf.

I was trying to blend the the character in the scene seamlessly. I also used a more dynamic angle, so it made the task more interesting. Perhaps there is some conflict between the very defined 3D model of the wolf and very stylistic and relatively loose environment.

 

I’m hoping to do something similar for the Evil Wolf as well and then finally my family will arrive and it will be time for Christmas :]

WW Character Presentation Video

Here is compiled character presentation. I chose to show characters in contrast to each other: how obviously different they are in modeling , texturing approaches, and how the time-lapsed animations also embody that difference. To solve some funny perception issues (they looked like about to sniff each other) I have posed the characters slightly differently and increased the distance between them, Hopefully that does it. As for soundtrack, I Used Dave Keefe's earlier soundscape tests.

Wolves Sliding Jump Animation

Sliding jump animations for both of the wolves have reached a decent stage. With these animations I was trying to emphasize the gracefulness and lightness of the good wolf. He jumps high in the air and lands dynamically. For the evil wolf I was emphasizing his heavy mass and an ice-like materiality. Therefore, as he lands down, there is a notable sliding and anticipatory crouching.

Wolves Character Turnaround Development

While working on project's animation, character turnaround development is taking place. I have an idea to present each wolf seperately covering its topology, scultpural form and texturing. I have not decided yet if each character should be presented posed only or animated ( for example if animated, they would be on a slow motion run cycle).

At the end of character presentation I'd have both of them in full colour posed together to show the contrast between the two designs.

WW Updated Soundtrack Test

Here is the video to show how the soundtrack was changed. We asked our composer Dave Keefe to add more beat for the build up till the very end of the soundtrack. He came back with 3 minutes long of soundtrack, and this was edited and combined with the original version.
Feedback very Welcome, as I am to pass a word to him if this is what we needed or if there should be some other changes.
Mind, that I’m using relatively old animatic without updated scenes from pre-viz.

Landing and Sliding Jump animation

Lately I’m working on Good wolfs landing and sliding jump animations. These are examples of first pass animation, which later will be further defined and adjusted to the scenes.

There were no longer any reference images from Muybridge, therefore I have looked for some videos on youtube and print-screened some key frames to inform my animating.

I am aware that the sliding jump animation seems to rely on translate keyframing, meaning the body seems stiff. I'll revisit this one after some time off, as I found it is worth animating back again with a fresh eye.

Trotting and Jumping Quadruped Animation

Here is another video of refined evil wolf run cycle. I've referenced oxes this time too so to add the heavyness in the run cycle. Also, for the good wolf I'm working on jump and flying animation