Experimental Write Up

Way back in October I searched through YouTube looking for examples of experimental animation, when I discovered an animation by HistorianHimself (which I blogged about). It featured a composition of film of ink in water, expanding, exploding and dissolving and it was this aspect that I found appealing and wanted to emulate in my animation. However I didn't want my animation to be composed as 'messy' in its composition as HistorianHimselfs video was. I chose the music Alsema-A because it had beats and a steady harmonic part, that to me, would help visualise ink dissolving.

Experi-mental - Blog Post.

To start with I tried stop motioning the ink drops into the water, for a start I didn't have any ink so I used juice and food colouring. I used the burst mode on the camera and started to drop the colouring into the water. Only after I uploaded the photos did I realise how shaky the photos were due to me holding down the button and how it missed the initial splash which was vital to the video. So I opted to film the splashes since the footage would be still and I could choose whatever part of splash I wanted rather than it luckily landing on the right photo burst. Also in this blog I involved more videos similar to what I wanted to achieve, though the videos I put up were CGI they had the clean and crispness I wanted to get into my video, also one of the videos had a cool moment that involved birds flying out of one of the splashes which I wanted to involve in my project.

Experimental Test Two - Blog Post.

In this post I featured a video of footage I had shot in the week. I tried to see how each bit of the footage could fit together, from being side by side to being mirrored. It worked relatively well other than the positioning of the camera which caused a white line to appear just below the surface. Also I planned on using a higher quality camera. One of the main problems I had was getting a white background. I put the glass tank in front of a white wall but I still had a really dull looking water. I tried changing the saturation of the video but that didn't work, I also tried masking around the solution but that didn't work as I couldn't mask out the whole solution as it too vast and spacey.

Experimental - So Close - Blog Post

This featured my near final video, it had all the footage I need, all composed how I wanted it to go all that was missing was the stop motion birds coming out of the ink. Rather than doing it all at once I wanted to see what the footage looked like without the birds and then also decide where the best place to put the birds would be.
Experimental Cut out Birds
The last production part of my project was the cut out stop motion birds, I started by drawing the stages of birds flight from what I could find on the internet. I wanted a range in animation, so I has a smooth 9 drawing animation and a stuttered 3 drawing animation. I then retraced the birds onto a red textured card that matched the colour of ink in the video and cut them out. After taking photos of them I cut them out in Photoshop and made them into TIFF files ready to composed into the video.

Finished Experimental - Blog Post and Conclusion

In conclusion I'm pleased with the video I produced. The main problems I faced was the fact that I had no control over the substance that I was using. Ideally I wanted to change the opacity of the footage rather than having them separated off but when I changed the opacity of loss quality in footage and the ink drops became hard to see. My main goal was to make visual sound, so that when I beat happened or an octave changed then something different would happened. The sound was great to use, it had a lot of long harmonics that greatly represented the ink dispersing and it was very natural which meant the birds fitted in well and had that shock factor I was after.

11 Second Club Finished

Finally I've finished my animation for the 11 second competition. I've added a camera cut to add a bit more 'zazz' to the animation, plus it a low down camera shot so the character is looking down on the audience's point of view. I would like to of have the characters interacting with each other a bit more physically but i've followed my video reference which only had me acting both parts, but hey ho there is always next months.

Finished Experimental

My Complete Experimental Project

Experimental Cut out Birds

For my experimental project i wanted to involve some stop motion. I had the idea of adding brids to the project after seeing it used effectivaly in other videos similar to my idea. Also the birds suited the music since its very natural.

I started by drawing the stages of brid flight



I then retraced the brids onto textured red card that matched the red ink I used. I then had them exploding out of the red ink towards the end of the video.

Experimental - So Close

This is the pretty much the complete video for my experimental, however i want to add some stop motion birds flying (silhouettes) out of the red smoke, like i saw in my research videos. So expect the final version up to be in the next couple of days. Peace out.

11 Second- It's Getting there,

Rendered out both characters and fitted it all together to get an idea of what the final product will look for. It still needs to be tweeked and ironed out, but i'm just happy i have the bulk of it done.

Life Drawing - A Weekly Update.

My weekly work of life drawing.

First Test render, i couldn't tell from just play blasts so i rendered out my work. I notice the shoulders shoot up too quick as well as other things.

