Skinny Loving Design

Artefact 2 - Depth Of Field

2012-02-06T03:03:00.000-08:00

Concept Ships

2012-01-24T02:35:00.000-08:00

Simon, my tutor, sent me this blog. Its all about futuristic concept spaceships. Its guna be really good for helping design the heli.

http://conceptships.blogspot.com/

Game of Thrones VFX

2012-01-23T10:07:00.000-08:00

While we are on the subject of TV show shot breakdowns I found them for HBOs Game of Thrones. This is another of my favourite shows at the moment and theyve used CG technologies really well. VFX produced by Screen Scene.

Well worth a watch if you hvae the time.

Boardwalk Empire VFX

2012-01-23T09:57:00.001-08:00

This is one of my favourite TV shows to come out in a while. Brainstorm digital produced some of the VFX for the show. This is the shot breakdown. It interesting to see how much of the scene is CG.

Artefact 1 - Lighting

2012-01-22T10:01:00.000-08:00

This is the first artefact from my research paper. In it I stated that I will produce the artefacts in the following format;

"Lighting – The first artefact will be a series of rendered shots showing how the different styles of lighting affect the same object. These will be with and without global illumination, with and without radiosity, with and without ray tracing."

The first part of this artefact that should be taken into account is the global illumination principle. This is the process of calculating the direction and intensity of the light that bounces of the objects in the scene. It should be noted that both radiosity and ray tracing are used in global illumination but both will be explained in more detail. The goal of global illumination is to recreate the light and feel of an environment as if you were standing in a real world equivalent.

There are 2 types of illumination, direct and indirect. Direct illumination is the light that hits a surface directly from the light source and indirect illumination is the light that bounces off a surface onto another surface. Indirect illumination is what creates the shadows in the scene. Radiosity and ray tracing are algorithms that help calculate indirect illumination. As you can see, from the radiosity and ray tracing examples, when there is no indirect illumination no shadows are calculated. This is because radiosity and ray tracing algorithms calculate the bounce on the light off other surfaces and the strength of the light that is reflected onto other surfaces.

Ray tracing is the more efficient way of calculating the light rays. The ray is traced back from the virtual camera to the objects and environment to the original light source. This saves on memory as you are only seeing the necessary light. It does however have some disadvantages. It doesn’t account for light that has bounced off other surfaces so the shadows appear as black blocks. This is why you have to combine it with radiosity to get a better overall aspect of global illumination.

Radiosity calculates the reflections on surfaces from the light source and from other surfaces. It breaks down the surfaces into smaller elements and then calculates how much light is transferred from one element to another.

Both these techniques can be combines to create a better illumination of the scene. The more reflections and rays that you trace and calculate the more detailed and accurate the scene will become.

Scene Test

2012-01-22T05:21:00.000-08:00

This is what i want the scene to roughly look like. Its to just give a basic idea of what the helicopter might look like and what shot might look like. Ill upload one with a different helicopter design soon.

Helicopter MoodVid

2012-01-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

This is a mood video of helicopters both CG and Real. It is to give an idea of the types of shot I would like the end piece to look like.

Hand Drawn Helicopter Designs

2012-01-18T15:36:00.001-08:00

Concept 2

2012-01-06T11:10:00.001-08:00

This one was based around an apache helicopter.

Concept 1 without my crappy photoshop

2012-01-05T15:15:00.000-08:00

1st Concept Helicopter

2012-01-05T14:53:00.000-08:00

This is the first concept model ive made. I wanted the final design to have a futuristic look and so ive started with a pretty futuristic design with jets instead of propellers. I just put on some basic textures and photoshopped it a bit.

Google Sketch Up

2012-01-05T07:38:00.001-08:00

So I have been doing some research on helicopters and concept ideas aswell. I have been struggling to put my ideas down on paper as I must admit that my drawing skills are poor at best...SO I have thought about the skills I have and the programs that are quick and easy to use and have come up with the idea of using Google Sketchup and a means of quickly getting down some ideas. Obviously I am still sketching and writing down ideas on paper but I am trying to get the better ideas into Sketchup.

