What the Flock? Site Change?

In response to Phils complaint about the unoriginality of my blog design 12 months previously, I have updated the "look" and designed a new logo.

Character Design - The beginning

So this is the first real post on the character design project. My two themes are mythical and space opera. This is really just a post to show my first ideas for the project.

So to start with, I've been focusing my thoughts on greek myth and basically setting it in space. Although I'm not actually going to follow any of the stories directly or copy any of the characters, I am going to take some of the basic concepts from the mythical creatures and generally get a mythical theme across in the designs.

So far what I've done is only on what I know of however I have also looked at this website, as well as others. Although I think books might be more useful on this topic.
http://www.igreekmythology.com/greek-myths.html

So the hero is going to be human. Your typical hero really.

For the villain, I was thinking of basing it on one of the greek mythical creatures. Quite a few of them are half animal and half human, but in my case I would like the villain to be an alien so replace human with humanoid. I was also thinking that the villain could be like the hydra creature. The hydra has the ability to grow two heads for every one that is chopped off. Sounds like an invincible powerful creature. Like most villains.

Then the sidekick, I was thinking of being an oracle of sorts. Someone how perhaps uses riddles to aid the hero on his quest.

So those were just some on the spot decisions, that I can use as my starting point.

To go with this I've also come up with an initial synopsis for the show.

The villain creates monsters (like mythical creatures) in each show. One monster per show.

The heros overall quest is to put an end to the villains monster making, but in each episode, he's just got to defeat the monster.

The sidekick always has the answer, but it's in the form of a riddle.


That's the first idea.

I've got some books out of the library to do with myths etc.
Myths and Legends - D Bellingham - C Wittaker - J Grant
Greek Mythology - J Pinsent
The Gods of Greece - A Stassinopoulos - R Beny
Mythology. An Illustrated Encyclopedia - edited by R Cavendish


Environment wise, this is being set in space, so initially I am thinking of having floating countries in space. something that has probably come from a recent episode of Doctor Who, but chances are they have borrowed it from somewhere else.



And thats it. At the very least, its a starting point for, hopefully, further ideas to develop.

Postmodernism Film Volume 1 - Kill Bill Volume 1

Kill Bill is the first in a series of films that we will be watching that are linked to this thing called postmodernism. What is postmodernism? well from our first lecture, it sound like that is impossible to answer in one sentence. Thats if you can find a definite answer.

Kill Bill Volume 1 was made in 2003 by Quentin Tarantino.

So this is the first time I've seen it and, well, for me it wasn't anything overly special, but basically the main character survives a brutal killing incident, and then seeks revenge. The rest is pretty much a lot of over the top bloody fight scenes. However obvious changes to the style were made throughout the whole of the film.



Starting with the retro introduction, to the cartoon killing sequence. Then another sequence in black and white, then siluette. So what makes this film postmodern? This film breaks a lot of general film making rules. Nothing is set in stone or or shown in linear fashion, but the key thing is that in this case it is not a bad thing.

The fact that it is a mix up of styles is aparently what makes it Postmodern. Hes created characters that contradict thier sterotypcal gender, in a postmodern sort of way.

Linking this back to the lecture, I can see some of the themes metunted, such as the fractured world and things that contradict each other.

A Long Days Work

Its been a very productive day. We had organised to have a meeting in a room. Other students wanting to enter the room we borrowed, would have been confronted with this message.



And during this meeting we were discussing story ideas. And here are some photos of us discussing those ideas.




There was one point where someone (can't remember who) said that our story was sounding a bit like Predator. Its a film I've never seen, but they said something about a heat sensing device to locate the invisible creatures. So I replied by saying, "hey its set in the year 2000. Which basically means we can have any invention or device we like. So instead of a heat seeking divice, why not a errr....... ummm.... a Refraction Anomaly Detector." Problem solved.
More on this meeting on the group blog. Including the complete basic story.

To finish off I was doing a bit of research, trying to find images of what the future was imagined like in the 50s/60s. The reason being is that our film is set in the future... in the year 2000. So obviously I'm not looking at what things were like in the year 2000, but just finding general images of what the future was thought to be like.









We should all recognise this picture.




No doubt there will be more research later on.

And maybe some drawings or concept art to follow.

B3D Logo Animation Development

So the logo was decided for B3D Studios, so I started thinking about a simple animation.
I re done the logo again in illustaightor and imported the three shapes into after effects. The entire animation was done in this.



I'm still regarding it as a test piece, which shows the basic idea of how I wanted to separate the various components. I'm thinking to complete the animation with the two closer letters falling back to where the D is, but next to each other. Then the word Studios appearing somehow next to it. The camera will probably have to shift to one side to allow room for the extra text.

Character Design

So the other day was the character design lesson. Random types of characters were generated by drawing ordinary playing cards. I drew a ghostly gangster, an aquatic clown and a cyborg cop.

The only catch is that although I drew them I didn't actually draw them. Well I attempted to scribble something but I struggled to picture the characters in my head. In the end I think one of the difficulties was that I was given an abstract character with no visual prompts to help visualise it. The other difficulty was that I couldn't logically think of a way to combine these separate elements to make sense. They were more like misfits. Some useful advice was to pick out similarities like in the case of the aquatic clown, I started to draw a face like this.

At the time I didn't realise the similarity in the mouth that I had drawn to a fishes mouth.



So I think visual research is going to be the way forward in future.

So in regards to the actual brief, I've been given two themes. Mythical and Space Opera. So what we have to produce is a character bible which contains a synopsis of the show and drawings of 3 characters. The good guy, the bad guy and the sidekick. in all sorts of poses camera angles and expressions. So in order to not mess up I am going to be doing a lot of visual research on mythical creature stories and space themed stuff.

A crazy, a Silly and One Serious Plot Idea

Plot idea 1

Humans from the future come to earth (in present time), bringing their technology and gadgets.

One particular gadget is this wrist band tech thingy. It tells the time, built in sat nave and all sorts of useful stuff.

It becomes compulsory for every human from present day to wear one of this wrist band tech thingys.

What the present day humans don't know is that the future humans are actually humanoid alien cannibal beings, and the tech thingy they wear round their wrist is disguising their true form.

So why are these cannibal aliens even bothering to visit earth, pretending to be humans? what’s the point of this.

Well they are obviously smart creatures that can unfortunately only eat meat that is their own. This is not ideal. The solution is to convert a similar race into their own, and eat them.

What the humans don't realise is that the wrist bands they have all been given is converting their genetic code to be exactly like the aliens. While at the same time, still looking human.


So aliens have come to earth from beyond the stars, and have secretly lived with humans in disguise. (effectively invisible, not literally)

all humans on earth have been gradually changing into the alien creatures, while still remaining the look of humans.


Now the aliens face one problem. How can they tell which ones to eat without revealing their ravenous form? (the aliens get quite hungry)

Even if they switch off the clever disguise so that everyone, originally human and alien look like the alien. The aliens still won’t know which ones to eat.

The answer is simple. Food colouring. More specifically, glow in the dark food colouring.

So the aliens wait for night time, switch off all the power, and every former human is a green glowing target for them to feast on.


So that’s the aliens plan. How the humans find a way to transform themselves back and defeat the aliens is beyond me. Bu then we are creating a trailer, so the ending is never going to be revealed.

Plot 2

One day an invisible cannibal lands on earth. It decides to eat his own tail because he is the last cannibal. No one notices his existence on earth as he is invisible. The end.

Plot 3

A parallel earth from beyond the stars, where humans evolved into cannibals. Instead of intelligent humans on the earth that we know.


Another Idea
I’ve been thinking about what sort of time period the film should be set. Instead of setting it in the future as imagined in the past. Set it in today’s time, with today’s real technology. No smooth hover crafts or anything like that. But obviously trailer wise, styled like an old film.

Lost in La mancha

Lost in La mancha is a documentary on how Director Terry Gilliam failed to make a film. The film he wanted to make was entitled "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" based on the novel "Don Quixote de la Mancha".


Is that rain I see?

