Maya urg!

Ok so as I waffled on about further down I have a world in a room update! dun du da dum!

Ok so one of the things I forgot to mention about the world in a room project in my last post is that it is to be completed in two different media. One in the CG software Maya and the other is to be a stop motion puppet animation (sort of, there's a real set and an armature). This post is about learning to use maya and how annoying it is but how excellent it is when you succeed at something.

Last semsester I was taught how to do little things on 3DS max so I had minor experience in a cg software before. However maya is so confusing. I think I'm getting it now but I still have more than 100 questions for our other technician when he gets back from where ever on Earth he is. So why am I boring you with this you ask? Well because I have pictures of my modelling successes and a small screen blast or whatever maya calls it, to share with you!

so here are two screen shots of Norman (The CG model we were given) He's to be placed into poses that express how he feels at points in the animation. He's looking very dismayed in the second one there and very expectant in the first. In retrospect the first now kind of looks like he's asking for the forgiveness but he's not meant to do that at any point.

So here's my first piece of animation. It's a screen blast which means maya rendered it for me by taking screen shots of each cell individually and running it together to create a quick time. This means it still comes with Normans rigging which distorts the picture a bit but I like it because it shows the process. It's a real progress shot. Here you go!

 

so there's the video there. It's not long but I'm pretty pleased with it. I was trying to get things to be a little less synced with each other however every time I changed it Normans natural rhythm made it seem like it was all synced up again. I really can't see a solution to that problem so I will just live with it. It doesn't really bother me and It's not crucial to the animation at all. I just worried it would look like I wasn't trying. Which I am, he's just going to look really well synchronised with himself. 

The jewellery colab

So this one I can't talk as much about because I came in a week after the project started and all the plans had been decided and set in motion so I can skip all the "here's my plan and why" crap.

But my group decided to make a thaumatrope or two. Thaumatropes are those magical spinning discs that puts birds in cages and such. we have made two. Well we made three but we didn't do one right. My group decided to create them based on circus' and victorian things. So there's a punch and judy one and a jack in the box one.

Then they also made a optical illusion which involves putting several pictures cut into stripes behind another set of stripes with the same intervals printed on acetate. The movement allows you to see one cell at a time and because of this as you move the first set of stripes the image moves. My group have created a box in which to slide them into and close for a compact illusion. There are a total of three of these illusions in the box.

In addition to these optical toys (of which I am going to create a number of in my free time because they're awesome) We are creating a collection of phonotropes as well. Phonotropes are fabulous. I have created some before in a project I mentioned before. They were great fun and I got a lot of inspiration from them. This time round I decided to try a bit more coherence with them. Which was directly ignoring advice from jared but there are plenty of tropes and lots of possibilities. Again these tropes are circus themed. So my current phonotrope has a seal balancing on a ball with another ball balancing on his nose. My colleague Ana's trope includes clowns, elephants and snakes at the moment. We're hoping it looks really snazzy in the end.

Anyway that's the project. I will update you later with some images of the finished pieces in their exhibition space on Monday.

world in a room idea

It occurred to me earlier today whilst planning my latest update to this blog, which was going to be about my progress in this semesters arcing project, when I realised that you would have no idea what I was talking about as I haven't actually told you what that project is yet!

I actually have two projects at the moment; there's world in a room and also a collaboration with jewellery. My collaboration with jewellery finishes this monday so expect a post about that following this one. World in a room however runs till the end of next month (because someone's bad at maths).

The aim of the world in a room project is to get us focuses solely on the animation itself. We have been given a set and an armature and we are allowed to do very little to dress both the character or the  room. The characters are allowed faces but they must have the same face which makes it hard. We are also given a basic story. Two characters both in a room with little more than a door. Both characters are reacting to a situation our choosing. We must animate their emotions in this situation. Lastly these characters must come together through the use of a knock. One must knock upon the door and the other must answer that knock. How we approach this is up to us as is how we edit them together to great one narrative from two stories. 

Ok so there you have the basic bones of my challenge. Now here's what I did with it.

My decision came from a situation I am sure everyone has been in. And let's be serious, more than once. I aim to make my film about the moment between an argument and an apology. That sort of limbo state where nearly everything you should have said, wish you'd said or wish you hadn't runs like a faucet through your head, occasionally escaping through your eyes. (what just happened?) Accompanied by the all the possibilities for a fix or to flip the situation on it's head. blah blah blah you know the deal argument happens, someone's pissed and someones sad. So these are my characters.

Anger and sadness/fear. One character slow moving and rigid. The other fast moving with large gestures. I wish to keep some cards close to my chest for now but here are the storyboards for my each character's story. The red is anger and the blue is sadness/fear.

They're a little hard to read and to figure out but once I've finished the animatics and get them uploaded they will be a little clearer.

As for this post I am pretty bored of talking about my ideas and stuff. I will probably elaborate on them in later points when talking about specific things but right at this moment I am going to end this post and start another. 

My little trip through Disney's animation thingy

I'm really running out of varying ways to start post now. *sigh* you'll just have to deal with my mediocrity...

Right! This is of so much importance to my animation career I can't not tell you all. I went to Disney World... for the 4th time in my young life. Anyway I didn't just passively ignore my animation duties and I did you see some animators while I was there!

Here I am, visiting the animation studios at Disney's Hollywood studios. 

