My idea for the final project was about two foxes, one being a maned wolf and the other being a red fox, coming across a camp site on their journey to find a place of their own. The maned wolf really wants to investigate the area, while the red fox cautions her friend about the possible danger. They end up deciding to take a quick look, with some struggle for the red wolf, and come across a camp fire. After hearing rustling from some nearby bushes, the two retreat hastily. After they run off, a dog emerges from the bushes, curiously sniffing around before seeing the two foxes in the distance. I interpreted the prompt like this due to the way animals behave and think around human areas.
While animating this project, I used a multitude of animation principles to add detail. First off, I used anticipation during the part where they hear the rustling in the bushes, as well as before they jump down the cliff. Secondly, I used secondary action when it came to where they ran away from the rustling between the run and tail movements, and when they should have talked they had added tail movements. The use of pacing in this project is to create a silly story feel, then cause a bit of doubt turning a tense moment of the bushes, before resolving the tension in an understandable way. The use of multiple camera angles also sets up the scenes involved in the story.
The parts that worked really well for this project mostly came down to me. Unlike other projects, I was more open to the use of references from books to the internet to get tips on different aspects. The walks cycle was something I really was proud of in this project, as well as I think I was able to convey the characters through their actions and expressions. The use of camera angles was something I was proud of as well.
The parts I struggled with also came down to me. I held off to long on voices and as such there is no lip-sync in the final video, though I don't know how well it would have came out if it had been in there. On the worse days, I would forget some design details and would have to go back and add them, causing them to "grow" as they go on.
Overall, this project was pretty interesting with it's premise and I did like that everyone can have a different vision of the script and create different stories. My strategy was to get the animation done first incase changes happened, then to go back and add detail in the background, which unfortunately didn't happen as much as I wanted it to. This also expanded to the voice work, so that is not present at the current time I had to turn it in, and will be something I add for my revision.
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Final Projects Reference
So, the final project is over, and it's time to get into the references I used for this project!
1.
First off, one of the characters in my project is a Maned wolf, which is a pretty rare animal to see. Being so rare in this area, I needed to see a picture that I could base my design on, as well as understanding the long legs on this animal.
2.
Speaking of those long legs, I needed this chart to see just how much height they added to a Maned wolf, and as you can see, it adds up to a surprising amount. Really, I did scale it down quite a bit so the two characters didn't have strange proportions when next to each other, but some surprising information on these animals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVdNmiPkuAI
3.
This video is a video I used to get a feel of these animals, from their movements to their interactions. I would have preferred a clip of them in the wild, but the one I found didn't keep it's focus on the Maned wolf, so I unfortunately couldn't use it in this situation.
4.
Now for an animal I have more general knowledge. I did find that foxes really have many different patterns, even if it's the same type of fox, and I really didn't feel like I looked enough. The design in my animation is a pretty standard design, but if I had to change the design, I would take more into consideration.
5.
You'll see in my animation, I attempt to do the signature kind of fox jump during the fleeing scene, and it didn't turn out how I wanted. While looking for general fox references, I kept seeing pictures like this, so I tried my best with it.
First off, one of the characters in my project is a Maned wolf, which is a pretty rare animal to see. Being so rare in this area, I needed to see a picture that I could base my design on, as well as understanding the long legs on this animal.
Speaking of those long legs, I needed this chart to see just how much height they added to a Maned wolf, and as you can see, it adds up to a surprising amount. Really, I did scale it down quite a bit so the two characters didn't have strange proportions when next to each other, but some surprising information on these animals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVdNmiPkuAI
3.
This video is a video I used to get a feel of these animals, from their movements to their interactions. I would have preferred a clip of them in the wild, but the one I found didn't keep it's focus on the Maned wolf, so I unfortunately couldn't use it in this situation.
Now for an animal I have more general knowledge. I did find that foxes really have many different patterns, even if it's the same type of fox, and I really didn't feel like I looked enough. The design in my animation is a pretty standard design, but if I had to change the design, I would take more into consideration.
You'll see in my animation, I attempt to do the signature kind of fox jump during the fleeing scene, and it didn't turn out how I wanted. While looking for general fox references, I kept seeing pictures like this, so I tried my best with it.
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Well, this week... (Weekly comments #18)
I am the victim of getting mentally destroyed by a dating sim, send help!
1. What I learned this week:
That 2D is still kicking my butt, whoops.
2. What I want to learn:
Anatomy is a big thing.
3. Something that frustrated me this week:
I wasn't able to get a book I really wanted this week, boo!
Also exams, they stress me out.
4. Something that made me happy:
My grandma came back yesterday, and my uncle and aunt will be coming up Saturday!
