Kind of significant since I didn't post on Friday.
So, on Friday we were sorted into our new groups and given our next group project. The idea is more or less the same - produce a short animation using live footage as a base to composite onto. This time though we have to make 3 10-second MTV idents. It's like 3 times more work than the last project, only not really since altogether we're only producing 30 seconds as opposed to one minute. So it's sort of half the work as last project. Only not really, because each ident needs its own script and storyboard and concept and they must work together and failure to complete them in time is FAILURE AT LIFE.
So, I've been grouped with Emma, Ashleigh, Lein and Zoe, and we've come up with some fairly fun little ident ideas. The storyboards for which you can see here! ( http://ashleighedmonds.blogspot.com/2011/12/storyboards-for-mtv-project.html ) It involves us each making a little monster/creature in 3D to composite into our live footage, and there may also be elements of 2D animation and perhaps even some 2.5D pictures to embellish the scenes.
Just gotten back to doing mine and had some of those mysterious randomly-striking and completely evil PC-Mac compatibility gremlins attack, so all my experimental texturing has had to go. But here's the basic mesh I managed to pillage:
Basic model (no NURBS):
3/4 viewish thing with HyperNURBS:
And a side view for good measure:
Yes, it is an egg with arms, legs and a tail. I was originally going to have very very simple blobs for arms and legs a la Pokemon (take a look at most of the newer Pokemon, actually. I think the artists forgot how to draw toes!) but although it looks cute on paper it kind of looked shoddy and half arsed in 3D. So I bulked up the arms and legs a tad and gave him thumbs for gripping the rope/lead as he does in one of the idents.
-Stopped typing blog, promptly forgot about it, then rediscovered it-
Done rigging my model now too, but it's borky in places... the arms spin around uncontrollably if I move them back too far and the tail has managed to twist all of its controllers the wrong way even though I aligned all the bones beforehand... typical Cinema 4D is typical.
We finished all of our B-Movies today! Yes, I know I have in no way mentioned the fact that we've been doing B-movies, and it probably goes without saying that there should have already been multiple posts detailing the descent into madness that IS B-movies, but don't worry! It's finally time for the long-winded and uninteresting digital verbal diahorrea that is my blogging!
So this project gave us two weeks to produce a short film based on Hollywood B-movies from around the 1950s-1960s, if I'm remembering correctly. Our group was a bit on the dodgy side though, if I have to be honest. We initially started out with 4 members, but on the first day one member decided not to do the project for personal reasons and another member was absent. So we had another person put into our group to try and bulk the numbers up. Then one of our remaining original group members had to miss the final week of the project, while another member who had been absent for the initial concept returned and, honestly, communication between the four of us was iffy at best, though we got good work done when we worked together. I think in the next project I'm going to try and take much better care to harrass my team for guidance regularly :D
It also left us a little behind on the other groups, I think, because concepts and bits and bobs that should have been finalised in the first week sort of seemed to carry over. We spent a long time rubbing our chins over the details and I think this caused our final piece to seem a little rushed in places. But overall I'm happy; it was nice to try something new. Ross made some really creepy monsters that I was personally chuffed about because they're exactly what I like, and Lindsey did some badass sound design and editing. Not to mention she did the write up, which is possibly the most boring section of the project altogether, so I took on the final script but haven't finished it yet. (Bet you didn't see THAT coming, eh?!) And she was the actor too... poor overworked Lindsey... sorry 'bout that. XD
So, our film short was originally going to be a full story but we decided to take the easy option and do a trailer instead. It's supposed to be a fairly serious horror trailer, and here it is!
Now it's a bit choppy in places, yeah, but I have some ideas for possible edits I could do before final handin. I'd like to try and see what the video looks like with rotoscoping and perhaps some manipulation of the monsters, perhaps changes to how they affect their environments. Some more varied camera shots (close ups, anyone?) might also help to make it more dramatic.
The other groups I think did some excellent work! I loved their animations so much, I jumped on our presentation computer on the sly and stole a copy of each group's animation. I'm a big fan of awesome and sometimes I can't just let it slip me by, y'see. I'll upload them a different time though, the internet is so slow it's taken ages just to load up my group's video.
Next week we have our presentations and another group project with a new group. We have to produce 3 MTV idents that work with each other; they're going to be virtual 3D animation in a real environment... sounds interesting!
On a completely random last note, does anyone else think our monsters look like Endermen?
Well it's now Sunday following hand in. I'm still a little concerned about the state of my work upon reflection, but not hugely so. I mean, last year I handed in two modules and I was just absolutely sure I'd failed; I was so convinced I asked Dave ahead of time whether it would be okay to resit them. And, wouldn't you know it, they were my strongest modules yet. Strange how that works...
But the simple thing is, I forgot to hand in some things. Like how about all my computer work screenshots and that... they weren't annotated very well but hey, I'd actually made some effort to record my progress and I completely forgot that entire section. Wasted time but... I just hope my other written work was okay. My written work is always, and has always been, pretty crappy.
Besides that, I couldn't get a print of Taln's character sheet in A3; I sent it off to the printer multiple times, got it accepted, paid for it, and yet it never actually emerged. That or someone nabbed it accidentally. All I got was a piddly A4 copy, and my other character sheet that was in full A3 never got mounted... *cough*IblameDave*cough*... But anyway!
I also have a few things that I handed in that because of my randomly spazzing email setup I was unable to post previously! (That was what prompted the new blog)
So, without further ado, some of my work!
A line test I couldn't post earlier. It shows my owl villain, Vorquan/Varquer'eel, being persued by two owl assassins. I don't LIKE it, but I did it!
My expression sheet for Okri, my protagonist. It hasn't actualy got ALL of the 25 expressions on there. Two of them are missing, the 'Drunk' and 'Rage' expressions. The drunk expression was a combination of not being able to get it right and because there's no way she could ever get drunk anyway; the Rage one I stuck in with 'Fierce' because well... there was no need for two different expressions for them. Cats hiss when they're enraged and they hiss to look fierce. And also when they're frightened too, but for communication's sake I just changed that one to a OAO type expression. (And yes, that's meant to be an emote)
That aside, I don't think I actually have anything else work related to talk about other than the presentation I haven't started yet. Just before, I had this really long winded backwards logic rant as to why I no longer needed to keep my blog entirely work-related, but I've forgotten it.
Hello, I'm moving over to this blog now rather than my other one. The multiple-google-account-thing was really causing me issues, so this should fix it!
Well, it's time to start structuring my posts a bit, I think. I spend far too much time waffling aimlessly and miss things out... so here goes.
First, the SMART target thing.
S - Produce a walk cycle and a run cycle to go with my walk-run transition
M - By Tuesday I should be starting to colour up my line tests (or the best existing one)
A - Completely polish up my character sheets and, if I have spare time, produce some concepts of nameless characters. I might just add cat-cameos in. Easy way to differentiate background characters, and I get to draw my cats!
