I've been working on allot of different areas of this project. From the beginning to the end I've worked on all kinds of posts and I feel that I've taken part in the whole progress. This has given me more experience in a lot of different parts of the project and I now know where I want and don't want to work with again. I thought I would make this post about which parts of the project I've participated in and tell a little about my experience with this.
Assembling a team:
I really enjoyed part. Trying to convince talented people to join our project was a challenge, but also a lot of fun. In the beginning I was skeptical to let some people join because I didn't have any work experience with these people and did not know if they where up to the challenge. It turns out skeptical for no reason. All the team members managed to do their jobs and at an even higher level than I expected.
Project planning:
I did not have the main responsibility for this part, but I gave a lot my assistance. This really is a boring, but extremely important part of a successful project. Planning is Alfa Omega and I think my assistance really helped the creation of a well thought out plan.
Lighting & rendering:
As I stated in earlier posts I like technical tasks. You could say that lighting and rendering is an artistic process, but I've learned that in this kind of production, with the mix of live footage and the 3d animation, it's really the live footage that decidedness the lighting and the post production that decides the style. The process was easy; I matched the daylight system to the current live action shot and added matte shadow proxies, then I rendered all the images to the OpenEXR format to have full control in the compositing stage.
Compositing:
I didn't work alone on the compositing of this project, and it's hard to say who was in charge. I felt I learn a lot from this part of the project and this is something I'm going to dig even further into after the project. I wrote a post earlier on this part alone that you can find some posts below. I also worked on other small parts of the project like workflow management and in-group communication but I think I have mention the parts where I did the most work above.
So I've showed the move to some people and I must say I am really happy with the response. It seems like people respond to the feel that we have tried to make. When I showed the film to a couple of sound students at our school, one of them commented that he actually felt sympathy for the main character. That's just what we aimed for and I really enjoyed it when he made that comment.
There are some that comment on minor glitches I the film, but that's only after seeing it for the third or fourth time. I choose to ignore those comments and try to focus on the comments that really matters, like if the story worked or how people felt when watching different parts of the film. The technical faults in the film are almost always an easy fix, but troubles with the storytelling or the general feel of the movie is harder to correct, and comments in the latter form is something to absorb and learn from.
Have you ever watched a horror movie and pressed mute on the remote because it was too scary? Well the sound affects us tremendously in all situations and especially when we lose our self in a film. When 'Lights Out' (our student animation film) was nearly finished I and watched it over and over I didn't think we had created very exiting movie. Something was clearly missing, and I didn't realize it was the sound until it was added. Working so long with only with the images, I was used to watching the film without sound.
After we created the final clip for the film we sent the film to our sound guy who worked over a week on it. In that time I didn't ask for any previews or samples of what he had done. When our sound guy had completed his work, and I watched the movie for the first time, it was like I was watching a whole other movie. Sound truly adds a lot of feelings to a film and should never be underestimated. In future projects I will definitely focus more on including the sound production earlier in the project. We were really lucky this time to have all the sound made in just over a week, and I won't take the chance of not having any sound next time.
Post production is really interesting, and as I have experienced throughout this project its really my cup of tea. I had some experience with Adobe After Effects before we started this project, but at the project start I got an introduction to Nuke by The Foundry. Nuke is a node based compositing program, and what that means is that it uses a system of nodes to combine images and effects. The reason why I really like to work with compositing is that you have the possibility to change so much with just a little basis. You utilize all that's created in the production and just "play around with it" to make an even better result. The process of compositing the 3d animation over the live action footage like we done in our film is fairly simple. The complex part is the color correcting and the rotoscoping to make the animation to look like it belongs in the shot.
Some scenes require different procedures to make it look good, and some are more challenging. I like the challenge of figuring out how to solve the different problems the different scenes gives me. Compositing can be an exact science sometimes, and if you know the math behind the effects it can be really satisfying to figure out exactly what to before you try it, and knowing that it will work. Sometimes it's almost as logical as programming and that may be one of the reason I'm thinking of sticking to this part of the post production.
