Concept footage

A concept 3d piece for a music video, im quite pleased with this, and also from making this i have learnt some technicalities. I have used about 5 different render passes, and blended them all together in photoshop, all using multiply, except specular, i had to use a different one.

(I then aded a photoshop effect to make it poster like, and im thinking about using it for some batch images in a later test)

3d moddeling hell

Today i have been working on some more current models for the brief i am working with Tom, and also i have met with a vis com guy and talked about his drawing that he has done, for which i have created into a 3d character, and lastly, i made a canopy for my 3d Dodge truck, for my main FMP project. So all day i have been alternating between 3 projects, and then at the end of the day, me and ma college discussed plans and concept ideas for a music video that i am making for someone,(so i guess thats a 4th), oh also did i mention the guy who i am making a 3d charcter for, hes designing me a character for a personal project of mine, which again is a portfolio filler. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, projects on my mind right now!!!!

At the moment, im trying to focus on the current brief, as the deadline for that is very soon, and i have a lot of work still for that. So if any of you tutors reads this, you will know i am trying to work hard as possible, so chill! :p

loved this short about crabs!

Yes, after watching this, i did kind of wish i had seen it before i handed my dissertation in, because there was some interesting things in there, that could have backed up some of my points that i was making. What i found very strange, in this film, is the use of subtle, yet dark humour, the narration, was very serious in the sound, yet certain gags and events that happened on screen, and also was subtitled. I always enjoy watching a film that is completely away from the whole Holywood thing, in that of style, humour etc. Its always nice to see a variation in the story telling format, it inspires me, and makes me want to make something like that, in a traditional sense. It has even given me ideas about my overall style in my war account for my FMP, i know what everything should look, i just want to design some kind of overall uniqueness to it, as i know alot of CG animated stuff, can seem very 'samey'.

There was this video, that i found on Aniboom, which to me was a good example, of overusing the 'squash and stretch' method, and it did kind of annoy me, as every single movement, there was some kind of wobble or stretching,and i thort it was just beeing abused too much, but that might be my opinion.

Audio and other things

Today i worked on some sketches on my plans for the 3d assets for the piece that i am doing for a YCN brief, that was what i did.
What i discussed with Matt was that of two things. One was the fact of landscape scenery generation software, and the other was the fact of my audio, the narration is hard to understand by people who are not from Yorkshire, which was something that i had not realized. The solution to this is subtitles, as it would be useful for the people from the local area etc. However, i would like to keep the original audio, and not have subtitles to ruin it, so im going to explore this issue.

Here we go....

Story development at the moment has been fairly consistant, i have been filtering thru some of my interviewed audio footage that i gained over xmas, and i have been working on this, my anamatics have changed somewhat from a first idea.
I have had dilemmas where for instance, the actual storyboards weren't very interesting and as comical as other storyboards, the thing that i dont want is bits of the animated film to not relate to each scene, in terms of composition. At the moment i have some storyboard images to add, and also a soundtrack that i have someone working on as well.

I said this;

Earlier i was saying that i was wanting to get out of the old habbit of using maya, but after speaking with matt, this is a BAD idea, i am sticking to maya and not gunna leave its side. It is pointless going into seperate peograms doing things like texturing etc, when you can all do it in maya, there are loads of programs that cud do better texturing, but i am ONLY delaying the inevitable!

some dreamworks related ranting

OK, here goes, i have noticed this thing that a few dreamworks animated films/ shorts seem to do a lot. In Shrek, Kunf fu panda, and Father of the Pride, i have noticed that the character animation is way too smooth, and for me its one of those things which i pick up on in a very subtle way, but it seems to make a big difference to how i enjoy the film. Ok i havnt done a lot of CG animation yet, but i believe its just not believable enuff, it kinda makes me cringe. I think i may see it more in human looking characters than animals/ monsters/ ogers etc, so thats what i have to say.
Thanks.

Some lovely cinematic filming

This short film is a very dramatic filmed paintball video, you can see that there has been a lot of thought that has gone into it, even tho you dont see faces, from the movement in the characters that have been shot, etc, you do see this. I have seen many promotional videos for paintball, and most of them are a bunch of random people running about shooting each other and has been fimed really poorly, this is very diffeferent, the filming style reminded me of Top Gear, but overall the film reminded me of a scene from the film 'Enemy at the gates', where jude law is been hunted by the german sniper, and he his hunting him, it is just a matter of who finds who first. If you like that film, and you hate or have no interest in paintball, id still urge you take 5 mins and watch it, as part way through, i felt it was giving me research ideas for the more 'professional' me. Of course you could argue that the film would work better if it were of an actual war, instead of the safer paintballs, but i liked it, and i rekon others will too.

watch here

Trax- not really good, it decieved me!

Ok well after that post about how great i thort trax was that was after a succesfull test with simple objects beeing animated, but not a test with a full rig, that has a lot of hierarchy chains. I think this is where it screwed me over. It seemed to work fine to start with then when i was wanting to repeat the animation in the trax editor, it went all weird, sending the rig all over the place like it had been exploded and frozen in space. However, after a disappointing time with trax, i decided that i wanted to do something with the animation that i had made, as i was rather happy with it, its not perfect, but i wanted to start putting clips of my progress up, and then see my animation skill getting better. My origial idea for this animation that went wrong, was this;

take heavy box, walk with it, trip over a curb and fall sending the box flying as welll as the character and then smashing through the table, get up,look round whilst rubbing soar joints, end.



i wish i listened to liam now! lol

Easter island talking heads

I like this for some reason, maybe coz it made me rember how much i want to do stuff like this, but all the technical difficulties in maya, its rather off putting, why does maya have to do this too you?

