Film 29/3

Todays class was dedicated to using Adobe Premiere and editing our footage. It was quite interesting to see how everybody edited their versions slightly differently even though our pool of shots was small.

Once I got the hang of the areas to drag and drop, how to import, and the manipulation of the sequences, I found it easy to sort out my footage. I think a couple more practice sessions will help in regards to feeling comfortable with the editing title/credit screens and the frame by frame editing

I think our little film turned out pretty ok considering the short filming period.

Gaming 28/3

Todays class has been about learning to use Unity to create an environment for our characters. Using imported 3D assets, we can manipulate them using W key to move, E key to rotate and R key to change size and scale. Holding the middle mouse button down and dragging is a quick way to navigate around the window, with holding and dragging the right mouse button to change the point of view. I have already started playing with the terrain painting features to create a mountain valley, hopefully a river or lake next. The painter itself is very similar to mudbox in the way it moves, it is very touchy too Ive noticed, hopefully practice with the program will help with that.

Second half of class was playing with water, once I was shown how to do it, what I wanted to achieve became easier. I must remember to drag and drop from the assets down the bottom to create the textures. The water itself seems constrained to a round plane, and so creativity is needed to make a river. Currently I have 3 water objects, all manipulated differently, to get the result in the following picture. Although the limitations of the water seem annoying, it is easy enough to solve the issues by not treating the plane as the ground, and building up platforms for the environment and modifying those instead.

Digital Painting 26/3

Today we watched Howls Moving Castle, first time for me. Very interesting story line in this movie. I loved the almost oil painting backgrounds in this film, and the contrast to the basic, sharp colouring of the foreground images. The colour palette suited the victorian era of the movie well, with the bursts of bright colour creating an attention grabbing pop to break up the dull, dark colours of the town, day to day life and war scenes. The background designs are definitely more my type of art, landscapes, nature, blended colours.

Retreived from https://markcz.com/imposition/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/howls-moving-castle.jpg

Howl's Moving Castle is a story about a young woman with a low opinion of her image, a young cocky wizard and a countryside at war. The young woman is swept into a world of conflict when Howl comes to her rescue on an outing, and unintentionally drawing her into a battle between himself and a witch. The movie follows the cursed young womans journey with Howl, his fire demon, and a young child in a giant steampunk style "castle". As the story progresses, Sophie falls in love with Howl, and helps to change his outlook on life, saving him for his inner monster and his mentor. The story ends with Howl regaining his heart, Sophie's curse broken, a couple of additions to their wee family and the war ended.

Continuity is maintained by the use of the same muted colour palette throughout the entire movie. There is also a strong steampunk twist on every scene, tying every town together, and hinting at the time period. Every time Sophie starts to worry about her appearance not being good enough, the old woman appearance becomes stronger. When she starts to not worry about her appearance, it begins to return to its original state.

Whenever Howl goes off to fight in the war, everything is dark. The sky, ground and beings, with bright fire everywhere to contrast. This is a good visual representation of the darkness that Howl is fighting within himself constantly throughout the story.

When the castle was moving through the valley to Star lake, the entire background was scaled down to a very small size, creating a sense of huge distance in the valley, and the castle was scaled up, to give the sense of being close to the camera.

When Howl first dyed his hair the wrong colour, he was mad and his hair was red. When he became depressed because of his hair, it turned black like his depression. The colour change helped show his transition in emotions.

Animation 22/3

Onion skin layers for frame by frame

I am slowly coming to the realisation that I am waaay too finicky when it comes to basic drawing. Its slowing me down when it comes to making "quick" animations. Next week is a lesson dedicated to making several animations, only spending 15mins on each one. It will be a big lesson for me, and hopefully I can learn some techniques to loosen up with my style. Ultimately I would love to be able to do quick sketches and be happy with them. The cats animation probably took me twice as long at least than I should have spent on that task. Todays group discussion on the blog is a real help, it clarified what should be going into these blogs, and I feel like I am on the right track so far with them.

Digital Sculpture 22/3

Today was a day dedicated to finishing our proposals that are due tomorrow, it was really good to ask questions for clarification, having Vaughn for gaming on weds and sculpture on thurs is great for continuity. I submitted my proposal tonight, after rewriting parts of it several times. I definitely think I needed to get it submitted before I over complicate everything and end up ruining the whole assignment, and my sanity! My biggest problem, with all of the written proposals, is having no idea what Im doing. The whole concept is brand new to me, and knowing my personality, I tend to overthink everything and second guess myself to a fault. Now that two are out of the way, the marking results will give me some feedback that I can use to improve the other proposals due next month.

Film 22/2

Today we received the proposal information and due date. Handy for adjusting my wall planner as my time management is a work in progress and the wall planner seems to be helping visualise due dates. We also finished filming the class short, unfortunately we ran out of time to edit anything, but got to play around with some of the footage from last week a little bit. Premiere is a little confusing at first, but didnt take long to get a basic grasp on how to use, I think the mini tutorial I got from Chris during animation last week was definitely a help.