5. Video of the week!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTYAJ_yEojM
Some CinemaSins for you guys, Everything wrong with Cars, enjoy!
1. What I learned this week:
That 2D is still kicking my butt, whoops.
2. What I want to learn:
Anatomy is a big thing.
3. Something that frustrated me this week:
I wasn't able to get a book I really wanted this week, boo!
Also exams, they stress me out.
4. Something that made me happy:
My grandma came back yesterday, and my uncle and aunt will be coming up Saturday!
5. Video of the week!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTYAJ_yEojM
Some CinemaSins for you guys, Everything wrong with Cars, enjoy!
The art of Editing
Editing is something I've always seen as an art, something subjective, and something that takes practice to form a style.
This video brings this idea up and explains why editing can be so hard to understand. Editing is all about the emotions and thoughts behind a shot, and conveying it to the viewer. The understanding of an emotion in a characters' face without words is a difficult editing decision, as some emotions are best seen in short shots, while some emotions require longer exposer to get the intended affect. Another editing decision is when a character fails, how do you make it seem real? With the examples shown, the failure of Luke Skywalker and how much time they took to convey all the emotions felt real, we could feel the emotions because we can connect. In the Ant Man clip, the cutting felt jarring, like the character gave up way to quick, and making the emotions in the scene feel fake and unconnectable.
Editing, when it comes down to it, really is a art consisting of knowing the emotion you want to invoke and cutting the footage provided to reflect this. Just like many arts, editors have to practice to improve their skills.
This video brings this idea up and explains why editing can be so hard to understand. Editing is all about the emotions and thoughts behind a shot, and conveying it to the viewer. The understanding of an emotion in a characters' face without words is a difficult editing decision, as some emotions are best seen in short shots, while some emotions require longer exposer to get the intended affect. Another editing decision is when a character fails, how do you make it seem real? With the examples shown, the failure of Luke Skywalker and how much time they took to convey all the emotions felt real, we could feel the emotions because we can connect. In the Ant Man clip, the cutting felt jarring, like the character gave up way to quick, and making the emotions in the scene feel fake and unconnectable.
Editing, when it comes down to it, really is a art consisting of knowing the emotion you want to invoke and cutting the footage provided to reflect this. Just like many arts, editors have to practice to improve their skills.
Posing Design
I had actually heard of this game before, in the form of pointing out animation issues in the product, but it wasn't this issue and so I was curious what this entailed.
After watching the video, I realized that I had seen and taken issue of some of these things before, particularly the female sexualization issue. Be it pose or clothing, this is a blaring problem for most character. The example provided with the black widow character is something I can agree with, because her sexual appeal is actually an aspect of her overall character, and thus has a reason to have a pose as addressed in the video. However with Tracer, as soon as the video started, I got a sense of what her character was, and it wasn't sexualized in the slightest. So to have a pose drawing attention to her butt serves as nothing but eye candy goes strongly against who Tracer is. I do have to give a hand to Blizzard for listening and changing the pose to something more accurate to Tracer, seeing as many companies don't really care, and just pander with their female characters regardless.
Posing really does become a big part of understanding a character and their actions, as well as giving the image of motion. If we stay on the video game route, sometimes these poses are what you have to use to draw people in. Such examples include cover art or promotional art, which should draw some eyes to it and interest those who see it. With shows, action becomes important in the conveying aspect, such as emotions or events that can't be felt with just words.
So all in all, poses really do give a true insight on a character, from their personality to what they can do, poses are a powerful tool into creating strong characters.
After watching the video, I realized that I had seen and taken issue of some of these things before, particularly the female sexualization issue. Be it pose or clothing, this is a blaring problem for most character. The example provided with the black widow character is something I can agree with, because her sexual appeal is actually an aspect of her overall character, and thus has a reason to have a pose as addressed in the video. However with Tracer, as soon as the video started, I got a sense of what her character was, and it wasn't sexualized in the slightest. So to have a pose drawing attention to her butt serves as nothing but eye candy goes strongly against who Tracer is. I do have to give a hand to Blizzard for listening and changing the pose to something more accurate to Tracer, seeing as many companies don't really care, and just pander with their female characters regardless.
Posing really does become a big part of understanding a character and their actions, as well as giving the image of motion. If we stay on the video game route, sometimes these poses are what you have to use to draw people in. Such examples include cover art or promotional art, which should draw some eyes to it and interest those who see it. With shows, action becomes important in the conveying aspect, such as emotions or events that can't be felt with just words.
So all in all, poses really do give a true insight on a character, from their personality to what they can do, poses are a powerful tool into creating strong characters.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Science of Rendering
Alright, after getting my nerves fried, let's tackle this shall we.
