Space for Rent

Self Directed Piece. Brief week.


What to do for my major piece. Well something in 3D, seeing as that's where i want to go.
Here's some ideas that I'm starting with.

- Technical character setup. Already been done so i don't really want to do this one. but character building is always interesting and fun.

- Advanced Modeling. Some hyper realistic models would be great to show off to a company.

- Series of animated shorts. Ive got some ideas backed up for short animations that I've always wanted to do.

- One short animation. in depth, emotional, meaningful animation for high impact on a studio.
More based on the story telling part.

-2D animation. To help with my animation skills and i love to draw so good fun and id like to have a proper animation under my belt.

As another idea id like to do some more motion graphics, maybe a music video of some kind.

There's some rough ideas for my final project, ill elaborate on them before i make any decisions.

Animating the Posthuman. Animation week.

Finally decided on the sound track for my piece. "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" by Michael Nyman. i was glad to find the website for Michael Nyman posting his music free to use as long as u credit him and send in a copy for the site to promote, too good to be true!! I still think i could find something better suited to my piece, but it works well and the screening we had in class showed that it worked well. My animatic went over well. it was a little had to understand so i congradulate those that understood it 8D.
A few things that were suggested to me, fill in the rest of the scene at the start, which i was going to do so that was coolies. A tree was suggested as a replacement to the fish shop repetition. i liked this idea and Ive drawn up some ideas for colour and size, shape. I'll model one up an see how it goes.

I've been scouting shaders for Maya too. its crunch time and ive given up on the ida that i can redraw 1440 frames of animation easily, ive set up scenes in flash to help animate but they are not quick enough for me, also they are stuch at a particular angle. My characters have a lot of movement at different angles so a flash set up would be lengthy to set up and still wouldnt capture all the angles i want to show.
Back to the shaders. ive been doing some research into maya toon shaders and sketch tools for maya renders which have some promising results. Whilst not being the exact idea i wanted with the elaborate Studio Ghibli settings the toon shaders have a flatter range of colours which i feel will enhance the emmotion of the animation, simpler colours will direct the focus to what is going on and the emmotions of the characters.

Heres some links from my research:
www.aleski.de

diffusion curves, research by ARTIS

ARTIS Publications

DAVID LANIER 3D

Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (yes its in French)

Pascal Barla research intoExpressive Rendering

And some YouTube for good measure.

Animating the Posthuman. Animatic Week

Finally decided on the mother and son. i had more ideas for the mother and the son animation then i did for the Grandpa one. Ive got some sketches to put up and the beginning of the animatic. here we go!

The Son.


The Mother.

First Street Pass.


Second Street Pass.


Female Futuristic Clothing Designs.



So that was a start, there are more but i don't want to post them all. the colour study and mood boards will go up soon.

Problems.
That i can see arising, well the one camera angle for the whole thing when i was watching the animatic did get a little boring to watch. So to compensate I'm going to have to lots of work on animation and keeping the audience engaged. Another problem i found is audio, what audio can i find for a 60 second slow but fast hand drawn animation. hmmm that's a toughie. I came up with two options, one add loads of sound effects, the hustle and bustle of the crowds the noise of the buildings and machinery everything. The second option was to find some sort of music, something orchestrated, simple strings of maybe piano. I'm going to try "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" by Michael Nyman. But i want to cut it at 1:28, might have to do some magic to the first part.

Here is a shot of the street at camera angle. My original idea has a more sweeping curve to the ground which curves off to the left as well. This shot is done in maya, made the street and set it to time in about a day. Might seem like a waste ofa day but now i can manipulate the scene, choose a better angle, curve the street but mainly i can see how fast i need to move the street to fit everything in. By setting the timeline to 60 seconds this scene will give me an accurate visual reference to draw from, each frame, and to see when events are going to occur. Things like lighting and camera depth can be added later. Adding a quick toon shader and bobs your uncle its done like a line drawing already.

Animating the Posthuman. Concept Week
Brief 1.
So what is "Posthuman"?? first things first, we have to get an idea of what posthuman is and get some sort of ideas for presenting those ideas..
Research Commenced!
Wiki has some information. self improvement seems to be a major issue. Artificial Evolution.
Red Ice Creations had a radio segment that delved into posthuman, AI, transhumanism, cyborgism, the new man. To me he ranted on about death and humans as really bad people, the human race not heading towards a utopia, a better race, what with all the genocide and wars that we already have. So where does that lead the human race?? what are we evolving into? what is to become of religion and so on. Could it be that we are a tampered race. hmmm questions, questions.

Two animations I'm developing at the moment are.
Mother and son animation.
A mother and a young boy (presumably her son) are walking down a street towards the camera. They don't stop walking towards the viewer, but start to age and also pass the same shops over and over. what changes is the technology that they use and how the world around them changes with technology, the social changes, the behavioral changes. Eventually they are both wired in so much that when the mother gets too old and slows down(stops) the son doesn't notice at first. A final cut will be of the son realizing what he's lost.

Grandpa Connection.
An older man receives a package. its his brand new computer/ device of unknown origin. he's excited and goes about trying to assemble the unit. Troubles arise when he tries to assemble it with backward ways. the new unit cant be built using older methods and logic. thus it becomes a shamble and angers and frustrates the older man. Leading to it being sent back or left in the cupboard.
This one is more of a humorous approach to how an older generation comprehends a new age of tech, the barrier between adapting to technology and growing up with it. Simple but has a clear message.

Style.

Well I would love to create a Studio Ghibli style animation I doubt ill have enough time to complete it. so ill aim for a simplified art style. more sketchy for the rough cuts. to block out the animation then ill see how much time i have left to do more passes and refine the artwork. as much detail as time permits. The characters themselves will have most of the detail, as they are the main focus.

Some examples: