Character&Narritive Essay

Well, this module was interesting to say the least. It started off great, I was working with an exchange student and we seemed to get along great. The maya tutorials, although tedious, were really great sources of information and greatly helped my animation work. I want to go into 3D animation and VFX, so this module helped guide me greatly.
The demo character was tough to create, especially since I lost the model halfway through making it, but mat let me download the unmapped character model and use that since I lost the one I was working on. Honestly the most difficult part was the rigging and grouping, I kept messing up and it managed to put me back several weeks. but I finished it nonetheless and it helped me make my actual character model much faster than the first one I worked on.
The pre-production of my animation went better than expected. I made a rough storyboard from the get go, but me and my partner had two different ideas on what the story should be, but we ended up going with a slightly edited version of my story in the end. After that, my partner made the storyboard of the edited version. I had some reservations about editing the story, but I decided against speaking out about them since I wanted my partner to identify more with the project. So I let some of the changes happen. I should mention there was one of the ideas I really liked, which was the idea that both the characters should have tatoos on their faces, as to relate them to each other. I put together a two characters I thought would be simple enough to animate well. I didnt come up with a name for the cat, but the person I decided to name Lights, since that seemed most fitting for a silhouette with spotlights for eyes. 
Speaking about my character, Lights.

I really enjoy how this character looks. Even though it was incredibly difficult to model, I'm pleased with how he turned out. But since Constance never finished her model, half of the project went unfinished. I had to make a proxy cat in order to salvage what I did have, but all it was was a sphere in the rough shape of a cat. That was all I could manage in the time alotted.

I am proud of how I made the eyes and tatoo glow. Essentially what I did was shine a directional light on the character and used the relationship editor to make it only affect the eyes and tatoo.
The rigging of my character managed to frusturate me to no end. I worked for around two weeks straight on it, and by the end of it I managed to get it the right way. I had to delete some edge loops and shift some vertexes around to make it work though.
I also never got done with the rigging of the jellyfish, which is something I really wanted to do. I wanted to make the jellyfish animated for the final portion of the animation, but I ended up just making all the jellyfish static. and the model itself wasnt even finished. I couldnt figure out how to make the material inside the jellyfish so I ended up just leaving it out. Which is probably for the best, since it might have made the final scene look extremely washed out. But still, it would have been nice to see the jellyfish float like they do in the sea.
Over the course of the animation, you might notice the surrounding environment get lighter and lighter. I got this to happen because I want the beginning and the end scenes to look completely different from each other, to give the feeling that change has happened within the context of the story. I wanted it to be subtle and apparant at the same time. 
When it came to finally animating the scenes, I found that it was probably the easiest part in comparison. Even with that being true, it took me a while to be able to get the animations right, and some scenes were extremely difficult to produce. Still, I'd take it any day over rigging.
Honestly for me the most difficult part of this whole process was the blogging. For those who arent aware I'm not an avid fan of writing. The entire reason I became an animator was in efforts to be able to tell stories without the use of written word. But I made it out to be much more of a problem in my own head than it actually was. I put off most of my writing for a while just so I could focus on just the animation work. I got the blogging done though, and I'm pleased with how it turned out, even though the process for it bored a hole through my head, metaphorically speaking.
As much as i'd love to put myself through this kind of hell all over again, id much rather go with a calmer workflow so I wont get so overwhelmed with the work. But that wasn't entirely my fault either. Most of my anxiety came from worrying over my partner. She was barely ever in and I could never get a really good look at how much work she had gotten done.
I had to use some of my classmates as proxy partners, helping me with recordings of myself to get reference for the scenes. Max mostly helped with that. I also wanted to get some second opinions for the final output because Constance still wasnt in. Everyone I showed said it looked really nice, but I really don't want to put out a piece of work that isnt even finished.
Constance really left me on the backburner with this project. I could tell she had other priorities so I didn't push her as much as I probably should have, but she was never in anyway. I don't hold it against her, but it dissapoints me that only half of my animation got done in the end. I might try animating it over this summer and seeing whether or not I can make something I'm proud of.

Developmental Maya:Pt.14

Today was tough to say the least. I just got the news that my partner went back to France. Along with the news that my parents are putting the dog I've known for 15 years down. I've been working all day trying to get an animation for my character running done but it keeps fucking up no matter what I do. I went from using FK to IK arms and I managed to get a litney of other problems as well.

I'm having an extremely hard time staying motivated and I keep getting frustrated because no matter what I seem to try I can't make his movements look normal. I might end up just making a straight cut to him already up because I'm getting sick of doing this and I'm wasting valuable time trying to get it to work. It's the Friday before the turn in date and i'm beginning to lost all hope that I might get this done on time.

