A page dedicated to final year...
My passion for concept art in both traditional and digital media has only been strengthened during my time at University. I'm constantly amazed at the variety and imagination of creatives working all over the world - I'm fascinated by the way in which these visions are brought to life through the magic of animation / film and games and the ever changing technology of modern artists. These creations can have a profound effect on the individuals who see or interact with them. It's something I really want to be a part of...
1.
Simple butterfly I created for the animation - to add to the night scene. I want it to flutter around the shamans night lantern.
Managed to start a walk cycle for the shaman using pencil body parts and the puppet tool. I prefer to use different parts on layers as I find I have much more control and less squashing and stretching going on! Im experimenting with two lights, one yellow spot light follows the lantern, and there is a less obvious blue spot light following the shaman to gently light up the rest of the scene and the background.
2.
Simple butterfly I created for the animation - to add to the night scene. I want it to flutter around the shamans night lantern.
Been creating tests for fire using both photographic images (candle) and also hand drawn frame by frame fire with glow effect added in AE. Prefer the hand drawn effect!
10/03/12 Created a fire for the scene using particles but it doesn't really fit with the hand drawn character and settings. It doesn't look like it belongs in the scene so Ive decided to try again using a hand drawn fire... this will be created using around x5 hand drawn images of moving flames and Ill add a blur and glow effect to them. A more subtle use of AE to enhance the animation. The Secret of NIMH animation used back lighting for the characters eyes (Nicodemus) on a hand drawn character.
04/03/12 Screenshot of my animation (silhouette) using after effects, and the puppet tool.
23/02/12 Attended Manchester Digital yesterday ( http://www.manchesterdigital.com/ )
Was nice to go and check out other people in the creative industry and see what they are doing! Never a wasted day going to these things and they always give you some kind of inspiration.. the building the event was held in was Manchester Town Hall, it was an amazing venue!! I also got some really useful advice about how to write a creative C.V in a talk by Mr Mike Carter Director of Orchard. Orchard is the North of England's largest Digital, Creative and Marketing recruitment consultancy!
06/02/12 So I am at a point where I have a good idea of the look Im after for the animation. I have done some concept work for the characters and scenes, I now need to start planning the aftereffects that will be added to the scene so that I have plenty of time to make it all work. Two of the main effects will be a fire with flickering light and smoke with images appearing in the smoke. Online tutorials and 3 books on AE from the library for the rest of the week!
26/01/12 Thinking about the three main characters in the animation; 1 Nature. 2 Man/ Shaman. 3 Little wooden mask character. How they connect and the story.
Decided to create the animation (story) around the disappearance of the bees which is happening around the world at the moment. The story will be told visually on the totem pole in the scene. The little wooden mask has been created by nature to communicate with the shaman (man) although because he wears a mask, he is not recognised or feared by the little character and together they build the totem to tell natures story to the people of the world.
The Story. The scene I will concentrate on creating is where the mask and shaman have built the totem and they are sat together in the fire light. Nature is present but only the little mask can sense her. (She will visually fade like a ghost in and out of the scene). 29/11/11 The Story. My little wooden masked character represents the inner child. He see's the world through a child's eyes. Time has no meaning in his world, there is danger but its not recognised. There is beauty and magic all around in the simplest of objects. He has an important job but does not realise it.
My character is the link between spirits of nature (mother nature) and humans. The shaman communicates with the little totem character and then builds stories visually using a wooden totem for the people to understand and receive the messages. I want to show the importance of imagination and stories throughout generations and how they help us to communicate and form community around them. They help us understand and make sense of everything.
The animation will begin at a point in the story where the last magical old shaman has died and the connection has been lost between the masked character and the people. He is trapped still receiving messages from nature but unable to forward them on. He is lost and forgotten and the people do not see him. He exists only in his own world and time now- almost like a dream.
Nothing else matters or makes sense to the masked character except to continue to take his message to the shamans sacred totem and then return to the forrest, trapped in a cycle forever in the hope that one day his message will be found again.
He is made of wood. An object that once contained life. He wears a mask because he has no identity of his own. The mask is symbolic - it has meaning between the shaman and nature, it contains a message that only those who communicate recognise and understand.. It also protects the character. It conceals it from harm.
