VISUAL STUDIES: Matte painting :)

Very pleased with this first attempt with real images... lots more to master but happy with the overall effect...!

VISUAL STUDIES: Environments

Found some useful sites for 3d environments such as; flashloaded.com showing details of how to create 3d depth from images using layers and lighting.

Been looking at other examples too on youtube and vimeo sites...

http://vimeo.com/groups/3889/videos/16809107

Need to experiment with creating the best image to use for the animation... ( digital matte painting or hand drawn illustration )?

matte painting No01 !

My first attempt at matte painting... Really enjoyed it once I got stuck in.

Not satisfied with the result as yet... getting the balance between loose detail and too much fine detail is more tricky than I thought it would be. Its a better effect to let the details stay sketchy and the imagination of the observer to take over I think!

Importing sound files - after effects

Best online tutorials for After Effects seem to be on Video Copilot website. Going to give this one a go to help with my sound file for the shoe taxonomy animation Im finishing. Fingers crossed!

Digital Media and Culture - Waking Life by R Linklater

Although I found this film extremely interesting I just felt that it went on for too long and therefore wether the content was interesting or not I began to stop absorbing what was being said -

The animation was good but it looks as though a lot of it is just traced images so not so amazing... Worth a watch, inspirational cleverly done and thought provoking but a bit too long.

D & AD Competition

Been trying to think of a character for the D&AD competition - Disney brief... have realised now how many subjects and characters Disney and Pixar have covered in the last 10 or so years, they have done just about everything.

So I have turned to some research in Myths, and legends for inspiration.

Disney storys often have messages and meaning entwined with a good measure of humour and wit... The brief specifies that the character must appeal to children aged 4 - 14 years. Thats a pretty wide audience but I figure if its to appeal to young ones it needs to be cute in some ways... and for the older kids it needs to be amusing and cool to keep them interested. Hmm...

taxonomy-Shoe project

Have started again with the animation using after effects this time. Has taken me all morning but I'm finally there with all the content and layers. Just need to tidy it up and add my sound file now. Can play with the effects a bit more for the images that appear. Would be good to practice using a different effect for each images that scrolls across the top of the animation.