The Uncanny Valley: An extra one:Early CGI Facial Animation (1974)

I just recently watched a video depicting an early form of CGI made back in the 1970s. apart from it being really interesting historically speaking, it also was incredibly frightening. The face itself was going through test motions and trying to convey forms of emotion, but it came off as extremely unnatural. Then after the beginning sequence they animate it saying something in a creepily recorded voice. The lip syncing is primitive at best, but this was 1974, so I'm amazed that they could actually make something like this.

Developmental Post:Pt.13

 I started the opening scene. Its roughly five seconds and since the first scene doesn't have a cat in it its a lot easier to animate and feel fine about it. Ive created a sphere head with glow eyes and ears to serve as the cat, since I have high doubts I'm going to be able to get the actual cat now that Constance has lost it. I don't hold it against her, London is a pretty tough place to navigate around in if you aren't from around there. Like most cities. I just wish she would come in and help with the animation work because if I'm left to do it alone it might not get done.

Developmental Post:Pt.12

I received some news from Constance, apparently she lost her computer and hard disk in stratford and won't be able to show me how far she's gotten. I don't exactly feel angry, even though I should. She hasn't been in for some time and I've decided to start working on the animation by myself for the time being and put in a placeholder for the cat. Thats what Matt told me at least. It's now two weeks before the final turn in date and I'm starting to lose hope of being able to finish it.

Developmental Post:Pt.11

I did some ambient light tests for the eyes and tattoo in the dark to see whether or not they worked.
 I think the overall appearance of him looks exactly how I wanted him to look, which I'm incredibly pleased with. Constance still hasn't shown me the cat so I'm not exactly sure where she is at with it but I'm confident that if its anywhere close to mine we're going to have a great time animating the overall thing. Since the animation of the main model put me behind I opted to not make the jellyfish rigged, instead I'm just going to make the model and hope it suffices.

I had to add two deformer curves to the tattoo to make it curve along with the facial structure of the model. I also didn't add any smoothing to it either, so it would keep the corners sharp. I added a small glow to the eyes and a directional light on to the model and parent constrained it to the head, then made it only react with the eyes and tattoo.

Developmental Post:Pt.10

I re-finished all the rigging and finally got it to work right with the paints. I also did the reverse foot group mechanic since I actually forgot to do it the first time. So it was probably a good thing that I re-did all of it, even if I'm behind now. The paris attacks have put Constance in a state of Mourning so she hasn't been in, which is understandable. So I still haven't seen her work. But she's assuring me things will be fine. I also made the tattoo for his face and put it on the model, since I forgot that the first time as well. I made the eyes and tattoo react with the head control so it moves around with it. Theres a weird discolouration of the joints on the right finger, but it doesn't do anything I can notice with the fingers so i think it'll be fine. I also added edge loops in the hand so that it would react accurately with the joints I put in.

Developmental Work Pt.9

Matt told me that i had to re-do all my rigging since I messed it up. Constance from what I've seen is done with the model, but that was a week ago so I assume she's gotten further since. Hopefully it'll be good news the next time I talk with her. In terms of work flow I've been pretty good, but this entire process is so painstaking that its taking me all day to get the thing done. Im gonna try and get the rest of this done as fast as possible so I can finally get to the animation portion.

Developmental Work:Pt.8

I started painting the weights today and I'm having a lot of trouble.  The biggest issues that I'm having are with the legs. Crouching doesn't work and when I try and make my model do the splits, his crotch freaks out. I moved the skeleton a bit and then this happened.

Im not sure how to fix this problem, since i can't undo it and i don't want to make it worse so I'm leaving it until a later time with the teacher so I can fix it.

Developmental Work:Pt.7

Today I created the controllers for the animation. I didn't have to make any for the eyes since I'm not going to animate them. Speaking of the eyes my teacher told me that it would be a good idea to create two polygons at where the holes should be and make them glow, instead of what i was doing before, which was akin to putting a sphere inside his head and making that glow. He showed me a technique to cover the eyeholes with faces and extract the faces, then change the materials to the glow shape I want it to be. After I finished making the controllers I bound all of it together.

 So far it looks fine and I'm going to start painting the weights starting tomorrow.

Developmental Work:Pt.6

Ive recently started making the skeleton for my character and it's significantly easier to do now that I've had experience with it on the video tutorial. Ive been trying to figure out where the joints would be by using the other model as reference.  Ive also taken out some joints as I'm taking out the fingers, eyes and mouth since the character doesn't have a mouth or fingers, and his eyes are gaping holes in his head. I figure I'm going to create the tattoo as a separate polygon and put it in after to save on extra geometry.