R - Finalize script. This may sound a bit odd since it should have been finalized ages ago, but the reason it's dragged on so long is basically because I just couldn't decide whether to have dialogue or not. Pros: It's easier to exposit on world backstory and character motivations, thus avoiding plotholes. Cons: it makes the animation seem like it could end up overtly mainstream and I think that silent characters that communicate purely with expressions and (cat!) body language could add a more natural feel to the story. And prevent them from being too... Humanized? Personified? Anthropomoromorphorizedificated? I don't know. I'll probably go with silent characters at this point, though, I just think it sort of suits me better. And it'll be a healthy challenge to see how much of the backstory I can reveal with image alone.
T - Just make sure the finalized storyboard matches the final script and check continuity before continuing line tests appropriate to that script.
Current Line Tests!
I have two line tests so far, both for my protagonist, Okri. Sorry that they're so faint.
This one is based on one of Muybridge's studies and I think it looks alright, but it's the one I need a walk cycle and run cycle for.
If you squint reeeeeeally carefully, you can see it's a sort of 3/4 view of Okri walking over and sitting down. I did extend this test so that once she's comfy she begins to clean herself, but I haven't actually line tested the rest yet. I'll upload when I do.
Critique
Had a critique too, it went fairly well. Well... if you ignore the fact that I got my Youtube accounts mixed up, tried to log into the wrong one, couldn't get the password right and so reset the password of that account to the wrong email account which I'd also lost the password for, so I reset the password for that email account so that I could get the reset password for my Youtube account, logged in to find it was the wrong one, so then I tried to log in using a different email but the password was wrong for that too, logged into the second email to check that it was the right Youtube account and eventually started chucking random emails and passwords at the Youtube login to discover ages later that both accounts were wrong, it was actually a third account I was after.
What a faff.
But anyway, I think it went okay other than that, but I've been warned to focus on the bigger picture and not get lost in details. What a load of rubbish, don't you think? Why, someone with a concise and accurate, completely organized mind like mine couldn't possibly become distracted by trivial detail and fail to cross the finish line! Right? Right?
Hello again! It's been a bit, but that's because I forget everything (if I don't, there's a risk my brain could melt from too much rubbish floating around in it) so I forgot to update when I should have... typical of me eh?
Luckily I haven't been forgetting to do some work. Though I've been a bit sluggish getting to my line tests (which, from today and over the weekend hopefully will be caught up on a tad) that's because I've been trying to get my character sheets done. It's not so much as I've got a lot of characters (there's 4 main characters, but one of them has two forms, and there's a heck of a lot of nameless and background characters) but because, as usual, I just CAN'T STOP CHANGING THEM. But I've finally decided to draw the line, for my own sanity later down the line, and I'm finalizing the characters in this last batch of character sheets. I did have character sheets for my protagonist and antagonist already, but the protagonist changed a bit too much to salvage anything but the background picture from the original character sheet. The antagonist might be a different matter because when I originally designed him, I guess I knew what I wanted him to look like. So I'll probably salvage him, but he does still need two more turnarounds finished. Each sheet has the characters on all fours (if applicable) AND on two feet, and the antagonist will need one on his hind feet in cat form (finished already, nabbed from the original sheet), one on all fours, and one as his owl form. Not too much of a problem but y'know... it takes me a while. A long, long while.
I need to remember to do a size chart too. Size MATTERS *is slapped* Okay, okay, bad joke.
I forgot what I was talking about.
Oh yeah! Character sheets. I actually uploaded the latest ones to my personal gallery, and well... it's out there somewhere, floating in the internet. Too bad I can't find the damn thing. Ah well. I tried to upload them to deviantART, but stupid college system is stupid, and it's blocked me before I could even upload one. Helpful, eh? So, yep, been working, can't prove it.
Next on the list is to do my line tests then, I'll polish off the character sheets in my own time. Really nothing else to talk about. Going to see the Lion King in 3D later today, it's 'educational research' into how Disney tackles the movement of 'large cats that are totally related to what I'm doing' and not just 'I want to see this classic revisited'. Honest! Just like those kittens we bought on Saturday. Those two adorable but up until yesterday very loppy 8-week old kittens were for 'research' and not 'those kittens are so adorable we have enough space and money to get them and I'm sure company would bring our older cat out of his moping so let's buy them'. Honestly though, they're adorable, we named them Jindo the Dogbreaker and Todd. Todd looks like a little fox and he's a perfect mix of mischevious and shy, with a proper babyface to boot. Jindo the Dogbreaker (if you've ever played World of Warcraft, you might get the joke) really suits his name... at the vets the other day our young dog Izzi came to sniff him in his cage, and did he hiss and shy away like normal cats? Did he hide? Try to run? Hell no. He LUNGED AT THE SIDE OF THE CAGE TO RIP OFF IZZI'S FACE.
I also saw a cat on Youtube while touching up my research that just boggled my mind... see, my older cat, Sunny, is obese, at about 6.5 kilos of weight. I'm taking measures to try and make sure no one else is feeding him while I put him on Royal Canin Obesity Management food, but even at his weight, you can't really notice any difficulty in general movement (he has a greasy lower back though because he can't clean it properly. Cat shampoo~) but he can get up, lie down, jump around, and he's still perfectly happy to go out and night and brawl with other cats and chase them around and all that territorial stuff. He's a big cat though. Now imagine my horror, when I thought my cat was honestly about as big as a cat would get, when I find a cat on Youtube TWICE SUNNY'S WEIGHT at over 12 kilos? This cat... honestly... it could barely get up. Watching it struggle just to stand up from lying down was horrifying. You know, I'm going to try and find a video of it, just do everyone can share my horror.
And I don't even think that was the fattest one I've seen... that's horrid. Put the poor thing on a diet.
Hello there again! A bit soon to be posting again, but I'm finishing up my research. I don't actually have huge amounts of real footage of the species of my characters in motion, and if I want it to be as realistic as I imagine it, I'm gonna need a lot of that footage!
Getting bird footage is... well... difficult. Come back, birds! Where am I going to find myself a large bird of prey? An owl? Something? ...okay, surely I can gather my own cat footage. Yes, I tried, it did not go well. The most athletic thing Sunny can do is roll over. Bless him.
That poor owl. I thought it would probably make more sense to look at the owl being fairly stationary, and though the quality isn't fantastic, you do get to see some simple body language. That owl is not a happy owl!
Same idea here; this little owl is quite relaxed. (The panting might suggest otherwise, but as the video says, it's actually just keeping itself cool).
Now that is an impressive owl. Look how pretty he/she is! More what I'm shooting for for my villain. Get to see him/her moving around a bit too, which is useful. :)
The following are flying references; since that's what the scene involving the owl has him doing the most.
A nice little video of an Eagle owl; get to see him/her taking off, gaining speed, gliding, changing direction, and landing. If only it were in slow motion...
That's better, much better! To be honest I couldn't tell whether it was a very good piece of 3D animation at first or real footage. After seeing Legend of the Owls: Guardians of Ga'Hoole I just can't be sure anymore!
Two for the price of one. For some reason I really love 0:17 - 0:19 when the Great Horned Owl avoids the branches of that tree. But even more impressive is the agility of the bird in this video...
