So I start back this week, as a scary second year *gasp*, we had our introduction session yesterday and have ADVANCED MAYA SKILLS tonight.
That probably would have terrified me a year ago, but this year, I'm actually quite looking forward to it. It's optional, but I plan to go to as many as I can before my mind becomes over-saturated with polygonal crazies.
I'm also going to attempt to model this: It's my Dad's 1970 Karmann Ghia (called Audrey). I must be a masochist. Hopefully I'll have modelled it by his birthday (July 10th... giving me a pretty lengthy ammount of time, and most likely sanity, to try and achieve it).
I'm putting my "Summer" animation on the back burner for now, I really would like to finish it, but my Uni work is going to come first (plus I've temporarily run out of ideas... hopefully christmas will bring some more inspiration for it).
So, I've finished and handed in my Maya project. It's been a bit of bitch and times, but it's finally completed. I realise now that I should've blogged as I went along to document my progress, but I've spent so much of my time working on it this week (and playing Heavy Rain...AWESOME). Luckily, I have over a dozen renders that have documented my progress. I still consider myself to be pretty crap at Maya (and when Georg sees my texturing I'm sure he'll probably agree...), but I'm pleased I've actually managed to create something AND texture it AND the final result looks pretty good.
So, from the beginning, my rough plan, based loosely upon my background project interior I changed it from a bedroom to a sitting/living room, purely because I had far more ideas about what I could put into the room (and the fact that I thought it would be easier to model a sofa than a bed). First baby steps into Maya, with a very basic sofa: The sofa is probably the object that has undergone the most transformation. I had lots of ideas on what to fill the room with, (close competitors were a fish bowl and fruit bowl) but I decided on making a bookcase and a coffee table as my main bits of furniture. Things like the canvas 'painting' and the rug were made up as I went along. The first lights went up on the window-wall, but I actually enjoyed myself(!) when it came to making the standing lamp, I love the shadows it casts. I really got into the swing of modelling objects (despite their basic-ness) I'm pretty pleased that they actually look lifelike(ish). A little close-up of my TV (with static white noise!) and bookcase (which I didn't realise had super shiny reflective books till it came to near the end...) Wallpaper texture, also shows the full shape of the room and the ceiling was quite possibly the most annoying thing to get right: I couldn't get the rug to look right, and when I tried to get to texture the floor the rug was stuck to it, so it got deleted, with the intention of returning, but I liked the reflections left on the floor by the table, so it was never put back in. The floor was also super-reflective when I first put the texture on it. Aaaand, the final thing: With a pretty occulent render (that Olly wanted me to do...), it makes the sofa look pretty cool:
I’ve been meaning to get round to talking about Bradford again (like I promised a good while ago). I’ve hunted out some of my favourite films I saw on YouTube, and provided the links so you can have a cheeky peek at them (and either agree with me on how cool they are, or completely disagree).
The Professional Films I have to say, if I’m brutally honest, I thought the quality of the student films were (dare I say it?) better than the professional ones. The Student ones have been proved much harder to find online, probably because they’re still owned by the Colleges that made them, two of the films I really liked (“Bruce” by Tom Judd & “I See What You’re Saying” dir. By Lottie White), came from the RCA but even though they’re mentioned on the website, there’s no link to see the films, which is a shame.
The Cat Piano Directed by Eddie White & Ari Gibson (Australia/2009/8mins, 23secs) I really loved the style of both this film and the one below, the story is a pretty strange one but engages your attention all the way through which some of the other professional films didn’t succeed in doing.
Lettin’ Go Directed by Malika Whitaker (France/2008/5mins) I love the style used for this, it almost looks like it has been drawn with spray paint and stencils, I also like the looseness to the story, I style can’t really figure out the ending and what has supposed to have happened to the male character. Other films I really liked in this category were “French Roast” directed by Fabric O Joubert (France/2008/8mins, 15secs) and “Alma” directed by Rodrigo Blaas (Spain/2009/5mins, 2secs), both were done in 3D and are simply amazing animations. They both won awards, but sadly I couldn’t find videos for them.
Commercials I love animated adverts so much, they make a nice break from the normal low budget adverts that are constantly repeated. I only saw this advert on TV a couple of times so was really pleased when it was featured at BAF (and won the Commercial award). It’s a clever combination of 2D and what must be Pixilation, I also love the song that goes with it, it fits really well, and you’ll see why:
Audi Unboxed
Panoramas
Photograph of Jesus Directed by Laurie Hill (UK/2008/6mins, 40secs). I really like this one (well, I like all of them which is why I’m writing about them), but I think this one is pretty clever, it uses Cutout and Collage with Pixilation which is something I’ve been really tempted to do myself at some point (who knows, I could try it out over Christmas...). It’s also a visual piece that goes with a spoken interview (like Creature Comforts).
Loof and Let Dime Directed by Vereshchak Roman (Russia/2008/2mins, 31 secs). This is similar to “Photograph of Jesus” in that it creates a visual to spoken words, but it couldn’t be more different. A lot of my fellow students disliked this film, but I thought, even though it wasn’t one of my favourites, it was worth talking about. It creates a visual to a nonsense repeated poem, even though the images it uses don’t have anything to do with the words being spoken, I love how the text travels around the screen, it reminds me of a similar thing on of my classmates did in foundation.
It’s been nice to be able to watch the videos again and write about them, I can’t believe Bradford was nearly a month ago! It’s not nice when you realise just how quickly time has slipped through your fingers!
