Sarah's BA Blog

saturday

2010-05-22T15:35:00.000-07:00

must be a weekend....im at college!

changed the image size of ALL leaf textures...each was 2000 x 2000 (unnecessarily might i add) and with about 1000 leaves in a cut down scene it was killing mental ray for render previews when on smooth preview.

Original leaf textures have been kept but please make sure if you assign colours (myself and Adam) you are using the ones with SMALL at the end of their name. These textures are 500 x 500 and have lost no quality what so ever.

Have cleaned up the history even further on all camera set up animated shots, got rid of whats not needed so render time is faster > hacked that scene right down.

Adjusted the grass texture. Matts original texture was 4000 x 4000 and once scaled down by grigsby to 2000 x 2000 displayed the massive white borders in the scene file. Myself and Adrian took the file back into photoshop and took a new 2000 x 2000 sample that got rid of the majority of the borders so the grass texture now covered more of the scene. This can easily be moved and rotated to accommodate more shots including some of the larger spaces such a shot 2 where we see from Hero's side of the garden to Machos.

Feedback to Clym, Roman, Alex Bax and email to Fahran about UVing the tree.

compositing and compression

2010-05-15T03:23:00.001-07:00

Today myself and Adam composited shot 4 in after effects.

So in total we have 6 render layers

2 for the character and 4 for the environment.

Character layers include beauty and ambient occlusion.

Environment layers include beauty, ambient occlusion, shadow and Z depth. This is not including our adjustment layers etc in After Effects.

Z depth is now my favorite...goodbye ambient occlusion and the wonders you used to bring to my eyes everytime i saw you...its Z depth all the way. Amazing how it transported the file and gave it filmic quality. Played around with the focal distance for a while until we were satisfied and the results are fantastic!

Since the character occlusion takes the longest to render, Adam suggested getting all finished shots having this layer rendered. The background (unless camera is moving) requires one frame and the other layers take no time at all to do. Matt is now organising the eyes for the finished animations and then I will be sorting out the camera framing so that adam can render sat eve. Looks like its down to me to try and replicate Grigsby's amazing lighting he achieved here so fingers crossed.

We then took the uncompressed After Effects file and began experimenting with different compression formats in Final Cut. Its a strange thing how different colour displays and setups make the world of difference to the look of the final piece, however with a few tries (thanks Adrian for his help on compression/formats) we're looking at mpeg2 which maintained most of the colour and quality of the final film. Hopefully (and I need to speak to Dalli about this Monday) this format will work fine for making the final DVD for the degree show and we shouldn't lose too much quality from further compression.

I gotta say...its looking bloooooomin marvelous guys :)

uncompressed file from After Effects...

mpeg2 compressed file from final cut...

shot 21

2010-05-13T08:52:00.001-07:00

havent posted in a while

back on the animation now which is gooooood news and back to shot 21.

So far so good....not finished...comments/feedback wanted as always.

Ignore the disappearing fork...again its something thats not sorted out until last until the hand/arm movements are locked down final. The throw downs are in stepped and from the punch onwards is in spline.

Heres the view from the camera. I've tried to make the shot flow nicely from one side to the other when it cuts to matt's shot 22

Dan...

2010-05-13T06:14:00.001-07:00

Its looking good dan, the pic you uploaded was on the small size, so when i took it into photoshop it was kinda difficult to see the cracks exactly but from what i could tell its looking nice. I've drawn over what you've done and just added some smaller section cracks which will just finish it off nicely if you don't mind adding these in please. Thank you :)

set the stage...

2010-05-09T15:32:00.001-07:00

welcome to the jungle...er...i mean garden.

Machos Area...pointy leaf colours need altering but this is a simple assign existing material click away. Machos area I wanted to stay pretty rough and hard edged...hence more pointy leaves. The gaps for the Wheelbarrow...

where as Heros area has more rounded leaves with splatters to reflect the better kept section of the garden. Mixtures of greens, oranges and reds to represent the change of seasons to autumn.

Compositing/Lighting 1 on 1

2010-05-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

My thanks to Grigsby for sitting with me and Adam Thursday evening and sharing a wealth of knowledge on how to achieve some great lighting and compositing for our scene.

Dan showed us the fundamentals of lighting and what was needed for the scene and the characters to light sufficiently. As our scene is outdoors, it does mean a less intricate lighting setup is required and with the use of light linking there are 2 lights for the character (3 if you include the main environment directional) and a few other ambients to help the scene. Dan showed us how to tweak the textures to fit with the lighting and how some of the textures may need colour adjustment to prevent overexposure and over saturated colours.

From this, Dan rendered a single frame for the environment and the character as well as occlusions for both and then took us through how to overlay in After Effects and the further colour adjustments, sharpen masks, blurs and screens that can be added to soften the 3D visuals and give more depth to the film.

I'll post up an image shortly but the results he achieved were astounding and he's kindly allowed us to keep the file for reference and learning how to transfer the attributes/settings over. We also have a copy of his lights as a tutorial for how we should be setting up the rest of our lights for the film.

Thank you again Grigsby, its been extremely beneficial to watch you at work and learn more about creating great scene setups :)

webmail....

2010-05-05T04:03:00.000-07:00

if i dont reply to your webmail mails...this is why...
webmail is rubbish!!

Shot 19 - tweaks

2010-05-02T05:39:00.000-07:00

been working some more on this shot trying to tackle the feedback you've all provided.

Here i've started adding in the bend in his arms via matt's suggestion of increasing the struggle with the weight. I've shifted the keys now so he manages to stand up right a little slower to emphasize the weight, as a couple of comments hinted it seemed an easy task for him.

please ignore the strange angles the fork is going off at...haven't matched up the second arm yet until i know the first is final. Arm bend to straight - trying to add more pop to the movement from one extreme to another as if he's really pushing this last effort to do it.

of course...ive been animating from angles like this....

when our camera angle is actually from here...

again this is not the final but just updates on how this shot is going. Hasn't been as successful a day with it as dealing with the nitty gritty is a long process. I hope to have a better day on this tomorrow and be able to move on soon. Comments welcome as always

Animation make brain go mental...

2010-05-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

work...here...not there

up....errmm....key select

that is all

Shot 19

2010-05-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

On a break from shot 18....started this this afternoon....

This shot sees Macho lifting the garden fork. Its should display a challenge for him but not be a complete hinderance unlike the flower pot he lifts later on. Since my weight lifting skills involve lifting mars bars....my reference for this shot has come from footage like this...

Initial playblast demonstrating blocking of key poses...might shift that end position forward a bit. Dont worry about the second arm, im working on the one first then matching the second as its a nightmare with parenting the object to just one wrist control.

starting to spline it...that scary moment when thingy freak out and more keys needed

Progress....check out that cheeky grin at the end....o yeah :)

its not finished...not by a long shot but hey thoughts

Animation Webpage: more tests

2010-04-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

ok...smurfed up Yaniv, whitened up the backgrounds...comparison to the rest of you lovely lot. comments pllllleeeease

Animation Webpage: tests

2010-04-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

previous images compared to the new uns....

replicating degree show photos

2010-04-28T00:08:00.000-07:00

myself and dan decided to organize another photoshoot for the last few animators who were without one. Dan S has been doing an amazing job with the website and its really highlighting the dependancy on having photos to help navigate round the site and let everyone know whose contribute where.

Were hoping to get the photography studio booked so we can use the backdrop and lights to replicate the photos...failing this we'll have to improve with some paper and natural lighting which should do the trick just as well.

Replicating the post production acheived on the previous photos was not a "quick process". I played around with basic photo filters as well as off setting colour balances on a couple of test photos to see how it was achieved. Whilst this produced the "blue ish tinge" that seemed to be present in the final pictures, it was difficult to tell if i was on the right track without having an original photograph to mess around with: with similar lighting and background setup.

So after a couple of seconds pondering...i stole the photographs from the degree show website and decided the best way to solve it...was to reverse the process. I took a few examples and colour balanced them to have "normalish" colourings, from this you can easily work out the opposite needed to create the final look.

I tried this with 4 of the guys photos (thanks test lot) and the colour shifts arent consistent which is obviously due to individuals skin and hair tones. So we can probably "get away with" a certain amount but obviously want to be as true to the final look as possible.

Photo sizes are also inconsistent, which are either 4KB or 8KB in size which would explain difference in resolution quality between the whole group.

Final image sizes are 170x170 pixels.