Why that is just unbelievable. I know that it's a Goshawk, not an Owl, but I think I can take a bit of licence when it comes to animating my owl, provided I can actually pull it off. That bird is amazing!
And here's some other, perhaps less related birds that I looked at, but they were very interesting to look at none the less, and I absolutely don't see any harm in giving my Owl the capabilities of other birds. He is an evil warlord with magic! :D
And I have to link these two because embedding is disabled:
Next up, cats! Like I said, my cat Sunny is a bit on the portly side, and he doesn't move much, and when he does, he doesn't move far. I mean, to be entirely fair on him, he does go out at night sometimes and probably beats up other cats in the neighbourhood but I'm not going to chase him off into the night, crawling through hedges, hopping into peoples' gardens... nicking other people's references is much, much easier!
Now this is supposed to be a video of two cats fighting in slow motion. The thing is, they're not fighting, they're just playing. The movement is still good to have though.
This is two cats fighting. It's a small fight - ever seen a REAL "extreme cat fight"? I'll tell you now, it is vicious. And it's not funny. I hate it when people get a severely distressed cat that's hissing and spitting because it's absolutely petrified and laugh about it. But I digress. Two cats scrapping. But thinking on more about it, I don't think I'll have this style of fighting, though I might keep elements of it, particularly the staring match that occurs between two cats in a confrontation.
This is a reasonably nice reference for a cat running (but why are the reference videos always in such low quality?)and personally the run cycle looks rather similar to that of a dog to me, so I could probably mix some elements of a dog run into my heavier set cat characters.
It was just then, when I couldn't find any more good videos, and all hope seemed lost, when I found out that Whiskas had a channel! Their cat biscuits and supermeat cans are absolute crap (but Sunny sure loves their packeted soft food) but these videos are fantastic. If only they weren't cut into like that they would be much better.
Cat leaping. Very good thing to have, I expect my characters are going to do a lot of fancy jumping around in trees!
Wow, that does look quite menacing.
While it's good that I found a video like this because my protagonist in my draft storyboards does fall on her feet, I feel kind of sorry for the cat just being dropped like that.
I really don't know whether I'll include a scene in which a cat is cleaning themselves, but given how much my protagonist looks like a bald rat, maybe I should. Tell the viewers, 'Okay, I know this looks like a rat, but it's actually a cat. Look, cleaning itself like a cat! Totally a cat'.
Awww! ...Ewww. ...Awww! ...Ewww. ...Awww!
That's all I have time for now, but before I post, this video has both cats AND a bird of prey in it, and I couldn't believe what I was looking at when I saw it!
I really can't believe it's already the Friday of our first week back.
I've been off so long, it feels like a lifetime. (And yes, I did intend to keep updating my blog throughout the long holiday, but the thousands of projects I habitually assign for myself leave me brainfried, and things I originally intend to do get forgotten).
I didn't forget about our upcoming project either; this one has to be under 3 minutes long and character-based. I think, though, that the time constraint is more a combination of Dave trying to make sure we don't bite off more than we can chew and shoot for The Lord of the Rings: The Animation! and because, if I remember right, the 3 minutes is the time limit for a submission to the Pictoplasma animation festival. But I think longer animations will actually be acceptable provided we can manage to finish the things in time, as the other animation festivals allow longer submissions.
For this project I decided to do cats. Why cats? Because I like cats! And birds actually. Magical birds. And the cats are tribal and one's a warlord who's actually an owl with a magical voodoo mask that turns him into a cat. And he's worshipped by the real cats. Who bring him birds. Magical birds. And he takes the magic from the magical birds which makes them into dead birds. It's the perfect plan!
Seriously though, there was actually a thought process that lead to this, but I'll get to it later. I expect I'll just blab endlessly about it when I do the research commentary (research is very awkward to write, isn't it? Honestly, I looked at this cat... and I looked at this bird... it's... a cat... and a bird... ) and finish all that up by Monday. I'm actually hoping that this will be my first mixed media animation - I've realized, over the past year, that I am very, very dependent on Adobe Photoshop. Good old Adobe Photoshop! But while I stay using it, I'm not using other techniques or anything, and I'm worried my learning has suffered for it. So, this year, I'm forcing myself into a brand new work flow! I'm going to use more traditional techniques and try to combine different media and/or type of animation (and honestly, I think this intent did have a hand in shaping my project idea in the last stretch of its initial conception, it's hard to explain). For the most part, I think the animation will be traditional, hand drawn animation - on a light box, not on Adobe Photoshop... (though I might colour it up on either Photoshop or Illustrator, but Illustrator makes everything look -very- perfect with those fancy vectors and I would rather it was sketchy and rough looking) and the magic sequences I would like to do a different way, perhaps using cutout/silhouette animation. I was going to give the bird's magic very African-feeling patterns and colours, changing the background to a lush red and the like, so silhouetted characters I think would work nicely. I'd also be able to use them to make the final fight between the protagonist and the antagonist quite nightmarish which would be exactly what I want. I've also given myself a challenge to learn to use watercolour pencils or paints for the backgrounds while magic isn't being used; to get a sort of pale, easy on the eyes natural location... that is if I can learn to use them. Watercolours are much harder than they look! I'm also interested in trying a bit of collage or stitching. Two years studying textiles and I haven't used a single technique in my animations. I mean... I'm not great at it by any means, but perhaps some mola cutwork or something for the magic sequences... I'm not sure.
Anyway, enough of my waffling about that. My original idea was about cats, and what they do when humans aren't looking. Anyone who's owned a cat knows that they have this amazing ability to vanish at will (Invisible Cats: The Movie?) and only return at dinner time, or when they smell your tuna sandwich. It was partially inspired by an in-joke I had with my sister about our old cat Tamara - yeah, Tamara was a snooty mastermind, he owned a casino underground. And our younger cat, Sunny, a stocky beast of a cat, he's a bouncer. The story was originally going to be Sunny/a character inspired by Sunny discovers the casino, gets hired as a bouncer, and experiences gangs clashing; this series of events all being held together by the giggles stemming from the fact that Sunny is as thick as a brick. However I became hesitant to base a story so much on faces from home, so my second brainstorm became about a Sphinx cat (that would eventually become Okko), a cat adopted by two blackbirds after being mistaken for one of their chicks. The Sphinx grows up with the birds and becomes the avian equivalent to a superhero, fighting off the tame cats that hunt the birds in huge, exaggerated Kung-Fu Panda type fight scenes. The final challenge would be to take down the fiercest bird-killer of all, referred to as the Terrible Catbird, which is actually a large owl (this would later become Vorquan, my current draft's antagonist). Again, this would sort of be its own parody, and not meant to be taken seriously. The reason I actually dropped this draft - or altered the crap out of it, however you like to look at it - is because I was worried about this trend of funny slapstick stuff I seem to have fallen into. The thing is, I never touched or attempted funny stuff before I started my first year. It's not that I don't appreciate the talent and effort that goes into a good joke, but I don't have that talent. I'm not funny and I keep trying to be. I don't even like slapstick!