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27/11/11 The master plan breakthrough; I have my plans, artwork and basic outline for dissertation and project animation. What I really need now is a question for my writing. What am I trying to ask? what new thoughts can I bring to it all. Also with regards to my animation, I know I have been playing it too safe. So far my greatest ambitions and ideas have been well and truly locked away and hidden, as I have been too scared of my technical ability and therefore holding well back with my ideas. Its time to take a risk. I want my animation to be a beautiful artistic piece, but I also want it to have a story and deep meaning. The best way to move forward I think is to make it personal to me. A personal story that I can relate to and tell. I need to work as though I had all the technical elves in the world to help me create my vision and see what happens! Im going to create and plan and see what the hell develops as my final masterpiece! or not as the case may be... I feel good.
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14/11/11 My dissertation has also transformed from simply werewolves into masks and identity.. how they are used and the deeper meanings surrounding our physical and mental state.
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07/11/11 Dissertation: Transformation is about werewolves (lycanthrope) how they have been portrayed throughout history and where they come from, the character and how the werewolf has evolved and so on. The book of werewolves Sabine Baring-Gould is a great place to start...
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23/11/11 Masks are the most ancient means of changing identity and of assuming a new persona. The urge for human beings to transform ourselves has co-exhisted with the development of the human society. We are surrounded by masks everyday in the modern world. If you were to watch the news or read a magazine, you would see many familiar mask images such as; surgeons, activists, bee keepers, astronauts and more... whether these masks are worn for protection, identification of to conceal identity, their modern day purpose is simply an extension to those worn and used by our ancient ancestors.
Shamans negotiate with spirits and part of the shamans responsibility is in warding off evil and danger, providing protection to their communities. The mask plays a vital role in the shamans rituals. It is believed to offer protection and is seen as a kind of armour. When dealing with physical or spiritual dangers, the shamans attire is meant to present a powerful and foreboding presence. Throughout the ages, the mask has been re-invented creating evermore fantastic body protection in competition with other cultures to ensure their communities survival.
Review of Dog Soldiers - 21/10/11
Camera constantly moving at the start of the film. Reality of the werewolves is dependant on the believability of the actors playing the part of the soldiers. This is a Soldier movie with werewolves in it and not vice versa.
The soldiers needed to be gritty, believable and authentic to create a good base of realism for the creatures.
The movie creates this base by focusing on the relationship between the soldiers and how that is affected through the events that follow.
Bob Keen - Visual effects (werewolf creator) believes CGI is overused in Hollywood. "CGI can wow you with its effect but in doing so takes you away from the story". For Dog Soldiers, the directors wanted to have viewers feeling what the soldiers are going through and relating, understanding what they are going through. Not easy to accomplish with CGI. The director compares the movie with An American Werewolf in London and claims that that film had the very best transformation scene, but the werewolf was too much like a dog... The Howling had a great werewolf but you hardly ever saw it. The werewolf they created was whippet like in the chest / torso but with human like arms. Dave Bonnywell (werewolf designer) said that having a physical werewolf that the actors could interact with and not CGI actually helped to make it more convincing and inspired the actors, especially the fighting scenes.
07/11/11 I emailed a lady today who has written an interesting article about storytelling and the common symbols of transformation used in fairy tales and so on.. I hope I get a response and will update with any advice on the subject that I receive! It should be of great use in writing my dissertation and also with my character design for final year project. Watch this space...
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02/11/11 Animation Idea: Ok, Ive been filling in a sketchbook for my final year animation and have gone through werewolves, creatures, part man and part animal and have finally settled on an idea.
The final output will be an animation (2-3min long) starting with an animatic of still artwork which will tell the story / history.. then this will fade to present a 3d scene in which you will be introduced to my little character who will drop into shot in some long grass and then look at the camera.. then I want his eyes to glow red. He is a little totem character and he has human features apart from his large head which is built to look like a large mask made from wood, similar to the kind of face you would find on a totem pole. He is an ancient spirit who comes alive in times of need. (A little like the animations; Brother Bear crossed with Mulan).
Making it a reality: In 3D a scene in which I will have (1) a matte painting for the background, (2) I will use the same process that we used in first year to create trees to create stems of grass by adding images to a plane and then adding some opacity to leave an imprint of a blade of grass on each one. These will be placed in front of the camera view to make it seem that there is a field of grass. A wind effect will be added for the breeze. (3) My main character will be modelled in 3D (4) and textures created in photoshop. (5) I want to include some small glow bugs (as its a scene at night) flying in the field and also the characters eyes need to glow red at the end of the scene - I will use aftereffects for this and also to put the whole thing together.