Im pretty confident we can replicate this now and i'll be glad to sort these out post wise and then hand over to dan to post on the website.

these arent by any stetch of the means perfect but give us a good starting point to work from. These look pixelated/bad as im working with small compressed images and so reversing colour will not look perfect. You can also see the pictures are desaturated as well which will need to transfered onto the new photos aswell.

Updates

2010-04-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

I can say without question or concern i have learnt more this year than any other year...

i will copy and paste this sentence every year following this one without doubt!

So to business and by gum has it been business. Character setups are crazy and still murky waters in terms of fully understanding all the necessary this first, parent that next, no this is not the way blah blah blah BUT i challenged myself to pursue this further than i ever have before and to see it through so we had decent rigs with proper controls etc.

This last week can not go without credit to the following person: Adrian Smith

Who spent the last week skinning not 1...but 2 of our characters. This guy is not (no offence) an animator but a broadcaster, who one day i decided to let loose on Maya and teach him the odd thing here and there...a bit of modeling, a bit of animating, a bit of rigging, render layers and what have you. Now he's pursued his knowledge of skinning and (somewhat embarrassingly) overtaken me on that one.

"Hahahahaha" i hear you say....maybe? However i personally think whoevers best for the job should do it and hey...he was better. The week was mostly live screen sharing until 4am with us sending the model of Lady Gnome back and forth. Me adjusting the arms and fingers and Ad doing pretty much everything else including fine tuning the fingers and arms i did. It really does highlight the collaboration between animator and rigger, as every single movement needed was discussed and worked on in the weights. Any issues that occurred during the skinning such as the teeth receiving no influence, the hair pulling the teeth out of its geometry the flower flying around the screen of its own accord was left to me to problem solve and generally trashing one version of the model until a solution was found and adding it to the final whilst Ad fine tuned the weights.

Do not dismiss who you may learn something from as from his knowledge of weights I've learnt how i can rig my characters better and even model my characters better for the future. There is nothing drastically wrong with these (i will fight my corner here) but knowing i can do better in the future is something im certain of just from what ive learnt here.

Clyms weights of Hero came through on the Thursday but unfortunately not up to scratch so were redone by Adrian and completed Saturday. The benefits of having the director there to discuss every movement needed is key and was how we were able to get Hero the way he does.

My thanks also to Mu Li

who solved the button not wanting to scale issue with his mel script. Thanks for taking the time to sort that out its much appreciated :)

Thanks also to Alex Hulse

for all your help assisting me with rigging and helping me understand it a lot more than i did.

All i then had to do was add the facial control panel and scale the characters accordingly. These are now available on the adrive account and our animators have been notified and can start work immediately.

A look at Lady Gnomes facial control panel....very pleased with this. All locked off and limited accordingly and fianlly parented to the master control so it will follow the character nicely.

the problematic hair geometry...when you move the hair locators it warps the flower. The flower recieves no influence from anything though and you cant seem to paint it out. I will probably need to add a joint in and add influence to solve this.

attempting some painting weights with Lady Gnomes fingers....

checking it against all the hand attributes...

Painting lady gnomes textures....

backing up EVERYTHING!!!!

Lady Gnomes painted textures require subtlety so we dont see the seam at the back.

the completed Hero gnome rig! werhey!
fingers shouldnt ever be able to reach this lengths of stretchyness

awwww look at the lil puddun'
scaling hero via the master control...
...one of his buttons is problematic and seems to not want to go with him!?!??! it has the same parenting and weighting as the other button so im stumped here!?
locking off the facial control panel sliders so they only go up and down by 1 to -1.

where the heck is her face and hair?!??!

this weeks objectives...

2010-04-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

Matt

finish up animation of shot 4 (mid to end Tuesday)

Your next few shots...

Shot 24

Shot 22

Adam

Tuesday - collect lit and textured environment with Matt's imported animation and test the render layers with this.

Post render results - breakdown of each layer and then final composite of all no later than Thursday

Tom the Stocker Wright

Shot 26 - Heros Reaction shot. See email with link to shot list and Animatic for reference.

Tom R

Tuesday - review of shot 23. Please send playblast Tues eve/Weds morn for update.

Emma

Shot 11 animation.

Clym

Animate shot 31

Sarah

Finish up the button issue

Finish up L Gnome Facial Control Panel

Scale Characters

Copies on the adrives

Notifications and info to the animators

Animation: Shot 18

Edit: whoops, should have been on the team blog

Frankenstein's Bride: Shot 36

2010-04-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

Ok so little franken lady has sort of been abandoned...ok she's in one shot but time to trash all those months of hard earned modelling and blendshapes to make her look...generally quite naff in the name of the film.

taking inspiration from...the animatic...she still looks pretty all together to be honest but were gonna go nuts on the smash, cracks, sellotape in texturing on this one. I cant change too much of the model without it needing UV mapping once more. If time were permitting i'd do a complete destruction job of but for now it will have to remain as this.
and other franken creations!
ah graph editor...why cant all your curves be as simple as this :P

More problems with Hero Gnome: i cant scale the character via the master control. His facial control panel seems to be limiting the amount of expression i can actually use with the character. Have emailed Clym for his thoughts on how to rectify these issues. Told him i am in Monday at college to sort this out so hopefully Clym can help me out with this one.

nightmare on elmo street.

2010-04-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

grrr....annoyances

-been sorting out individual web page images and descriptions for the degree show website as well as the groups web page images. These aren't finalized but its better than having nothing for now just so people can see what were up to.

- roman sent through a new soundtrack which was AWESOME...it was only the starting piece but i really think hes taken my feedback in and is getting to grips with what the projects about.

- Yanivs UV mapped Hero Gnome was wrong - face separate from body which meant i couldn't add a texture to one without it affecting the other. Ive begun painting the textures in order to get a better idea of colours. Although i have the character colour concepts at hand, its amazing how in 3D they look almost too washed out by following the concept colours exactly. There's something about volumes etc which means you have to tweak the saturations a little bit. These characters have a range of splashes etc on them too so its all about balancing them to look painted without being an art attack accident.

Sorted out Clyms facial control panel was scaled and parented to the master control so it would follow the model for the animator to animate with eeeeease.

Lady Gnomes facial control panel was hooked up to the blend shapes and parented to the master control so the animator can animate with ease.

Both these characters were then scaled appropriately so each animator is all working to the same scale so there's no probs when importing the characters into the scene for final rendering with the environment.

started animating with characters...hero Gnome does not work on my machine in smooth preview i cant play back stuff and not in smooth preview means i cant do any facial expression animation.

Heros Zero Pose for Root Cntrl

2010-04-24T16:47:00.000-07:00

i apologize...heros root control missed out on being completely freeze transformations along the way.

his "normal" stance is:

translate X: 0

translate Y: -0.082

translate Z: 0

Its my fault...i made a mistake on that one.

a shhhhhhhrrruuuubary!

2010-04-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

a few images testing the textures. Thoughts on the textures pleeeeeeease.

paint by numbers

2010-04-19T19:37:00.001-07:00

Werhey! Cant tell you how brilliant it is to finally see these models with colour on them..long overdue and i think its whats spurring us on these days...lambert 1 drains...the...soul. Tom i took your models...and...er....slightly tweaked them. Not your fault, the drawings gave you to work from meant the 3D models looked slightly unison and perfectly rounded so i smashed and dented em up a bit.

inspiration for which came from here....

...shame about the story line....

moving on

Anyway I've been texturing the mushrooms this evening, the underneath has been tad annoying to get round due to how the UVs were sewn. Nevertheless its just something that requires juuuuuuust a bit extra time on in order to make it look right.

Starting out...i paint out/mark out the basic colours so i can see where each start/finish.

adding the layers in photoshop

main mushroom complete...just have to the how to to the others

so far so good :)
more to come soon

Sunday 17th April

2010-04-18T12:11:00.001-07:00

Its awards time and the following have been awarded worst email usage at the weekends...

Been carrying on with my section of texturing today...

Painting the pots. Wanted to try and capture a dusty terracotta look here which i think is starting to work but needs a few more tweaks etc. The pots are ok but again havent spent more than 15 mins on colouring these...seriously quick with throwing the old paint about...its all about being messy and loose with the design...no definitive structure.

Painting the stomas? (im not a flower expert) for Hero's Orchid...i began by roughly painting and then applying the texture to see how it stretched and then removing colour with the poly lasso tool to neaten it up. We wont see super close to the flower but just so the geometry makes sense.