  

Developmental Post:Pt.5

I've managed to finish the character model easily enough.

I had a bit of a problem with the crotch and head areas, but I added some edge loops and moved some edges and vertexes around and that solved the problem. Constance has gotten done with the head by about now, but she's assuring me she'll be able to get it done.

Developmental Work:Pt.4

We decided to go with my story, with a few added tweaks and changes made to the story. Some of the ideas she voiced weren't ideal for me, but since we were working together I decided that in order for her to start identifying with the story I would be open to changes since it's a group project and we need to work together.
We decided that the story needed direction so we have the main character chase the cat instead of follow it. And we added some changes to the scenes to make them more sound from a filmmaking standpoint. We also made it so that the entire environment these two are on is a giant jellyfish field. I want to try and rig two models for this project, first is the main character and the second is a fully animated jellyfish. I'm then going to make copies of the jellyfish for the rest of the environment. Constance is in charge of making the cat.

 

We also decided that it would be a good idea to link the characters by giving them both a tattoo on each of their cheeks. I figured a stylised version of a jellyfish would help tie in the environment. We decided the final icon would look like this.

Developmental Work:Pt.3

I decided to go ahead and make a storyboard and a few character designs since Constance hasn't been in.

I wanted the main character to be slim and lanky with a round face to give the impression that the character is relatable, open minded, and curious.  In the storyboard, the main character finds a cat and chases it follows it through different places. Ever so slowly the surrounding area gets brighter and brighter until the entire area around him is all light. he then tumbles onto a jellyfish and floats away. I wanted to keep the story open ended to keep in line with the Adrift story line.

Developmental Work:Pt.2

I got teamed up with the exchange student from Paris, her name is Constance. For the project we had to consider 12 phrases to base our animation on. I was stuck between Road to Nowhere and Adrift. By the end of class I managed to decide against doing Road to Nowhere since we both wanted to do Adrift.
We have two separate ideas for the project as of right now. Constance wants to do an animation on a man slowly being sucked into a black hole, trying to grasp at things like memories and the like. I wanted a story about a man chasing a cat in the dark, finding his way in the darkness.

Developmental Work:Pt.1

For the first portion of the tutorial Matt had us put together a mesh of a pre-created puppet meant for tutorials. Putting it together was easy enough to do, and it was a nice refresher for me since I hadn't worked with maya since last spring. Along with that, Matt also put all of the tutorials in videos online which made the entire process extremely easier since we could work on it at our own pace. Sometimes when working with the teacher up front I would be following his directions at one point and the next time I look up I'm 10 minutes behind. This made it so that I could get all the information, which is really great.

The Uncanney Valley Pt.5:Tin Toy

Who can say that Toy Story 1 wasn't a visual masterpiece?

…Besides him .

Today I'm not talking about Toy Story though. We're going back before Toy Story even existed. Im going to be talking about the short animation that inspired Toy Story. A 1988 animation by the name of Tin Toy. Its an animation simply about a tin toy. But he isn't the only character in this. The tin toy is confronted with something that looks kind of like a baby with wrinkles.

Throughout the entire animation this character is making incredibly unnatural movements that aren't humanlike at all. But this was made in 1988, a time when 3-d animation was still incredibly cutting edge and high budget. So I'm mostly willing to forgive the unintentional creepiness of the model. 

The Uncanny Valley Pt.4: Medal of Honor:Warfighter

Medal of Honor Warfighter is a video game released in 2012. It was published by EA, the winners of the vote for the worst company in america of 2012. Medal of Honor is a long series of video games dating back to the first made by Dreamworks Interactive in 1999. The biggest problem with this game is the facial animations.

 For a game released in 2012, it has great skill in how it manages to create truly horrifying humans. It's almost as if EA wanted to make this a Sci-fi game where all of the characters seem to be aliens impersonating humans.

Uncanny Valley Pt.3: The Polar Express

This movie is a unique one. Released in 2004, The Polar Express was the first All Digital Capture movie, meaning it was the first movie that used only motion captured actors in it. Whether or not that was for better or worse is for history to find out. Thats what i'll be deciding today, because we all know that a second year animation students opinions are absolute and without error. With that, let us begin.

This movie has some great writing with a great story, but in regards to the animation it falls completely and utterly into the uncanny valley. With some more interesting choices for character voicing, we have  Tom Hanks as the voice for the conductor.

We also have the voice of Eddie Deezen (Mandark from Dexters Lab) in this movie in probably one of his most annoying roles of all time, this kid.

