Modelling our first character

So modelling has begun on our character and I have started with Gloria first (our main character). Lija has been doing research into proportions and other attributes to help refine Gloria, which can be found HERE. Along with this she gave me the t-pose which I turned into image planes to model from within Maya. There were different iterations of Gloria, mainly with and without the coat, this was really helpful as I was able to just concentrate on blocking out her main body first and then change the image planes to add in the coat afterwards - found HERE. Throughout the concept art stage and creating the t-poses Lija would constantly get feedback from me to make sure it was looking okay and if any adjusments needed to be changed. This worked out really well as I could advise her on what I would be able to model and if anything may have been too complicated for myself to make.

Throughout the whole process I have tried to keep the mesh simple and the topology clean, whilst keeping the poly-count low. I probably spent the most time on her face as I didn't want her looking too realistic but I'm hoping the textures will emphasise this even more. To keep things simple her head and legs are not attached to another part of the body, they are simply placed within the clothing. When it comes to rigging and binding it will all hold together, I will just have to weight paint it in a particular way in order for her waist not to show through the coat when she moves.

The bottom of the coat was a bit of problem solving for myself as when it is rigged it will have dynamic curve which will create a more fluid motion that we can easily animate. Because it will be moving I had to create it so it would be able to move about so down the middle at the front, the coat is not joined. Also with it going into Unity afterwards I have to remember about backface culling - if the normals are not reversed one side will not show up. I duplicated the outside of the coat and reversed to normals to get around this issue, so hopefully all will be fine in Unity.

I spent awhile on her shoes too, it probably wasn't necessary as the viewer might not even see them that well but it just adds to the extra detail. I extruded certain parts and merged the vertices to create 'laces' of some sort. They aren't perfect and there might even be an easier / better way to create them but it's what I was able to come up with.

The next stage is to model her hat, this is another separate geometry, however will not be attached through the rig as we need it to fall off at certain points. I don't think it will need rigging in anyway as it may just complicate things. After this I will get on to unwrapping her so I can pass the UV map onto Lija to texture. Whilst she is doing this I might go onto rigging her or move on to modelling our second character.

Diggs Nightcrawler

One of my favourite animations from last year was 'The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore' from Moonbot Studios and I have been keeping an eye on their future works to see what else they are producing. Since their animation short which they won an Oscar for, they have since produced an interactive app for Apple and now they are working on a new augmented reality experience for Playstation 3, Wonderbook. Wonderbook places a physical book in the players hands and brings stories to life around you using Playstation Eye.

It's nice to see an animation studio trying something new by making a game, it shows that they can do more and that their skills are transferable. “We wanted the story to become something more and show you a bridge between books and digital media...” said Brandon Oldenburg (studio co-founder). Moonbot Studios like combining different mediums as with The Fantastic Flying Books, they combined 2D and 3D animation along with stop motion. With Diggs Nightcrawler it's a game however there is about 60-80 minutes of animation so in a way it's its own feature length film. I really admire them trying to push the boundaries and bringing mediums together in harmony with one another. It's something that is quite different yet the end result is something very beautiful.

SWOT Analysis

We were given a SWOT Analysis sheet to fill out to identify our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. By realising each of these I am then able to see clearly what I am good at and what I need to improve on; I can also start to create a solution for any problems that I may have. Weaknesses can be converted or minimized to strengths, strengths and opportunities match each other and threats can be converted to opportunities by working and improving on them.

SWOT gives you a clear indication of what you are actually good at which in itself boots your confidence more so you're not always concentrating on the things that could be improved upon. I realise that there are a few things I need to work on such as be more outgoing and talk to more people within the industry and get feedback on my own work. I do worry a lot about deadlines and the workload but I think this is due to the fact that I always plan out what I'm going to do and the overall look of a project worries me yet I still manage to get it all done in time.

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is not only a form of therapy but is also the theory of the mind and a theory that can be applied to other objects and processes. This can be a way of catergorising and understanding certain desires, motivations and dreams. We ourselves are not controlled by logical or even reasonable thought, there is far more to it than that and our unconscious mind will play a big part in our everyday lives.

Sigmund Freud created this idea in the late 1890's, he used psychoanalysis as a form of treatment for hysteria patients. Through psychoanalytic theory Freud came up with the dynamic conscious, this would be created through infancy to protect our conscious selves from events, ideas and thoughts that would be unsuitable otherwise. Our unconscious is chaotic in a way, it has no order or language yet makes itself present through slips and tricks - Freudian Slip - accidentally saying something but not consciously planning to. Freud looked into how the child goes through stages of development in order to become a fully conscious being. The child must experience and overcome mixed feelings and misconceptions that come under psycho-sexual identity through the Oedipus Complex of 'to want' vs 'to be wanted', the Castration Complex and Penis-envy, all of which can possibly create negative feelings but they must overcome this.