Experimental Test 2 - Wait until 0:10 on the Video

This is my last test before i start the real deal, that hoping if it all goes to plan. I've made a video of some of the ink droplets reacting to the music, it is not following any design. But the main reason of the video was to see how it would work. Due to the camera quality the film looks grainy, i will hire a better camera to film the final version. I also will try and do some stop motion with the footage and have it in the back ground after i change the footage opacity.

This Sheet be Dope Yall

11 Second Club Dope Sheet

Experi-mental

Some people helped to point out these videos for me, though they are both CGI I like the composition and colour of them both. The With Rain video has a really cool introduction with the single line coming across the screen, i would like to try and implement this into my work since my chosen sound has a heavy bass line i feel a single line moving to the sound is the best way to represent the sound.

With Rain from takcom™ on Vimeo.

LAB : Flying Particules from David Picarda on Vimeo.

This here is a test i did using the burst mode on my camera. it didn't work out as well as i hoped.

11 Seconds So Far

So I've started working on my scenery and a screen cap to see what the animation will look like. I've modeled the background (which i want to add a blur too) and created my Wilson. Then I have added the two characters to the main scene, so this is the look i hope to achieve.

11 Second Club Animatic and Ref

I've done an animatic of key poses for the 11 second competition. I haven't included any facial expressions and annotations because they should all HOPEFULLY be apparent after I act it out. The basic plot of the short is that character 2 has eaten the last remaining food on the island. At the end character 1 says "you stole it, he stole it" at that point i want him to look at the screen, which then cuts to volley ball resembling that of Wilson from castaway, which has been the perspective of the audience, plus it emphasises the fact that there going crazy. So here is the rough animatic:



Here is my refference video, I'm going to animate from this angle then reposition the camera to make it more realistic, however i dont want the characters to be facing away from screen too often.

Life Drawing

Some more life drawing.

Emotion Change Playblast

Lip Sync

I wanted to test out the Blake rigs lip sync capabilities so I used the first few seconds of the 11 second club sound bite "It's like a predator"



I also used a Dope sheet which turned out better than I thought, I have a feeling I will be using these a lot more often, though I had to add a slight delay in when the mouth moves just to make it look right.

Blake Rig

I liked the look of the blake rig so i decided to have a play with it, nothing major, just wanted to know how good it was, I reaaly like the face animation and the customization you can get out of one character but I preffer the g_male's body rig.

Life Drawing

Some drawings with charcoal, they range from 10 second poses to 10 minute ones, because of the charcoal some of the pictures have smudged.

Experimental Animation Ideas

just searching through youtube and found this nifty piece of animation. Drops of coloured ink into water i think.

Walk Cycle

Here is my walk cycle with the G_male rig. I'm pleased with the results even though from the side view it looks like one foot doesn't touch the floor, even though I checked it with a plane, and also it jumps a little where I have looped it. But overall a cast improvement from my last walk cycle.

Heavy Lift

I tried to get the basic principles down, such as the anticipation and struggle. But I think it needs more frames for the lift to emphasis the 'rolling' of the box onto the chest. I also realised I cant draw in Flash.

Diamond Ring

Over the summer I wanted to produce a realistic animation, or as close to as possible. So I started looking into photos of products in magazines, and decided to model a diamond. Since I couldn't find any models of a diamond online I had to make my own following a pattern I found online. The major problem with the diamond was getting the right material. After scouring forums I was told the best thing to try would be a Phong materials and set the IOR to 2.417 which is of a diamond, then to play with the properties. After a play about I had a material that was sufficient of a diamond, but on its own was kinda dull. So I started to model rings to go with the rings, they started simple and got more complex as time went on. I started with these two rings.



I used mia_materials presets of chrome and copper.





I used bounce cards to reflect in the chrome, however i was reading the blogs of Zap.
http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/10/making-better-metal-with-miamaterial.html
http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/01/tricks-and-tips-for-miamaterial.html
and he used a HDR environment to achieve a much more fufilling reflection. Below is he ring spinning, more for personal use to know how the bounce cards look it the reflections.

Computer Advert

During summer I wanted familiarise myself with Maya, so I set myself a project of modelling my computer then setting up camera sweeps etc, then take the video into after effects and add 'advert' like text to the footage. The reason I chose to do a computer was to get use to box modelling and extruding faces, Moving vertexs and using the edge loop tool. I liked making footage that looked almost real, even though i know the computer build didn't cross the realms of the uncanny valley or anything. Any way heres the final "advert". I had problems rendering so the resolution and FPS isn't top notch.