I have done a model of a chinook helicopter to give an example and to get a bit of practice in before a start on my own models. It took me about an hour and it was the first time ive used sketchup in a while so id hope that I could get it more detail/cut the production time down the more I use it. I then exported the model into 3DS Max to render it.

Im hoping this will give me, Pete and everyone else that looks at my work a better chance of understanding whats going on in my crazy little mind.

I know they are basic but the idea is to aid in chosing the right design rather than creating a model that I will be using in the final piece.

Client Project

2012-01-05T07:29:00.000-08:00

Its been a while since my last post and lots has happened regarding my client project since then.

Peter Chiang at, the visual effects company, Double Negative has kindly agreed to be my client/tutor for this project. Double Negative Website

We have been chatting about ideas and decided on a project that showed lots of different skills.

The final idea is to have a futuristic helicopter that is designed, modelled, textured and lit by me. I will film the background plate myself at a local light aircraft airport and composite the helicopter onto the BG plate. It will be a short roughly 30 second clip of the helicopter taking off.

Alot of the details will be refined during the production process.

Alumni Project

2011-10-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

So the alumni project has been handed in now. This is the final video.

I think it has turned out really well. I used some techniques in a tutorial I found. http://www.maxafter.com/tuts/heartRateM/heartR.html I had to use this as I not really that confident in aftereffects so had to follow guides.

I like the way that it all looks quite seamless with the scanlines and bend of the screen it all adds to the effect. I have also used trent colours to make it relevant.

I had to edit the sound in but it seems to work ok.

Alumni heartrate monitor

2011-10-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

This a screen shot of aftereffects showing what I have been doing to create the heart rate monitor.

Client Update

2011-10-19T06:58:00.001-07:00

Ive neglected the blog a bit over the last few weeks.

I am well into the simulated client project now. I thought about what message i wanted to get across and to what area I wanted to aim at. I decided on trying to guilttrip alumni into giving money. In the style of charity adverts. The university and the alumni association puts alot of money into cancer research at the uni and I want to use this as a theme.

I thought about creating a 3d model of a person with a heart rate monitor which flatlines then starts again however I thought about the time contraints and I also wanted to try and use Aftereffects as ive never used it before and wanted to get to know how to use it.

In the end after a bit of research I decided to create a heart rate monitor screen in Aftereffects and continue with the same basic idea of the monitor flatlining then starting again.

I have created most of the bits in aftereffects and all the drawings/storyboard etc. Its turned out pretty well and I will post some shots of my progress after this. I still need to put it all together, add sound and text but I am happy with the way it is coming along.

Final Year

2011-10-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

So final year has begun and and we are well underway with all three modules starting very busily.

We've got to make a piece of work for the university alumni association in our client module. I have decided on making a heart rate monitor showing someones heart stopping then starting again to signify the money that the alumni fund puts into cancer research.
In the research module we are deciding on our topics. I have thought about looking into hyperrealism in art and visual effects.
The first context 3 project is to think about what we would do if we set up our own business. Im still deciding but im thinking about making 3D models for companies or something along those lines.

Purple Planet

2011-07-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

This is the second tutorial I have gone through.

This one was a bit more difficult. It involved using procedural maps for the texturing, texturing a tube with an opacity map and placing omni lights correctly.

I enjoy making this one as the final render is quite impressive.

This is the final result:

Times to pull the finger out

2011-07-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

So after my disappointing results i have decided to really knuckle down and improve my skills. I have started doing tutorials in 3DS Max and potentially After effects in the future.

The first tutorial I did was about making a chrome effect.

I think I pulled it off. Its come out with a nice reflection and metallic look to it.