As well as the choices for characters, we have a character that looks eerily of one famous celebrity. Are you allowed to copyright your face? If so Jason Statham might want to get on that.

All in all this isn't a terrible movie but the animation in it is so god awful you have a hard time getting past all the awkward motion and unrealistic facial animation. So if you want a movie that won't have a chance at scaring your child, this movie might not be for you.

The Uncanny Valley 2: Beowulf

Today I'll be looking at the motion capped 2007 movie Beowulf as an example for The Uncanny Valley. Beowulf is an Old English epic depicting Beowulf's feats of heroism over the course of his life. The movie set after his story made in 2007 is an interesting retelling to say the least.

First off, while first seeing this movie, I was actually impressed with the level of detail in the character design. Although, I was 11 at the time, so that might have been something to do with it. Looking back on it i can say that most of the level of detail was gained through motion capture and not actually the animation of it. In some of the scenes with Beowulf on the dragon, it seems that the only portion of his hair thats moving is the lower back, and as someone with long viking hair, I can say that this isn't truth. In the swimming scene as well, the blood that spurts out when Beowulf comes out of the sea monsters eye.

All in all Beowulf was a pretty good movie, but I would enjoy seeing a more faithful reproduction made. Maybe in live action.

The Uncanny Valley: The Witcher 1

The Witcher is a highly regarded video game series developed by CD Projekt for the PC. The main character of the series is named Geralt, a traveling monster hunter for hire. The reason I'm targeting this video game for my first post about the uncanny valley is because the first game, released in 2007, is one such where technology wasn't good enough at the time for them to fix many of the problems they had. When it was first released the witcher was considered decent at the time, they don't hold up very well now.

Starting off with the facial animation, sadly I noticed most of the characters being shaded with black and they had suffered from major still face syndrome. Being as it came out in 2007, thats not too bad for the time but I was playing the game and someone had just died but their faces were almost emotionless. That broke my immersion somewhat and didn't help create a convincing atmosphere.

While it was an interesting game mechanic, the 3 different fighting styles seemed odd animation wise. The strong fight style had this odd over the head sword grip that he ran around with and it just seemed a bit strange. People usually shift around while holding swords but he stayed very static while walking with his sword drawn. His upper body moved very little and he stayed in a crouch-like position the entire time he was in combat mode.

Although this game was released in 2007, some of these types of problems had been solved in other games like Mass Effect. Still, I wouldn't judge the game on animation alone. Overall this game is still very fun and I would recommend it to people who like fantasy RPGS.

Visual Language Resubmission

Visual Language was probably the most difficult module this year, for me at least. I have trouble keeping up with my sketchbooks and its something I definitely need to work on. That being said, my drawing skills this year have greatly improved due to Visual Language pressing me to put out more work in my sketchbook. I still have to work on blogging as well. What I have decided is that i'm going to keep all of my blogposts as drafts so i'm able to edit them over the course of the module, that way when I post them they're exactly the way I want and need them to look like.
The first assignment for the module wasn't incredibly hard. I just had to come up with sufficient ideas to draw things of. It wasn't until the second brief where things started to get difficult.The backgrounds assignment was probably the one studio brief i struggled most with this entire year. I started out strong but then I took a trip back to America for my birthday and It was difficult for me to change gears. I ended up procrastinating it up until the final few weeks of the module. I didn't even know about the animated sound project until two days before it was due, so I put that off until I wasn't juggling so many things around. I wasn't here for the turnaround studio brief as well so I had to stay up one night and do a turnaround of a stuffed animal on my bed at 1 in the morning.
After all that was done I still had to blog about all of what I did, and by then it was 3 days before the module ended. So I put out as many blogposts as I could, working right up until the end of the module, and only turning in half of a final review blogpost. Overall I felt pretty bad about what I turned in and I felt like I could have planned my projects better. I was glad I got done with all of my physical projects though, I tend to put my actual work at a higher regard than my blogging, but I need to be able to explain myself through the blogposts so I should put more work into them.
After all the modules were done I felt that I probably improved the most with the Visual Language Module. Even though it was incredibly difficult for me to finish, I still ended up finishing all of the physical work for it. I figured out how to properly spread out my work to create a much less stressful work calendar, and I was able to put out work at a rate I've never seen before. The life lessons I learned in this module are some that i'm going to keep using, hopefully into the next year of university if all goes right. I feel like if I made these mistakes in a later part of my life I wouldn't have learned from them nearly as much as I am right now.

Applied Animation Module Evaluation

This Module was probably the most productive one that i've participated in. The first studio brief was a very good introduction to 3-D modelling, something that i've never actually had experience in but I wanted to get better with.  The project itself was making 3-D models of trucks, and then making something small that was simple enough in its design to look nice when we made it. A lot of people ended up going with their phones, but I chose to use my Baymax bracelet.