For that matter, I never usually have animals as characters either, but I don't mind it.
So, I thought okay, perhaps I'll do better on this project if I stop trying to do something that I'm just no good at. This prompted me to tweak the setting of the story: I swapped the houses and gardens for a great forest/jungle hybrid and added some fantastical elements. No where in the animation will the viewer be told they are in a more magical world, but hopefully the rules of the world will be fairly apparent: birds are naturally magical, and it is this magic that allows them to fly. The cats are magicless and somewhat tribal but still follow some general animal behaviour.
The story itself is about a cat called Okko, who is a Sphinx cat (Trivia! In the early drafts, she was male. I changed her into a female because when I sketched her she looked feminine and because I'm a feminist. :D ) who lost her mother as a kitten, but is adopted by Ralla'ool, a Purple-Crested Touraco. When Ralla'ool is kidnapped by cats and brought before the supposed God and warlord cat, Vorquan, Okko must fight to save her. During the fight, though, she strikes a blow to Vorquan's face and knocks off his mask, and he reverts to his true form, a Great Horned Owl roc. Okko finally defeats him by slamming his mask back onto his face mid-flight, turning him back into his cat form, and he falls to his death. Okko is saved from a similar fate by Ralla'ool.
The story still has its fair share of issues and the plot doesn't tie together as neatly as I would like, but I'll work on it.
As a random aside, here are some of my favourite commercial cat animations! Finding less mainstream animation with the accuracy of movement and lack of extreme stylization I'm after has proven, well... it's hard. I mean... unless you count this.
Oh, Mr. Oreilly, you do disturb me greatly. :)
There's this too, 'Please Say Something' which I really like in its own right but it isn't what I want for this animation.
And here are my favourite mainstream animations so far! Firstly - and you'll see this one coming a mile off - Disney's Aristocats.
Apologies for the fact that it's not in English, it was better quality than the English ones I could find. What I love about this film is how realistic the cats are; they still have their typical Disney style as far as the character designs themselves go, but their proportions and anatomy is a bit more down to earth and it helps the movement look very natural. Compare the cats here to, say, Lucifer from Cindarella.
Doesn't really move like a cat at all. He moves like the typical cartoony slapstick character; he moves like Tom from Tom and Jerry moving on four legs instead of two. Oh, hey, another cat to look at. Fancy that!
I could do a huge long list of Disney cat characters that are poorly animated in the sense that they don't move like cats compared to the characters in the Aristocats, but I think it would be slightly redundant. Sergeant Tibbs in Disney's 'One Hundred and One Dalmatians' has a lovely design but he doesn't really move like a cat. To be fair, most of the time he's marching, but the animation is still nothing compared to Aristocats. But the dogs move fantastically. Why? Because the main characters are dogs, they get the most screen time, so its reasonable to say that more time for research and more time for animation was afforded to the leading characters. That's all it is, really, I believe. On a very random aside, the animation of the cats below still isn't as good as the Aristocats. But they needed to be posted somewhere. You can't look at Disney cats and not look at these two.
They're so cute, yet so evil, and so catlike, yet so evil. Love them. They do look curiously like the Siamese from the 'Everybody Wants to be a Cat' song in Aristocats though.
Stop. DonBluthtime.
Don Bluth's 'Banjo the Woodpile Cat':
I'll tell you now, I love Don Bluth. He is the master of facial expressions and dialogue animation - just take a look at 3:09 to 3:25 on that first video. I watched that bit so many times its unbelievable.
The cats in this animation are a bit odd in that they flip-flop very severely between being excellently accurate to... getting up on their back feet and dancing the night away. It's somewhat typical of films like this (it happens in Disney films too) that in upbeat sequences the characters become more humanlike, though, and its not really something that bothers me too much, but when the cats are being catlike, it's done fantastically. I wouldn't go as far to say that it's better than the Aristocats, but its still very good. And the characters are adorable, especially Banjo.
Next up I'm going to take a look at Studio Ghibli's The Cat Returns. Good film, if a touch short.
Yes, I realize that it's been a while since my last update. Apologies as usual, once again, my infamous lack of consistency has won the day!
(It's a work in progress, promise.)
Wow, before I continue, I just have to say that Blogger is being unusually glitchy today. I press enter to skip a line and my cursor goes flying all over the place. Might just be me but still... odd.
Anyway, I've been busy looking at a lot of 3D animation, even as entertainment! (How's THAT for two birds with one stone?) And recently went to see a recently released film called Rio (twice in a week) that I found to be particularly noteworthy for its rather bizarre blend of realism and anthropomorphism. Usually, bird characters are notorious for being very anthropomorphised - wings become arms, feathers become fingers, beaks become lips, etc. very little of their natural movement is conserved - in fact, the best example I can think of other than Rio is the pidgeons in Bolt which were also good for it, though the difference between those and the characters in Rio is that they are more comedy relief and aren't true protagonists and so they don't have the duty of conveying all the emotions the protagonists of Rio have to. That being said, Rio is probably the best (in terms of realism) mainstream film I've seen yet for capturing the mannerisms of birds while the emotiveness and likeability of the characters doesn't suffer at all for it. For the most part, wings are wings, beaks are beaks, and feet are feet and hands... which is sort of right, parrots and the like have very good control of their feet.
It reminds me of Ratatouille which was also kind of unusual for retaining more animal characteristics than are usually retained in this sort of animated film. I have to say it makes a pleasant change. I really appreciate the love and care it must take to believably recreate the animalistic motions in these sorts of characters (particularly in birds) and I think it does help the characters from an emotion standpoint - they become more the animals they're based on than humans that sort of look like animals, though the rendition does work well in films like Kung Fu Panda (2008). A film that also comes to mind is Valiant (2005) in which the pidgeon characters are VERY humanlike... actually, the mouse character is too. Now there's a comparison I need to add to my research. Rio/Ratatouille versus Valiant in terms of animation style. Wait. Wait. Another one is coming to mind... Ah! The Ugly Duckling and Me. Very very humanised rat and bird characters to compare, though the CGI in that film was already outdated by the time it was released... ah well, animation is what's important.
The worst thing is, I don't know about The Ugly Duckling and Me, but I think Valiant would have been much more effective if it had more of the realism that Rio had; I think rather than making the characters more small flying humans (with only small references or changes to dialogue to remind you that they're little pidgeons, besides the overtly human-like visuals) if they were actually displayed closer to the small, vunerable birds they are the film could have 1) been less offencive with racial stereotypes and 2) had a greater sense of peril. Rio did an excellent job of making the characters have conflict on their own level (via Nigel, the primary bird antagonist) but also keeping the audience aware of the bigger picture (via many perils of the city and smugglers). Valiant should theoretically have a big focus on the bigger picture (they are delivering messages during warfare after all) as well as the bird antagonists.
I know I've never been keen on characters with too many humanized characteristics so there's obviously some bias present, but I do think Valiant could have worked very well if the characters were... how to say it... less soldier, more pidgeon.
