...skeletons in the computer

Oh dear how confusing.

Well, almost. Creating joint systems - This was so good! Take your polygon 'thing' and just click where you want it to bend, it's that simple. Obviously, there's a bit more to it than that but for basics it's pretty straightforward - the rest is more about tweaking to improve movement rather than create it.

For this, we took the hand model created previously and added a joint rig so we could animate it wiggling about. Basically, the first joint is the wrist so you click there. From this, you work up each finger bone as is in a real hand, clicking at each knuckle to create a moveable joint.

Once the whole joint rig is created the rig has to be bound to the mesh so that when the rig moves, the mesh reacts with it. Again, this is pretty straightforward - it's just a matter of selecting the two parts and clicking the 'bind' tool in the relevant drop down menu (again, obviously there are more advanced options but shush)

BUT... that's where simple ends...

Hello Painting Weight, how I do not love you! Painting weights, I still don't understand and really need to sit down and practice with a textbook alongside. I think that the main principle is to distribute the amount of distortion placed upon the different areas of a bending joint. Further than this, I have no idea :(

However, once the joint system is in place, animating seems simple. It's no different from animating any of the downloaded characters I've been playing around with... you move a bit, key frame, move a bit, key frame... This part I get :P

Now, back to painting weights >_<

...how real do you want me?

Plan for GAS essay.

"It can sometimes appear that CG animation regards the production of a plausible and photo-realistic human figure as its holy grail. Such a quest, however, misunderstands the real strengths of animation and of its technology" Using a single example, explore this idea.

I have been wanting a question like this for ages - finally a chance to research and explore the idea of the lack of 'soul' in the photo-realistic CG human!

...digital fantasy

"In an increasingly digitised media environment we are seeing a greater and greater blurring between fantasy and reality, which impacts in complex ways on peoples' everyday lives" In the form of a 10min presentation, discuss this idea.

After all the heavily games-related lectures, I've been finding it somewhat difficult to relate the content to an animation-based view. However, I love the theme of 'what is real?' which is essentially where the main content of this presentation lies - When fantasy and reality are parts of a scale, rather than two separate entities, how can you really separate the two? And in that case, how can you really be sure as to what is 'real' and what isn't. As a concept, it has the ability to completely destroy the held beliefs of the media image.

For the terms of the lectures, the subesquent presentations and probably all theory for the course in general, 'real' and 'reality' should probably be more appropriately names 'PHOTOreal' and 'PHOTOreality' - the level of 'realness of media as judged by the viewer (i.e. how real a media image is in terms of it's photographic likeness) - in these terms, simple live-action with absolutely NO computer effects would be considered the epitome of 'real'

PLAN FOR PRESENTATION

Intro -
- what is fantasy?
- what is reality?

Fantasy -
- fantasy in animation
- fantasy in games
- obviously an illusion, handmade or machined
- acts as an escape from 'reality'
- examples

(photo)Reality -
- as close to real life as possible
- easily believed as 'real'
- examples

Rise of Virtual Reality -
- transparent imediacy
- purpose is to make fantasy seem real
- gaming apparatus

Rise of CGI -
- more exploitable than 'reality'
- can look 'real'
- blends with 'reality'
- Avatar, Pirates of the Carribean, Transformers, Jurrasic Park

The Blur -
- advance in technology = fantasy is more immersive
- harder to differentiate between 'reality' and 'fantasy'

These are the points that will be researched in to in more depth for the presentation.

...your sex is on...TV

So, the first soundscape left a lot to be desired! Time to be..better.

In the first project that required sound, (the first year abstract 'keyword' piece) it ended up with a visual piece that had audio attached to it in anyway possible - with staples if necessary.

The second piece was this term, the first soundscape piece. This time there was an emphasis on sound working with the piece. However, the sound lessons came first and because of this it was easy to make the sound and attach sort-of fitting visuals as an almost afterthought.

Both times had the same issue. The audio and the visuals didn't work with each other as one or the other came first and the second was created to 'fit'. It seems that to correct this and make the entire piece work a lot better, means planning both audio AND visual before actually creating anything. Also, constantly testing the compatibility of the two and not being overly precious about changing things if they don't work.

THE PLAN

The theme is 'Sex' - possibly my favourite topic for artistic things :D
I love suggestive imagery and sounds, and the plan is that as I'm so in to the theme that will then come across in my audio-visual statement. The idea is that the imagery and sounds will, in reality, have nothing to do with 'Sex' but the viewers 'life experience' will dictate that that is what they will see.