Heres a video from the first shot i composited on the film:
Finding a title is hard and there were not that many suggestions along the way. The title 'Robot Film' was used almost the whole project period. I guess the reason why we didn't change the title of the film until pretty late in the movie was because the title 'Robot Film' worked just fine in the in-group communication. This just became our working title, and we all knew we had to change it something more professional later. When the end was near we realized that we had to think of a new title. Our project manager was asking the different team members trying to lurk out a better and more professional title. Just recently we had made some changes to the story, and the ending was now in place so now we had a more solid basis for making a new title. The final title for the film was found when our project manger prompted our lead animator for a title suggestion. From out of nowhere he answered 'Lights Out', which I think was a brilliant idea. The team agreed to use this title and I just keep on learning that some of the best ideas aren't made during brainstorming or exercises like that; they just come to you out of the blue.
Throughout the project the most discussed topic was without doubt the ending. From the beginning to the end different members of the team has disagreed on how the ending should be. It's hard to end a story in the right way so the whole thing makes sense. I think one of the reasons why it was discussed so much is because the individual team member would visualize an ending that made sense to them that not necessarily made sense to all the others.
Before working on this project I thought that working without an end would be a major hold back in the production. I now realize that it isn't, and we even managed to shoot two different endings without a problem. I've learned a lot from this experience, for once that the ending of a story is really important and second of all that not all the pieces of the pre-production puzzle have to be in place before you start the production.
Working with V-Ray render engine in 3D Studio Max I noticed that there was certain things that slowed down my workflow. I think it's important to do everything you can make your workflow as efficient as possible. Some of the things I noticed that slowed me down were a lot of repetitive work, so I figured a script would be the perfect solution. So I started creating my own script that would resolve the issues and the resulting script have really helped. Since I've used the script a lot and found it helpful I have decided to share it with you guys. The script can be downloaded from the link below, and the install instruction is included in the download.
When you've decided to start a start a project there are certain guidelines to follow to ensure your project achieves success. I'm going to try to cover the workflow of an animation short film project in this post. By having a workflow ready at the beginning of the project you immediately know what to do and what to do next, which can be a real timesaver. I'm going to present this tutorial in an itemized form where I present a workflow with explanation of each step.
Assemble your team.
When assembling your team you have to think trough what kind of personalities you put together. One of the most important criteria for a project to work properly is that the team members are able to work together in an efficient way. A rule of thumb when searching for team members is that you should try to fill the whole circle of qualities needed in a team and choose people with different or opposite qualities. For example a strict producer would work well with a creative person willing to take a lot of risk for his or her ideas. You should try to find persons so your team has all these abilities: Sense, systematic thinking, idea seeking, impatience, discipline, creativity, intuition, use of emotions, a mediator in conflict and human-oriented.
Plan your production.
The next step is to plan the three following steps. This is done by creating a well thought out project plan. Getting to know what your recourses are is the first step. When you know that you should be able to mold your first draft of the production plan. This draft should be grinded into your final plan trough iterations of feedback from the team and reevaluating of the plan. The plan should include pre- and post production, and optionally the finalization part of the project.
Pre-production
It's in this part most of the creative stuff is happening, and where you would think that the creative persons would be in charge, but think again. Every creative idea would lead to a certain amount work in the production and should therefore pass through the filter of a ruthless producer. This part is all about being creative, but still ending up with something feasible.
Production
Now the time has come to put all the ideas into life.In this part it's important that all the team members stick to their deadlines so the production never comes to a halt. Having someone to have full overview over the production is important, and this person should be used as a link of communication.
Post-Production.
This part is fairly similar to the production with the exception that it's harder to recognize all the work produced. The team is now familiar with different things being produced each day from the pre production stage until now. It's important for the team to understand that the project is still moving but that the workflow has changed and the people now at work are refining and fine-tuning the end result.
Finalization
In this last part of a project it's easy for some or all of the team members to be tired and exhausted. Someone may find it hard to collect enough energy to complete all their tasks. It's in this part of the project that it's important for the motivators in the group to work their magic. Wrapping up can be hard, but it's always easier when someone's there to spread some joy. Keep that in mind.