On a completely different note, I recently purchaced a new game that was on offer - well, actually, quite an old game. It's The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Now, going back to a game like this:
After being very used to games that look like this:
Is naturally going to have the player urking at the graphics for a while until they get used to them. That's normal. But the thing I noticed was... why are the characters in these older games made up of multiple pieces as opposed to characters in newer games that are usually a smooth mesh? I'd say obviously graphical limitations but doesn't having several parts make the model just as graphically straining as having the same model joined together, with the same poly count? I'm thinking it might be to allow the characters to perform nessessary animations without having to worry about essentially 'scoring' the joints so that they can bend without too much deformation (and therefore ending up with a lower poly count) but can I hear anyone else's ideas about why this might be?
That randomness aside, it's back to work, turning these messy notes into readable material. I need to finish my dragon model too (I'm thinking of prioritizing the Faun for now until I make my desired tweaks to the dragon's mesh - and I still need to figure out how to do those wings. I've been looking at a couple traditional dragons in CGI - Dragonheart, Dragonheart 2, Eragon, The Last Dragon, etc. No one ever animates bats in detail in 3D... or maybe I just need to search harder. Poor bats. So cute but they never get any love!)
Hello again, time for an update. A very, very late update.
So work on my 3D character has been coming along alright. The basic model of the body is more or less done, except for the few bits of clothing my character wears which I'm going to add separately (and hopefully add cloth physics to). He's also going to need hair and fur, but I think as far as the hair is concerned I'm going to go for a partially clumped look, maybe with strands of hair partially visible at the tips of the hair if possible...
(And yes, as an example of what I'm thinking, I'm going to refer to an old favourite of mine. Yay for predictability!)
Like this perhaps. Bless you for your simple CGI, Final Fantasy IX. Bless you. *salute*
It's the best example I could get for what I want. Blocky, but floppy. Surprisingly not that common nowadays! (Usually, it's either floppy and realistic or blocky and stiff, which isn't what I'm after).
On top of that, I might make minor changes to his mesh but it's not decided yet. Originally, the intention was to try for a style part way between Hiccup from Dreamworks's recently released CG film 'How to Train Your Dragon':
and Disney's older, traditionally animated film, 'Tarzan':
Sorry if that's a tad big. Anyhoo, Tarzan uses this nice, clean, angular sort of style I wanted to use. A similar style is found in Disney's 2001 film 'Atlantis: The Lost Empire'. But my character sort of evolved away from the angular style, probably out of personal habit more than anything else. I'm considering adding in extra loops in order to just sharpen the edges I already have.
I would take some full body screenshots of my model to put here, but Cinema 4D is locked down right now (it always is before noon on Mondays, what a pain) so this will have to do.
'What'chu lookin' at?'
Yeah... it's got a way to go, though I'm happy so far. I'm currently working to get him all rigged up, and also to come up with a name for him. Everyone keeps calling him Mr. Tumnus, but I think I'll have to pass on that one. Don't really have the money to just go around getting myself sued... sorry guys.
Since Fauns are supposedly from Roman mythology (as opposed to Greek, which I think was the case with Satyrs who often get confused with Fauns) I took a look at some old Roman names and thought Felix suited him. But since he lives in a completely seperate fantasy world, I might just scrap it later... I'll see how I feel about it after some thought. Felix is a cute name.
I have a long list of animations I've been looking at but I'm going to pop them all in my next post. For now, I have much Cinema 4D experimentation and possible computer-killing to do. Next time!
So I spent my entire day yesterday wrestling with Adobe Premiere. Heck, I even spent the time I was supposed to be here typing an update about how I was wrestling with Adobe Premiere wrestling with Adobe Premiere. What a pain.
The problem I've encountered is that it wants to be very snooty with how I set up the project. I've tried several identical projects with different settings and different render settings, but it will not render in widescreen and still allow Quicktime to play the file. I can get it to do one or the other only - either it's widescreen and Quicktime can't read it, or Quicktime CAN read it and it's smooshed. Obviously there's something I'm doing wrong but I can't figure out what.
We'll get there. Also, don't mind my idiocy in my last post... rendering it then recording in Fraps, eh, was definitely a Monday... But the Chroma key's quality is rubbish, so though I'll take a peek again to see if there's a way to improve it, I'm mostly going to move away from that idea and see if Adobe Premiere understands empty space on layers. Since Photoshop does I'm guessing Premiere does too, but we'll see.
This morning I've been trawling Conceptart.org for faun designs and I've found a few that interest me:
The Faun character viewable in this thread is of particular interest because it actually has the same shape that the brief said my character had to have: skinny. Character just has to be skinny. Though I do like this work and the way they've taken a reasonably well-used concept and made it interesting by embellishing the character, it's a bit too flowery and nature-oriented, that would suggest they're going down the usual fantasy-elves-live-in-peaceful-forests-with-magical-trees type route, which isn't really what I'm aiming for. I'm wanting something a touch tribal with some modern trappings for familiarity. So though I do really like it, don't think I'll be doing something all too similar.
One faun I found that I really like is this one from 'Pan's Labyrinth':
...because it really has an interesting way of embellishing the whole inhuman side of the creature; this faun is not just a human with goat legs, it's something else entirely. That's something I'd like to nail with my design - hopefully the mannerisms involved in the actual animation will make up for what more human characteristics I'd remove physically - as well as the whole tribal thing. Let's be honest, though, that faun is incredibly interesting looking but also very creepy. Let's try to steer clear of creepy.
On the other side of the spectrum completely is Mr. Tumnus from 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. Now this character is, honestly, just a bloke with goat legs. But he's so cute and endearing I just had to give him a mention.
Now to be fair, these are obviously for video games, not animated film/shorts like the kind of stuff we're shooting for, but still, they're fantastic. Same problems though, too familiar...
I'll figure something out. Hopefully. But it's gonna have to be soon, because I don't have forever to finish this model, and it's best to make changes while it's still in progress.
This man is so creative with his creature designs it actually gobsmacked me. Fantastic, make sure to look at every page of that thread, or your life is incomplete!
Next thing to do is to brush up on my tribal research and finish touching up this character so I can make appropriate changes to his 3D model before I get too far along into it. Rigging starts soon and I don't want to fall behind and miss the rigging!
Well, back after a good week break (that, I have to admit, I desperately needed) and I've got my new brief.
It's the best brief in the world.
AD108 covers 3D character animation, which has long been a subject of interest for me. A while back I began to learn basic modelling, rigging and animating in Blender. Since I started college I haven't had much time for it, but I've been trying to brush back up on that as well as practice in Cinema 4D. It's crazy how different the two programmes are, considering they both do pretty much the same thing. Though admittedly I haven't read about any Blender equivalent to Cinema 4D's NURBS (and also, what does that even mean? A nurb? )
But I'm feeling motivated and quite excited to get back into the meat of it, though I might tweak my character design a bit (I never actually liked it... but it ticked the boxes for the module).
Another good thing is that I passed my two previous modules! Actually came as a BIG surprise because I was almost entirely certain I'd failed, and miserably at that. But hey, I must have done something right! What's even more surprising is not only did I pass, I passed better than any pass I've achieved previously. So what I thought were my two weakest modules actually turned out to be my two strongest... it's a strange world.