Lambert 1 making a disappearing act there off the top petal...nice.
Flower deux...Once i mastered one petal it was simple enough to transfer over all the layers to the other petals. These arent symmetrical tho as ive tweaked opacity, sizes and duplicated/removed layers to make each of the petals unique. Flowers are random so i figured why not...

Flower numero deux has taken a bit of a leading role...unintentional i can assure you, but i think we might have to change numero deux to be Heros flower. Whilst i was aiming for a tropical feel with the real Heros flower, i think the purple colourings really contrast with the rest of the garden making it stand alone as something individual. Im so happy with the texturing on this too i think it deserves to be centre stage...will discuss with the guys tomorrow on this one to get their ideas. The stems are looking ok, possibly more work in variation of splats etc is needed but you have to be careful not to start making it look like army camoflague!

a painted world

2010-04-17T09:37:00.001-07:00

Im having a lil go at the old texturing. I've done this a couple of times in the past but this is a bit of a refresher for me. Im texturing Heros flower, flower 2 and the weed as well as their pots using the photoshop brushes to create a painted feel

I wanted Heros flower to have an almost tropical element to it which i think the orchid model creates. Here Ive referenced a photo from Kew Gardens for the colourings but adapted it for the painted quality were after. Thanks Mr Smith for your photo as reference :)

The Weed: My first textures for the weed stem...its a little pale...and looks....ill! Needs a few more layers and splashes to break it up.
First applications of the Heros flower texture...when the layers are combined its lost a lot of its contrast in colours, need to bring stronger contrasts such as reds and whites. Not bad for a first test though.

Inspiration came from realistic flowers that from my memory mean their colours/design have spliced together as if using one of those spirographs.

idiotic mistake numero 1: where the hell are the textures?
"...ah for the love of-"
Building up the layers of colour, trying to bring in some contrasts to the design by introducing some yellow slices of colour to break up the purple.
the painted designs are a matter of impulsive creation meets not trying to overpower the viewer with lots of splats. I started with a basic set up and i literally tweak, shift, alter opacity and update the textures in Maya. Once one petal/leaf is correct, its a matter of copying over the layers and adjusting accordingly to bring variety to the model. Im really happy with how this is looking so far and its great to see the models in something other than lambert 1 :)
The weeeeeed: looking like camouflage but a better colour here

That evenings work.....p......p.......d...........

Gnomes Webpage: Images so far...

2010-04-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Hey Dan,

heres what i would like you to upload to the InsideOut Gnomes page please. This is just images i have sorted out but i'll ask the others to get some stuff together too and send it on to you.

thanks

Sarah

The Description:

The rivalry between two garden gnomes is interrupted by a new arrival. In a conflict of brains vs brawn, the two battle it out to win the affections of the beautiful Lady Gnome, but who will win, as this is no ordinary love story.

Updated Film Image:

Images:

Individual Webpage Stuff

2010-04-16T09:40:00.001-07:00

Modelling and Animation Showreel 2009

Portfolio

Gnomes (2010): I designed the characters, set and props for the film, as well as modelled Lady Gnome and the key scene assets. My roles also included story development, texture creation, character setup and animation.

Rendered occlusion of Lady Gnome

Character concepts for Hero Gnome.

Post Apocalyptic London (2008)

Occlusion render of environment models for environments project. Roles included environments and assets modeller, as well as character animation.

John and Benny (2009)

Roles included; story development, character design and modelling, UV map and texture application as well as character setup.

Composited render of John the Clown.

I love photography. As well as freelancing for a sports and events company, I also experiment with digital and analogue mediums in my free time. I enjoy creating spontaneous and interesting outcomes from mixtures of colour and light.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahverrall/

Edinburgh (2008)

Barcelona (2008)

fridays jobs

2010-04-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

emailed roman intial sound score feedback

emailed greg sound score feedback

uploaded UVd props to the adrive account

discussions with Yaniv about blendshapes - problems with internet and power at his end though so waiting to send these off to Clym with the rig for skinning and GUI facial control panel creation.

to my wigging friends...

2010-04-14T15:27:00.001-07:00

this is a little message to EVERYONE who has helped me out this week with the rigging errors or issues I have had and have given up their time to assist me...Clym, Alex, Tom, Stu....all of you have helped me so much so big big thanks to you :)

a lesson in bomb proofing...

2010-04-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

heres a tip...

make a rig...build the controls....make the spline....make the...the set driven keys...THEN pass it over to a complete stranger...someone whose never used maya...or animated...someone whose sitting on the bus next to you and tell them

"heres a rig...could you just...you know...have a play around with it"

because i can assure you, they will highlight the problems with the rig in an instant. Its a painful process of aahhh nnoooo dont rotate that...ahhh jeeeeeze i need to lock that off and ahhh crap thats not quite clear enough. Watch in horror as the whole thing is pushed and pulled in the most unglamorous fashion ever imaginable and then think to yourself maybe you need to spend another 20 minutes making it clearer.

For certain though, its all about making your rigging better and your rigs bomb proof...water tight...etc.

the best things in life may not be free

2010-04-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

it's said: a bad workman blames his tools

true...but that workman didnt have the worst somewhat version of Maya ever.

Ive been using 8.5 since year 1 of CVA and its had no end of errors. "Sarah...thats Maya for you so get over" i hear you say. Ok maybe..but exploding UVs and files that corrupt themselves when you havent opened them...na ah.

Good bye 8.5...you served me...somewhat well but Im replacing you with a much better version....no its not 2010...frankly my mac is so ancient the operating system tiger cant comprehend a version of maya so advance...so its 2009 for me! horay! no more problems....

EDIT: this may have been the most naive thing i ever said

Friday 9th April

2010-04-09T04:39:00.000-07:00

research into presentation materials for degree show, downloaded a few templates for postcards we can upload some of our concept art to and have professionally printed, might be nice give away for the delegates: colour script and environement concept

stephen pender: email back saying he will continue to work on his animation regarding the feedback i provided the other day.

emailed Matt (1:30am) feedback regarding shot 32

emailed roman (sound composer) to see how hes doing with the test score for the film. He will mail monday with the first 42 seconds of animation score.

blendshapes....must...complete.

Rig: Double Transformations

2010-04-06T00:01:00.001-07:00

gah! egad and zooks!

So i went to import the completed rig so i could modify to fit the Lady Gnome model and guess what? Annoyingly so the spine seems to be going ahead of the legs: double transformations. I thought this only occured after creating the master control but there you go. I followed step by step instructions about turning off inherit transformations with no success.

addition of a master control:

Double transformations still occurring. This occurs because the IK Spline receives influence from both cluster deformers and the IK Spline.

Select the spine curve and turn off inherits transform. This should remove one of its influences so the rig follows as one...however mine seems to have collapsed?!

I unchecked the inherits transform from both the spine shoulder control and the hip control to see what difference this made. The rig did then follow all together but it led to the controls and clusters being left behind..but still able to control the rig as you can see below.

Email the Hulse...

Alex took a look at the scene and the rigs setup to which there were no issues, and after a few removals of inherit transform, he decided the best way was to remove the spine curve from the group as this was the factor causing double influence. Once this had been removed, it was simple enough to turn off the inherit transform check box on the IK Spline and then add all controls to the master control..Perfecto, all done dusted and in working order. Now to finally adjust the rig accordingly for Lady Gnome and were off...to the next stage

Removing the Spine curve from its group removed the influence over the rig

so that once the master control was created and all controls parented too, hey presto, no more double transformations. So annoying how these things are down to order of parenting/adding etc but hey ho.

Rigging: Lady & Hero

2010-04-05T04:52:00.001-07:00

Asking discussions with Yaniv, his workload on Red Rock has increased so it didnt seem fair to expect him to rig his character considering he has a whole character to model for his other film. Whilst i could copy over the rig used in Macho Gnome, there were a few niggling errors and missing attributes and general things i wished to improve upon, so i decided to start from scratch for these two and would alter one accordingly to fit the other model.

The rig is on a seperate layer to the controls and the rig is switched to unselectable so theres no chance of an animator moving about the joints.

all locaters are serperated on their own layer which has been labelled unselectable. All controls have necessary translates and scale attributes locked off so they cant accidentally be moved about. I've changed the knee pole vector constraints to curves as it means we wont have to hide them when rendering out...annoyingly i cant believe i forgot this when following the rigging tutorial for Macho Gnome. Overall this is not too dissimilar from the last rig, but is just that bit better, slicker...well...to me it is.

Reverse foot. Though our characters should 'plod' when animating its necessary to have this level of control over the model otherwise the animation would look primitive.