Freudian Models layout the Id, Ego and Superego. Id being the unconscious where our fears and irrational wishes lie. It is our primary process thinking, our instinctual part of ourselves. Ego is the conscious, our thoughts and perceptions, our own personalities and secondary process thinking. The Superego being the social order where things have to be acceptable, no irrational wishes. The Pre-conscious is all of our memories and stored knowledge, it all happens naturally like language, it is our subconscious.

After Freud's Death Jacques Lacan presented his own brand of psychoanalysis where he re-conceptualized Freud's findings. The child must identify itself outside of his self, but because of this identification the child will become split and alienated so the Ego is created to fill this gap, it creates personality and an identity for ourselves. There are other theories and models Lacan came up with such as the 'orders of reality' where it goes over the 'real', 'imaginary' and 'symbolic' which can refer to our conscious, subconscious and unconscious selves.

There are so many parts that come under psychoanalysis, different theories and models, some that are easier related to subjects than others. You can use psychoanalysis to help understand the human mind, how better to sell things, advertising/promotion wise. The Uncanny is something that is unnatural yet has a sense of familiarity to it. The boundary between fantasy and reality breaks down. Films have used the Uncanny, mainly in the Horror genre, they would use the essence of familiar but the overall feel would be foreign. There have also been films that reference psychoanalysis and the theories behind it.

Private Eye Monologues

In our group we decided on having our girl character do a monologue that runs alongside the our cinematic, by doing this it would reference old detective movies more and add more to the atmosphere of the scene. I have been looking into old movies and also any recent movies or programmes that include a private eye monologue; I have found that it has been used a lot in TV programmes/animations. The three that I've looked at so far have been:

• Pinky and the Brain - "Brain Noir"
• American Dad - "Star Trek"
• Rugrats - "Radio Daze"

All three are animations and even though they are based around the private eye detective they all differ from one another. I was mainly looking for key phrases that were spoken which I could then use to come up with a script for our character. Some of the phrases that we may use are "The night began like any other..."; "My next step was clear"; "I was a man on a mission and no-one would get in my way".

Not only by watching these did they give me ideas of what to include for the script, but in both Pinky and the Brain and American Dad, the character starts off face down in a pool while a monologue talks over before it cuts back to the beginning. This is another aspect that seems quite common within detective style movies/programmes, almost a parody even. By seeing this appear in both shows it gave us the idea to open up our cinematic of the camera fixated on our girl's face as she is lying down. It would set our cinematic up and you would instantly know it's in the detective style.

We're going to play around with this idea a bit more and hopefully finish the script before long so we can create an animatic with rough sound and a monologue on top. By doing this we can have a better idea of what will work and how long each shot will roughly take.

UV Mapping Alien

This year UV mapping is slightly different as we are now unwrapping a full biped character. It's pretty much the same process as what we learnt last year and using the same tools, the only major difference is learning how to unwrap the head and using a tool called 'select shell border'. For the head you just have to take into account of the mouth pocket created, this should be unwrapped separately which would leave the head to be unwrapped normally. 'Select shell border' tool allows you to expand the edges of a projection you have taken; e.g I took a planar map from the top of the foot, after separating the top from the bottom using 'select shell border' on each this allows you to see and easily paint for the edges of the foot.

I have just done a really simple texture on my alien just to show that the UV mapping I have done is correct, I think there still needs some fine tuning e.g lining up the texture perfectly around the seam but I will definitely make sure this is done when it comes to our final characters.

Moustache Man

After writing up a couple of character sheets the next stage is to produce some drawings that are based off these. I want to improve my drawing skills a bit more so I wanted to contribute to the concept part of the brief. I had a rough idea of how the boss man should look so I started sketching out a few ideas, concentrating more on face shapes as his moustache is the main focal point. I tired out a range of different shapes to see what would best compliment his overgrown facial hair. Passing it on to the rest of my group for feedback I have managed to come up with a possible final idea for his face (it still may need tweaking), but I think I will take it into Maya and block it out to get an idea of volume and how it will be in a 3D space.

We have also decided on his body shape being almost like an upside down triangle, he is very well built on top but has short legs which can give him an almost comical look as you would expect him to be quite tall in comparison. Below the drawings you can see a quick model of this character in I did in Maya. At the moment it is just in smooth preview, it may not be this smooth when it comes to making the final one as it would bump up the polygon count quite a bit. His hair and facial hair may need to be modeled separately but I will have to find this out, at the moment I have just extruded out specific faces to create them. I will pass these on to Lija so she can get a better idea of proportion and how he will look from different perspectives.