Oh, speaking of which, I think I might have come up with a much easier and more time efficient method of combining the two halves of my ident. Before the problem was that I was animating in Adobe Photoshop on a decent sized canvas. (Bare in mind I'm not the best when it comes to animating in Photoshop). I'd have this big canvas, then, and one run of the Granny's arm animation is almost 60 frames/layers. The cat, if I remember right, was between 40 and 50 frames/layers. As you can see on my last post, the Granny does her motion about 6 times. So 6x60 is 360. 360 frames for the Granny plus the approximate of 40 for the cat's single run, 400 layers. Then consider whatever final touches, like extra E4s or leaves falling (these could be keyframed for position change but rotation would have to be done manually, so let's say an extra 30 layers for all of them)... we're looking at 430 layers on a whatsit-by-3000 pixel canvas.
Wouldn't be a problem if I was using something like Final Cut (if I were any good at using Final Cut...) but in Adobe Photoshop it just becomes much more difficult. Now, two options.
1) Continue in Adobe Photoshop, weathering the struggles of my poor tiny computer, and chip away at it 2) Struggle with Final Cut Pro (Hey, it can be tricky you know!) which would get the job done but I'm not awfully experienced with...
But first, I'm actually going to try something that, if it works, will let me combine the two halves with minimum effort and super quick. Basically I've been trying to learn how to use Adobe Premiere and its chroma key effect. I'm going to remove the background from the Granny and the Cat, replace it with a strong green or so, render, record at max quality with Fraps, go into Adobe Premiere and chroma key them back onto the original background and together.
It might not work. It might be a trainwreck. But if it does work it'll save a lot of time and effort and lag. I'll just have to give it a go and see what I can come up with. And also, I can't forget to put the sound in.
Either way, I'll probably repost the final once I've puzzled out the best way to go about doing it.
Related AGAIN is that I got to see everyone elses' idents too, and my, they're fantastic. You guys better upload them soon so I can oogle at their animated brilliance again, okay?
What else... oh yes, we watched a lovely little film called 'Cat Shit One', where two rabbit soldiers take on a base filled with enemy camels to rescue hostages. It was actually really, really good, if bizarre, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. War films usually aren't for me, but thanks to quirky writing and cute character design I got really invested in the two protagonists really quickly, and the animation was brilliant. Oddly, though, I could tell by looking at it that it was Japanese in origin. I think there's a particular style in Japanese animations that involves character expressions, lip movements (like the shapes that the mouth makes, even if the English speech is synched well) and the camera angles. I felt like I was having flashbacks to the idealized style of Final Fantasy Advent Children all the way through. Japanese animations seem to keep mouth movement to a minimum; characters often seem as though they should be opening their mouths wider and making more distorted expressions but don't. The same is true for the facial expressions in general; any distortion is very minimal. A lot of the expressions of the characters seem to be created using the movements of the eyes instead.
Unfortunately, Youtube doesn't seem to have an good quality clip from Final Fantasy Advent Children, but here's a decent example of what I mean. In the first 20 seconds of this clip, watch Cloud, the blonde man with spiky hair who's being addressed. Watch his eyes. Though his face hardly ever changes, his eyes are used to express his emotions instead. He goes from quiet anger to uncertainty to fear to annoyance in 20 seconds. And most of his face barely moves.
This was the sort of thing that happened in Cat Shit One. The faces of the characters were quite still, but the eyes told you what they were feeling.
Camera angles is a bit harder to go into, and in Cat Shit One the oddly recognizably Japanese use of camera angles was mixed together with more standardized war camera angles (yep, over the shoulder shots and the like frequent war films), but they were there. I think the general difference is American or English films tend to make dialogue between two characters easy to keep track of, often simply having the camera flick back and forth between the characters (and the characters do not invade and move around each others' shots) while Japanese animations are a little more dynamic with how the characters actually speak to each other and don't follow the speaking character quite as obviously. Like I said though, it's hard to explain, and there's no set-in-stone formula or overriding rule of 'American cameras are like this, Japanese cameras are like that'... it just felt Japanese.
Overall, though, it really worked for me. The lip synching left a bit to be desired but it wasn't hugely distracting, and the story was told well with good pacing. Thumbs up! If you get the chance to watch it, I'd recommend giving it a look in.
Well, I think that's all the blabbering I have to do today.
Okay, I promised myself I'd post sometime yesterday but I ended up sleeping for most of yesterday (I didn't sleep at all through Thursday night, I was trying to push to finish the thing but... gah, the speed at which I work is nothing short of pathetic). So, today, I'm finally updating. Go me!
Though I didn't -quite- manage to outright finish my Ident, I did complete most of the animation for it, which, as usual, I didn't make an easy task for myself (yes, my Granny DID have to move in 1s and have almost 60 frames for one movement of her arm. It was completely necessary!) - but, in the end, I'm reasonably pleased with what I have. I just wish I could have combined everything into one truly final piece before the deadline. And when I've recuperated from the terrible effects of deadline week, I will finish it. For myself mostly... I'm one of those 'start a billion projects all at the same time and never finish them' type people and believe me, I'm going to change that. It already drives me crazy when I can't bring a close to my personal projects, it becomes extra frustrating when the habit spills over onto my college projects as well.
But enough of that, here's the first part of my animation. Please bare in mind how this is intended to work; the Granny version of the animation is the required length of 10 seconds. The Cat version would be intergrated into this, not added on, so the final thing would be exactly 10 seconds long, as the brief specified. The Cat is part of the Granny animation, the Granny isn't a part of the Cat animation. If that makes any sense.
The Granny Version:
Okay, here we go. The Granny was intended to be the main focus of the animation, though she is the most boring aspect of it. My original intention was for her to be hand-drawn in each and every frame but I decided not to - both for time constraints and so that she would feel extra static; the less interesting movement to be observed from her body, the more attention you pay to the part that IS moving - her arm. If you're watching her arm, you naturally follow the arm to the walking stick. And from there, the bright colours of the E4 logo itself should catch your eyes, making you aware of it. But it's not in your face, which is a complaint I had with a few idents I looked at. I preferred, largely, idents that made you aware of the E4 logo but didn't feel the need to shove it so close to your face you felt like it was going to bang you on the nose. So that's what I tried to do.
Problem with this is that it is, at the end of the day, boring. So when I was drawing the storyboards I added in a little bit of randomness to try and inject a little offhanded humour into it, and hopefully something a tad unexpected. And that's below:
So down falls the cat and the lawnmower. The cat itself was generally taken from the old 'old lady trying to get Tiddles the cat out of the tree' sort of idea, the lawnmower was added for an element of the randomness and unexpected entrance I was after. Besides this, I wanted there to be this sense that there's this woman, and she's prodding at this E4 'apple', and there's odd stuff going on around her but she's so absorbed in the E4 that she doesn't notice anything at all. The final animation would have had quite a loud crashing sound effect when it fell down and a loud engine roar as it moved, just to drill in the point.