After we got done with that brief, they assigned us a project where we either had to work on a title sequence of our choosing or go with idents for a set of TV channels.  A few of my classmates decided to go with the idents, but most of them opted to choose a book to make a title sequence of. I was one of them. I wanted mine to give me a good introduction to special effects and green screening, something i've only done once and that was with my father when I was eight. So it wasn't really an introduction as much as him doing most of the work for me. Still, I was determined to figure it out so I chose to put in a small live action sequence and put in special effects. For this I mainly used Trapcode Form and Starglow, which is an effect within Adobe After Effects. I also needed to learn how to key out the green screen and edit in a moving staff into my actors hand. Along with costume design, partial set design (I made a background in Photoshop to use for it.), Directing, Storyboarding, And managing the entire project by myself. I had to outsource some of my work, so I got classmates and Commissioned artists from inside and outside the school to help me. I probably spent around 80+ Pounds on this project altogether, but I think it was worth it. Even though the thing that cost more than half the money I spent never actually got here on time (See My blogpost about the project if you wanna hear more about that). I wasn't able to show my final project to my classmates for Critique because i hadn't rendered it out yet. I assumed since the class day ended at 4pm, that was the time we would all sit down and review it. But instead it surprised me in the morning and I wasn't able to show it. I still had enough time to get it done though, and even fix a few minor tweaks that I didn't see before. I was able to tweak an sfx sound that I was having trouble with too. There was even enough time to put a final edit on all of my blogposts before posting them to my blog. So over all this project was by far the most fun out of this module, and even in some sense this entire year. For me, at least. The module was really interesting too, I learned a lot of skills that i'll probably be using the rest of my life, and improving upon as well.

Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 10

I put all the work together in After effects and got a song off the Dragon Age OST to serve as the background music. I had to motion track the pole movement to be able to get the staff to have the right movement. It was extremely difficult as I had to go frame by frame to achieve the illusion. I made gas clouds and stars in the background by using trapcode form and starglow. I used camera panning shots to give it a sense of 3-d space within the shot and edited cloud sprites to serve as 3-d gas clouds.

Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 9

I needed to film a live action portion with an elder Merlin so I got Luca to help with it since he can do makeup. I had to put together a costume for him though. So I commissioned a fashion student to make me a cloak, along with ordering a wooden staff from eBay. I never actually got the staff, so I had to use a pole and edit the staff in.

 I used a green screen to key out the background and made one by editing a couple of photos together.

Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 8

I managed to get some help from an artist friend I have from Singapore,  and she gave me a PSD file to learn a technique from. So I got the rest of the subject matter I needed it to transfer into the formula and they all turned out pretty well.

 I got one of my classmates, Matt, to act as Merlin in one of my backgrounds since he has a likeness to the character.

















I also used a photo of a beach in Wales, since at the start of the story Merlin wakes up on a beach, and i figured it could blend out into the movie.

Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 7

I found a fashion student who is willing to help me with creating the costume production. He charged it as around 20-30 pounds, which is well within my budget. Now all I need is an old looking chair for my actor to sit in, as well as a staff for him to knock against the ground. I wont need them to be movie quality since its just a school project, but it would be nice if I could make it look as best as possible, since im really starting to enjoy this project.

Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 6

So far today i've been trying different techniques to create a suitable recreation of a nebula with the content I need put in. I've created a set of dynamic photoshop brushes to help make nebulas look more realistic and unique. Hopefully i'll be able to use this to my advantage, but so far i haven't found an easy to replicate technique to use so I haven't been able to make the backgrounds.

Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 5

I managed to finish some basic storyboarding but I knew exactly how I needed it to look, since the idea was simple enough. Although i'm not sure how i'm going to achieve the particle flow that makes each tiny particle a nebula in of itself, i'm sure i'll be able to. Even if it doesn't work out, the live action portion of it will still be interesting enough to leave in the project. So far i've only been starting out with the basic parts of the project, i've found a few photos that are high res enough to use and they're all uncopyrighted images so i wont have any issues if i use them. I plan to use a classmate who looks similar to the main character as a model for the blind picture i need, and I'm going to ask around for people to help me with costume design, along with the actor who's going to play the older merlin.

Feedback on Applied animation project - Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 4

I plan to open the title sequence with an old merlin sitting in a chair. He strikes his staff on the ground and it produces light particles. I plan to move to and from each light particle, and when zoomed in close it covers some of the major events surrounding the story, Including waking up on a beach, and the fight between the stag god Dagda and the Boar god Rhita Gawr. I also plan to cover the events that lead up to his renouncing of magic and his blindness due to the cause of a fire he caused, along with the realisation of his second sight.