A quick outline of the rig...a couple more bones necessary to distribute the weight for the face/back and sides as noted by Matt for my last rig of Macho Gnome.

creating the IK Spline...hopefully this wont need to be removed (Daves showed me where you can remove influence from the cluster deformers) so hopefully we wont have to improvise with the weights this time.

Test out the leg bending with the added root control.

This rig has the added toe flick attribute, thanks Dave for showing me how to create this.

The fully complete rig complete with FK arms, IK Spline, Set driven keys for the fingers, root control and a host of foot attributes as well as the suggested rib, face and tummy bones to help distribute and ease the painting weights later on.

A quick smooth skin bind test to see how things are looking, moving, deforming. Already were getting some really nice animation stances without too much deformation here in this walk pose. This should literally need a slight adjustment in its weights.
Ah now i can really see the benefits of adding the tummy and face joints to the rig as poses like this now mean there is less deformation occurring in the face. Hopefully it should make painting the weights a quicker process.

Slight explosion going on here when rotating the arms however this just requires smoothing out of weights, shouldn't be too much of a problem.

and a final look at the set driven keys, again nothing massivley deforming here, the main area that will need focusing on is the flap of skin between the thumb and fingers which is affected by multiple joints. Apart from that, no serious issues here, so I'll be waiting on Yanivs blend-shaped character before I can bind/paint weights for.

Lady Gnomes rig requires a few variations on top of this. For example, myself and Matt decided she needed joints placed within her hair so that any collisions with her arms when she's clapping can mean the animator can simply move the hair away or react to her hands clapping. We tried removing the hair but she lost her look that we liked so much.

p.s my easter egg...another Wilf sent my way...its beginning to get creepy now.

Ghost Stories: Story Telling Genius

2010-04-02T01:58:00.001-07:00

Last night I saw Ghost Stories written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith. Its the best piece of theatre I've seen! Truly amazing example of how a story can grip and shock the audience through horror.

The atmosphere was created even before the show began, with low level lights and the eerie sounds of dull echos as if your trapped within a tunnel which was very unnerving. The sets had incredible versatility, and could twist and turn to allow the audience to see round every avenue, creating a 3 dimensional world, yet still retain hidden elements to fuel the suspense and tension.

The tension in the audience was incredible, and it seemed as if everyone was picking up on everyone else's fear (which was a weird shared experience) but heightened the panic and the drama. I actually was frightened, genuinely frightened by what happened, and you almost lose your senses as if you are in true danger as the story unfolds in front of you.

The performances were perfect and none of that over the top horror movie rubbish we've seen time and time again from Hollywood. Influences for the story come 60s and 70s British TV horrors.

I don't want to spoil it, so if you have time then I urge you to go see this because its a fantastic example of storytelling and is incredibly gripping. I was a mess leaving the theatre, and actually exhausted where it had me on a knife edge throughout. Superb. Its definitely going to inspire my story ideas/writing in the future.

Below is the Ghost Story trailer which, don't worry, wont spoil a thing. I think this is a perfect demonstration of what trailers should revert back to; something thats teases our interests but doesn't actually show us the key points. More examples of animations/graphics use in promoting other media/creative disciplines.

Inspiration: Wanted

2010-04-02T01:55:00.001-07:00

Just seen this, a student film from a few years ago called Wanted. Some nice animation and a great little twist to the story. Had a browse round the site and there are some nice concepts and sketches. Here's a look at some of their storyboards.

some stats...

2010-03-31T14:38:00.000-07:00

Im trying to plan through the time we have left.

So the animation has a total of 36 shots.

Lets say the worst case scenario that we get no one else on board to help animate in either our year, 2nd or 1st year, that would leave myself and Matt 18 shots to animate each.

Lets say we both started animating 12th April (current time im predicting worse case scenario for Lady to be finished and ready) that would leave us 4 weeks to animate giving 2 weeks for rendering and compositing.

This would mean that we would need to complete 1 1/4 shots each day BETWEEN THE 2 OF US in order to fully complete the animation.

Sounds daunting?

maybe...maybe not.

Firstly, Matt has begun animating so were already ahead of the 4 week deadline...giving us 6 weeks instead of 4 (though its currently down to Matt at the moment) However Matt is a good animator and I'm confident he'll begin to reduce the work load for us. Also some of our shots are piddly in terms of their complexity such as shot 26 and 27...however some are definitely gonna require some extra attention, shot 35 is defo gonna be our priority for getting it to look kick ass.

Were gonna have to get clever about which shots are NECESSARY to deliver the story rather than just what we'd like to animate.

Im hoping we can get some 2nd years on board to animate and even possibly some 1st years but I'm going on the fact that we have no one else right now. I've notified the second years who were interested about animating, telling them about the rig and giving them a deadline for next week to provide us with a test. We also have Yaniv whose agreed to do some animation but i cant currently state how much this will be as i know he has commitments to Red Rock and both teams are gonna have to plan around each others schedules in order to get our work done.

Wednesday 31st March

2010-03-31T08:55:00.001-07:00

So Maya time has been limited for me recently as I find myself strangely taking on a full time managers role by constant contact to our contributors on the project in sound, technical and continuing to try and more assistance from the second years. Its persistence thats required and whilst we have a few guys on board doing our UV Mapping (Fahren and Dan) there's still more people I want to get on board in terms of Animation and Lighting.

Sound meeting with Pip to check up on foley and atmosphere progress. Adam not present. Foley only requires a few more tweaks and additions and then it is complete. We'll soon be sending Pip our playblasts for her to time these sounds to. Arranged a meeting for next week to check these last alterations, but after that we'll just be giving her links to our playblasts to work to.

Checked through JBs testing for the pot smashing. the pot crack doesnt quite work for us and JB is gonna do some more testing so the soil looks more random within the scene. If worst comes to the worst we can reuse toms rocks and just have a few of these fly everywhere which would cut memory and render time. We'll have to be a bit clever with our shots.

learnt about UV sets with Yaniv which will be very useful for our repeted environment for the leaves and shrubs.

Emailed the second years about the rig being available to begin testing. I've given a deadline of next tuesday 6th April for them to submit their tests via link, showing us, or copying over playblasts to the folder with their name on.

Received test voices for Hero Gnome, John completed 3 different sets for me to say which was going in the right direction. Sent feedback via email regarding this character and the tweaks and necessary changes.

Emailed sound designer John regarding feedback to the style of the soundtrack and possibilities of hearing some tests soon as well as discussion about his work schedule for the next few weeks.

Emailed Yaniv Hero Gnomes expression sheet as well as detailed list which broke down the exact expressions for eyes, eyebrows, and mouth as generals as well as left and rights. waiting upon fishing rod model to email off to Dan to UV map.

Emailed Matt the Lady Gnome voices for his opinion. Might have to get our voice artist back on board as i haven't heard from the contact John Bell (other voice artist) gave us.

Emailed Roman our 2nd sound designer (because were covering all the avenues here with plan A, B and Z) to see what progress is being made with the sound design. He replied quickly and asked if he could be sent some visuals so he had an understanding of how the 3D would look in its design and colour. I sent over some images we used in our end of 2nd term presentation and noted the key design features we aimed to achieve in the project. He's going to be providing some scratch tests of the soundtrack hopefully by end of next week.

Render Farm: testing it to the max

2010-03-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

So me and Adam have been sending stuff off to the farm to see how its coping with frames and why certain issues are occuring.

After speaking with Simon from IT, its apparent there is no point using the farm for rendering off small jobs, rendering locally means it'll split the job better. Makes sense really. Anyway, the render farm copes better with jobs of 100 frames above, it seems to distribute the work better.

Adam is in the process of splitting the scene file in render layers and were testing the longest frame by rendering an occlusion pass of the initial pan shot. From this we can determine how much we need to split up the scene file into layers of props etc. Removing the shrurbs already cut 5 minutes off the render time but it might not be worth it.

After speaking to Alex Hulse he confirmed we'd have to get ultra smart about what needed rendering etc and sort out the layers now. Think we may need further discussions with him about what exact layers we want and will actually benefit the film...no point rendering what isn't necessary. Will speak to Dalli about potentially setting up a meeting for this, as it would be a good opportunity to ask some ques and sort ourselves out now for post.

Pitch to the 2nd Years

2010-03-24T14:44:00.001-07:00

So today I pitched to the second year animators, hoping to secure our film some UV mappers, textures, lighters and animators. I re-used our end of term 2 pitch presentation and added in a few slides for the task we decided to set the hopefuls who wanted to work on the film.