AUDIO
- car revving
- waves
- birds cawing
- dogs barking
- pop bottle fizz
- bird crowing
- fat sizzling
- breathing
- creaking
-

VISUAL
- cherry being crushed
- train entering a tunnel
- flower having the petals ripped off
- nuts being cracked
- cream
- cowboys/riding
- cat
- tidy, made up bed
- forbidden fruit, locks
- hand scrunching bed covers

...the wire man

Yes! I finally made my first actually upright armature...sort of!

So, this modelling lesson was all about machining armatures. They were only basic but, they work and are a very good platform to work up from. The armature is very simple but has a lot of room to alter and add more complicated parts to better suit the needs of the intended character.

Materials
- 2mm wire x 2 strands
- 1mm wire x 3 strands
- milliput

Tools
- drill
- vice
- pliers/cutters

The 2mm strands are for the neck/spine and legs, the 1mm strands are for the arms. After measuring out the strands, one end is twisted a little before securing in a vice. The other end is then tightened into the drill, held taught and twisted till stiff. These strands are then cut to the right length for the body and secured into place with wrapped wire - a milliput torso and pelvis is added.

...texture is only skin deep

Oh I loved this lecture, but it confused the hell out of me at points as well. So far I've found that with Maya, 90% of the steps for any task are (once you know the basics) pretty easy to get a grasp of. It's the damn little 10% that makes everything fall apart!

When it comes to textures, the part I found the hardest was creating a 2D 'pattern' for the texture skin. Trying to blow out the edges so that when wrapping the texture, it was easier to hide seams. Trying to cut out the nails so they could be textured separately! After that, it came really easy but it's that one hard step that puts a halt to everything else. Pain really.

Once I'd managed to export my 2D 'pattern' to Photoshop it was just a case of painting it in anyway I wanted the texture to look. As it was a hand, it was fun trying to get all the realistic-ish details in (creases, dark/light, knuckles etc) and it was really nice seeing it ON a 3D moving object! I found it strange seeing how a 3D skin would look flattened - I guess that must be what it would look like if you skinned a human and turned them into a rug o_O

Oh well, if I don't make it in CG modelling, at least I can now make my Sims look sexy!

..butterflies and fireworks, not a pretty sight

So, the first soundscape project. Did ya love it? o_O

Ok so timing and planning on this was awful and we really should have storyboarded and time-managed a lot better. But we got there and, well, it's become a good starting piece to look at to really judge what went wrong and what needs improving.

The basic idea was to have a natural, outdoor scene gradually become a mechanical one through various steps and changes. What this culminated in was bright coloured card flowers and a paper butterfly flying into a whirlpool of glitter to be swallowed up and replaced with pulsing rippled dots.

Had the idea been better thought out and planned it could have been really good visually.

Soundwise, we created that first as the sound lesson came before ANY storyboarding time. This meant that in the end it felt a bit disjointed as it was next to impossible to get the timing to match both audio and visual. As a sound piece though, I really liked how it turned out and would love to have had the chance to come up with better visuals to do it justice.

There's always next time!

...that's handy

Hello to first time modelling in Maya!

Yay, I love it... but do I love it more than clay modelling? Hm, we'll see soon enough.

This was where we had a go at creating a polygon based model. The first step was importing horizontal and vertical image planes of the hand to be modelled as a sort of template. From this, a polygon cube was created and adjusted to match the palm of the hand. It was at this point that a similar rule to 3D stop motion became apparent - 'if it works, do it'. Now, obviously in CG there are rules of the software that have to be followed or it will break but essentially the same rule as stop motion applies.

So for the fingers, rather than duplicating and reattaching them, I extruded them knuckle by knuckle from the palm then shaped them to match the image plane template. This seemed to work no worse than the original method. I added prior to this, edge loops to create the webbing between fingers and the first knuckle bend.

The part I found next to impossible however, was the finger nails - I could not for the life of me get them to shape as I wanted. I really need to practice more modelling in this form, with an original sketch to work from.

Overall though, after smoothing, the hand turned out pretty well - I just wish I'd been able to get more detail into the palm and nails.

...head case

Finally some hands on modelling!

For this lecture cum workshop we talked about techniques, tools, materials and also odd tips you might not have thought of. I was so looking forward to this as I felt modelling was very high up on the list of directions I wish to pursue - Luckily I still feel like this after the lesson and am going to be working on developing my skills as much as possible.

It was surprising to learn about the different ways to create the desired effect - what I really liked was that there only seemed to be one rule with regards to modelling - "If it works, do it". Having hard set rules as to how to do something is what I find difficult as the 'official' way might not be the easiest or simplest way for everyone.

Gill Bliss, the modelling lecturer, not only taught us the basics of how-to's and such but also gave us lots of individual feedback as well as hints and tips on how to improve personally. Tips were things such as, using the 'juice' from baby wipes to smooth out the plastacine skin or to use miliput dipped in latex to form simple hands.

We made ourselves a series of clay heads, which demonstrated our initial ability as well as our individual styles. I found this not easy, as it was definitely difficult getting the 3Dness of the facial features such as brows and cheeks, but found it natural (whereas I find drawing animation to be an awkward progress where I play a game of hit and miss).

I found that I had much more of a personal style when it came to modelling than when I am drawing - when it comes to drawn animation, I tend to lean towards generic 'how-to book' characters but with the modelling I found it a lot easier to bring a uniqueness to the characters. We'll see if this keeps up when I have to make something more scary than just a head... maybe a whole body!!

...don't run before you can walk-cycle

Ah the walk cycle, how much I dislike you. I can walk...along a path, that's fine and dandy. But I cannot for the life of me work out how to walk on the spot! I can animate the first step but it gets to the pass where step two begins that I struggle. I plan on finding/making some reference videos but on a treadmill - the issues I find are with sliding the fore foot backwards as the second foot steps forward.

Stop Motion Task

The task for this was to create a paper + split pin character in profile that we could then animate a walk cycle with. The pupped was somewhat awkward to animate due to the fact that the split pins had been pushed through, thus making a straight 'hole'. This became problematic in that it made rotating the various limbs difficult as the straight 'hole' didn't allow for much turning - a punched round 'hole' would have been better.

CG Task

For this week, the CG task was more open to interpretation. The real point was to play around with Maya in any form you felt most leant towards in terms of what sort of specialism you ideally want to go for. So, the set task was essentially to put into practice all the various bits and pieces learnt so far and use them to do SOMETHING. By something, this could be animating a pre-made character rig, creating simple expressions (i.e. the facial task using blend shapes and control points) or building basic character 'shells' using polygons and such.

I decided to focus on animating a pre-made rig I had downloaded called Blake - he was a fully functioning character with many different movement possibilities ranging from head to toe. My favourite part of this set up was the amount of facial motion available - this allowed me to play around with different head/face actions to try and portray a particular emotion/reaction.

Also, I tried out several walk cycles in different styles (i.e. creeping, running, strolling) to practice walk cycles as well as get to grips with actually animating in Maya.

I felt the CG walks were a lot better than the stop motion ones - spacing and timing of frames seems to come a lot easier in Maya than under a linetester. Time for a lot more practice in both!

...colour me beautiful

Ah experimental animation, how I love you! About as much as I love being gouged in the face with a rusty nail >_<

This was really just a presentation on a chosen film - having been given a lecture on the scales of abstraction, we had to pick a film that we could judge on those pointers. It didn't have to fit every criteria and it didn't have to go to the extremes of that criteria either  - it was more about understanding WHY it's abstract or orthodox.

The scale pointers were -

Configuration - Abstraction

Specific Continuity - Specific Non-Continuity

Narrative Form - Interpretive Form

Evolution of Content - Evolution of Materiality

Unity of Style - Multiple Styles

Absence of Artist - Presence of Artist

Dynamics of Dialogue - Dynamics of Musicality

For this presentation we chose the film 'Tongue of the Hidden' - A poem recited in duel languages with the majority of the 'characters' created from Persian script. While it didn't tick every single 'experimental animation' box, we felt it a good example of a film that implemented many abstract techniques and styles. The artist is present in that the film is started off with them writing/drawing the first character and that it's written text not made to look like real animals etc. Also, the characters are extracted from their original 'real' form - yet still are understandable as what they are meant to represent. On narrative form, it's fairly linear in that both visuals and audio follow a set storyline and complement each other.

This film is definitely a help in convincing me that there is more to experimental/orthodox animation than just two extremes. It's perfectly well and good to create your film anywhere on those scales as long as it was intentional and you can explain why.