The Brilliant Design Lecture - Huddersfield!

Ok, been to the Brilliant Design Event in Huddersfield today... was very good. Was great to see how the speakers including Mr Bingo, made it into the industry. What inspired them and the glimpse into their world as professional designers and creators!

I think I found Jason Bruges, Rob Chiu and Mr Bingo's speeches and slides the most inspirational and interesting. Robs movies really made me want to include video and music in my animations. I imagined watching the film without sound and I don't think they would have been quite as affective. Lesson of the day... the right sound or music can change the way you view any images.

Jason Bruge - I liked the way he worked... the studio and all the gadgets, I would love to work in an environment like that... cant wait to have my own little space surrounded by all my favourite images, art books and stuff one day!

Mr Bingo - As he started out as an illustrator I could probably relate to him the most. Illustration is one of my strong points and it was nice to see someone who had developed his style to work for lots of different kinds of projects. Art for galleries, skateboards, animation and for websites...

www.thebrilliantdesignlecture.org

lipSync

Second project for the summer holidays... get used to creating images in illustrator rather than stay in my comfort zone using photoshop. Wish I could have done my lipsync illustrations in it, they would have looked so much better and professional... Wasn't happy with the grainy animations I ended up with!

My personal textures & image library

I've decided to create a library of my own to include a collection of images and textures for use in 3ds max and my design projects.

Everything from clouds, grass, stone, fur, wood, fabrics etc.

This will be a nice little project for over the summer holidays and should prove very useful...

The idea came from a little colour swatch I did for my game design - I had a collection of photos of some old tiles which I took colours from using the ink dropper in photoshop to create a matching colour scheme.

exam! presentation - animation progress

Seem to have learned more in this last week than the whole of the last month... Amazing what you can achieve when under pressure. Unfortunately dont have a lot to show for it but certainly feel more confident!

Had to build an emergency biped in 3dmax in record time before heading out because of a lighting problem when it came to render my animations... turns out my original was fine, just had the automatic exposure setting wrong! Ah well, I can now complete lessons 1 & 2 in basic biped modelling with my eyes closed.

3dsMax Bible

In need of this baby... Bible arrived today for 3dsmax 2010. Some heavy bedtime reading now and then it should be game on! Avatar here I come

Soundfiles in Flash

Been trying to figure out why oh why my MP3 audio file will not work in flash!!! Followed step by step instructions however have been informed that flash can be picky when it comes to playing MP3's created in certain software.

I have tried converting my sound file into an MP3 using apples itunes... audacity is useless as it needs a lame file and is all very confusing.. I dont have soundbooth as used at Uni by Rob. Managed to google help and found a helpful blog which explained how to convert sound file into a wav as this is more flash friendly, depending on bit rates etc (it gets complicated).

Im pleased to say it has worked and my snail is ALIVE and talking!

Huge sigh of relief.

WalkCycle

Gona have to jot down the spacing along the timeline to get the movements to stay at a consistent speed and look more realistic in 3ds max... Also planning my moves along the time line will help to decide at what frame to make the moves and how long my movie should be.

Reading up on Max has certainly helped me in getting to grips with the layout. Having that bit more understanding its beginning to make more sense. Little things like I thought 'shrink' and 'grow' was to alter the size of the object, but no, its to shrink or grow your selection of that object... Knowing my way around this software is key I think. Once I understand it more, I can concentrate on using the tools! But I'm feeling more comfortable now.

Had forgotten the settings for video output so had to dig out the basic vehicle tutorials from beginning of term. Going to copy these key reference notes up in writing and keep with me as my own personal help manual that I can quickly access to save time and maintain sanity!

3dmax Mushroom!

Have been reading up on 3dmax over Easter and did an online tutorial to continue with learning my way around the interface... Created a 3d mushroom!