The most important lesson to learn from this tutorial is that each part of the project almost always takes up more time then planed, and this should always be taken into consideration when planning your project.
One of the people that have inspired me with his astonishing 3d work is Marek Denko. His ability to create dirty and grungy looking artwork is some of the best I've ever seen. Almost all the artwork he produces is photorealistic, and that is something I admire. The reason why I admire that is because he never takes the shortcut of portraying something modern with lack of details.
One of the things Marek seems to focus on is doing a lot research before he starts producing something. If you have made a concept picture for your scene the next step would be to look for a lot of reference images. One of the resources Marek uses is www.environment-textures.com, but he also takes pictures of his own that he uses in the production.
I found out that one of the ways to achieve this photorealism is to add a lot of junk the scenes that could use a lot of different pre made materials. The materials used must have a complete set of texture maps like diffuse, specular, reflection and bump or displacement to ensure they look realistic in all situations. Combining this with a well thought out scene and good lighting you have yourself a photorealistic environment.
To have a structure in the production from the start to the end is important. If some ground rules for communication, naming conventions and file sharing is made at before the production begins, then every team member will become more effective. By knowing who to talk to, what to look for and where to look for it, a lot of unnecessary questions won't be asked and time will be saved. It's for example important for everyone to know what to do if there not showing up one day or if they are late. I found it very useful to know who to contact when I had a question, and have a project leader that at all times has a general overview of the production. I think that just communication itself adds structure to the project.
Naming conventions and ease of file sharing further add to the project structure. It's important to establish this early in the project so everyone gets to know the system and utilize it from the beginning. Or like a scripter would say:
Watching films from I was a little kid, I have observed the development of film from my own perspective. One of the things I have found most interesting in the last couple of years is the color scheme of films. At Animex '09 one of the speakers talked about his work on the color design of "Horton hears a who". He had some really interesting things to say, and this lecture sparked my mind. I would never have thought that so much time and effort was spent on the color design in films. From then on I wanted to look into color theory of films, and figure out how people respond to color.
Researching color design for our film I first looked into color theory, but found that it didn't help me much. The reason that it didn't help me is because it was hard to translate all the theory and make use of it in a moving picture. So I started to look into color theory for films where I started to find some interesting things. In almost all feature films I found out that each scene had its own "color mood" that related to each other to create atmosphere/feeling. I found out that there were certain guidelines to follow, and you should think twice about not following them. I learned that for example warm colors convey safety and cool colors suggest danger.
I wanted to use what I learned in the film to create an atmosphere. Each shot should be colored according to feeling that the scene express. The other compositor and I decided what colors to use for each shot so all the scenes would connect and flow trough out the film. I decided to follow the guidelines and use cool colors for the sad scenes and warm colors the happy scenes.
The planning of the production is a very important part of creating and completing a successful project. Knowing what your recourses are and how much time you got is the first thing you must know before you start planning. When we started to mold our production plan we started by making a rough week-by-week plan. The reason for doing that is so we could ask the whole production team if it seemed plausible. When we got the feedback we could further mold the plan into a more probable day-by-day plan. To keep the plan solid as we changed it we kept asking the team for their opinion.
Creating a detailed and well thought out plan really helped the production of the film. But the plan would mean nothing if the team wouldn't follow and respect the deadlines of the plan. Our team leader showed and repeatedly told us about the importance of meeting the deadlines, and eventually we almost managed to stick to them. Of course we added some extra days to the plan in case we didn't meet all the deadlines, and we needed those days. I now see the meaning of a solid plan and the importance of neither over or underestimate it.
As I wrote and described in my last post I chose to create a film that's going to be live footage mixed with 3D animation for my last project. This type of film has not been chosen for a student animation film project before on Noroff, so I knew this was going to be a challenge. I was going to have to use some software that I've never used before, and I had to think in whole other way planning the shots. The lighting, render settings, post production techniques would all be changed to make the CG match the live-footage.
I have long wanted to create a film like this and learn all the techniques, the new software and most importantly overcome all the challenges. I think my wanting to participate in a film like this was one of the main reasons why I immediately wanted to join the project. Another reason is that I would be able to learn all these new things that are used so much in the industry.