Well, I hope anyone reading liked this anyway. It was fun, but tiring, and I think this project (and the module running along with it) have been my weakest yet. Still so much room for improvement. But, looking at the bright side, each module I've done the final animation gets closer and closer to being finished. My first animation was barely there at all, my second was halfway done, this one very close to completion. The next one will be finished by the deadline! ...Geez, my time management is awful.
Well, it's that time again. Or at least, it's almost that time again. We have our work due for this Friday, and, truth be told, I have more than I can manage.
At this point it's quite obvious that there's no way I can pass both modules, so I've been thinking that my best bet is to pick one -the biggest one- and just focus on that. It improves my chance of passing that one but pretty much assures that I'll fail the other, but at least I'll have one clean and clear out of the way. I can, I believe, resit the second module, and since it's the smaller one it should be more managable running alongside my next modules. It's not in concrete yet but I really see no other way - it's a choice of do I want to tackle four modules at once, or three?
I do wholeheartedly blame myself, though. It was me who put myself into this situation. Though events that have transpired recently have had me stressing for a week and then mourning for another, I should have just bitten the bullet and got on with things rather than just sit around in self pity. Everyone else seemed to just manage to get on, but no...
Well, that's the state of play.
Taking all things into consideration, I'll be focusing entirely on AD109 and pretty much ignoring AD102, so my week is as follows:
Monday - Worked partially on AD102 and AD109, have since decided to give priority to AD109 (unless, of course, Dave comes along and clips me about the head for making such a stupid decision) Tuesday - Focus on finalisation and neat presentation of all research - Ident research, Ident style/visual references Wednesday - The Ident itself should be finished by the end of Wednesday, early Thurday at the latest, giving me time to evaluate. Storyboard and concept visuals should take a backseat, but I would like them to be coloured and presented today, if not Thurday - Storyboards and concept visuals should be fully presented by the end of Thursday at latest; evaluation of animation complete Friday - Tidying up, any final presentation and file sorting done, then hand in.
Work's continuing on developing concepts for our ident/E-Stings/whatever I should actually be calling them. I have a presentation tommorrow on my concepts which would be fine if... I had all of the concepts.
I'm quite sure the minimum is 3 ideas and so far I only have two, which I'll run over after a brief whingefest about how I keep coming up with ideas - it's not that I can't think of things, it's that I'm extremely picky about concepts and 98% of what I come up with is absolute rubbish. I just feel like there's this slight, slight little chance of me coming up with something halfway workable but I have to wade through all these random very dull ideas I've just pulled out of nowhere in desperation. So it really takes me a while to decide on things like this... I'll get there eventually. Brief enough of a whinge? Good stuff.
Moving swiftly on, my first concept.
It sort of popped out of a very unimaginative idea (packed with unimaginative messages of course) where there would be a dusty TV, something would happen, E4 logo pops up, suddenly the TV is dusted off and becomes funky or whatever. Dull? You bet'cha. But it sort of evolved into what I think would be a mildly decent idea with dust bunnies (yeah, those lumps of dust, but they would be cutout into little bunny shapes and it would all be very cute and that) which carry out an E4 logo and start praying to it or something. I was originally going to have them do a little Indian dance around it but I thought it might be a tad offensive. People can be sensitive about their culture after all... another variation would be where they'd put the E4 logo down and admire it a bit, then someone would pass the camera with a hoover in the background behind them, causing them to flee and leave the E4 behind. I thought perhaps this way I could make something a bit cute and pleasant to watch without being overtly obvious about the E4 thing (if you look back a post, I complained profusely about having logos shoved down my throat!).
The second idea I had which is probably my current favourite would be one of those clips where you think something is going to happen, and you anticipate it, but nothing ever does. There was one advert in particular I can remember where there was a cup in a gutter. Nothing happened, but at the end it said something like 'See? You will watch anything'. I've tried to find it again but because I don't actually know what it was there for it's been difficult. If anyone knows where to find this one, please let me know, because I'd like to take another look at it! But I find clips that use this sort of anti-climactic approach to be effective partially because of their contrast with everything else you see (because seriously, who wants television to be clogged with clips in which nothing happens?) and they're also bizarrely humourous. I don't even know what makes them funny, they just invert expectations so nonchalantly I can't help but love them.
So before I waffle on for even longer, the idea was to have an old lady standing under some apple trees - the apples, however, are E4 logos - and she's got her walking stick and she's trying to prod a particular E4 logo out of the tree. Occassionally other E4 logos just plop down from the other trees of their own accord, but she ignores them and just keeps happily prodding away at this same E4 logo. While I was considering having some other odd things fall out of the trees over the 10 seconds, the basic idea is that nothing happens. I'm oddly attached to this idea for some reason.
I'm going to have to come up with more concepts; I might try for a more abstracted third idea so that I'm getting a good balance of concepts, but I'll see. Priority is my presentation, though, everything else can wait until I've done that. Speak of the devil, I'll get back to my work on that right now.
Well hello! Once again, a late update. This time I have excuses though - the bane of all computer users, the terrible Random Viruses That Popped Out of Nowhere. Though I've managed to save my computer from such a terror (I just wouldn't be able to go through another issue like last year where my computer exploded) I've been quite paranoid of the Macs used in college, because I think the viruses came from one of them. I had noticed that my memory stick had started to behave strangely; it has a small light that flashes red when information is being accessed which usually stops a few seconds after a file is loaded or saved. But when plugged into one of the Macs it began to flash non-stop and wouldn't eject. Eventually I just pulled it out and thought nothing of it, but my antivirus software later detected the viruses that I had almost transferred to my work PC.
So I ended up having to essentially delete all the data that had been transferred recently and replace the memory stick entirely (a bit over-the-top perhaps, but it's cheaper to replace the stick than to replace the computer, and I've had enough with broken-down computers. Some viruses are hugely destructive).
But now that everything's been taken care of, things should get back on track fairly quickly.
We're now looking at idents, specifically E4-themed idents. So I've trawled through Youtube and Vimeo, but it was the actual E4 site that provided these gems:
'Dirty Pidgeon' by Brunommf, 2009 This first E-Sting I like because of its use of pixellation (can't go wrong with that) but moreso because of its use of texture. If you watch the background there's a huge variation of shapes and textures - rusted corrogated iron, pipes, bricks, plywood, roof tiles, etc - that is directly contrasted with the images in the picture frame, which are fairly plain. Similarly, colours are contrasted in a similar manner - the bright greens and purples of the images in the picture frame and the duller tones of its background really help to make the animation's style feel collaged and interesting. Unlike some of the idents I've looked at, this is an example of it being fairly unclear about its purpose until the end, but is interesting enough with its mixed visual style that the audience is very likely to watch until the E4 logo is unveiled.
'Punch!' by thedmc, 2009 This second ident I like firstly because of its very basic, almost juvenile humour; it plays with the childish game of making someone else hit themselves with their own hand (and then ask then why they're hitting themselves) which is oddly very funny here. Though I'm not entirely sure why (perhaps its the sound for the person's voice - they sound very confused) it still really works for me and is good for a giggle. It looks like very simple cutout animation using photographs - real enough to make it more humerous (oh, we just love the suffering of fellow humans, don't we?) and yet cartoony enough to escape any possibility of being labelled inappropriate.
