Animation diary

Task: make a funny film in the mould of the silent films of the start of the 20th century. My main character will be a robot so the aesthetics will be far from 1910, so the main “selling” point will have to be the animation itself. Having looked at some old films I am further turned off the idea of trying to emulate one, not only are they black and white the films frame rate is low making the whole production look stiff and full of brakes. The actors themselves also seem to try there best to over exaggerate their movements making them look less human.

For my robot project I have decided to abandon the 20’s theme and replace it with an acne theme. Not only am I far more familiar with the loony toons I also think they are funnier. Given that the loony toons are also completely fictional there is also far less restraint. For the funny I think I’ll do something like the road runner cartoons. Where every one but the coyote know what’s about to happen until the last few seconds when whily figures it out but by then its far to late.

In the grand scheme of things I think I would want to be a modeller, I find great enjoyment creating the shapes and constructing the pieces, I would liken it the sculpting out of clay. The same can not be said about rigging, I have never sat down to accomplish a task that has given me more of a head ache. Know trial and error is the best way to learn and I have no problems with the trial bit it’s the error that does my nut in. I have discovered that with minimal input I can destroy any rig know to man

The importance of good rigging is now becoming apparent. I always thought that the point of programs like max was to make the animation easy, for max to do this your rig needs to be solid, mine is not. This means I have ended up correcting the movement frame by frame any way.

My final piece
I’m not entirely happy with my final piece as you can tell it was my first attempt as such at such a thing. I really need to learn how to rig as that is where I let myself down. If the rig was better the animation would have been to. Balls


MY Place IN the 3D pipeline
As it stands I said I wanted to be a modeller this has now changed. I think I can already model, given enough time and a bit of lateral thought you can make anything you want out of basic shapes and the lovely tool edit poly. Rigging is the skill I want to learn, any one can model but to take a model and bring it to like as it where is real skill and that’s what I am know aiming at.

Journal task

Research can help me achieve my goals in many ways. The first and for most is it informs my desetion making. I want to work on the special effects for film and to do this I will need to research which studios are doing the kind of work I want to do, by looking at which films each of them are working on.

Descriptive research is the one I am most drawn to as through it I can lean something new.

I don’t feel weary of any kind of research although I utilise some more than others.

I feel that no form of research is irrelevant. However some forms are more suited to different tasks, for example if you where designing a avatar but wanted to see what other avatars where out there you would use a descriptive policy as you are looking into a specific area. But if you needed to look at your own personal development you would conduct interim research.

The Flash is done and it feels like i'm 20 kilos lighter. i think asking us to learn flash in 1 week was a bit much, especialy as we got 3 weeks to do the 1 shot. however i'm happy with the result and did enjoy making it. hopfully the embed will work but if not check out my deviant art its under the name matter1901


Chase and his Case by ~Matter1901 on deviantART

one shot crit

The one shot film in my opinion was not a success and there are several reasons for this. The first is the narrative is a bit overloaded. With sub-titles and voice over’s it hard to follow anything. The opening lines also go to quick for u to really read and so the viewer misses what’s being said. The voice over’s themselves sound tiny and artificial which detracts from the over all affect. The camera operation was also lacking. The cameraman stopped recording to soon at the end of the scene, which made it hard to edit the end of the scene with out it looking abrupt. However the concept was sound and I wouldn’t mind doing it again. Maybe with proper actors who don’t mind taking their time with it? This project was also a very pleasant experience from the team working perspective. Every one was more than happy to give ideas and take part in at least some part of the production. This was most telling in the concept stage, as the final idea is quite a leap from the original and the complexity of the concept is credit to the way the group brainstormed together.

contrast task

Two simple images with a colour in them changed to a contrasting colour. I have left in some of the original colour so you can see what it used to be.

really good seminar

The lighting seminar
The lighting seminar, in my opinion was a great success. I have never really given that much thought to lighting before and in hindsight this was a big mistake. From the photos you can see that with the correct lighting you can make even dull situations look cool. So imagine what you could do on a cool looking set. It was a definite eye opener and something I will have to think about in future.

the one shot begins

One shot.
We have finally settled on an idea for our one shot concerning a meeting. It’s a couple meeting after a one-night stand (this is the exact kind of theme you get if you let us do what you want). The girl was very drunk and upon seeing him again regrets it. The conversation will be sub titles and her thoughts will be audio. Some photos of us scouting for a location.