Friday, December 13, 2019

Collaboration Reflective Statement



As an exchange student coming in without any prior knowledge of the course or the 3d software Maya, and generally little 3d experience, this project proved to be a challenge in several aspects. But regardless, it wasn't impossible, I wasn't 100% new to the concepts, and with the helpful guidance of the tutors and other students I could manage it in the best of my abilities while juggling the rest of the projects and my own existence in a foreign environment.

My specialty lies in 2d art, and that is what I planned to contribute here. That is not to say I was meaning to ignore learning or contributing in 3d aspects, quite the opposite, my intent was to deliver help with what I could consider my strong side, all while learning and giving a hand in the 3d aspects, but not as much to have my inexperience weigh the project down. I would like to say that at most part I achieved this intent.

I was assigned to deal with the concept art of the characters and their textures, and I think I managed to deal with this successfully. I did all the character concepts that we had planned for the initial idea, even though we managed to practically use only half of them. In terms of textures, I managed to texture all the models we needed for the skits that we ended up having without overworking on skits we wouldn’t tackle. So with this I could turn to helping with the animation and taking upon one of the scenes. Admittedly the 3d animation was a challenge and I only managed to do it as far as simple key poses that themselves could’ve been revised and better timed. The new medium took a toll on my speed and efficiency as well as quality, and even though 2d and 3d animation both have fairly similar concepts in the core, in the moments of execution it proved to be difficult for me.
Despite the challenge I learned a lot in the progress. Not only do I now know the basic use of Maya, such as the fundamental tools, shortcuts and techniques, I’ve also learned a lot of new things about 3d animation, modelling and the industry in general, which is knowledge that isn’t that accessible from where I come from.

If I had to do this again, I think I would possibly try and take up the reigns and perhaps give a hand at being director. The project has shown that I should work on my communication skills in a more professional manner in the future and to not fear taking upon some responsibilities in favor of progressing more. Unfortunately the conditions of being in a new environment and lack of experience in the course slowed me down and made me more sheepish, but I believe that this has been a valuable experience that I will carry with me to future projects. I’m incredibly thankful for the tutorship and help I’ve received, and can only hope that some of my small insights managed to help the people around me as well.

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

COLLABORATION and FILM REVIEWS - MASTERPOST

COLLABORATION


Final animated short


Making of:

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My contribution in the team was mainly to do with 2d work. I was responsible for the character concepts as well as texturing them on the UV layouts. I also did the backgrounds. In terms of animation I was responsible for the Valentines skit where i animated the static keyposes for any potential future continuation. The skit is the second scene in our film.

Posts of my works:





Film Reviews





Collaboration - Textures and Backgrounds

For our collaboration project I had to create the character textures and some of the backgrounds.

Here are the character textures and their previews, Several of these ended up unused in the final result.






Unused
Unused


And here's the backgrounds for few of the skits. The outside one ended up unused.



Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Toolkit 2: Life Drawing 10

Life drawing results of the last week of the term.





Toolkit 2: Character Design 10

On the last week of character design we were put in groups and had to create 3 new characters for a randomly given already existing title.

My group with Alexandra and Olivia were given Noddy, Toyland Detective.
Alexandra made the guest hero, a healthy food loving detective, Olivia made the sidekick/victim, a chef who's fridge was stolen, and I made the villain, a racoon who happens to steal fridges because of his love for food.

This mischievous critter is made of plastic and is very well but a very intelligent animal, to go with the kid friendly theme, making sure the villain in reality actually means no harm and simply might be misunderstood.



He lives in a cardboard box and already has another fridge he'd stolen from some family.

And a bonus task was to design the character as a car, in the surprise situation when a client might have some kind of spontaneous idea they wan't fulfilled.


Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Toolkit 2: Character Design 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9

Week 5

Facial Expressions

On week 5 we explored character expressions and how they can determine personality and convey emotion.
We started with human characters, then anthropomorphic items, and lastly animals.



The explorations with my project:

The protagonist has custom self-made eyebrows for better expression
The nobles change masks to express emotion


Week 6

Props and Sidekicks

As our task we were given a random a certain culture and had to choose an individual, and put it into a sci-fi setting as a sidekick.



Afterwards we were designing a sidekick for our lead character in our projects, regardless if it would show up in the end result.
Here are some more focused first concepts for the protagonist and the sidekick
Sidekick concepts are the mechanical birds in the lower right corner.

Week 7

Setting the Scene

For this we were tasked to choose and analyse the shots and staging of a film or show of our choosing.
I analysed a scene in Carmen Sandiego
Afterwards we had to come up with a chase scene in a randomly assigned location. Mine was airport.

Here's a rough start of a storyboard for my project. Visualising the entrance of the protagonist into the noble's mansion.

Week 8

Perspective

We were taught about the way to approach perspective and how best to construct it, being 1 point, 2 point or 3 point perspective. We were then tasked to utilize it within one of our own scenes as an animation layout.



Week 9

Production Bible

This week we were taught about the structure and design of a production bible and how to approach it for our own project.
This lead us to the basics of graphic design and we were tasked to design a logo of a randomly given theme and then design a poster for a movie of our choice.


In terms of project, here are the rough sketches and progress with concepts and turnarounds





Toolkit 2: Life Drawing 8 and 9


In these 2 weeks we had no live models, so on week 8 we were taught about the 'Rule of cool' and were to apply it to randomly generated prompts




On week 9 we discussed how to create believable environments and settings, what that consists and specific examples. We analysed Polar Express and were tasked of coming up with a more favored concept for it in groups.
My group with Chelsea and Alexandra came up with the idea that we would turn to a studio such as Studio Ghibli. The train in the film would be a lively thing, not only grounded but also flying as the train cars have features of different creatures, likely that of bugs, and the children that are transported with the train are actually the souls of children who are brought to santa to let them pass over to the afterlife.




Toolkit 2: Life Drawing 7

Here's week 7 of life drawing