Gantt Chart

As we are working in a group of three and each of us has separate tasks to produce it would be beneficial to write out our individual goals and the time frame we are allocating ourselves to achieve it in. By doing this it gives everyone a deadline to work to and makes sure that nothing goes off task and the final product is completed on time.

Below is our group gantt chart which indicates all of our tasks and deadlines. Some bars are colour coded to relate to different people and their tasks. I've worked on this with Lija and Phil to get a rough idea of what people can achieve in the time. This is still a rough guide, some tasks make take longer or even shorter to complete but it gives us something to work to.

Character Sheets

To get a better idea of what our characters might look like we have wrote up some character sheets. By doing this it outlines what we are designing to and get a better idea of their personality. Their personality will influence the way they act which will determine the animation. These character sheets are still subject to change as this was just the first draft, it may come to a point where things need to be added onto this sheet or even replaced.

From these character sheets we will then take reference videos for how each character will walk and act and this will help not only with research but animation too.

Our characters are stark contrasts from each other, the girl being very tall and slender yet clumsy whereas the man is very short and stocky and disciplined. We wanted to play with their height and proportions in relation to each other as this would create a more comical look which would fit well with the overall cinematic story.

Business Cards

In order to be prepared to network during Bradford Animation Festival I have decided to get some business cards printed up. For the time being I have just kept it as a clean and simple design however I think for the future, especially once I graduate I will design one that has my own character on it or something along those lines.

I sorted out a Vimeo channel for myself as it is more professional than putting up all my final pieces of work onto Youtube, and it also enables me to keep track of any animations that I like and the people that have produced them. I have also included my blog address on my cards as this will allow people to see the work that I am doing at uni and the developmental process I take. 

Detectives

For this module we are working in groups to produce a piece of machinima involving 2 characters and an interaction between the two, revolving around one of 3 topics:

• Exchange
• Stolen
• Surveillance

Lija who is in my group has roughly outlined our basic ideas and which route we are planning to go down HERE. She has also started some moodboards and sketches on the matter using a book I found in the library: A Pictorial History of Crime Films by Ian Cameron. I thought this would be rather useful as it references crime films and we can get a better understanding of what camera shots are used within them and look more at the way of shot composition. 

I have been looking into detectives from films around the 1950's and the film noir genre. We haven't decided whether or not we are going to go down the film noir route as of yet but it is something that could work quite effectively with the hard shadows and lighting creating striking silhouettes. As our main character is going to be a woman detective (something which was not very common) I started researching films which have included a female protagonist. In the 1930's a female detective could be outspoken and independent and evenly balance her femininity with the masculine profession of a detective. However in the 1940's the few female detectives had to give up their independence in order for them to achieve happiness which in this case was marriage. The 1930's female detectives would not have given this part of their life up easily, however in the 1940's the women seemed to do so happily.

As we are working around the 1950's era with our idea it would only be best to look into this with the female detectives of that time. By the 1950's female detectives were hardly seen as a positive thing and as previously she was deemed as a reliable authority, now however this was questioned which also led to questioning her sanity too. During this time masculinity and femininity could no long co-exist within the female detective so this led to her ultimately disappearing from the screen. This is quite an interesting subject as before reading this, we had planned on our character to be quite clumsy and her boss would never be impressed by her work. From the research we could develop her character further to hold some of the stereotypical traits of the female detectives of the 50's. This would add more to her background and could help us in develop her 'look' more.

Research into female detectives found HERE

Developing Skills

To try and develop my skills further I want to try out and get to grips with using Mudbox by Autodesk, a 3D digital sculpting and painting software. I've had a brief look at it before however I never took the time to get into it and I didn't really know where to start. I've heard pretty good things about it and the results are quite stunning, you can achieve a high level of detail and is compatible with other Autodesk software such as Maya and 3ds Max. I think Mudbox could really improve my texturing skills as you are able to add normal maps and paint on your actual model using stencils or freehand. 

I think I will try and get to grips with Mudbox as best as I can so when it comes to our own personal project near the end of the year I can create a character within it from which I can then animate. I'm hoping that by using Mudbox I can achieve a more professional looking model and widen my knowledge with 3D modelling and sculpting.

Animation Festivals

Over this year I am planning to try and get to more animation festivals to network and get a better understanding of the industry. There were a few I came across last year that I found interesting however I wasn't able to make it due to deadlines from my course and not finding out about them soon enough. The one I was really excited about was FMX - Stuggart, Germany. This festival covered not only animation but VFX, games and films and had some big studio names giving talks last year - Pixar, DNeg, Dreamworks, LAIKA, Axis Animation and Aardman to name a few. What's really good about this festival is that is covers a wide range of topics within the industry, movie screenings, gives masterclasses, portfolio reviews and so much more. I had previously looked into going to Fantoche as this was meant to be the best animation festival out there, however after seeing the line-up for FMX last year I think that I will definitely be trying to get to this one.