I got Prompted to search up ways on producing the light effects i need to make the title sequence the way I want it to. I was also told to finish my storyboards.

Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 3

I found a creativedojo post about creating trapcode galaxies in after effects.

http://creativedojo.net/tutorial/nebula-galaxy-trapcode-form/

After seeing some of the videos that were made with this technique I realised that this is the exact feel I need for my project. I figured out that I could create pieces that had themes within the story and make them into nebulas for the animation project. Now all I need to do is search up some themes from the book and create a storyboard for it.

Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 2

I've decided to go with a book that I read during the time I was a child, The Lost Years of Merlin. Warner Bros. is actually in the process of making this into a film, but since nothing on it has been released, my instructor said it would be fine to make a Title Sequence for it. I want the title sequence in some way to portray the sense of mysticism I had when first reading the book, so it has to be subtle. Im going to look into ways to produce this effect.

Title Sequence for book Animation - Development - Part 1

Today we were given a brief on making a sequence for some form of entertainment. One was making Idents for Tv shows, one was for making a Title sequence for a book, and the last was making a commercial for a charity campaign. I want to go with the one that has the most creative freedom, the Title Sequence. Since we can choose any book we want (as long as it hasn't been made into a movie) I'm going to take some time to decided one what to do.

Maya Induction Pt.2

After that he assigned us a project to create and render a shape of our choosing. I decided to use my baymax bracelet and create it within a 3-D space. I used the skills he taught us and made a rough rendition of what it looks like. I Created a few primitives and blended them together to create the image of the baymax bracelet. For the face I did the same thing but on a smaller scale.

Overall the class was very informative, especially since I want to start doing 3-D animation. I hope to be able to use this program in a more in depth way in the future.

Module Evaluation - Visual Language

This module was incredibly difficult for me in terms of general time management and the quality of work I produced. I really think I should have worked harder on this module in general, but i put other modules over this one in terms of priority. I managed to get done with all of the physical work before this module ended, but I didn't get done with my blogging. Im not sure i'll even be able to get this 500 word evaluation done because i need to turn it in in 10 minutes. Ive been procrastinating this module and the work just kept piling up and it made me want to get done with it even less. I wish I had worked more on this module not only because of grades but because I genuinely want to get better at drawing by hand. I'm going to be drawing more and more often now because I feel as though I didn't get done with the amount of work I should have, and I want to fix that. Hopfully I wont recieve too terrible a grade for the end of this module.

Development of Turnaround Object

I had not originally heard the brief and the tips the teacher gave me on making my turnaround animation, so when I decided to make mine i cleared off my bed, shined a directional light on a stuffed animal I had and began to draw it from scratch. The series of drawings I made were contour line drawings so there was no shading value to them. I had difficulty making the series of images congruent in terms of sizing in the head. The doll itself fell over several times so I had to reset it to where I thought it was before it fell, which might have been the cause of the head sizing issue. Overall though I think this was pretty successful as a first attempt. I hope i'll be able to retry this project on my own time once again to see if i've improved.

Maya Tutorial - Working in 3-D

On the 9th of February the Instructor gave us an induction into Maya. Our assignment was to make a very simplified Truck in a 3d space, then texture and render it.
We needed to render the trailer, cabin, chassis, wheel bars, and finally the wheels.
He showed us how to translate and expand faces, vertices, and edges of our meshes to create the shapes we need. he also taught us the bevel tool to create rounded edges out of flat faces.
After, he showed us how to do this he showed us how to add textures to the meshes we created, along with adding in a skybox. He told us to mess around with different textures to get a feel for the program.



After that he assigned us a project to create and render a shape of our choosing. I decided to use my baymax bracelet and create it within a 3-D space. I used the skills he taught us and made a rough rendition of what it looks like.

Overall the class was very informative, especially since I want to start doing 3-D animation. I hope to be able to use this program in a more in depth way in the future.

Sound Animation 3 - 自主制作アニメ/TANABOTA

This is a student animation made in the Kobe Design University. I find this animation interesting because it uses an english speaking song in a Japanese Animation. Its an animation about a young cook who makes baked goods for people supposedly on Valentines Day, which is reversed in Japan. Whereas boys would usually give chocolates to their girl crushes or girlfriends on Valentines Day,  girls would give chocolates to boys crushes or boyfriends. Back to the point, the cook gives out chocolates to girls all day and sees them get together with various boys. At the end of the day while he's heading home, a girl who has been following him all day offers chocolates to him and he picks her up and twirls her around. Its a fairly short animation, but its interesting to see how the song goes along with it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvBprH7PGc8

Sound Animation 2 - 自主制作アニメ 「 May 」

I chose this animation for various reasons. While it doesn't completely focus on the sound for the animation, it shows how to create sound design so good that it completely melds into the animation. It complements it instead of directing the way it should go. It manages to include all of the small sounds we hear without giving it an overpowering feeling. The jingle of the door as she enters the cafe, the small talk going on in the background when she's daydreaming, even the music style complements the animation. It manages to give a sense of reality to the animation, which is really nice to see.