We have now started the Student animation Film Project(SFP) as I wrote in my last post. Me and some other classmates have managed to gather a crew, and we have already started our journey to create an animation short film. We are still working on the plot, but I will post it as soon as we have it nailed to the wall. What I want to write about in this post is the style of the film, and what kind of animation film we will make.
The film is going to be live footage mixed with 3D animation, like in the movies "Transformers" and "I, Robot". What we do is that we shoot all the scenes for the film in live footage. Then we track all the scenes so we can mix our 3D animation into the live footage. The second process is called tracking because we use software to track points in the live footage which can be translated into points in 3D space. The process of mixing live footage and 3D animation we call compositing, even though compositing does not have to include both live footage and 3D animation, we call it compositing because it describes the process of combining visual elements from separate sources.
As for the style of the film it will be a realistic animation and render style, and the goal is to make the 3D animation that's added to look as natural as possible. The style, especially the style of textures, will be more dirty than clean, as we are going to portrait a near future or a parallel universe not to far from what we are used to.
That's it for this time, and I will be sure to update this post with some pictures as soon as I can.
We have now begun with the early stages of a big project called Student animation Film Project (SFP). This first stage which includes a series of assignments is called Conceptualization. That being said I will present to you part 1 of Conceptualization.
This week we got the assignment called Research and Present which is part 1. The assignment was to create two ideas for a film/short film, using text, images and internet links to present and sell the idea. These are my ideas.
The Idea 1:
Presented to you in a cartoonish style; Rolf the Ranger.
Rolf is a US Army Ranger so elite that he hunting terrorist alone. Cave after cave, one terrorist at a time, he has been cleaning the desert lands for rebels. But his next mission will be tougher than ever. Rolf is going to destroy the Osama Terrorist Boot Camp, which is known to be the largest concentration of kick ass terrorist in the world. In this extremely dangerous mission Rolf will have to take terrorist ownage to a whole new level.
I want the movie to have a cartoon style where the characters are exaggerated and the objects and textures are simple. I also want all the animation to be exaggerated. This is a good example of what I want the style of the movie to be like, and how I want the main character to be introduced.
The main character in the story, Ray, will be a mix of these three:
Idea 2:
An old married couple who fight all the time. The woman, who is large in with and height, is always complaining and whining to the man. The man tries to "get rid of" her in many different ways, but always fails. When he finally manages to kill her he gets lured in to his own snare and also gets killed. After death the man enters the gates of heaven, but he soon later realizes it is going to be the same living hell as on earth when he meets his wife there.
Over the past few weeks we have given three different assignments on storytelling and cinematography. We were given the assignments over three week, and the finishing of one would lead to the start of another. The task was simple, create a treatment/story, then make a storyboard out of it, and finally make it into an animatic. Below I will reflect on what I thought of the process and what the results where.
The Treatment
Creating an idea for a story is not that difficult. I usually have a lot of ideas for stories popping in to my head from nowhere. But when given the task to create a short story the ideas suddenly stop popping to my mind. And when I finally get an idea for a story it's either too long or too complicated or lack of entertainment value. After trying to come up with a story for a while I decided to give one of my vague ideas for a story and try to make that one work. I realized that by using some of the techniques we learned at school earlier this year I could form this idea into a story. The vague idea I had was of a robot that had lost his head and wanted it back. And using what I had learned, like that my character should always do something pursuit of a goal, while overcoming an obstacle. Combining this while trying to implement the three act story structure, my story started to take form. What I struggled with was finding a proper ending to the story. After pondering a while on how the story should end I got a suggestion from one my classmates that really worked as a punch line and I went with it. I saw my story as finished even when I knew that it could still be worked with some more. But I wanted to keep it a little open for change in the next step of the process namely the storyboarding. I'm happy with the results and I think I created a funny little story.