Gaming 21/3

Today was a class on finishing the proposal, it was really good to get clarification from Vaughn in regards to word counts and a chance to do a final go over before submitting it. The first one is always the hardest so it will be good to get feedback so I can figure out if Im on the right track or not. I also had another play with the autodesk character generator, and I think this second iteration is a better take on my characters look. Once wings are added I will be happier. Vaughns preliminary play in Unity with animation shows promise, not for flying but at least for walking around naturally with the wings on the back.

Digital Painting 19/3

More of the same today, working on our series of images. I am a little unsure as to whats supposed to be happening in this class so far, im hoping that will be made clearer soon. For now I will just continue with the lycanthropy theme and see where that takes me conceptually. Im really liking where this latest image is going, i think thats partially evolution and partly getting to grips with photoshop.

The different foreground has helped change the perspective, which fits the tail end of the series with the wolf leaving the village. I really like the Foliage brush that is part of photoshop, makes the ground and tree textures pop.

Digital Sculpture 15/3

This image came from our drawing session in practical sculpture this week, I think it could be turned into a digital sculpture in some form quite nicely. Two contrasting sides of the world back to back. I dont think it quite conveys the message I want it to but I think it would be a good starting point for this class.

More proposal work today, and turns out I was referencing wrong. Note to self, get a copy of the SIT library example for my home computer to refer to. I am now about halfway done, just need to get more artist model research and a conclusion. Friday is going to be proposal day, and get as many of the 4 done as I can. Being a hermit has its benefits sometimes.. lol

Animation 15/3

FINISHED!!! Finally! I have lost track of how many hours I have spent on this damn thing. Now im scared about how long my actual project will take. Unfortunately todays class was lost to trying to export our renders, Toon Boom was throwing massive hissy fits for some reason. There was one of my frames that it didnt like and so it would crash constantly. The work around for that, was to export two renders, either side of the annoying frame, and then combine them in Adobe Premiere afterwards.

Next weeks task intrigues me, animating some van gogh inspired, black and white landscape art.

Film 15/3

Today was the first time shooting scenes from a script I wrote. Score 1 for me! There is a lot of work that goes into shooting a few seconds of footage. No wonder movies take forever!

I need to start thinking about all the little things in regards to my own project, appropriate shots and  angles for each scene being one of them. It was a lot of fun though, however Im guessing that's because its just a class exercise and not serious lol. We have a couple of scenes left to shoot and then its on to editing. I am definitely entering the unknown zone now but it is definitely starting to get interesting. I definitely preferred being behind the camera directing and not acting in front of it, but Im not hating that as much as i thought i would.

Gaming 14/3

Today we got to play with Autodesk Character Generator. It was cool to get a 3d concept of what my character will end up looking like, however there is a few limitations ie. no wings options so I will have to add them in photoshop later. As a basic model program, this is a good way to hash out ideas and see how they translate from words/2d drawings into the 3d environment.

Aeliwina Darkstorm concept

Little Wheel review

The art style of Little Wheel is very simplistic, solid black over an ochre-brown background, almost silhouetting like a light box. The actual environment itself consists of basic black line drawings depicting a world full of metal towers and robots. There is nothing natural at all in this world, which fits the robot theme perfectly. 

The main character is a little robot, in a world of robots that have entered the "deep sleep" due to no electricity. After 10,000 years, our little robot is hit by a lightning strike which powers him up. Your mission is to reconnect the main generator so all the robots can come back to life. The main robot is endearing, in that he is a little bit clumsy, and keeps getting beat down on his mission but carries on trying to complete his task. This gives him almost a human feel, like Wall-E.

Figure 1.

The gameplay is a little challenging, small circles tell the user where to click, however there is no explanation as to which order you click them, or what is required so you must use your brain to think outside the box to complete each task. Each panel works nicely to advance the overall story, moving the main character towards to end goal of the generator, hooking up power cords and transport along the way.

Figure 2.

Overall, it is a very short game once you get the hang of it. A fun wee game for your brain that gives you 10mins of distraction.

Reference

Figure 1,2. https://www.kongregate.com/games/fastgames/little-wheel

Digital Painting 12/3

Today was a continuation of the last couple of weeks, working on our pictures. This week I was playing with composition and fixing straight lines in the picture. We have to create a series of images that all relate to each other/tell a story, but are not the same. Im digging the lycanthropy twist, and I think mythology would be a good idea for my main project.

The foreground needs changed, and some form of framing. Also need to get some sort of ground under the wolf, lighter version of foreground potentially.

Film 8/3

This week we were supposed to come up with a film script for next weeks class. Our usual classroom was off-limits due to a taster class being held, so we ended up staying in the student lounge. I dont know if this was such a great idea because we didnt really get much done. We have two options, Lajee's joke from last week, and she has already written it up into a script, or I came up with another short skit, spy vs spy style, that I am currently in the process of writing up. Im not sure which one will work best when we start filming, but will find out next week i guess lol.