Finally Finished

2011-05-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

Ok so this is where I explain all my decisions for the piece below. Here goes:

I chose Fantastic Voyage because it was basically the one that I had the most ideas for when I watched all the clips. Ive always wanted to into animation like Pixar or visual effects so I thought about that when chosing. One of the first ideas that came into my head was the submarine idea that I ended up using. I also thought about doing it was people but cartoonising them but thought that was too similar to the original so I went with the subs.
I found the production relatively easy. There were a few occasions where I had to seek help, especially with the eyes. I orignally had them using look at constraints however from a distance you could see the eyes were moving and as there isnt much dialogue and not much movement to a submarine it was heavily based on the eyes. I got around it by using the reaction manager with contrainst that let the pupil move to the edges of the eye.
I spent some time trying to design the environment (the blood vessel, the platelets and blood cells) with the intention of simplifying from the real thing but still making it recognisable. The blood cells were pretty easy to make, they are quite a simple shape anyway. the platelets i wanted to look different from anything else to be recognisable but still looking organic. I used the UV mapping to create the texture. The blood vessel itself is a cylinder that I editted the vertex points to make an uneven surface and then used turbo smooth to make it look more natural.
The submarines I wanted to look metal and out of place in the blood vessel. This was easy to do as its a simple material addition however it did slow down the rendering process MASSIVELY. I need to take this into account for future reference as I had to reduce the quality for some shots.
That was one issue I had was the rendering times. I worked out that if I had left all the setting as standard it would have taken about 150 hours to render everything even on my relatively fast computer. i sipmly didnt have the time to do that. Thats over 6 days solid.

We have been asked to think about where this projects lies in comparison to our future ambitions and how we've thought about it during the project.

As I said above I would like to go into visual effects or maybe animation such as Pixar. I think the Pixar link is more obvious in this project as I based the characters on the film Cars (made by Pixar). I liked the way the models are made and I think I used the same sort of style. I also think the modelling shows my link to the visula effects industry, theres lots of modelling involved in VFX and the environments and characters show I have thought about given a bit of realism to teh piece.

All in all I like the way the piece has turned out. I think that while it is obvious I have a few weakness to improve on it also shows my strength and how I have improved on all the projects I have done.

Fantastic Submarine Voyage Final

2011-05-27T07:13:00.000-07:00

This is my final piece for the DP3 Fantastic Voyage project. I will discuss it in my next post so for now just enjoy.

Fantastic Submarine Voyage Animatic

2011-05-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

This is the animatic for my animation. The original Fantastic Voyage video is only about 2:20 long so ive added shots onto the start and finish.

Update

2011-05-15T06:55:00.001-07:00

Quick update aswell. I have finished my animatic and storyboard. Just need to put it into video form.

I have also done most of my animating now and a bit of the rendering.

Once ive finished ill upload it all and explain everything....

Physalia Studio

2011-05-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

http://physaliastudio.com/index.html

This is a studio I found while looking at some videos on youtube.

They are quite a small company but have done work for some big companies such as MTV, Seat and Nokia.

I relaly like their latest offering. The magnet and plastic balls. I think it works really well.

A bit of a jump

2011-05-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

I know I havnt shown all my finished subs. Ive been a bit distracted hence not posting on here. I will update with shots of my subs soon. I have however been playing with 3ds max a bit. Ive got a 3 sec clip just to give me and everyone an idea of what the final piece will look like. The only issue I have with it is that it took 1hr 50mins to render 3secs. Im assuming this is due to lots of glossy/reflective textures and the lights. im gunna have to review that i think otherwise the final render could take upto 100hours to do.

Past few weeks

2011-04-18T05:20:00.000-07:00

I have to say im been pretty rubbish at keeping this blog updated in the last few weeks. This is mainly due to having a big race the first week of the easter holidays so I was concentrating on that and I was at home for my birthday for the 2nd week.

Since ive been back i have carried on working on the environments and the subs. Ive been having a little bit of trouble with the lip syncing however due to the fact i have very little speech in my script, I could make the mouth movements more simplified.

I will do a bit more work and post it up here.

Platelets

2011-03-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

I have produced two platelets which are part of the blood cells (I am going to red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets floating around)

I used a sphere and pulled the polygons about to make the shape more natural. I then added the red texture map on it.

Lets hope Banksy doesnt see this

2011-03-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

I got a bit bored so I decided to mess around with photoshop for a bit. I havnt done any arty work in a while and I do miss it a bit from my art foundation days.

Just a simple piece. Painted heart, I stole the image of the girl of the internet and edited it slightly. Added a texture filter at the end to make it look like its on canvas. Made it up as I went along really.