Here's the animation theatre where they teach you to draw a Disney character!

Here is the inside of the room with our animator Don. Can you guess which character we got to draw?

It was Merida! Couldn't actually believe it! Actually Scottish people are the only people who can actually pronounce Merida properly. Everyone else gets it wrong. That's my Merida there. Sorry it's on it's side. It's late and I cba rotating it.

Then Don asked us which one of Merida's brothers shares a name with another Disney triplet and we were like pfft how easy is this question and when we told him it was Huey he gave us his drawing and here we are!

Anyway there's also the character department! In here I got to see the concept art for Big Hero 6, watch animators as they worked and take a small seminar on character design. It was all about how they designed Mushu. Originally Mushu was two dragons D: Oh my goodness!

Beneath here is some of the other concept art from the general concept art gallery. 

Now here's me with animator Jennifer Mathews who today was the animator that sat and drew characters on repeat so we can buy them. I bought a Jack skellington last time I was over and he's awesome. I got to chat with her about disney and stuff and it was really cool.

This guy down here. This is Greg. Greg here is one really cool dude. He illustrates for disney and he made the 2011 disney symbol which was used everywhere! He was really proud of himself. He makes brilliant computer generated oil paintings with tones of hidden mickeys in them and we spent a lot of time looking for them. He was a lot friendlier than the animators and I know because I met 4 animators and most of them did very little talking. Greg however signed a park map he designed for me and gave me his business card and told me to contact him when I made it big. Really cool guy.

The animating station in the art of disney shop where you get to watch animator animate.

Just a cute little reference here. I spotted this on the ceiling in planet hollywood.

just throwing them in there because why not. I met lots of animated characters too.

.... And Doc. Because It's Doc... Come on everyone loves Back to The Future.

So to explain this, in Disney all the important people to the Disney corporation who pass away get a spot on one of the windows in main street. Look it's my name!

Lastly this board sits outside the animating theatre and includes the portfolio requirements for Disney I look at it every time I'm there.

The Edinburgh Project

Now onto some serious animation stuff. I have been on holiday the last two weeks and because of this I have rather a lot of things to update here. I'll start with this semesters first project. It was a joint project between all of the years except fourth.

The aim of the project was to create a film about a street in Edinburgh. However you did it, it was supposed to make you think about that street. My team had some trouble at the beginning. We had picked the Grassmarket but we were all to courteous towards each other that no one wanted to push their idea and we initially were planning to make a very bland, historic account of the Grassmarket. Luckily the opportunity to see our idea in the grand scheme of things put us in a place to come up with a better one.

Unfortunately in the end, thanks to an irritating computer error we couldn't get our first edit done. Which meant when it came to the crit we were showing a film that very much could have done with more editing. But time was just wasn't on our side. None the less in the end we created this film as we continued to edit with a better view of things. We decided not to worry about upsetting each other and to just look at what footage and things we had in order to make a film that held together well.

https://vimeo.com/108386861   (Sorry that it's a link, blogger won't let me inbed a video unless it's from youtube *rolls eyes* quit it google!)

So this wasn't the only part of the project, the other half was very much focused on how we worked together as a group and how we learn to structure ourselves to each other. This, for our group, was the successful part of our project. I was in a group with a lot of very introverted and shy people who I feel really came into their own in this project. Initially we couldn't pick strengths and weaknesses, however as time passed we could see each others strengths and weaknesses and learned to stop being quite so extremely polite to each other and push for things we really believed in. Alan believes that it took us the three weeks to learn how to work with each other and I believe he's correct as most of our best collaborative work came from after the end of the project.

I think we learnt a lot from how to work with each other from this. I know we learnt that;

• Rules need established early or things will begin to drift and merge and before you know it, it's chaos.
• Don't be afraid to push for something you really want to do. This is how good films are developed - from passion and a love for what you do.
• Separating people into component parts of the film is how you produce a strong film. Other wise your only as strong as your groups mean.
• Respect is key. But use it wisely. Too little and no one will work with you, too much and you risk making a film no one wants to make, or getting walked all over.
• Constructive criticism is how everyone moves forward. We all need it and we should not be scared to dish it out or to receive it.
• And most importantly communication is essential. There's no point in suffering in silence. If you need something, want to change something, want to compliment someone or are unhappy let someone else in your group know. People should not have to do projects they really don't enjoy and so we need to know how to make you happier. Plus communication makes it easier to keep tracks on the projects timing, meetings and progress.

So that about wraps up this project, I'll edit this post to let you see some pictures of the process as soon as I can scrape enough up to make it worth it. See you all later.

More EIFF for you

I found photos of the film festival! I knew I had some and they were on my mum's phone. So here they are. There's not very many and because I'e already spoken about the film festival in the post below I'm just going to extend it up here before I start talking about other things. (some really awesome things coming up after this btw) 

So this is as much of the ECA gang as I could round up on very first night. It was awesome. It was in the museum and it was gorgeous all light up like it was. You should all go one time.

Me and Kayla, waiting for Andrew to bring us back another drink and Shannon went to get flat shoes. We wished we'd thought of that.

This is the closing night, which was at ECA. This night was amazing! We met Simon Helberg! again you should all really try going. Great people, great fun and you learn a lot about the film industry.

There are my photos! there are more but they are all really silly photobooth photos of me and my mum or me and other animators which really have no place on this clearly very very serious animation blog.