Animation 8/3

This week we carried on with our animation, I still have a couple of hours work ahead of me which I will get done on monday morning all going well. I have a better understanding of how key frames work thanks to this weeks class although I do believe I need to tweak the ones I currently have set up. I need to look at my cats again to potentially put in some squash and stretch to enhance the running movements.

Figure 1. Squash and Stretch

Ref.
Figure 1. Squash and Stretch, David Derks, February 22nd 2016,  http://www.derksworld.com/squash-and-stretch-and-character-animation

Digital Sculpture 8/3

Todays class was a run-down on what is required for our proposal, and then starting to write the actual proposal up in power point. Im finding it a little bit harder mentally with sculpture just because the class is split in half, 1hr15min isnt really enough time to get into a groove and get lots done because you have to finish so quickly. Im hoping once we are onto the actual projects themselves, it will be easier to get going each week.

Gaming 7/3

Machinarium game demo review.

The artwork is very steampunky, but nice and cleanly drawn, it reminds me of the artwork in Footrot Flats with the way its drawn. Nice muted tones add to the futuristic, robotic vibe of the game. The environment is nicely drawn in that its not blatantly obvious when looking at it what places are interactive without mousing over the top, like the old school animations when you could see the animated panels because they were a different colour.

Figure 1. Machinarium

The main character is a little robot that you move around, as you complete tasks to move onto the next area. For example the very first set of tasks is to somehow find his missing arm and leg whilst stationary, and get across the gap in the middle of the screen. The tasks are not obvious, some requiring you to find two items and combine them in your inventory before they will become usable, others require changing height and twiddling with settings to find the right combination.
The sounds along the way are synced well with the movements, and discoveries that you make. There is a calming, peaceful background track throughout the game also, which I like because I can see some of the tasks becoming quite frustrating very quickly.
I like the concept of this game because it requires a lot of "out of the box" thinking to find the next clues however as I mentioned earlier, it could be rather frustrating if you get stuck. Especially when certain tasks require your robot to be in a specific location and/or height to trigger actions.

Figure 2. Alley

Overall, I quite like the game, giving it an 8/10 overall. I would be interested in buying the game, providing there is several levels, to create long gameplay.



References:

Figure 1. Machinarium, 2009, http://machinarium.net/wallpapers/cover_1280x1024.jpg
Figure 2. Alley, 2009, http://machinarium.net/wallpapers/alley_1280x1024.jpg

Digital Painting 5/3

Today we carried on working on our line drawings from last week.

This was the first concept, blurring the perspective between the man and the animal. I also made a translucent version to see what a more ghostlike/shadow image would look like. I like the fact that the solid wolf covers the awkward angle of the mountain, however the translucent image seems more shadowlike to me. The image almost invokes a sense of man and beast joined as one, as in the Lycanthropy myth.

This image was the second concept, insinuating a chase without seeing the actual participants, only their shadows on the wall. The size difference gives off an uneasiness, almost fear, as i think a lot of people can imagine the scary thing in the dark coming to get them. The foreground texture has muddied a bit too much, I need to go back with a bigger texture brush and get a bit more detail into it to simulate leaf litter more accurately. I am happy with how the river has turned out though.

Animation 1/3

Todays class was animating our short story from last week using frame by frame animation. Toon Boom still isnt loading so we are currently restricted to only being able to work on them during class which is unfortunate because I am taking longer than the others to get mine sorted. I have the background done but still have a lot of work to go on both the cats and the door movements. Hopefully it will be fixed by early next week so i can hang around after class and get it done. I have gone for a very basic drawing style for my animation, hoping to spend more time on the movement frames but that may backfire due to the large number of frames that i will need to complete. I only hope I havent bitten off more than I can chew.

First frame, Im still not sold on the colours but I'll see how it plays out.

Film 1/3

Today we are allowed to hang out on set while the 3rd years were filming as part of their boot camp this week. We were given the "baby" camera and a sound kit so we could take turns filming behind the scenes shots, which we managed to get some interesting stuff, and some funny/risque stuff. It was quite eye opening to see just how a working film set runs in person, of course because everyone was still learning there were a few speed bumps but overall it seemed to go pretty well. I learned just how tricky it can be for the boom operator to stay out of shot if there is a lot of lighting to cast shadows everywhere. It was good to get a feel for the tilt and pan drag on the tripod, and the weight of the camera itself in a setting other than just a quick play like we had in class previously.

Figure 1.

Reference

Figure 1. Vlogging, the Basics of Audio and Sound, Peter Ward, 2016 https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/video/tips-and-solutions/vlogging-basics-audio-and-sound

Digital Sculpture 1/3

Today we played around with photoshop and the cintiqs. Practicing using the pressure sensitivity settings for drawing and colouring.

The thought process behind this little sketch is from sitting on facebook and seeing the many random pages coming up that are all "like to send prayers to africa" or "like to save the tigers" and just how useless liking those pages actually is to a polar bear stuck in the middle of the ocean. The cellphone and coffee is a satirical take on the types of people that actually think liking a page will help the cause. I would like to make my end result for the digital work something with a little humour like this sketch, but not necessarily in this way.