Brainstorming

OK, so while i have been on my summer holidays apart from being in sunny Barcelona where i was taking a lot of pictures of textures and buildings for external work and visiting a few art galleries including Picasso's, i have been working on my projects for the up and coming year.

I first of all had to decide on my PRP topic and start researching clients for my client project. After a long winded research process i finally decided on a PRP topic.

PRP Brainstorm:


I want to study the physics of 3d animation, for example, the way gravity affects objects, how when a wave occurs in the sea how it assembles and falls, i want to study how objects move. another example; when a building falls, i want to question how it falls? how does gravity affect the falling rubble? how does wind affect it and when it finally hits the ground, how does it disperse? what course do the particles of rubble take? I want to do this because i have always been interested in physics and as the modules this year are long drawn i want to study something that is going to keep me engaged and get my brain ticking. To do this i am going to look at the particle systems and space warps within 3ds Max and i am also going to do external research, so watch clips of buildings falling, waves forming etc and create my own tests with materials such as wood, plastic, cardboard, foam, and i will film these experiments before recreating them in 3ds Max. I still need to get this checked off with my course leader but hopefully i will be able to carry it out if not this then along similar lines.

OK, so my client project, as of yet i still have not got a client lined up, I am actually quite interested in doing a competition, but i am finding it difficult to find one that is ending after our deadline. There are a lot of competitions ending this month so hopefully there will be new entries for 2012 opening up soon which i can partake in. I feel with entering a competition, if i do well it will give me more opportunities in the future as not only does it build my portfolio other companies and future clients are more likely to see my work whereas working with a client, OK, it could possibly guarantee me a job after uni but its only that one client that sees my work. However at the moment I am looking for anything its not easy enough to be picky but i think if a competition becomes available i will take that as my "client".

I am looking for clients in the 3d visualisation industry, I am very interested in architecture and especially interior visualisation. My perfect client would be a company who produces stills or fly-through's of interiors for residential or commercial builds. I ideally would like a company in London as it is not far from my hometown and if i manage to get a job out of it then i can easily travel there. If i get offered a job in Nottingham it won't be much help to me after i graduate.

I am not looking forward to this year as i know it is going to be a lot of pressure and hard work, My time management is also very poor and it is something I'm going to have to work very hard towards improving this year! I feel if i manage my time well this year i will be able to crack it and it will greatly benefit my future in this industry.

Here are some clients i have been looking at:
www.wonder-vision.com
www.thepixelworkshop.com
www.visual-eyes-media.co.uk
www.foundationcgi.com
www.3dworldmag.com

Year 2 Stills from my final hand in

Animatic and Final Animation

My Animatic


My Animation
It is not completly finished but this is what i have so far... i have added in stills to show roughly what would have happened... i ran out of time to render as i had trouble with my max file and camera set ups.

Evaluation

What a long project this has been! I must admit when I got given the brief after Christmas I was fairly disappointed, however when I started to think about it, I thought I could do something really great with this... that thought didn’t last for long as I really started to struggle with inspiration.

I watched film after film and looked through magazines, books, internet and couldn’t find anything that inspired me. I eventually chose Edward Scissorhands because it is... was, one of my favourite films and I love the innocence of Edward but how he is portrayed as evil. My original idea was to create it in a doll world similar to toy story as you can see on my blog. I wanted to create a house made out of doll parts and have the inventor and Edward as dolls and everything looking like plastic. A bit like a Ken and Barbie animation but with a creepy side to it as I’m easily creeped out by dolls. I wanted it to have a Frankenstein twist to it!

So I started planning however after a conversation with a tutor we decided I didn’t have enough time to make the whole house and that for a few seconds animation it wouldn’t be worth it and to concentrate on the inside of the house. After going home and trying to redesign my ideas I sort of got fed up with it and it didn’t seem the same so AGAIN decided to change my idea except this time I didn’t have one so I started to create my environment hoping I would get inspiration as I was going along. I created basic things like stairs, tables, furniture to go in my environment that I knew I needed.

It’s a really inappropriate way to start a project but time was ticking and I was running out of ideas, so. I started with an attic room, thought it didn’t look good so made a basement and added all my furniture then when it came to animating I thought it was too much like the original film so went back to the attic idea! Silly I know. Anyways I love modelling so I didn’t mind; it was when I came to adding lighting and cameras I got stuck.

I found modelling and rigging my characters fairly easy I didn’t really have a problem, only with the envelopes however that was only minor. I also found animating my machine fairly easy however when I merged it into my scene it didn’t animate properly and I can’t figure out why. But the original file works fine! Most of my problems came when I had to add the cameras and render! Cameras and rendering have always been a problem for me and I think always will be. When I was doing my modelling I was trying hard to keep face counts down the whole way through however when I rendered after a certain point it would say not enough memory to allocate mesh or something along those lines but it would render it fine as a still and as a sequence up to 166 stills then it would always come up with that message. I ended up having to delete my fire effect for my machine which was one of my focal points. I did not use after effects in the end for a couple of reasons; I didn’t have the time, and I don’t really understand it properly... still! It’s something I am keen to learn over summer when I have no deadlines or projects to concentrate on.

That aside I am happy with my modelling anyways. I think my modelling has really improved since last year, in fact even from the beginning of this year! It took me a long while to get the hang of simple modelling I used to make a mess out of it but it has really improved and I am really happy with it! I am also really happy with my portfolio project. I spent a lot of time on that because I was just model making there was not a lot of animation and rigging ect. I spent too much time on it really. I really need to allow myself more time next year in my work; it’s the main thing that lets me down every time. And I’m really disappointed in myself for allowing it to happen again in this project.

It's been a while

It's been a while since iv been on here... iv been very busy trying to complete my project. Iv been working on my finished models which i have changed over and over! I have also been working on my environment which is what i have been concentrating on most until recently when i have given up with it and finished off my character models! Im not normally a fan of character animation but i have really enjoyed making my inventor... ok i may have made a few rough models which i wasn't happy with but it has all led to my final ideas for both my characters! I got the idea for the final inventor of a picture of an old man i saw on the internet. I roughly changed the shape of his head and i made his body a bit different but i am really pleased with it so here he is uncomplete at this stage as i will put the final version up in my evaluation...









More will be up shortly of my other character but for now its time to hit the hay

Some more photo editing :)... a bit of graphics

Texturing

Once i have rendered all my stills from max i am thinking about filtering it in photoshop to give it a hand drawn... sort of doll look. I want it to look really sketchy... like the old films. I got this idea from frankenstien and from a halloween picture i edited. Here are a few ways i can do it.

Ink Outlines


Poster Edges


Rough Pastels


Paint Daubs


Angled Strokes