Sound Animation 1 - Out of Sight

Out of sight is a short animation made by  Yu Ting Ya, Ya Hsuan Yeh, and Chung Ling. It opens with a small girl whos purse is suddenly stolen. The dog she has runs off after the man who stole it from her, and she goes after him. When she gets to a fence she runs into it, then sprawls her hands onto the fence looking for a way to get past. She finds a hole and climbs under it into a black surrounding. After a while you realize that the girl is blind and using sounds and smells to direct her around. As she goes along she starts to rough out a surrealistic world around her. This animation is really cool because it heavily relies on sound to create the world around it.

Environment Animation 3 - 自主制作アニメ 「星の下、少年の日」

This is a short animation most likely made by a student as a project for college. Even though this may be, this animation shows a really interesting variation of environments. The opening sequence is a series of backgrounds to show movement by train. Later on it travels into rural areas, and shows a rural japanese home along with a beautiful night sky scene. This animation shows how rural areas and settings can give a romantic feeling. This is the type of backgrounds that I would like to emulate in some ways in my animations. Not all the time, but it is a really nice style of animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPObGuEwGzY

Environment Animation 2 - CHILDREN 【自主制作アニメ】

CHILDREN is a 3D animation made by Takuya Okada as a metaphor for the Japanese school system and how it pushes conformity and non creativity in the children of their country. This animation is a beautiful example of how dark tones and bland, grey tones can create a sense of bleak desperation in an animation. All of the people in the animation have numbers on their heads, to show that students in japan are just numbers. All of the environments are dark and stale, giving it a repeating, depressing feel. Its also a makes a beautifully dark point on Japanese society in general.

Environment Animation 1 - Take On Me

The 1986 music video by A-ha, Take On Me, is a very good example of how environment in animation can change a piece. It depicts a woman who falls in love with a man who is in a drawing. She gets teleported into a comic to be with him. After she enters, the owner of the cafe she was in previously thinks she ran out on her bill and she crumples the comic the girl is in and throws it away. Then inside the comic, characters with wrenches begin to chase her and the man down a corridor and she escapes out of the comic just before they catch up to them. He, however is left inside. She then runs home with the comic and she tries to flatten it. the man then appears in comic form in her hallway and starts to phase into reality.
This is a nice example of how animation can interact with the real world.

Module Review

This Module was a really interesting one for me. It started off  slow, since I didn't have many ideas on how to do this project. Most of my ideas i came up with on the fly and then i just ran with it. That's how I came up with my main character, the jars of wind, and even using wind itself i basically decided on a metaphoric coin flip. I'm really glad about how it turned out though, because I did put in a ton of work for this to turn out the way it did.
During the start of this project, truthfully I was concerned with other pieces I was doing, most of the planning and pre-production I did was an afterthought at most. I chose my main character out of my various character sketches i come up with regularly. It was just a picture of an old man with a spherical body. After I started making little parts of his house, some utensils, I drew the jars of wind I used in the animation. I barely put together a storyboard that i used in my first crit presentation, along with the character design i made and the various bits of assets i made.
Making the Animation itself was probably the hardest part. I started off doing well, I finished 44 frames my first workday along with 3 backgrounds. It wasn't until Winter Break that I started having troubles. I didn't get my lightbox and animation paper until the week of Christmas, and my parents decided by themselves that I wasn't going to need a scanner, so i was out of luck until the last week of winter break. I made headway on the Monday of the last week, doing 50 frames a day was going to be my plan for that week, and then id scan all of it in in my dads office building. Basically that entire week consisted of me sitting in a room for several hours drawing for 5 days. I managed to get all of my frames done the night before my flight, but I wasn't able to scan them in, so i was going to do that the day i got in to Leeds. Then I accidentally slept for 5 hours, which was the worst possible thing that could happen.
My post production stages were probably the most stressful part of this project. I had to stay up 26 hours to finish the final edit of my animation. I got sick afterwards so I only went to school to turn it in and then I slept it off. I also did all of the sound design myself because I didn't have an internet connection to get the assets online.
This project overall was probably the hardest experience I've ever had doing a school assignment before. Nevertheless I'm extremely proud about how it turned out, and I'm looking forward to my next animation. Hopefully I'll be able to get it done without so much stress next time.