Process:
- Build some prototypes - using paper make a simple model of the scene I want to build in 3D and using a camera experiment with the motion and position of all of the models and camera angles.
- Storyboard the 3d animation and animatic.
- Create the matte painting and artwork, Build and rig the character in 3d.
- Build the 3d scene - lighting and wind effect etc.
- Animate the main 3D scenes as still shots so that I have the very basic animation from start to finish. When Im happy with the set up I will animate the in-between frames
- Add special effects in aftereffects.
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10/10/11 Questions to answer / research for dissertation.
- Why use models / actors instead of CGI characters? - advantages?
- (Movies) Does this benefit the cast and crew - acting with green screen?
- How do the costs compare?
- What other effects / methods are used to create convincing CGI characters and environments along with the 3D software?
Ive also been considering the design of my character. In the making of '9' I was really impressed how the artists put so much detail and thought into everything they create, the period that the movie is set in is kind of between world war 1 & 2. They use a small pallet of colours but push the lighting to make dramatic effect. The twins are made from a pair of gardening gloves. The first shot of the collapsed building that '9' finds himself in pans out from a hole in the wall where the robots originally broke through (although we are not shown this in the movie).
Project - I want to come up with a theme before I create my character. They need a history and a time to belong in. Once I have the environment I can concentrate on who or what might live in this environment and what purpose would they have to help make a more solid character design.
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07/10/11 Studio - For my final year studio project Im thinking about working in 3D to create a character / environment animation, mixing this with other medias such as photos / photoshop / real images to see how blending these together can create a more believable version of the character / environment visually. I also want to focus on movement and how to create a believable CG character that moves realistically. This carries on from 2nd year where I looked at creating believable textures for use in 3D to make my characters look like watercolours (creating a 2D effect) using 3D environment. I will start with the design and look of the character then model and rig this in 3D.
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05/10/1 CG v's Actors - Spent the last couple of days looking at the 'makings of' on some of our DVD collection. So far watched Alien 3 (to compare with the first Alien) which used a lot more CG animation. Tim Burtons Alice in Wonderland - interesting how he has blended CG with real actors to create a more believable world with characters and the making of the animation '9'.
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03-10-11 As I've decided to focus on 3D modelling this year I have been looking at others in the industry. Someone who I have focused on is Rick Baker. I started looking at the films he had been involved in and found the following interviews (see links below). They were really interesting because the more I looked at some of the biggest 3D modellers in the film and game industry, the more I realised that a lot of these people had started out in the make-up and prosthetics departments.
I started to wonder why it was decided that the Wolfman (staring Anthony Hopkins and Benico Del Toro) would be filmed mostly using traditional masks and make-up rather than all digital.
What is it about the movement of a CGI character that is never 100% accurate? How is it we can always tell when something is not quite real? Its this movement and look of characters that Im interested in researching. Another favourite movie of mine that could be compared for this is the Alien movie with Sigourney Weaver. The first was created with actual models and puppets, but as the sequels were produced more and more CGI was introduced. How do they compare?
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29-09-11
Researching character ideas for this years project! reading reading and more reading...
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27-09-11
Returned yesterday and discussed in studio the individual theme ideas for our final year projects.
I have decided that I want to continue working on creating concept art using both digital and traditional methods. The area I wish to focus on is character development and environments for the film and game industry. I lean towards fantasy and creature art as thats what fascinates me the most but it also means that through the research and development of characters and environments I can include other passions such as my love for watching movies and animations, nature documentaries and history! All should prove valuable. I also want to take my designs into 3D so I can focus not just on the look of the character but also on the movement of the body as I think this can have a massive impact on how a character is perceived visually and can help give character to the design. Learning to model professionally will certainly be the most challenging part for me but its a skill I would love to have and Im looking forward to the work! Ive began researching others in the industry and Massive Black based in San Francisco is a good example of the kind of thing Im aiming for. The animation showreel on the site has some 3D game creatures but the focus is not on narrative but movement. Massive Black Another of my new heroes; Alex Alvarez (Director and President) of The Gnomon Workshop. www.alexalvarez.com/blog/
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