The quality isnt great probably because ive uploaded it to blogger rather than embedding it from flikr or something.

Flickr

2011-03-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

This is my reference library on Flickr.

My portfolio

2011-03-21T15:02:00.000-07:00

This is my portfolio. I will expalin why I have done certain things. I made the portfolio 1min long as it cant be too long as employers only have a small amount of time to view portfolios so I have made it short but included lots of work.

After listening to Paul Wilkes speak about portfolios, looking at the brief and after talking to the leader of the BA Digital Effects course at Bournemouth, which I would like to study after I leave Trent, I decided to include the obvious things such as my design process, animation, skills such as UV mapping and modelling, photography and photo editing and art work (these are due to the leader of the masters course at Bournemouth saying I should include example of photography to show shot framing skills and art work from my foundation course to show my artistic development)

Ive made my CV short and compact as I thought it would highlight my key attributes and it easy to read for potential employers as they have a limited amount of time.

Portfolio

2011-03-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

Today I have been working on my portfolio for the context 2 assignment.

After looking at the brief, dicussions with tutors, thinking about what Paul Wilkes from Escape Studios said and emails with the course leader of the masters Digital Effects course at Bournemouth I have decided to produce my portfolio in the form of a short video.

I am going to include development work from the current project, finished work from previous projects, photographs I have taken to show my photography skills and a few pieces of work from my art foundation course to show how I have developed.

I will explain what I have put in my portfolio and why once I have finished it.

Red Blood Cell

2011-03-11T07:43:00.000-08:00

I have designed the red blood cell. I have just adjusted the vertex on a cylinder and added turbosmooth.

*EDIT* After doing a bit more research on red blood cells i have found out they are not always cylindrical so i will be adjusting the model above a bit and creating a few versions

Teapot Map

2011-03-10T05:17:00.000-08:00

This is the teapot uv map i created. I used the teapot geometry in 3ds max.

UVW Mapping

2011-03-07T09:14:00.001-08:00

I attempted to do some UVW mapping of the head that Andy gave us to work on but for some reason it didnt work so I have decided to start really simple and work my way up. I have started with a simple box and coloured the sides in.

This is the coloured in template.

This is the finished render

I am going to move upto a more comlicated shape before going back to the head again.

First Submarine Attempt

2011-02-28T12:04:00.001-08:00

This is my first attempt at creating one of my subs. I think I may need slightly more detail. Maybe add a few rivets or a periscope or something. Im also going to try and UV map the hull to add some decals on it and create a more definative mouth. I also need to find out how to make the iris to move around the white "eyeball". At the moment I have got a look at constraint on the grey iris so that turns but unless its really close in you cant tell where the eyes are looking.

Dead Island

2011-02-22T12:27:00.000-08:00

Ive recently seen a trailer for a new game called Dead Island. Its a very cinematic release and I love the way its been produced.

It has got me thinking about the style of my final animation. I like the slow motion narrative and the fact that the video relys quite heavily on the music. As there is alot of narrative and not much dialogue in the Fantastic Voyage clip, I have come up with the idea of making most, if not all, of the animation a slow motion look through the blood vessel. I think it would suit the style of the script. I am still trying to decide wether to include none, all or some of the dialogue.

A few designs

2011-02-22T12:18:00.000-08:00

These are some inital designs I have made for my characters. I am in the process of creating the sub at the bottom of the last page. I think it is a good design and I have thought about the development of the character. The others I am going to develop a bit more before I move onto creating them.

Fantastic Voyage!

2011-02-17T04:11:00.000-08:00

For the final major project of the year we have been given a choice of 3 scripts that we must use as a basis to create a 3 minute long animation. It is following on from the bots and bananas project that we did last term.

The options for scripts were:
- The Dojo scene from The Matrix
- The scene where the sub enters the body in Fantastic Voyage
- The Lab scene in the Frankenstein book

As you can probably tell from my title I have chosen the sub scene from Fantastic voyage. I liked the idea of being able to create some realism in the animation with the cells and blood vessels but also have some fantasy in it with the submarines. I have based my ideas on the movie Cars. I like the idea of having the submarines as the characters rather than have the characters as people in a submarine. I think it will help me as I will be designing and making non-human like characters so I can get a feel for creating different types of characters.