The clumsy robot
In a storage facility in a location unknown, a robot head sits all alone. When the light is turned on the robot wakes up, and it realizes it has no body. In another part of the storage facility the body of the robot starts to make its way around. The body soon tumbles in a stairway which he decides to walk up. On the top the stairs we meet the robot head once again. The body just walks past the head because it's facing the other way so the head cannot see its body. But just before the body walks out of the room the head can hair its body walking. The body then starts to retrace its steps, walking backwards towards the stairs. Getting closer and closer to the tip of the stairs, the body shows no signs of stopping. Eventually he takes one step too much, and is now balancing on the edge. The robot is struggling not to fall, but he can't fight it and tumbles ruining the stairs on its way down. Lying among the debris the body seems lifeless. After some careful processing in the robots head, the robot decides to make a few more attempts on connecting its body parts. The robot tries everything from a ladder to helicopter, but has no luck. In all its aggression from failing all the attempts the robot tosses a metal nut up in the air. The nut travels far up into the air before eventually hitting the robot head and making it fall. The robot head rolls to the edge and falls down. The body makes a desperate attempt catch the head, but fails as the head falls straight on its neck upside down. Before the robot can react the head is automatically screwed on upside down.
The Storyboard
Our group chose to use my idea in the storyboarding process. There was a lot up for discussion about the story but also how to best tell it in pictures. We discussed what angles to use and when and where to move the camera. It's fun to see how differently we visualize a story in our head, and how draw and present it. I found that sometimes my group members had totally different ideas for certain shots than I had. Sometimes we drew it as I saw it sometimes not, and sometimes we mixed all of our ideas. What was important for me was that the story was told in a way that the audience could understand and get the feeling what scene was suppose to tell them. I have some mixed feelings about the final result of the storyboard. That's because I think it tells the story ok and some of the shots are good, but on the contrary there is some shots I don't like and could be shot in a more creative and less dull way. I will give you some of examples what I mean below, and you can see what shots I'm talking about by reading the PDF.
This shot could be lower to the ground, and not aimed at the "corner" of the room. Maybe so low that it could be tilted upwards to set focus on where the robot is going.
Example 2: Shot #7
The robot head could be placed in the center of this shot. The camera should be closer to the head too, so that the viewer could notice the expression on the robots face.
Example 3: Shot #17
I really like this shot because of the way it first shows you the robot body arriving at the top, but with a quick zoom out it’s a whole new picture and it changes the story. I also like how it displays the distance between the body and the head, good for the storytelling.
The animatic was the final part of the process. Our final storyboard was all digital so to get it in to the animatic all we had to do was crop the images and place it into Premiere. I started working on importing the files and getting them sorted on the timeline, while the other helped me or looked for sound clips. The process of creating a good animatic requires it to played over and over again, reviewing, commenting and changing it while working on it. I felt that my group worked well on the animatic, because even dough I was the one editing the animatic, it wasn't necessary my ideas and thoughts that made it work, it was the group that made it work. Maybe we could have planned more time for this final step of the process, but I really didn't think that creating an animatic would be so time consuming, that's something to keep in mind for future planning.
The animatic we ended up with could be better in some ways. If we had more time I would like to improve the timing of the clip and added some better sound. I'm also nor sure if the music we added to the animatic really added to the storytelling or not, maybe it would had worked better with another song.
From storyboard to animatic some of the decisions and ideas can be forgotten when translating it into an animatic. I think that we managed to recreate the key shots from storyboard onto the animatic, but something that was explained by text on the storyboard may have been lost. When utilizing process of creating an animatic you can realize this problems of the story not translating or not, and I think tats something I'll keep doing for future movies.
Saturday, December 12, 2009 at 5:45 PM i Assignment * 0 comments * The URL
So a while ago I created a logo intro for a movie production company called Gaffa Team (Gaffa = Duckttape). The movie I created is for use as an introduction of the production company in movies and short films, so it was supposed to be short and simple. Below movie ill talk more about the process of making the movie. Here’s the result:
Hello again. Last week school was all about acting for us animators. We had a week long project about learning animation methods and using them in a short animation. To learn some of the basic principles and methods of animation we took a look at Ed Hooks, Acting for Animators. It’s a great book with lots of helpful information not only on animation, but planning and creating stories for your characters. Anyhow, the first assignment of the week was to find two acting methods from Ed Hook’s book, and present and explain them to the rest of the class. My group, consisting of me, Eivind and Mats, chose the following the acting/animation methods/theories: Your character needs to have an objective and Effects of alcohol and drugs on movement. I found that the first method I mentioned is very important when animating and creating a story, as it’s brilliantly explained in this sentence:
"Acting is playing an action in pursuit of an objective while overcoming an obstacle."