I used some of the basic scenes I created earlier in the year for the task, the Hero corner and Macho corner. These could be accessed in Public folders > Gnomes Texturing and Lighting Tests along with our sample textures as well as all the zip files for the paint brushes we use in photoshop to create the textures so they could make their own. We also included a render example so the guys can see the quality of the aesthetic were after.

I hope that this gives people something to jump on board and get on with as the files are all set up and ready to go. I didn't show the animatic...i acted it out instead which at the very least provided some entertainment for the guys. Right before a pitch, I'm nervous...and Im not even kidding there were a lot of 2nd years and their beady eyes of hope made me scream inside (just a feeling mind not reality) but once i get going Im away and frankly love the presentation and performance aspect. I love conveying the idea to people and finding ways to engage them and keep them interested in the presentation.

I could go on..but in short, this year has given me so much exposure to presentation I feel i could do it in my sleep (an interesting concept).

So heres the presentation slide were the tests were explained.

Collected 18 names from people who were interested and going to email them all individually to remind them of what we'd like. Hopefully between the 3 groups who pitched today, we'll all manage to get the help we deserve.

Man Im shattered...presenting is tiring but things will be on the up.

Gorillaz: Stylo

2010-03-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

Just seen the brilliantly composited new video from Gorillaz for Stylo. Definitely worth a watch to take in the amazing work they've completed and some great expressions achieved through the characters...or even just to watch the random appearance of Bruce Willis!

Gorillaz - Stylo from mario ucci on Vimeo.

Rigging: Macho Gnome

2010-03-24T05:36:00.000-07:00

The plan is to have a test rig complete and weighted by Friday so we can let loose some first and second years to try out some walk cycle tests/generally bullet proof test the rig for us. As Machos the furtherest along we decided to rig him. I haven't rigged since last Summer sometime so man was I rusty but got there eventually.

Matt sent through the skeleton layout for Macho Gnome. Unfortunalty the bones werent in the best positions and some of the orientations incorrect, so it was easier to start again (sorry Matt)

Whilst rigging I had to alter the rotation on the models legs in order for them to point directly forward so that IK handles would work properly. Thankfully not a problem since all our models elements such as arms and legs are separate components from the rest of the model.

The rig has reverse foot setup, foot attributes including heel roll, heel pivot, heel lean, ball roll and toe curl. Set driven keys in the fingers, IK legs, FK arms and a IK Spline in the spine.

ankle IK testing...pole vector contraint assigned and parented to the foot control.

testing out the spines advanced twist options...

final look at the rig...I'm sure we'll have some additions and changes to make (i've already realized the head control is unnecessary apart from being able to parent the eyes and teeth to in order to follow the rig. A master control is needed to but I'm gonna find Dave on this one cos man does it like to play up a good'un when I'm trying to do it.

bound...now over to matt for the painting weights...gd luck

Monday 22nd March: Lesson Notes

2010-03-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

For hand in your required to submit:

1 x DVD which contains...

3 x folders: artist, technical and animation (clearly labelled with what is your MAIN folder for marking) YOU NEED ALL 3 FOLDERS TO PASS THE COURSE.

1 x Document with link to your individual blog

What elements are covered in each of the folders?

artist - preproduction, texturing, camera work?? (not sure here) Animatic, storyboarding, character drawings - mostly pre production work.

technical -lighting, rigging, dynamics, UV mapping, textures, compositing and post production software, render layers, using the render farm.

animation - any animation, secondary, rain, nething that moves, clouds. Be warned...if you determine this is the folder you want to have for the bulk of your marks you will need some red hot character stuff in order to score well.

Any images submitted must be in a format that will open universally. NO PSDs or PDFs, Jpegs all the way.

Marking for the folders

60% for your main/focus folder

2 x 20% for your remaining folders

Don't leave anything to chance! Submit all your tests and experiments as this can make your mark go up! Take the opportunity to show simply everything you did.

About the blog

This is a more personal item, documenting the process/experience of the course/year of film making. Its you demonstrating your own input and how you've found the experience in its entirety. Make sure what you say you've done backs up actually what you've done otherwise bye bye marks.

Deadline

28th May - when the folders will be marked.

Anything after this is for the show - June 10th (bearing in mind it takes 3/4 days to transcode and compress all the films to final dvd)

Formats

NO HD renders for it 320:240

quicktime files/avis/jpegs

H.264 -high quality for good compression

Term 2 Formative

2010-03-12T06:16:00.000-08:00

This weeks been mental sorting out evvvvveeryyything so everyones aware of what to get on with whilst Im away for a week. "Its alright for some" i hear you say. Weeeeeeell dont cos I'm taking work with me, so enough of it!

Formative session on Thursday with Mike and Dan who'll be taking over next term so it was the chance to show him where were up to, what's been causing us issues and update him about the projects. Overall i think they were pleased with progress but inevitably agreed that the dissertation had prohibited where we would have liked to be on our schedule (by now we should have been animating...sigh) It was nice to get some really positive reactions to our models and texture tests which is a nice boost for us (general consensus would be to do an entire film around the snail now due to all the ooos and awwwws for him) We didn't play our 3d animatic as the shots weren't polished enough and it didn't really make sense without playing the other one along side it. We decided it would be best to really work at this in order to make it our final camera shots etc and overlay the music/sound effects on top to show Dalli next term.

SO...for MONDAY 22nd MARCH we need to show Dan..

3d Animatic with shots completely polished AND with the addition of musical score and term 1s voice overs/foley etc.

Friday was a headache of trying to sort out the STL files for Jared so our models can be made into sculptures. We has a few issues when trying to export files in 3DS Max and the college computers had a day of being rich tea biscuits and giving up. We got there...took longer than expected but we were there.

the final Lady Gnome figurine that comes with your 2nd issue of Gnomes weekly: almost everything you ever wanted to know about gnomes AND MORE! i kid of course...such a magazine would be awful...it would never divulge everything u wanted to know about gnomes...

im quite pleased with the expression achieved here, but its highlighted a few extra divisions are required in the face just so she can maintain the shape a bit better.

this is using the old suit point instead of the newly formed on which doesn't go to one vertex (i started posing before Alex highlighted this problem so no point starting again just for the sculpture) The fingers were the biggest pain and ended up using a basic hand rig just so i could bend them better, however not too far as it pulled on other geometry. With minimal time i just reshaped the verts instead of painting the weights. She looks pretty good though so it'll be interesting to see how they come out. Macho and Lady have been scaled to one another incase there are cut according to size. Yaniv will email Matt his version of Hero to scale on Monday 15th so all 3 will be made. The snail has also been sent off.

We then spent minimal time in comparison scaling our characters to the environment which has now highlighted a few things:

-because of the character size differences, the flower pot had to be even bigger so it seemed plausible Macho could fit in it. The change in size now meant that Hero when scaled could not reach to water the flower...we'll have to install a clever little set of pebble steps so that he can reach.

Tuesday 9th March

2010-03-09T00:15:00.001-08:00

todays been busy...a mixture of epic fails and sorting out music etc.

Our composer Greg has got amazing turn around delivery! A full score has been produced but were in the process of changes and tweaks. Currently have to match the soundtrack up to the youtube animatic which is a series of "play PLAY" quick clicks but takes a few listens for me to write all my notes and feedback of what needs altering. Emailed feedback and set another deadline this time for a week and a bit (Sat 20th March) for new version to be mailed as I'll be away.

Emailed our voice artists as well: Jon and Kim. Jon will begin recording asap for us but both will be fully working on the project in a week or so's time. This is not too worrying for me as both reassure me they can deliver fast and the voice overs are grunts, sighs, ooos and aaaaahhs.

Spent morning working on pose of Lady Gnome for the sculpture deadline this friday...now the main layout is set its down to the nitty gritty aaaarrrgh rraaah tear your hair out part of styling the fingers hands arms etc...which is pretty dammed hard without a rig. It may come to making a basic one just to get the final bends etc from the model.

I've begun UVing a few props....literally projections at this stage of the fork, pot and wheelbarrow but its amazingly NOT my fortay and i soon moved onto...