We watched this documentary, and saw how a series of unfortunate events lead to the ending of the film before it had begun. To put simplely the directors idea for the film was so ambitious, that it was simply to big a project for the budget. From what I can gather he made a few wrong choices, it terms of where to cut costs. Such as the actors being paid less than usual. Which meant getting the actors together to shoot was difficult. Admittedly there was some element of bad luck, during the making of the film. Like the location for one of the scenes was completely wrecked when rain darkened the colour of the sand… and washed away half of the equipment and props. But then there were other things that went properly considered when choosing locations to film, such as the noise around them. The team knew that aeroplane would be flying around every so often. I suppose what really ended the making of the film was the lead actor had become unfit to play the part of Don Quixote, which put things on hold. Perhaps the film could have been made if realistic choices were made when things weren't working. I think the main thing to take away from this as a CG artist is to know your limits and plan everything.

Some Logo Design

Just posted a bit of logo design on the studio blog.

I for one am looking forward to working on this group project.

Unfortunately for the moment, I wont be working on the summer project now until, well I don't know when. The main thing I got stuck on was the character. So I suppose I really need to revisit some of those rigging tutorials at some point, or it may have to wait until second year is over. Hopefully by then I will have more knowledge on the subject and be more confident as well. I don't want it to get in the way of the second year projects as they are now the highest priority.

Where am I at this point in time

its been a little while since I last posted anything. I've been in Maya mostly, animating away, working my way through each shot. Although not in any particular order.

Although before I did that, I grouped my story boards together into their complete shots. There are a total of 13 shots in this sequence. I then put an approximate time against each shot, based on the edits in the animatic. I spliced the sound into 13 pieces and with all this, I could setup my scenes in maya, with the correct length and sound associated with it. OK. So where am I now?

There's still a few more shots to go and all the scenes need various effects added to them. Such as bubbles, rolling fog and a few particle splashes. The character is also missing in all the scenes at the moment. Can you believe that I'm still wondering how I am going to do that. Considering the amount of time left. I haven't properly lit the scenes either.

Anyway, I thought I would post all the bits of animation that I have done so far, as Playblasts, in sequence. The blank areas are shots that still need doing. Having seen them all play in sequence together like this I can see some areas that need further improving. Mostly regarding the camera.


PS in the last two shots, the water isn't moving because it was taking too long to calculate for the playblast.

I think almost every shot, the animated camera requires more refining.
As an example. Shot 10 (about 40 seconds in) seemed to look good by itself, but when played after the previous shot, something looks odd. It could just be me, but I think its because the end camera angle of shot 9 is very similar to the beginning camera angle of shot 10. The fact that the camera in shot 10 is moving considerably faster than in 9 could also be contributing to making this edit look slightly odd. It could just be that in shot 10, the camera is starting too far away or it shouldn't accelerate so quickly. In fact, looking at shot 9 now, I think the animation needs to be changed drasticly, because for me, it isnt working.

One thing I have done is created a table, listing the 13 shots in my animation, with tick boxes of what needs doing. Columns starting from basic animation to camera animation, additional effects, render setup to compositing etc and lastly a done box. I actually did something similar to this on the last uni project as it helps me see exactly where I stand.

Production Phase

Hello. I can now say that I'm well into the production phase. So the last week or so I spent a lot of time (probably too much) tweaking the whirl pool effect. I actually improved on it so much that I've decided on using it in the final film. I've started on a few other scenes as well.

This is a still from one of those scenes. It's not finished yet, but getting there.

You might notice that I have modelled a new boat. It's similar in shape, but is much smoother. It has extra details like doors with handles, a rudder and propeller. I spent quite alot of time trying to find blueprints or the sort of boat that I wanted, but found nothing. So it was based on a variety of images of boats that I found on the interent. I was intending on doing a front and side view of the boat myself but accidentally used the whole page when drawing this.


I ended up just modeling free hand, using this drawing as further reference.

This is the model after it's been smoothed a few times, so it's looking a little dense in some areas.




I haven't started the making of yet, but then I haven't finished the film. So I will work on that afterwards. I've just seen that the due date has been extended as well, so that hopefully will allow enough time to finish everything.

Does anyone know what time to come in on the first day Monday 20th. Or even more usefull... a timetable...

I'm probably going to get on with making this film now, so expect shorter and fewer posts for now.