I have designed a few of the submarine characters and a few initial ideas for the enviroment which I will be posting soon.

Bots and Bananas: Big and Small

2010-12-13T05:16:00.000-08:00

This project has been about learning to design, create and animate an object, in this case a robot, but it could be used in many other aspects of animation.

When I first viewed the brief, I found the idea of producing a minute long animation both daunting and exciting. I started by looking at silent films and sketches by people such as Laurel and Hardy, the three Stooges, Norman Wisdom and Charlie Chaplin. I also looked at cartoons like Tom and Jerry and Loony Toons as they are use the type of slapstick comedy that I was trying to get into my work. My initial idea was to have an Indiana Jones style environment. The robot would walk through some caves and come across a swinging pendulum blocking his path, he kept getting knocked back before finally making it through only to find loads more just round the corner. This was going to be my final idea however upon starting to make the environment in 3DS max I found it very difficult and found it was going to be quite difficult to animate in such an enclosed environment. I therefore re-evaluated my idea and decided to change it to a simpler idea of the robot walking down the street, almost treads on a banana skin, jumps over feeling really clever with himself only to have a massive robot come along and tread on him. I realise the idea isn’t as elaborate but I my reasoning was that I would rather have an animation that looks good and works but has a slightly more simple story and environment than something that had a elaborate storyline was going to give me problems to make.

During production I had a few problems that I had to overcome. I will admit that for the first few weeks I didn’t work through the worksheets we had been given in the seminars so it was quite difficult trying to do all this work in a shorter space of time than I should have had but I think that I got to understand how all the aspects of creating a robot works now. I was also struggling with the lighting towards the end. I wanted to try to create a strongly lit environment that looked like daylight but without using the daylight control as I knew this would increase the render time dramatically, I used an omni light to give this effect.

In the end I think this piece of work is acceptable but I think I could do much better. The textures don’t really fit with the models and I should have probably used some simpler textures or used just plain colours instead and lets the models and story show the quality. I do like the storyline and think it has the aspects of slapstick that I was looking for. The models are ok and I think they are perfectly acceptable but again more work could have gone into them. I will fully admit I didn’t put as much time into this as I should have over the whole term. When I realised the time that should have gone into the work it was a bit late. I think that now I have a good understand of the new design techniques that we have learnt this term and how much time and work I should be putting into these projects I think I can move on and produce a much better piece of work for the next project.

Absolutely Rubbish

2010-12-13T04:40:00.000-08:00

Ive been crap at updating this blog. In all honesty I completely forgot about it. My aim in my next post is to tell you what my thought process was throughout the bots and bananas project and how i developed it into my final idea.

Moving Image

2010-05-25T14:12:00.001-07:00

I have never really liked the moving image projects to be honest. I am not a fan of filming but I have always tried to do my best and get involved. Our group was given the "Shift", which is a script about a man who steals government secrets and then becomes a target for the government. We had to change a part of the script and add our own scene in. As a group we thought about what we wanted to film to be about and decided it was to be a mystery what was going on until the end. So we had the man go through the different scenes slowly revealing little details. After we had been given our different roles, I ended up with sound and assistant lighting. I liked these positions as it meant I was involved but it let the other people in the group who were still interested in moving image take the more important roles. We started filming with the scene in the office. It was the most difficult to film as its quite long and we struggled with props and the fact that it was supposed to be night but we were filming during the day. I think the scene turned out ok and it is one of the main scenes in the film. We then filmed all the other scenes in an afternoon and late evening, it was quite an easy shoot and we had all shots completed. I think that Caleb did an especially good job at organising it all and creating his vision. We then had to edit the film, which is where we came up against some problems. Some of the scenes had crackling in them, you could see a foot of one of us in our main office scene and the total running time for all our scenes was about 6 mins. We managed to fix the disturbance and just about managed to cut down the scenes to just over three minutes. We also added some suspenseful sounds to add to the feel of the film. Overall I feel the film turned out really well and I think we are all happy with the outcome.