From Ed Hook's, Acting for Animators
The second assignment was to use three of the methods presented by either us or another group in the first assignment, to produce a 20 sec animation. Using the following methods/ theories this is what we cooked together:
After presenting the second assignment to the class we got some feedback from the students and the teacher. It was mostly a negative feedback from the teacher, telling us (well basically me) to focus more on the story and animation rather than creating fluid effects. Some students commented on the timing , use of the camera and suggested slight changes to the story. All in all partly happy with the end results, and I understand why my teacher and classmates critics when I review the movie. More focus on the story next time around.
Monday, November 2, 2009 at 1:30 PM i Assignment * 0 comments * The URL
My first assignment delivery at Noroff second year is done. The assignment was to create a character concept art from a pre-1960 story about gangs. This is my fist time going so in depth with character design. And although it was a fun project, I must admit that drawing really isn't my thing, and that I lose my patience fast when doing drawing. I will show you my results in this post, and tell you how I got there.
Fist of I started by finding the pre-1960 story about gangs. And when I say "about gangs" I don't necessary mean crime gangs, although that was the fist that came to my mind when the project was presented. The story had to be about a group of people that was connected somehow to be more specific. After browsing to a lot of short stories online I finally found this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings_of_the_Gloves
The plot:
Having docked in Yokohama and looking for a boxing match to raise money, Costigan and the crew of the Sea Girl find that the only fight club in town is booked up with Swedes vs. Danes matches because the whaling fleet is in port as well. Luck seems to come, however, when the Swedish sailor Dirck "The Gotland Giant" Jacobsen breaks his wrist and a replacement is needed quickly for the match against the Danish sailor Hakon Torkilsen that night.
The crew try to pass of Costigan as a Swede called Lars Ivarson. The club owner does not believe the ruse but has no other option. The fight goes ahead, although the crowd is unconvinced as well. Further complications soon arise. The first complication is that the match referee turns out to be a man Costigan knocked out earlier in the day for attempting to kick his dog Mike. He knows who Costigan is and tells him he'll reveal everything at the end of the match, at which point the crowd will turn on Costigan for intruding on a Scandinavian matter. The second complication emerges soon after the match starts. A rival captain got the Sea Girl's captain drunk and tricked him into betting the Sea Girl on Hakon Torkilsen to win and signing a contract as proof. Despite the captain's pleas, Costigan refuses to throw the fight, both for himself, for his ship mates who have bet everything on him, and for the Swedes that he is now representing.
The fight continues regardless and Hakon turns out to be an equal for Costigan. The complications distract Costigan and render his performance uneven. He is knocked down several times. The problem of the bet is resolved when the rival captain, Gid Jessup, gets too near the ring while Costigan has almost been knocked out of it. Costigan grabs the contract, the only proof of the bet, and begins to eat it. Jessup tries to retrieve it, but Swedes in the audience, thinking he is trying to interfere with their boxer, attack him. Free of that problem, Costigan decides to fight to the finish regardless of the referee's threat. This too is solved quite soon after when, in the confusion of the fight, the referee accidentally starts to count Costigan out in Spanish (having only used Swedish, Danish and Norwegian so far). Costigan realises that he isn't Scandinavian, either, and the referee admits that he is an American vaudeville linguist called John Jones who took the job because he needed the money.
Costigan and Hakon fight savagely but Hakon eventually collapses in a corner and cannot get up again. The Swedish captain celebrates with Costigan and, after the match they have seen, does not mind that he clearly is not one of his countrymen.