UVing Lady Gnome...about bloody time i know i know...and i have to say i have NO IDEA what im doing...gonna try n get as much done tonight and then Ive arranged UV master Yaniv to have a look see and gimme a few pointers tomorrow.

strike a pose

2010-03-08T09:37:00.003-08:00

Trying to get Lady posed and ready for friday so she can be sent off and made into a sculpture *hopefully*. posing her is a little more difficult than first anticipated (especially wen it comes to the hands/fingers however its been a good opportunity to see the models capabilites and how she can bend and stretch. Posing has mainly been done with the lattice tool in order to not shift about the characters verts too much....

please ignore her awful facial expression...it is pap

Hand posing is difficult! lots of chopping off...bending and twisting going on here as well as thinking how the character would be at rest in her pose...

yeah...the hair wouldn't duplicate over...thoroughly annoying when this happens...anyway pose starting to take shape now...from the front at least...again ignore the horrid facial expression.

How its looking so far....to be continued

White is for Witching

2010-03-03T15:51:00.000-08:00

books need trailers these days...sounds weird but think about it, more demand for animation. I love the collation of words to images here, the simplicity of the trailer with just the sound of the wind, creeks and heart beats...very haunting indeed. DO NOT WATCH WITHOUT SOUND!!

White Is For Witching from Treat on Vimeo.

Meeting: Monday 8th March

2010-02-25T00:34:00.001-08:00

Right guys, so dissertation hand in is Friday 5th 4:30pm. A massive chunk of time has been taken out of production so we are behind schedule and need to pick up the pace massivly in order to make this mother of a film.

in other words...were gonna have to go full steam ahead now. There are no other units so full focus guys, full focus.

For Monday 8th i need to see the following

Matt, Sarah, Yaniv - All 3 characters modelled and UV'd (though Lady and Hero need discussion about their faces but other sections can be UV'd ready

Matt - The texture tests complete for the characters - stone overlay, colour etc

- texture tests for plants/leaves, ground.

Adam - The environment created - floor, neighbourhood, fences. BEGIN UVING

- Camera playblasts within the 3D environment - at least half the animatics worth

Tom - All elements modeled from your list. Begin UV mapping these.

Heres how i see the week panning out...

The animatic is created in 3D either basic keys on Blocks or characters.

The characters eyebrows need sorting and will be sorted - UVing on characters complete

Characters will be scaled to each other as well as the environment.

Final painted base texture will be locked down - offset and layered ready to alter for ANY and ALL objects within the film.

Matt will take over on texturing of characters

Sarah will begin rigging of the characters

Yaniv, Adam and Tom will continue UVing the other elements for the film with Yaniv working on the main stage area, Adam on the shrubs and Tom on the background houses and elements.

dont forget formative 11th!!!

partly cloudy....partly unsure

2010-02-24T06:15:00.000-08:00

I still dont see why the showed this in some cinemas and not others. The pixar shorts have always gone hand in hand with their feature films, yet this seemed to have a strange level of mystery around it.

The concept already put me off...the creation of the world thing/where do babies come from ideology seems....somewhat not Pixars style in all honesty...lacking that certain ooo i dont know what. I didnt want it to deter me, as someone whose faced initial criticism of an idea that has often struck people as odd or off-putting...but...when I finally saw it a few days ago I was left disappointed. I cant quite explain it though, the clouds themselves (an obvious technical test for Up) were wonderfully created with a lot of depth, giving a soft fluffy quality to the characters. The lightning was great. The stork that always gets hurt by the more non cuter animals of nature fine....yet it was missing something, something to give it that spark which annoyed me incredibly. It just didnt make me react, i didnt laugh or squerm at the storks pain NOTHING! Is that the answer for unappealing characters? Like i say, I remain uncertain.

My favourite Pixar short still has to be Presto. Maybe its the characters that have more appeal...presto already has this great role reversal between master and servant, that twist of control...maybe its just a funnier concept whereas Partly Cloudy tries to be more subtle in its humour...all i can say is I prefer Pixar making shorts that punch me in the face with humour with superb exaggeration in animation, which is what Partly Cloudy doesnt do for me...sorry

Firstly...heres partly cloudy:

"Partly Cloudy" by Pixar from Jeni Starick on Vimeo.

Presto...the benchmark (for me) of their shorts...

Presto from adrianouragano on Vimeo.

The Lady and the Reaper

2010-02-10T14:02:00.000-08:00

Frankly is there anyone who hasnt seen this and thought WOW?!

well...if you havent...check it out here:

http://212.227.136.88/press/

The lady and the reaper tells the story of the fight over life and death...quite literally...as a Gaston like Dr and Death battle it out over an old ladies soul spinning the story over a chaotic scene of filing cabinets and staircases. The perfect battle, very very funny with excellent pacing and story beats.

The framing was superb throughout...some really interesting angles used to emphasize the drama and anticipation, especially in this starting shot which is a favourite of mine:

another great use of framing through the characters positioning here, the scythe drawing our attention to lady. The use of colour filters and lighting is awesome!
the obnoxious doctor and his nurses. This use of expressive sounds for voices are how are characters are gonna be...this guy IS macho gnome!
I love the character of Mr Death, his simplistic cubic design provides a highly expressive character for the story...a very stylistic view of the skeleton.
The stages had an interesting warped feel throghout which created interesting sets which otherwsie would have been massivly boring if built straight. The storyboarding of shots must have been very thorough in order to know exactly how the sets could be warped and still be functional for the performances to occur.
Use of silouette was also great as it introduced a lot of play with colour here as we decend into the madness of the chase scene...
oranges here showing emphasizing the energy of the scene as the story reaches its emotional peak...
and the blue as the pinicle moment happens and we return to the calm/solution...
Another favourite shot. This is a great set up for an establishing shot and a great design for Mr Death's environment.

the secret to success

2010-02-10T09:16:00.000-08:00

"the aim is to collaborate with individuals who work towards a common goal, only then will you journey together towards success..."

heard this on the radio months and months back...i cant remember who said it but the words are incredibly true.

how tall is the little fellow?

2010-02-09T09:49:00.001-08:00

quick render test to show development of Hero's corner + photoshop character to determine just how tall are these little guys...

1. He's a giant gnome! too big i think

2.
3. Personally i think this is too small but hey, just for contrast. I think his height lies somewhere between 2 and 3...bearing in mind the others are also taller than him.

to do list...

2010-02-03T22:43:00.000-08:00

List of what I need to model/finish off modelling:

Fork

Flowers - heros + 2 others for his side of the garden

Fishing Rod

Trees - sort em out

stump - again...sort it out

Leaves - give depth to, adjust with lattice

Lady Gnome - finish that mother

Hero's Prize Flower

I didn't want the flowers to resemble realistic flowers, but more have qualities of them with a twist. Hero's flower in-particular needed to resemble something of distinct value, its precious to him so therefore should look pretty different from the other flowers in the garden. I tried designing purely from my head but looked through a few different books until i found a few elements i wanted to encompass into the design.

in the beginningt: I like the petals, but the central part needs something more....im not sure whether i prefer it squared...

as opposed to smooth?
Using the lattice tool to give more definition to the petals, addition of stomas for the centre which need lengthening and more separation between each. Need to vary the petals as its too symmetrical but defiantly getting there.

Model smoothed...not liking the flower smoothed to be honest...

Fishing Rod

I attempted this as more of a square design, but it looked very primitive. So starting again and extruding from a cylinder to create this.

The Weed:

To the left is the plant extruded from a cube works well when it comes to stylising it however looks primitive once smoothed and beveling adds not a lot to the model really. To the right is a version of the plant modelled from an extruded cylinder which gives a cleaner outline HOWEVER its branches look generally rubbish unsmoothed and smooth as you can see....

unsmoothed models...

smoothed...

extruded cube model with added geometry (right) so it retains a more squared off shape when smoothed (left)

Close up of the leaves...as pointed out by Adam, the shapes are fine but the depth needed addressing otherwise they would look extremely primitive. These have been extruded slightly to give a nice curve when smoothed.

Leaves are shaped into position using a lattice...
The Petals....started out as a extruded cube then using the lattice tool to give the geometry curvature.

Flower numero deux....one final flower to go along with the troop of plants in Hero's little garden, less wow factor than the prize one but hey still pretty magnificent to say the least.

left: unsmoothed model, right is model smoothed.

Original petal modeled from extrdued cube...

the petals in their lattices are then curved into desired shape and the copied over to create the new flower...(i think my favourite new tool for this term!)

When it came to adding the flower, the stem seemed way too tall and made the flower look a bit obsolete so i changed the shape about a bit and moved and sewed the preferred stork to its new position to get the following...