Interactive Design

2010-05-25T14:00:00.001-07:00

Interactive design was another project that I was looking forward to. I have enjoyed it much more than I was expecting this year. The brief was to create an interactive quiz that was enjoyable and fun. At the start of the project I thought about what I wanted my quiz to be about and what I wanted to be in the quiz. Initially I thought about having a “guess the intro” as this would be fun but also include lots of media, which would make the quiz challenging for me to create. I then thought that creating a pub quiz would be a better idea by having different rounds and making it more general knowledge. I thought about what I wanted the rounds to be and I decided on having a sports round, a history round and a general knowledge round. This means that the user has to have a good general knowledge to be able to do well in the quiz. I spent lots of time finding and researching the right questions. I looked through lots of online pub quizzes and general knowledge quizzes. When I started designing the slides I wanted to keep it simple, as the questions are quite hard. I wanted to make it a quiz rather than a gimmick so I went for basic red text and simple buttons. I thought about the buttons and wanted to keep it easy for the user so I just have buttons, which get you to the next round, and the start. I also had to think about how I wanted to end the quiz, I thought about having different endings for the different scores you got but thought that would be too difficult so I decided on just having a normal “this is your score ending”. The brief also states that the user must be able to see the answers so I also included a “cheat” button, which gives you the option to view the correct answers. To fulfil the including sound deliverable from the brief I have put a sound track over the top of the quiz. It gives a sense of suspense so gives the user a better interaction. Overall I think that the quiz turned out quite well. I think that it’s entertaining but at the same time it challenging. It is quite simple and I think that if I could do this project again I would include some animations and make it more fun and vibrant.

Superhero Lair Video

2010-05-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

Superhero Lair

2010-05-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

When I got the brief for the first of the 3 projects, virtual environments, I was quite excited. I always look forward to working in 3DS max. My initial ideas were either some sort of fun house style lair or a really colourful and abstract lair. I started to look through film magazines and on youtube to look for current examples of superheroes. I also had to think about what I wanted my superhero to be. After much consideration I thought that a superhero who was very posh and rich but was living in opposite conditions maybe underground or in some sort of dungeon. When I had an idea of what I wanted my superhero lair to be, I had to think about the layout and what I wanted in it. First off I thought about having something like mole tunnels which different chambers so that you were underground but decided that might be quite hard. I then decided to make the lair as a shanty house, with tin walls and roof. The brief stated that there be 4 rooms so I decided on a big main room that would be like the main hall, then a weapons room and a media room, then finally a long firing range. As for the decoration and interiors, I wanted the lair to be quite minimalist as the superhero would live in poor conditions but as our hero is well off and has some standards the things he did have would be of quality. So in the main hall I decided on making it his living area with a table/chairs and a TV area with seating. I also wanted to have some more models in there so I made some plants to have around but I had to keep to the minimalist style. The next room was the shooting range. I needed to have somewhere where our hero could fire from and at targets. I created the red lights as this gave a “warning” feel to it. I also made a gun to make sure everyone knew it was a shooting range. I also made a weapons room which originally I wanted to fill with different weapons that I had made however I found it really difficult to make weapons that looked realistic and were different so in the end I just mapped some images of weapons onto the walls. It looks ok but I would have much preferred to have made the models myself. The final room was the media room which every superhero seems to have. I decided that he would need to see all the news that was happening around the computers. world so I created the screen bank that is on the wall. I also created the computers. Overall I think the lair turned out well, if I was to do the project again I think I would have spent more time creating the models to get much more detail in them and maybe have made the lair more elaborate as it is fairly simple.

Apologies

2010-05-14T07:26:00.001-07:00

I have been neglecting this blog a lot recently. As you can see the last post was from January. It seemed that my blog got removed from my research process. I would always forget about putting things from my projects on my blog. Over the next week I will try to put up all the information and research I did from my projects over the last two terms. I will also be talking about my visual essay and presentation.

Development activity

2010-01-17T06:11:00.000-08:00

In the seminar with Jools we followed on from the lecture and discussed "active learning". In the lecture we had discussed in groups what things had made a significant development in our area (multimedia/theater design/design for film & TV). This is a type of active learning.