Second Year.

So its the start of a completely new year at University. We've been told about some really interesting and exciting projects that we will have to complete. From experimental projects to being drafted by third years. For the experimental project i'd like to try a techinque that i say in an animation by BLU called MUTO



One idea was to use charcole and draw shadows behind people, then have those shadows dance to the music that we will be set. However these are all just starting ideas at the moment. There were animation from the years above that involved paper cut outs that are layered. I'll try and find a video of where they got there idea from.

As a small side project i want to combine line drawing with stop motion, by drawing paper aeroplane the n have it fly towards the "screen" and then stop motion the paper into forming a paper plane. Its kinda hard to explain, and also if possible i would like perhaps have a green paper plane so that i could use after effects and motion onto the plane its self, ie words or video footage.

Finished Formation Project.

I've been completely side-tracked and forgot to upload the final fly formation title sequence. So here it is.

Finshed Animatic.

Animal Firm, Concept.

Just some starting concepts.

This character is my protagonist, hes your classic hard boiled detective.



I thought a hyena was the best animal to portray the chav culture.



This character was created on the play on words "police are pigs". I plan on this character to be a bent cop.



This one is just for fun.

Half Done Animatic.

Just wanted to post this. I Took Rozi's awsome cut out story board and trace bitmapped it in flash. Then converting the arms or whatever moved into symbols i was able to create some of the animatic.

Pencil to Paper.

Heres some drawings i've recently done, I thought I may as well post them to make it look like a lot of work. We've alos been given a drawing assignment called Animal Firm, where its up to us to come up with characters and concepts. I've included 1 photoshop sketch to do with animal firm, the rest are just sketchs. cheeeeeers.

Team!!!

Our group project consisting of me, Rozi and Alice, is a title sequence for a project called formation. Its about flies carrying a killer virus, which wipes out most of the world, apart from a few survivors. We assigned ourselves roles to take in production. since its a fairly small group we share the majority of the roles. For jobs we couldn't decide on we pulled names out of hats. Which landed me the role of producer. From this I started a blog http://flyformation.blogspot.com/ in which everyone in the group can update and check the schedule. Alice cracked on with the fly, making sure it would work (i.e appear to fly). Rozi started on the storyboard. We all tried different styles from cut out to art deco. I made a mood board which tried to capture the essence of the art deco silhouette style we are going after.



We then came together making a rough story board for Rozi to do in neat and make changes if needed.





I started working on silhouettes and how to capture the right style of a person with out going into to much detail. I had the idea of dying the silhouettes black to emphasis death in a euphemistic way.





I also tried a stylized scenery composition but it turned out too child-like. The paper background idea was Alice's, its great to help give it more of a "gritty" real, textured look.

Virgin Red Room Ident

So the last task of the term involved making an Ident for Virgins new online music site Red Room. My first idea involved an amp cable coming out of the screen and plugging into the viewer. but the idea lacked structure so i closed the books on that one and came up with the idea of a music gremlin. running havoc on a record player. From that idea I managed to whittle down a 10 second ident idea. which involved a gremil like creature running on a record player whihc plays classical music, then starts to run which causes the music to speed up into more indie music, and since he would be running so fast he would fly off the record, hit a wall and his body would spell out Vrigin Red Room. So I started with an animatic I made in FLash.



This animatic helped me to plan out how long the music would be on for, and when to move the character. From the start I wanted to use stop motion as I have never done it 'properly' before. I bought myself an idustrial amount of plasticine and set off making my character. I started my design based off my concepts.





However, the clay man was too heavy and had to lose the arms, as well as have a skeleton made out of foil. But i was much more pleased with the final result.



So onto the stop motion! With the help of a friend and his fancy red record player, we hit the studio's common room. I first modelled the character walking, which turned out fine, however when trying to make him run, he coulsn't support his own weight and it just looked odd. so i decided to turn the speed up on the walking to making it look like hes running. we tried other shots such as a front angle but it looked odd aswell. I also photoshopped the photos to get rid of the cracks the clay make had developed and shot were my hand is holding the character up. Heres some of the photos from the shoot, as well as and angle version of the character, which we didn't use at it would have been distracting.






So I edited it all together along with the sound and effects. However I could not get it in the proper resolution, but still pleased with the final result, take a look, hope you enjoy it.



Also as a side note the band that did the music was a local band known as InColour
http://www.myspace.com/officialincolour