Once again, the reason for lack of updates is down to the epic FAIL of the internet connection at Glasney View. I wrote this update on the 3rd of December and have only just been able to upload it!
We had to take the walk cycle a step further, by having to animate our own walks! We got filmed walking along: a normal walk and a silly one and were told we had to animate one (or both of them) in 2D and 3D. I chose to do my normal walk (my silly walk wasn’t silly at all, it was supposed to be a sad walk, but i’m a terrible actress – I did drama in Year 12 for one of my AS-levels but was cringe worthy awful when it came to the physical acting side of it!).
I actually found this task easier to do on Maya (SHOCK) than I did drawing it – but I think this is because I tried to get my figure looking as life-like (or at least as human-like and in proportion) as I could. I originally started with the head just being a bald circle but it looked very strange, especially when I decided to draw my trousers and shoes a bit of detail, so I added the hair and profile which were a bit of a nightmare trying to get looking right.
I did two versions of my 2D walk, but I prefer the rough version in blue pencil to the one with clean lines, the blue figure looks like it has more weight and character to it, so this was the one I submitted for marking. If you spot a face appear on the right hand side you’re not going mad! As it was only meant to be a rough version I practised drawing my profile on frame 5, so a face appears for the briefest second (well, one 24th of a second to factually correct, haha). I would’ve scrubbed it off but I quite liked it and didn’t get a chance to scan it before I shot it all on the line tester. I still need to shoot the other one!
We also had life drawing this week, and after a few weeks off from it I was quite rusty. This wasn’t helped by the fact we had a new model, so it was the first time I’d drawn a woman as well. I couldn’t get the proportions right for quite a while, I kept giving Jane a really small torso compared to her really long legs and large upper body, but I was quite pleased with the final drawing I did- I was even brave enough to attempt to draw her facial features! I’ll upload a post with lots of life drawing pictures at some point in the (hopefully) not too distant future!
Burt and Ernie used to be my favourite characters on Sesame Street.
This Burt isn't quite the same, but he's still pretty cool.
Our task for 3D this week was to animate him walking along. To be honest I'm not too pleased with how it's come out, but I got really annoyed while trying to animate him because I kept clicking on one foot to animate it and it kept moving both of them. This went on for about half an hour and I've no idea what I did to make it do that. But I figured it out eventually and here's the result:
2D Some days are far more productive than others, and thankfully today was one of them! I drew out all my frames for the 2D Animation today (36 of them, I was really going for it), but didn’t manage to shoot them on the line tester yet, so there’s no video till I go back in tomorrow (which is Halloween – awesome! And also a Saturday, so hopefully the studio will be pretty quiet and I’ll get to use it). The 2D brief this week was to animate a big and a little Cubey, and an interaction between the two of them, using the new methods we’ve learnt this week: anticipation and overlap. I won’t give away what happens in it, I’ll post the video as soon as I remember too, but I’ve put up my scrappy little plan for it with this update.
3D I’m actually managing to succeed (slightly) in getting Maya to do what I want. (This is probably because I’m choosing pretty simple things that I’ll actually have a chance at getting right). I prefer the 2D Cubey to the crazy 3D one, although it’s fun trying to get him into all these physically impossible positions that want to try to break (the “un-breakable”) Maya.
I like how broad our project briefs are too, by just being given a simple task (our project brief for 3D this week was described by Georg as having to “animate Cubey and a Ball”) it allows everyone to come up with their own ideas and makes everything unique (It also means that some of the class, *here’s looking at you Dan Emmerson* go off and create really crazy complex stuff in Maya that makes me want to cry because their skills are so epic).
Life Drawing I haven’t spoken about life drawing at all, so I feel it’s time to break the silence on the subject! The human figure has always been my favourite thing to draw, simply because there are so many people around all the time (unless you’re hiding out in your room writing your blog updates). At school we drew a man called Nigel (who was given the affectionate original nickname of “Naked Nige”, was completely hairless and also looked a bit like my old I.T. teacher!), and now we have a man called David (he has no nickname as of yet... at least to my knowledge anyway). I’ve never drawn a female life model though, which is strange because (from my experience) when most people think or talk about life-drawing they tend to assume it’s with a female model and are always a little bit shocked when you say it’s with a man. Which is stupid really, as it’s a 50/50 chance anyway!
I wrestled Maya. It was bitter and intense and there were heavy losses on both sides (well, loss of sanity on my side, not much on Maya’s). Everyone else seems to have been able to do pretty epic stuff with their Cubeys, making him do crazy acrobatics and jumping through fire rings (I kid you not). My Cubey, well he jumps, that’s we got told to do, that’s all he does do. And just that was a bitch to try and get right, so I’m glad I didn’t try to do anything crazy or fancy at this point in time. Hopefully in the future.
I’ve had to give links to my videos because blogger has gone lame and not liked them for some strange reason.
2D
Our 2D project this week focused on using Squash and Stretch, and the time old classic of bouncing balls, personally I think mine’s a little slow, I probably should have shot it at 24fps instead of 12. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHI9R8FGMEY We also had to animate a little character called “Cubey”, so we could not only practise the Squash and Stretch technique, but to practise with the Secondary Animation of his Antennae. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v2vbeX29WI 3D
It’s a miracle! I managed to do something on Maya (after much umming and ahhing and cursing at the screen), we had to animate two bouncing balls of different weights, so I did a normal(ish) one and a super bouncy one! It was pretty fun when I got the hang of it, but now we have to animate the Cubey character in 3D this week. Eep. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7CQbFRc3vs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwrTkz5KCc
(kudos to you if you understood the boosh reference in the title)