We then discussed in pair and groups about what types of development activities we did. Development activities being reading; watching; talking; listening; making. The activities that i could come up with were: watching relevant videos on youtube; looking at other people blogs to see how they are progressing; the meal project that was undertaken in our tutorial group; vistiting Double Negative, a visual effects company in London, a few summers ago; making better solutions to old projects; I also like working with the different pieces of software so I become more accustomed to them.

Alot of the activities other people did were very similar to mine; youtube, blogs etc. Some people did little projects of their own that wernt connected to the course, such as flash projects or things for friends.

Interactive Narrative - Regions of the UK

2009-12-13T11:08:00.000-08:00

My finished interactive narrative:

http://andrewmapley.deviantart.com/art/Regional-Fun-146648890

I think it turned out well. It looks good, all the buttons work and the I think it flows quite nicely.

Interactive Narrative

2009-12-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

Im now halfway through my interective narrative project but I havnt been very good at updating this blog so I will start from the begginning.

My initial idea was to have some sort of confrontation. Starting off asleep then there is a banging at the window, you can then chose to look outside or stay asleep. then if you look outside you can ask the people to be quiet politely or aggressively or go back to sleep. then you can go outside or go to sleep, then argue or reason with them. Then if you argue you get hit. Everytime you chose to go to sleep, the narrative goes back to the first slide and there is a banging on the window again.

Initially I liked this idea but I thought I should come up with some other ideas as I felt this could be a bit boring.

I brainstormed a few ideas. I came up with:

-A journey. chosing the route.
-A map. chose the different destinations
-chose what to do around my room. ie go on pc, wash, tidy up, go eat etc

In the end I felt that the map idea was best as it could be expanded and would be reasonably simple to make. The idea was to have a map of the UK then have the different regions; north, midlands, south east, scotland, NI etc. The user can click on each region and picture and info will appear on the new page. The aim is to have it more educational than silly or fun. Like something the government or environmental agency would produce.

I am still in the process of making it but it should be finished by Friday.

2009-11-30T06:23:00.000-08:00

This is the montage of photos that I took for the meal project.

The Meal Project

2009-11-29T08:16:00.000-08:00

The Meal Project is a collaboration between students at NTU and Shangai Institute of Visual Art This is a fantastic opportunity to work with students from another country. It will give an insight into a different culture.

The task was to take 1 photograph every minute for each hour of your day.

In all honesty 1 photo a minute was a bit ridiculous and not feasable so I took photos at interesting parts of my day. I came out with about 40 photos I think. I gives a nice representation of my day and the british culture (apart from the thanksgiving meal :) )

I have put the photos into a video and uploaded it to youtube. I will upload the video on here when youtube sorts its act out and finishes processing the video.

One Shot Film

2009-11-27T04:38:00.000-08:00

This is our final One Shot Film. I was ill during filming but I was involved during every other part of production. I think it turned out well. I like how it flows well and the sound gives it an atmosphere.

Short Films

2009-11-23T08:28:00.000-08:00

I found a few shorts that I like just after starting the one shot film project, however I forgot to post them on here...

...so here they are:

I found a few that were animated as pixar are famous for their short films, however I did find one that was live action.

World Builder

This is a short film by Bruce Branit, who creates lots of short films. This one is about a guy who, at some point in the future, creates a world for some unknown reason. He puts alot of effort into it paying close attention to ever little detail, the reason being revealed near the end. I think it has a fantastic story to it and the graphics are brilliant.

The Pixar Shorts

Pixar are famous for their shorts and they produce one to be shown before every feature film they produce.

One Shot Film

2009-11-19T14:00:00.001-08:00

I havnt done much blogging recently. I think this probably due to the fact that I dont really have that much interest in filming and I wasnt involved in the actual filming process of our final piece due to illness. I like the whole creative idea of filming and I enjoyed developing ideas however im not sure I like the filming side of it.
The film will be going up shortly.

Pixilation final piece

2009-11-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

This is my final piece from the pixilation project. I think it turned out reasonably well. I could have taken more frames to make it smoother. However, I like the outcome and at the moment, animation would be my first choice.