Model unsmoothed...lower petal needs twisting a bit to fill the gap more. That pot is WAY too tiny. Needs a central point to the flower as the petals gather to nothing at the moment.

added centre piece...

smoothed

The Fork:

Ok, there have been previous attempts at this model and along with their positives came a whole load of negatives which when we broke it down, came down to the prongs on the fork. Although squared off, stylized they looked unbelievably underworked, lame and genuinely not conveying the practical element of a garden fork. Along with stylization comes a believability in the item, the audience has to believe it could be used and maybe they would...but they would believe it was a primitive fork none the less. This prop is KEY to the story, therefore needs to look killer...

SO...taking the good points, i spent many hours looking at a garden fork to redesign this in maya...

not bad...proportion wise not quite long enough but not bad. More details from the handle to the stem to the base give us more information....

lengthened...got rid of the ridge bit between the prongs to make a more solid object....
which prongs do you prefer?

Showed the guys and the preference was for the fork prongs to the left as it looked much slicker, so I'll continue with that one, adding in a nice curve to the shape that garden forks have.

left: original fork, middle: new fork unsmoothed, right: new fork bevelled and smoothed....need to sort out that middle prong.

Heros Corner:

Just to get a quick idea how the environment is building up....these are the unbevelled pots and models are unsmoothed but frankly still looking rather swanky...grass patches and tufts as well as leaves will need to be added when dressing the set. EDIT: after showing the guys, the second flower needs to be reduced in height/size as its dominating as much space as the prize flower...will alter this accordingly.

Machos Corner: another render test to see the props possible layout for Machos corner of the garden...less curls and swirls and more grafting. Again lots of grass patches and tufts and addition of leaves required in set dressing...

The Trees: after much discussion it was decided the design needed redoing. The trees that were originally designed, though stylistic were too big for the environment in which the story is set. They're the kinda trees you'd find in the vast woods with frodo baggins instead of the humble garden with the quaint little gnomes (yes i said quaint....what of it?) Anywho i looked into my garden, my neighbours garden, then had a staring match with the neighbours becuase of the whole looking into their gardens, then a redesign of the trees so they embedded the curly qualities of our flowers:

watercolour testing

2010-02-02T07:49:00.001-08:00

ok matt i'm gonna give this painted textures a wee bit of experimenting

3 basic colour layers in photoshop, grain, paint effects, texture added via filter effects

every paint splat is on its own separate layer and hue/saturation/lightness adjusted accordingly to allow the most control.

tues-er-mc-day

2010-02-02T05:17:00.001-08:00

pressing on with character modelling...

from ze side...loooking good...hair might require pushing back further at its top section though...that or the flower. dress frill still needs adjusting.
from the front...ive reduced the width of her lower face slightly as it looked too puffy. looks a bit more slender/femine now. nose is still looking about michael jackson but i shall continue to tweak.
A quick test of her with duplicated arms, legs etc....left part of hair isnt currently latticed into place. Looking much better but still a few areas to adjust.
left side of hair now latticed into place, bent and curled to give more dimensions.
added a bit of length to her legs to give her a bit more of a slender/feminine look....dress frills have been curled outwards but still need etc work as they look under-worked and lose their shape when smoothed.

seen it?

2010-01-28T13:20:00.000-08:00

Saw this the other day on the TV and absolutely loving it...ok...nothing to do with our project (although the ice smashing at the end...flower pot....maybe!?!but another brilliant animation to keep you inspired and guess whose it by? ya-huh studio aka...

Im in pure admiration of the compositing used in this advert for Peugeot. Cant find out who made it, but its got great use of camera, shadow and transformer esque construction.....soundtracks not bad too!

Peugeot Ad / Anuncio Peugeot Motion & Emotion from vaffer22 on Vimeo.

mother of all updates

2010-01-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

me: "ah man...thank god that dissertation formative is allllll handed in *pheeeeeww*"

alec: "sarah *sniff*.....update your blog"

me: stoney face of pain...

reminds me of..........

SOOOOO not because alec told me, i was planning a massive update anyway but here it is...now whats been going on?

well....mainly the last week or so i've been trying to press on with dissertation which is painful to say the least but hey ho...we move on.

well thanks to the help of Tom i've been awakened to the bevel tool and although wanted to keep a graphically sharp look to the models, i have to admit the bevel tool just adds more depth to the designs when in 3d.

So its decided...what needs to be beveled will be and what wont....wont. Not everything will, but it does add a nice edge to the wheelbarrow handles, pots etc as you can see from the comparison shots below:

Left model: initial model. Right: after bevel....answer....we're using the dam bevel tool!

Stumped? so the stump had a "patchwork quilt" effect look going on, myself and matt set about experimenting with removing the horizontal geometry in order to see if it would free up the model....answer below....

the bark and right root has had its horizontal edges removed which gives us this hard vertical edging which matt likes but I'm not completely sold on at the moment. OPINIONS?!??! At any rate...it looks a dam sight better than before so it can only get better right?

Nice hair piece...so heres the levels of working on Lady Gnomes hair. Far left is the original model made from extruding a cube....next left is the geometry duplicated over and a lattice was added and rotated, twisted into its new position which gave it more dimensions. The next is the geometry copied over and - scaled for the opposite side, i've then altered it to make it longer and look different so there's not perfect symmetry. Right is the finished hair piece and flower all smoothed:
Closer inspection: occlusion render from the side shows you the nice curves added to the model via the lattice, nice face framing shape now determined.
and from the front to show the difference in sides...

experimenting with the foot...this is why (to a certain extent) FLAT DOENST CUT IT!

During a midnight break from dissertation I decided modeling isn't as painful compared to the written document of doom. BREAK THROUGH! so strange...i've been having issues with modeling for a few weeks now (ultimate brain block) but suddenly it clicked what to do.

the old face...completely flat and unreadable! showed this to JB and Edgely and they suggested removing some of the edges to free up the space for more successful blend-shapes...her face has been annoying me since i was originally trying to connect it to her hood....it was a mess believe me.

but at midnight and i cracked it by simply pushing the eye geometry back into the head which instantly gave her rounder cheeks and the brow i was after! huzzar! Left side is the new version compared the the right....you can also see where ive removed some of the edges which free up the geometry more.
smooth test...not too bad, the left side certainly has more detail than the right.
geometry is mirrored over
from the side, we can see the curves of the face a bit better, much more interesting to look at that a completely flat face.
quick duplicate and smooth test to see what shes looking like atm....nose looks a bit strange, needs more work. The hair needs further lattice shaping as it looks stuck on...size around the top areas possibly needs reducing, flowers fine, suit and face obv require more work, teeth and tongue need slotting in, sleeve needs more subtly...test frill on the bottom of the dress NOT sorted yet...
ahh....its when you suddenly pose her like this you realise the real proportions of things and MAN are her hands massive...gonna scale them down a bit.
testing out the length of her arms...think i'll change the hidden inside bit of the arm back to a cylinder so she can get the most from her movement....her hair may be a possible issue for being in the way of her arms....will need to sort this too.

ah in the name that is good and evil...shes disgusting...think its the face...big guppy mouth with no teeth. little test occlusion to see how the shadows etc will be forming and those brows are waaaaay too defined...she needs some more edges round the eyes to soften. Scaled down the hands now which is goooood and scaled up the legs to match the width of the arms a bit more. Im concerned about the following

a. the brows - will we be able to read the shapes they make if they're that close to the fringe?

b. what the heck happens to the frill of her dress when she sits down?!?!? we dont want that pushing through the mushroom geometry?! plus when she needs to run/bound etc her legs are gonna go through the frill geometry.

c. im really thinking overly too much about every single bloody thing at this stage!

Help is at hand...Tom

2010-01-21T09:29:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Tom for helping out with the modelling on the project, yesterday he started working on the fences which i checked today and after a few tweaks is looking brilliant! cheers mate :)

So i set him some more work...Tom has all the background garden props and a few props for the main scene to model. He's been given all my sketches for reference images to model to so hopefully we should be well on the way now.

Thanks Tom :)

the worlds gone mad...

2010-01-20T14:38:00.000-08:00

a gnome brooch...are u mental?!

leaves & trees

2010-01-20T12:21:00.001-08:00

made this quickly the other day...just a quick test. One to the right is the original, one to the left has been duplicated and bent upwards to give a bit more dynamics...this is based on my designs and would be 1 out of 5 varieties...just want to get opinion on it.
the trees....trying to keep them squared off but wondering if there needs to be some extra geometry?