'Addicted to Light' by RDColey, 2009 This ident for E4 I find intensely cute (it's the voices that do it, bless them) and it's very good at making the audience aware of it being for E4 from start to finish without being too forceful about it. The most obvious use of the logo is in the lightbulb element, but the moths are also made of two E4 logos. When they fly into the bulb I believe they say 'E...E... E-E-E4.... E4' in what is possibly the cutest way ever. It's rare that an ident manages to reuse and reuse the logo in practically all of its assets without seeming either overtly obvious (to the point of it insulting your intelligence) or just generally trying too hard, but this one does it with a lot of tact which I thought was nice about it.
'A Ride of Some Sort...' by GeeTeeEff, 2009 Another one of my favourites (though I must admit a bias for traditional 2D animation) is this ident. It's interesting as the concept is unusual but the style isn't too unusual - which actually makes it stand out, oddly enough. Most idents either use 3D animation or much more abstract use of traditional animation if they use it (which is rare in and of itself), so using 2D for this ident really works for me. It's humourous, too - though the boy on the E4 ride looks like he's having a pretty horriffic time initially, he actually loves the ride (takes another penny out for it) which keeps it pretty tame as well. The use of colour vs. greyscale is a fairly easy way to draw the viewer's eye to the E4 logo as well. Overall, it's a classy and well animated little ident that isn't trying too hard - and amongst the hordes of idents that though well made feel like they are trying a bit too hard to drill the E4 into the viewer's heads, this one seems very charming.
'Recursive Culture' by Cyriak, 2009 As far as I can tell this ident is one of the most recent winners of the E-Stings competition. It's a highly creative affair and feels very collagey (is that even a word?), using what looks like a bit of live action, a bit of photomanipulation and a it of cutout animation (particularly the spider-robot creature) in what I think is a 3D environment. It's effectiveness is in how incredibly strange it is; you can't help but want to watch it several times over to try and figure out what exactly is going on and where each bit of building is coming from. What I said for the last few idents, as well, holds true for this one. Though the spider-robot starts popping E4 logos out of its pincer it never has to shoot the logo right into the viewer's face which always earns points with me. (Viewers aren't stupid. They don't need to have logos so close it hits their noses!)
I think I'm going to take a lead from a lot of the idents here where they're not overtly obvious about what they're trying to show you. I really do prefer the low-key approach. I prefer the logo to be visible, not huge, but involved in the activity going on in the ident rather than just have a semi-related animation play and then have the E4 logo just appear afterwards (sometimes, if done badly, it just seems random and tacked on). I particularly like 'A Ride of Some Sort...' for being brave and less abstract than some of the others (though to be fair, I do like the creativity in the abstracted idents too), so I think I may try for something quite simple and not too busy - and yes, perhaps a bit more predictably styled - than some idents initially and see where I go to from there.
I realized that over the last few weeks updates to my blog had come to a standstill, and it's mostly because of the deadline for both my animation and the sound design accompanying it fast approaching (14th of Jan). I have just under a working week now, and though I'm seriously concerned as to whether I'm going to get this beast finished, all I can really do is make sure I cover as many of the learning requirements as possible.
The animation itself has been shortened. In the animatic I made, the Eagle would give Ratatosk a rock which he would throw at Nidhogg, then in retaliation Nidhogg would give Ratatosk a rock to throw at the Eagle. Upon having a stone thrown at it, the Eagle then gives Ratatosk a second rock to throw at Nidhogg, and the second time around Nidhogg retaliates by hurling a boulder (reason No. 53 for Why You Don't Mess With a Dragon). However in the animation I've decided to cut out the second phase of rock-throwing entirely. Now, The Eagle gives Ratatosk a rock to throw at Nidhogg, and Nidhogg has a quick revenge when he up and hurls his boulder immediately.
With that taken into consideration, I'm probably almost halfway through. The areas that are currently more or less finished are
-The opening scene; camera pans through a forest following wisps, zooms in on a sleeping Nidhogg and then pans up the Yggdrasil tree to reveal the Eagle and Ratatosk sitting up in the branches, looking down. -- I've ran into issues with animating the characters in this scene in Cinema 4D, as they are separate planes from their background and when they move, Cinema 4D automatically resizes the images to fit in their plane. Which means the characters just won't stay still or in proportion. Wobble wobble. I think I can fix this if I recreate the images with their own background plane in Adobe Photoshop, but I'm going to look into fixes in Cinema 4D before I resort to that. I'm anticipating the same problems with a lot of my other scenes, so it's important that I find a fix quickly.
-Ratatosk is given a rock; a scene I made entirely in Adobe Photoshop because the angle is impossible in the main Cinema 4D scene model. It shows Ratatosk sitting, and he flicks his ear back towards the viewer; the Eagle's foot, acting as a hand, extends from behind the camera to hand Ratatosk a stone. Since the characters and their backgrounds aren't seperated, I don't see myself running into any problems when it comes to rendering this scene.
-Ratatosk throws the rock; he jumps down to the base beside the sleeping Nidhogg and hurls the stone; Nidhogg glares at him so he points upwards towards the Eagle. I was considering also having a shot of the Eagle laughing, to make it clearer to the viewer what Ratatosk means when he's pointing (the Eagle is the baddie and not him) but since it's not hugely important to the story I'll see if I have time to slot it in at the end of the week.
Scenes that are still in progress are as follows:
-Nidhogg picks up the boulder; Because of the differences in the scene layout between the animatic and the final, this shot is both more tricky and less tricky at the same time. Good news is that falling water is much easier to animate than crumbling earth, but it's slightly less obvious than the original version (which is one of the reasons I inserted the boulder into the scene where it originally was not there).
-Rat gets splatted; Nidhogg tries to hand the boulder to Ratatosk, but ends up squishing him. I haven't focused on this scene too much because, depending on how things go, I might snip it entirely.
-Nidhogg throws the boulder; Subject to constant resketching because an upward shot of a dragon throwing a giant rock is tricky to make look right. Luckily it's a quick shot though. Less drawings!
-Eagle gets splatted; Not started quite yet, but it shouldn't be too hard because of the speed the character moves at.
-Nid and Ratatosk settle; Because it's more or less a reverse of the opening scene, except this time with Ratatosk sitting beside Nidhogg, I don't see any problems.
So completion is roughly 4/8, so half way there. I can't be sure whether I'll be able to finish this, and I have to remember not to forget about the sound design.
Plan for this week:
-Monday: Already passed, I finished two scenes (Rat receiving and throwing rock) -Tuesday: Make sure all the necessary scenes have their animation finalized, if possible begin on lining and colouring as many as possible. -Wednesday: Ensure sound design is complete; all sounds collected and all research adequately presented. If I finish early, continue with animation work. -Thursday: Render scenes, apply final edits and ensure all paperwork is absolutely finished -Friday: Any final preparations before hand in