One that is closer to Leeds is Animex held at Teeside University, again I had seen this last year but never really got round to getting tickets for the event. Animex is the international festival for animation and games and previous guest talks have been given by Eric Goldberg, animator and director from Disney, Production Designer, Karen deJong, Epic Games, Naughty Dog, animators from Valve. Along with these talks, there are masterclasses and workshops to attend as well. I need to start looking more into these masterclasses and workshops that are available at these festivals as they can be of great use to myself as I would be learning from an industry working person.

Animated Exeter is one that could be nice to go to however it all depends on whether I could get there or not as it would cost a fair amount of money to travel all the way down there and to also pay for accommodation; I think I will wait until November (when the programme is announced) before I make my decision on this one. Animated Encounters in Bristol is close to my actual home and would have loved to have gone, however the dates for this year had changed and I was already moved back up to Leeds when it had started. The problem with some of the animation festivals is that they tend to not be anywhere close to where I am and involves paying out quite a bit to attend them. Because of this I think I will only try to make it to a couple but the one at the top of my list will be FMX. It definitely seems worth the money going by the programme last year and so I'm going to try and see if other people in my year will be interested in attending this in April.

Alien Model

As part of of Game Art & Machinima module we are all building the same character and from this learning how to rig it before moving on to making our own characters for our cinematic. Using image planes already provided for us I began to model the alien using them as a guide. Over summer I had previously modeled a bi-ped character, however I didn't fully understand the topology so in some areas the mesh wasn't as clean as I would have hoped. Now with a better understanding of it I was able to execute the model to a standard that I was more happy with. To make it easier for myself and to make sure everything was symmetrical, I firstly modeled half and then mirror the geometry. The screenshots below are just in smooth preview, it's best to smooth it last as it is easier when it comes to UV mapping. I think the alien has turned out okay, however the mouth needs sorting out as when I mirror it, the geometry seals itself up leaving no gap. Apart from that it seems okay just might have to make some minor adjustments here and there.

ParaNorman

I recently went and saw ParaNorman after hearing many good things about it from a friend in America and I was not disappointed. For a stop motion it was quite ambitious with the high-speed chases, huge sets and a fair bit of vfx, however LAIKA pulled it off to a great standard. What really impressed me was how the animation for the faces was done. They used what was called replacement animation as the material in which they used to create the models couldn't be morphed in the way they wanted. In order to do the animation in this way they had to create thousands of different facial expressions, to put it into perspective you would need around 24 different faces for one second of voicing. 300 puppets was the total amount in the film which meant that there was around 40,000 faces created.

The amount of effort LAIKA did to create the sets is pretty impressive in itself. Whether someone realises it or not, every minute detail within a film makes it what it is and when you find out how much work went in to something it really makes you appreciate the process and dedication of the people who made it. Even though it is stop motion and the process for this animation differs from the way you would create CGI, it still involves a lot of time and effort and the final product is quite an inspiration.


Mark Shapiro, who works as Marketing and Brand Manager at LAIKA will be attending BAF explaining how ParaNorman was made so I am really looking forward to seeing the behind the scenes of the film and what it was like to work on it.

Assassin's Creed Cinematic

Second year has started and our main module to start with is 'Game Art & Machinima'. To start this off we had a look at a range of different game cinematics and cut scenes to determine which were pre-rendered, used in game content or was what you would class as Machinima. Machinima is filming actual in game footage, it's almost more like a film where you have to direct where each person will be.



I chose Assassin's Creed Revelations opening scene as it was a game I had recently played and was also one of the openings that had stuck in my mind for a long time. When you start the game it immediately starts showing you a montage of what has been going on in previous games to give you a recap. This montage could really be classed machinima as someone has actually gone into the game and recorded specific actions and complied them into a montage. After this part the opening scene then moves to in game content where soon after you are dropped into the game, you notice that the cut scene is in game content as the character and surrounding area doesn't actually differ when playing. Further one, once you have walked through the archway you find yourself immersed into a cinematic which explains what has happened since the previous game and sets the scene for what you are about to play. This section has been pre-rendered as you can tell by how detailed the textures, backgrounds and characters are and how the lighting is quite sophisticated, much more than what it would be in game.

It's whole purpose is to set the scene and also remind the player of what has been going on previously and introduce the game to any new players. This cinematic gives you a good overview of the different ways in which it can be produced, using a range of in game content and pre-rendered scenes.