The Production of Winds

I havent really decided on going with water or air for my animation. And I decided that I'd use the element in a way that people wouldn't normally apply that element. I figured that a personified form of elements has been used a lot before so I think i'm going to use it in an applied form of the element.

I decided to go with air because my zodiac sign, Aquarius, is an air sign. Literally that's why, I really have no reason other than that.

I needed to come up with a main character for my animation so I decided to do the same thing i did with my 5 second flash animation Business Penguin. I found a picture of an old man that has a pretty simplified body form, so I'll use him. Also I decided that I'm going to make my main character cook with Air or Winds from different climates.

I'm going to have him have a cupboard filled with jars of different climates that hes going to do something with, I'm not sure what yet.

Since it's a cupboard of jarred winds, I figured he should cook with them, so today I drew a big cauldron in my sketchbook next to him to see how it worked. It looked nice so that's what I'm going with.

I want him to live in the middle of nowhere and since the western things been done I want him to live in the middle of a tundra in a weird house made of plank wood.

I finished my first 40 frames, It's the opening sequence. Basically it consists of him walking in a blizzard to his house. I didn't really have any idea that walking looks a certain way(my fault) so I drew it without reference. It was only until after that I realized he looks weird, so I drew a cloak over him, and it looks a lot better. I also Finished 3 of my 6 backgrounds that i'm going to use in the animation. This was a productive day.

I found out that i'm going to be finishing my animation over in America so I asked my parents to get me a scanner, a lightbox, and some animation paper to get there when I arrive in America, so I can finish it the first week and have the rest of my break to have fun.


I flew in today and asked my parents where my stuff is so i can get ready to make my animation tomorrow, and they said that they didnt order it yet. Bad turn of events. I got them to order it online so hopefully it should be getting here soon, and i guess ill finish half of my animation the week after Christmas and scan it in.

My stuff didnt get here until the week of christmas, and since i cant do my work during christmas i decided to dedicate the last week im here to sitting in my room and finishing all of my frames.

My parents decided that they didn't want to get me a scanner and that i'd use the one at my dads office. I told them that that wouldn't work since i need a scanner that can scan a4 pieces of paper, and they told me it would be fine. I guess i'm going to have to use it anyway.

Today is the monday of my last week here, i figure if i finish 50-75 frames a day i should be able to get done in time and still have fun with my friends. I had my girlfriend over to chill with me while i do my animation, it was nice. I ended up finishing the scene where my character goes into a living room and turns on a gramaphone. I want to have him play old jazz from the 1920s or something, i dunno. I've been writing down a bunch of jazz artists in my sketchbook that I think would sound nice with this animation.

Tuesday I finished a walk cycle for my character that I thought looked nice, and it should cover quite a lot of frames since he's going to be walking a lot. I have extra time that im going to hang out with my friends.

Thursday I finished a scene where he's looking for a shaker of snow and the rest of my backgrounds. I realized that my cauldron idea wasn't going to work so i decided that he'll use a pot on a stovetop oven.

Today is the last day i'm in America, and i don't have enough time to scan in all of my animations, so i'll be doing that when i get into Leeds, since its going to be in the morning. I managed to finish the rest of my scenes so now I can spend the rest of the day with my friends to have one last outing.

I flew into Leeds today and its the morning, i just got in and im gonna chill for a little while to rest my bones.

I accidentally overslept and now im going to have to finish all of my scanning, and put the animation together today. I'm probably going to have to do an all nighter because of the amount of work i have to do so i bought 2 liters of energy drink. Hopefully I wont get sick.


I barely managed to finish all of my animation and put it together. Final amount of time working on post production, 25 hours. The entire time i was doing this i didnt have an internet connection, until about 10 am. During that time i lost a set of scans to corruption, and i also went through 2 different songs, one of which was a windows 7 sample song. I also had to cut out an entire 6 second scene because it made my animation a lot longer than 20 seconds. I also recorded some SFX sounds at 3am, hopefully i didnt wake up my roommates.

Today was the crit, and they asked me to change around a few things in my animation. Since i was pretty much having an anxiety attack for 25 hours i didnt remember to save the photoshop versions of those animations, so im going to have to re-make them.

I redid those scenes and managed to make them a lot better than i did last time because im not on such a time constraint. I added an arc to the arm that looks through the cupboard and i also made the labels on the jars darker so people can read them. I also added a coat onto the coat rack inside his home, to add a sense of continuity.