End of One, Start of Another

2009-11-03T04:55:00.000-08:00

I have nearly finished my pixilation/stop motion project. I just need to string all the photos together and add the music, then I will be finished. It will be uploaded here and on youtube ASAP.

So as one project finishes, we move onto a new one. One shot Film. I am looking forward to this one as I have never done any filming in any form so this will be a new experience for me.

That is all.

2009-10-22T07:45:00.001-07:00

Screenshots of 8 bit racing video games

Need to decide on top view or behind view.

Ideas for animation

2009-10-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

I have had a few ideas for this project. Some involve Pixilation while others have deviated slightly. The ideas ive had so dar are:

- Use the photos taken on thurs, somehow. maybe use the "zombie" set of photos and draw over the top using photoshop.

- Dancing shoes on the floor. Like, from the film, Bednobs and Broomsticks. Have someone walk in and take the shoes off then the shoes dance, walk about, move etc

- Reverse animation. ie take frames of fruit/food being gradually eaten then reverse the order so it looks like the food is growing.

- The main idea that I have is to do a stop motion animation in the style of the old 8-bit atari car racing games. so the car stays in the same place but the scenery and track move/change.

eg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2qSbyZ4_F0

I have a few example drawings in my notepad.

The car idea doesnt technically include pixilation so if I cant do that I will try the zombie idea however I hope the car idea is allowed as I am looking forward to it.

Bit of youtube research

2009-10-17T12:39:00.001-07:00

Ive got a few youtube videos that I like for different reasons. A few I have found over the years and a few I have found while doing research recently.

Sur le fil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m0yeRstw-I

This is an amateur animation video made by two guys on an animation course. I like how its simple but has a story. It employs the same frame by frame drawing techniques that were used in the whiteboard animation.

Ham

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLY0MCi69go

This is an animation by one of my favourite digital artists, Nico Di Mattia. He normally produces online video/paintings called speed paintings (as you can see in the next video) however this is a back to basics animation about two pigs arguing over food. I like the simple design as if I am going to produce an animation I will produce a simple animation. The story is a bit strange and surreal but there is a bit of humour in it that makes it quite endearing.

Nico Di Mattia Speed Paintings

http://www.nicodimattia.com

Nico Di Mattia is an artist/animator from Argentina who mainly produces short films and animations but is more widely known for his speed paintings on youtube. I found his work on youtube a few years ago, I love the way his paintings are so realisic and that they are digital. He uses a graphics tablet to draw these paintings over a few hours. The videos of his work are then speeded up so the whole process only seems to take a few minutes.
One of my favourite paintings is his spiderman painting,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJNvKjQHv8I

And so it begins!

2009-10-16T03:57:00.000-07:00

So I was ill during the 1st two introduction days hence I am only starting my blog now, a week after I should of done. oops. Anyway I am going to pretend it is a week ago and talk about intial impressions, how I think the course will develop, projects etc.

My initial impressions of university life are quite different from what I expected. After taking a art foundation course at Bucks New Uni last year I had this expectation that that it would be exactly the same at NTU, being in the studio 9-4, always having a project to work on, always being around and working with other people on my course. However, it seems that this is not how it works in Nottingham. 5 hours of teaching a WEEK! just told to go and get on with projects without any guidance and at the moment I hardly know anyone on my course. It does make me question what im paying my 3500 pounds for. I understand that this is not a school education or even a college education but 5 hours a week, just doesnt seem like enough to me. I may have to talk to a tutor at some point. Give it a few weeks see how the course develops then we'll see. Hopefully I will just get used to the change in pace.

The assignments. I have been given all my assignments for the next couple of weeks. The essay seems quite short but tricky at the same time. There could be a lot of research to do before writing this essay. Design techniques? I dont even know where to start. What the hell are design techniques?
The animation project seems much more exciting. I have got a few ideas on how to incorperate the sequences we took as a group and my own ideas aswell. I was thinking something along the lines of having a cross between hand drawn animation and the photos we took. Im not sure how feasable that is as i think it will take ages to hand draw lots of frames. Also swapping from hand drawn to photos, it may get out of sync. we'll wait and see if it works out.

Im going to do a bit of animation research and post my results on here later.

Adios