Anyways...thoughts people...thoughts

Hero's Watering Can

2010-01-20T10:57:00.001-08:00

the manliest watering can you'll ever see :)

Paint by Numbers

2010-01-18T15:28:00.001-08:00

The catalogue of photo shop brushes. Thanks to Grigs :)
Heres a look at them all for easy reference when it comes to texture creation, please let me know if you need a copy of the brushes:

flower....

2010-01-18T12:31:00.001-08:00

lady gnome goes slowly...very slowly...so slowly im embarrassed to say the least BUT dissertation distracts me so i find my character modeling goes splat....but i want to push things further SO LOOK AT THIS FLOWER! yes the original flower model now has all indentations AND more curves and twists thanks to a bit of lattice tool useage...thanks to Simon for the pin points :) now looking 100x more excellent.

left: lattice flower which was curled round to give right...the more 3 dimensional looking piece for lady gnome.

p.s 43 seconds in...this is my influence for lady gnomes run...unexplainable NON human running...were a long way off from animating tho guys BUT let this inspire us to go go go!

wheel-e-mc-barrow

2010-01-11T02:56:00.001-08:00

original model...looks good
some slight alterations: spokes have more extreme shape, front bracket of the barrow is wider to contrast its slender handles, the handles themselves have more definition to connect them to the poles, top of the barrow is taller than the back. Oh and the screws have been exaggerated bigger.

bask in the detail.....basking done

i don't care miss steele...

2010-01-07T00:54:00.001-08:00

...i live in the sticks

props

2010-01-06T13:16:00.000-08:00

pots ahoy - the one to the left needs some additional work as you can quite clearly see the faces etc what have you but im liking this squared off look to the piece. As you can see, i've tried to create a variety of models that will help break up the scene/keep it interesting/show off the design ettttttcccc!

Another watering can...what was wrong with the first one i hear you add? NOTHING...I've made a spare incase we need to dot extra items around the garden or indeed give Hero his own little watering can which could be a nice touch just seen in the corner of shots? maybe not...in any case theres another watering can now.
yeah damit its ANOTHER watering can...but after i made the last one i thought it wasnt exactly a Hero esque design if he's gonna have one so i went through my designs and found this squat straight one which i think suits his character A LOT more...p.s im the queen of making watering cans!

first fork...not overly impressed to be honest...just something not right about it...seems a bit flat but hey i'll include it on here anyway and then you can see the final cohort of props used for the film later on.

Machos Stump: im loving squared off objects as i feel it really adds to the old look of the film. This in particular works well as it adds to the damaged effect of the stump which will in turn add to Macho's area of the garden. I created a base log and extruded faces to created these twisted curly roots. I then duplicated the model and began extruding certain faces, either in lines of 2,3 or 4 and re-stitched them together to created a sort of jacket for the log which gives more depth to the object as it looks like all its bark is splitting away from it from wear and tear. I've started to add some cuts and chips to also add to the aged look.

simple details....

2010-01-05T08:45:00.000-08:00

me and matt went through our character models, discussed what we liked, didn't like about each, what we were having trouble with etc. We looked back at the making of Lost and Found to see about how they created the facial setups, blend shapes from such a simplistic face model. We then discussed concerns that the blends created from our models might not be extreme enough so the characters will need geometry to allow puffy cheeks, creases to help the characters to emote to the audience. After all...whats the point of having the a great character that no one can understand what they're expressing?!?!

I gave Matt a copy of a test head, arm and leg and foot so he could alter for his character/save him time from making stuff from scratch.

continued modeling of Lady Gnome, i was finding modelling the face difficult to tackle so...

I went to distract Edgely (sorry) and he showed me a couple of techniques for creating a simple mouth from a cube, so im gonna have a experiment around. Cheeeeeeer matie, much appreciated. Its strange how someone else can break down how to make something different to you and hey sometimes it works better, sometimes it doesn't...

...on this occasion it did work better.

edge's example of creating a simple mouth...

from looking at edgely model of jed, its put it clear to me AGAIN that variety is the spice of life, and whilst characters are kept simple, do you really want them to look like copy paste examples? even down to the buttons on his character, each is different from the next which kept the character looking interesting. Im gonna go back over the model and alter the flower petals for Lady and offset parts so there not se-metrical. Our characters are simple, but they require detail within the few elements that they have in order to give them appeal to the audience.

white chocolate buttons? okay so the old model is on the right...perfectly semetrical base using a cut up helix in order to create the strings...not terrible but a bit weedy....take 2 on the left is a more squared off squashed button...more chunky for our lil hero, the string is created with extruded cylinder.

Christmas Inspiration: The Gruffalo

2009-12-31T05:21:00.001-08:00

After recommendations came my way i sat down to watch The Grufflalo shown on BBC 1 over Christmas. Based on the popular childrens book, Studio SOI (who frequently collaborate with AKA) have transformed the 2D visuals beautifully into 3D. Catch it on iplayer while you can, its well worth watching!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pk64x/b00pk5z3/The_Gruffalo/

I really enjoyed the visual style of this piece, and funny enough has a lot of similarities, points of interest toward our piece. Heres some screen grabs to get you inspired:

There was a nice use of texturing which created a sort of plasticine look to the characters and the world they inhabited.

The trees look like they're melting!

Some of the environment shots looked almost photoreal which i think was mainly due to the lighting. Hopefully we can get something similar going on in ours?
Heres some really nice examples of the texturing used in the short...really liking the graphic knots and grain used in the wood here, i can imagine it would work very well with our painted textures too:

The story confirmed the use of tall grass and pathways to me. Tall grass was a means of creating worry and fear, allowing the audience to understand the emotions of the vulnerability of the main character of the mouse. Shots using paths and mud etc are used to allow characters to tell the story, allow the audience to focus on the main character. Use jungles for jungles and not for the whole miniature world:

beautiful lighting used here with the sun emerging through the trees. Love the shapes of the trees too:

GO AND WATCH IT!!

character colours

2009-12-13T15:34:00.001-08:00

Part of our 2nd pitch feedback was to reconsider the characters colours as before they blended in with the environment and generally steered away from typical gnome colours. Going back to our gnome research mood boards, it highlighted that gnomes generally stay within certain colours of green, blue, red, yellow with mixtures of browns. Straight out i did NOT wish for any of the characters to be brown, which they would have to be considering they're wearing a onesie...*ahem* So with that in mind, I quickly whipped up the following tests in photoshop using this old paper texture, as the watercolour one is fine....buuuuut when altered hue wise gives a mixture of colours (which is nice for design work but for locking down colours not so good):

Test 1: i quite like this one, although the first thing to be pointed out was that Lady Gnome would blend in with the mushroom in the environment which is a big issue considering she spends the majority of the film sitting on it.

Test 2: Hero and Macho I like, nice contrast of colours between them but im sceptical to use yellow on a character when it covers such a massive area, though Lady does look bright and cheery.
Test 3: mmm not really working for me here....Macho is NOT a blue character and Hero is NOT a red one, just doesnt suit their characteristics at all.

Test 4: I quite like Lady in green but again yellow is just a no no...

Test 5: and then its an even bigger no no putting the big tough guy in yellow!

Final character colours:

Sound Meeting

2009-12-02T07:01:00.001-08:00

Today was our meeting with Pip from Creative Sound Design course. Since she had missed the 2nd pitch i decided to basically go through our presentation, discussing the design of the characters, environments and texturing we wished to achieve from the piece. We then played the story animatic and then talked through it so it was clear what the piece was about. I mentioned to Pip that i don't currently have an exact idea for sound at this stage, but that i thought the piece would lend itself quite nicely to a light and bouncy soundtrack, not a fully blown orchestral piece. In terms of the rest of the sound...i was pretty honest that all the foleys/voices etc needed re-recording as they aren't the best of quality and the sound levels are all over the place. Im confident she'll be able to achieve this though in the time frame we have for the project. We discussed how some of the foleys (such as the footsteps) need to sound less realistic as they haven't gelled very will with the animatic and will need to emphasis the fun/comical quality of the story.

Pip took some notes and a copy of the animatic and said she had a few ideas up her sleeve so im looking forward to seeing what she produces for us over the coming weeks. We filled her in on the extensiveness of the animation process so she was fully aware of our schedule and roughly when we should have modeling complete, animation etc etc.

Pips taken away the materials and said she'd contact me Monday with her action plan which i look forward to seeing. As for updates, I've said the group would keep in contact either once or twice a week with her to get updates and make sure everything's ok.

Anyway its great to have PIp on board as part of the team and Im really looking forward to what ideas she's gonna bring to the project!

Thanks Pip :)