Trax

Trying to master trax editor and i think i finally get it. What im doing by the way is animating just a skeleton (one from previous project) and just making my animation skills better, im going to run thru some scenario's that my film may be in animation wise and make the animations, just testing that i can actually do. The trax seems to give me more confidence that my idea can be done.

Got back into drawing

How many penguins?
complete the yawn


Yeah, im pretty pleased as i have missed this for a while and the fact that i wasnt as good as i was. I used to draw much more, and i think i must have stopped drawing properly and that has made me pretty lazy, however i am getting back into back into it and i cant stop doodling drawing etc. I feel so great to be dooing it. My mutter gave me this book called 'Doodle while you work - by Staffan Gnosspelius' and it has half finished drawings and stuff, and its pretty good to help me get back into drawing and just coming up with some possible character designs for one of my FMP.

thort id have a wee go

I have a few ideas about entering this posibly cliche'd contest http://thesimpsons.com/postercontest/ its just a still, so yeah, im havin a go. :p

paintball war zone animated film

I really liked this too, as it is both involving 2 of my fav things, paintball and animation, it has a very simplistic style, it reminds me of some computer game, i just cant think which.

really strange surreal short animated film

it is based on the nice characters based in childrens books, but it has a very weird twist, i really dont like the all the lettering in this tho, i think there still trying to keep a kids book look, but it anoys me, apart from that, its quite ok.

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom
nuther example of CG ww2 animation, not as good as my previous finds tho

wow

I dont no what it is about stop motion that i get the strange loving feeling about it, just the way it is so raw looking, wow. oh and quite funny too.

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

Influences

Ok i thought id better do some more explaining of how i got my main overall idea theme. For a while, i have wanted to make a film which relates to world war two, i seemed to have developed a keen interest of it, over the years, watching discovery channel, nat geo, history channel etc. And finally i have a decent idea for a ww2 animation.
I have decided that its going to be a little bit like creature comforts in the way of the visual humour, which doesnt always involve the dialogue, but sometimes relates to what is beeing said.
This is probably the best example i could find of this, youtube was a bit disapointing for what i actually wanted.
My main inspiration was an Aardman film called War Story, when i first saw this, a long time ago, i imediatly was impressed by the subtle comedy that goes on in the film, it is kind of the thing that what i am wanting to achieve, but of course i have a different story, and even tho it is still the same theme as War Story, it will be a different kind of film, in my way.


I want it to be like a montage of events, sequenced in order and hopefully use interviewed dialogue, i have from my Grandad, and use old photos as references and to help me build characters etc.
As a main style to my film, i want it to be very 'cartoon' like, i don't like realistic, as i feel it would limit me, in that of humor etc. I am going to look at the old warner bros cartoons and mgm cartoons as some animation references. As this is an example of very 'cartoon' like style in 3d.

i also saw this from the same channel, which is another war animated film, not as good as others, but its a good reference, this is meant to be a comedy too, but i felt the soundtrack was letting the film down.
So in a very small nutshell, and if someone asks, what are you dooing, i think i would say;
.....I am making an animated short film which is a light comedy flick about some persons experiences during world war 2. (that person happens to be my Grandad, but it could be anyone, just lucky i got him for this)......

So the whole reason that i have made this post is to make it a more in depth understanding of why i want to do this idea. Also i know this brief i will be more into, and wont get sick of it (to a point anyway, lol), On this, i dont think there will be much lip sync, theyl just be a lot of actions, close ups, glimpses of characters in the background, etc. So i dont belive it is going to be as much work as it sounds. I do know i will have to make multiple characters, scenes etc, so i am slitely looking forward to it all. AND, i am going to actually learn from my mistakes, dont waste time on certain things, and of course, my main objective is to make certain things simple SiMpLe SIMPLE SIMPLE! One last thing, i really want to get out of maya, but i know ill be using it lots again for this project, but i want to learn other 3d apps too, its just a time thing. :D :p

Final Major Rationalle

I have learnt a lot of CG skills over a my time on this course, and I know there’s still lots to be learnt, as with my pervious project I designed a brief which was to help me with my animation skills, to develop them further and understand more about some technical side of things more too. I now feel that I need to put these skills to more practice. So I have decided to make an animated short film which is relied upon the narration that has been pre-recorded, and from some pre-recorded audio, I will develop the short film around it after I have edited the narration to my requirements. The actual content is World War 2 related, and the whole concept of the animated film, is really going to be an edited account of a certain persons time during the events of World War 2. Already I have ideas of how the film is going to look, from some content already found, I believe it is going to be comical and will have a rather cartoon look to the characters etc. The film ‘War Story’ from Aardman animations has inspired me to do this. I feel that as I have a strong interest in the overall subject, and my existing knowledge will help, with the technical side of things, factual aspects and of course the animation.
As my whole idea for this film, is based around one character, I can see myself having very little problems for the realisation. For certain scenes I may need more than one character, and I have the idea to have one character and just edit the mesh several times, this way it saves me making whole characters from scratch, so the initial first thing I need to do is design a neutral character, so then all the characters will have the same stylistic outlook As for a soundtrack, I don’t think it would be essential, as comedies don’t seem to work well with them, but I will investigate this anyway, as it may need the odd sound to emote audiences emotions (like what they do in horror films).
As for the whole duration of the film, I am not certain yet, I think it could be 5-10 mins give or take, it All depends on my audio content, and how much scenes I will add in.