First off, math and science are involved in the process of rendering, and in a few different forms. Geometry is used due to it's involvement with the working of shapes, while coinciding with 3D coordinates, vectors, and matrices, to give off the illusion of space and depth.
Now from the stand point of differences between Rasterization and Ray Casting. First off, Rasterization is based on drawing points from the object to create the needed effect, aka Object Centric. Ray Casting is instead Image Centric, meaning it instead takes in consideration all images and where they are in comparison to the camera. Ray Casting also fixes some of the errors with Rasterization, such as fixing a visibility problem by taking the closest point if points intersected in a process called Z-Buffer. On top of this, Rasterization is not practical for things like shadows, reflections, and refractions, all of which needed to be done in Ray Casting.
With the topic of direct and indirect illumination, we need to know the differences first. Direct illumination is when light is reflecting directly from the source to the objects present in a scene. With indirect illumination, it simulates real world principles by having light bounce from everything present, giving a more realistic image. The issue that arose from this was that power of rendering was everything, and many who tried to use it, for example Pixar, didn't use indirect illumination until farther down the road. When it was used though, it created something truly realistic and special that gave life to what it was applied to.
The fact that in time, render time and power would improve is in part to Moore's law and Blinn's law. Moore's law involved the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit will double every two years. However, Blinn's law starts that even with advances in technology, render time remains consistent. While Blinn's law may seem off, we have to think about how as technology advances, we are throwing more and more into this tech.
Really, CGI is an amazing art form, the fact that not everyone is capable should be proof enough to classify it as such. CGI allows filmmakers to build creative worlds of fantasy, loveable and memorable characters, and stunning stories that can only be brought to life through this method.
All and all, this video was really helpful when it comes to learning the work that goes behind this ever evolving form, and how far we've come in such a short time.
First off, math and science are involved in the process of rendering, and in a few different forms. Geometry is used due to it's involvement with the working of shapes, while coinciding with 3D coordinates, vectors, and matrices, to give off the illusion of space and depth.
Now from the stand point of differences between Rasterization and Ray Casting. First off, Rasterization is based on drawing points from the object to create the needed effect, aka Object Centric. Ray Casting is instead Image Centric, meaning it instead takes in consideration all images and where they are in comparison to the camera. Ray Casting also fixes some of the errors with Rasterization, such as fixing a visibility problem by taking the closest point if points intersected in a process called Z-Buffer. On top of this, Rasterization is not practical for things like shadows, reflections, and refractions, all of which needed to be done in Ray Casting.
With the topic of direct and indirect illumination, we need to know the differences first. Direct illumination is when light is reflecting directly from the source to the objects present in a scene. With indirect illumination, it simulates real world principles by having light bounce from everything present, giving a more realistic image. The issue that arose from this was that power of rendering was everything, and many who tried to use it, for example Pixar, didn't use indirect illumination until farther down the road. When it was used though, it created something truly realistic and special that gave life to what it was applied to.
The fact that in time, render time and power would improve is in part to Moore's law and Blinn's law. Moore's law involved the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit will double every two years. However, Blinn's law starts that even with advances in technology, render time remains consistent. While Blinn's law may seem off, we have to think about how as technology advances, we are throwing more and more into this tech.
Really, CGI is an amazing art form, the fact that not everyone is capable should be proof enough to classify it as such. CGI allows filmmakers to build creative worlds of fantasy, loveable and memorable characters, and stunning stories that can only be brought to life through this method.
All and all, this video was really helpful when it comes to learning the work that goes behind this ever evolving form, and how far we've come in such a short time.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Hmmm...(Weekly Comments #17)
Making this weekly comments with The Cinema Snobs "review" of Friday the 13th part 4 is slightly strange, but I can't put my finger on why...
1. What I learned this week:
... Nope, don't think I learned anything this week
2. What I want to learn:
Maybe better ways to sync up audio maybe.
3. Something that frustrated me this week:
Once again, nothing really, bleh week
4. Something that made me happy:
Uhhhh.... I am going to a great Italian place this weekend, other then that I don't know...
5. Video of the week!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDKvO5jspI0
Seeing as one of our articles was about the Jungle Book, I found this fitting. Enjoy!
1. What I learned this week:
... Nope, don't think I learned anything this week
2. What I want to learn:
Maybe better ways to sync up audio maybe.
3. Something that frustrated me this week:
Once again, nothing really, bleh week
4. Something that made me happy:
Uhhhh.... I am going to a great Italian place this weekend, other then that I don't know...
5. Video of the week!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDKvO5jspI0
Seeing as one of our articles was about the Jungle Book, I found this fitting. Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)