The stroy is about Costigan and his crew of the Sea Girl looking for a boxing match to raise some money. I could imagine that Dirck "The Gotland Giant" Jacobsen who was supposed to fight in the boxing match in the first place, was a pretty tough fellow. And that's the character I wanted to create. A huge Viking fighting machine.
My interpretation of the term 'gang' was in this setting was that the gang was the crew of the boat. A group of people working together almost every day on a boat would surely get to know each other very well. Dirck would be the type of character that is the "tool" of the gang. He is strong, feisty and easily fooled into doing others what other people wants. Making him look like he was part of a gang wasn't easy. The only real idea besides him having a Viking helmet was to give him a tattoo of some sort. But I thought it would look stupid character, and besides tattoos is more of a pirate thing.
I think that the time put into finding inspiration and researching is well worth it. When I create a kind of inspiration/research folder its easier for me to visually see what I want to create. If I save all the stuff I find interesting when doing my research its easyier for me to go back look at what I wanted this character to be like when I'm drawing. The picture below is a model sheet that helps sell the idea of the character, to me and others.
Here are som droodels. Im trying to find the shape of the head and the body of the character.
After drawing the character in black and white it was time to give my character some color. I searched the internet for inspiration again and found some pictures of wikings. What they all had in common, was that there clothes was colored in dark- red, brown and grey, "nature" like colors. I wanted to recreate the feeling of this nature colors and chose my colors accordingly. This choice of color would help sell the character as a real Viking.
I think people will clearly see that this character is a Viking. I asked some people what they thought a Viking should look like, and the helmet with horns was always the first that came to mind. Even dough Vikings didn't really use helmet with horns, I feel that if you take that element away it's no longer a Viking. All dough he is a Viking, that doesn't necessary mean that the audience will see that he is in fact part of a crew. And I think that's because I spent too little time thinking about what design choices could make him look like he was part of a gang.
My aim wasn't realism for the final character drawing. I wanted to create him sort of cartoony with borders defining him, and his size not necessary naturally correct. What I was aiming for was a comic look and feel to the drawing, and I think that I achieved that.
And finnaly there is the modeling of the characters accessories. I wanted to keep them simple keep the cartoon feeling, and I wanted to make them as low ploy as posible and at the same time making them look smooth.
I learn today that if I where to become better at what I do, I have to look at what others have done with criticism. In my case that meens seeing beyond entertainment of a video, and into what really makes it good or bad. That's why I'm going to look at some post some videos i have watch today along with my comments on them.
It's a simple animation with lots of rhythm. Great example of how rhythm can be illustrated. I like the way the dots never stands still.
Cool camera postioning.
This animation has its own style. It's simple, but I like it. Even though the movement and animation jumps very fast from pose to pose, it sill brings out the point.
There is too much random stuff going on in this movie. It seems like who ever made this tried to put all his ideas into one movie. This doesn't work at all.
Didn't like the environment/render, but I liked the characters and story. The characters blend in with the environment, which is fine if the character isn't important. But the main character in this story also blends in.
Nice animation of the tree. The animation of the tree flows in a way so it seems natural. I also like the modeling of the city and how they made the sky/clouds.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 10:32 PM i Blog * 0 comments * The URL
So this is my fist blog post, and since this will mainly be a blog about 3d I thought I would start at the begging. The first time I ever tried to be creative in all three dimensions was at a LAN party when I was 14 years old. A friend of my older brother introduced me to 3d Studio Max, and from that moment I was sold. I knew I wanted to learn this program in and out. As I understood more and more about how the 3dsmax worked I became even eager to master technique of being creative in 3d. It also became more fun as I could express myself in new ways and visualize my ideas.
After I first was introduced to 3d I haven't worked with 3d every day. It has been something that I been obsessed with from time to time. But when I was at my last year at high school (videregående on Norwegian) my interests for 3d was at its full again. That's why I decided that this is something I want to work with. I want to learn as much as possible and make 3d part of my everyday life. So that's what led me to where I am today. I am a 3d film student on Noroff in Oslo, and this year seems to be as good and interesting as last year, and I'm looking forward to one more year here.
Although I almost like every part of 3D, I'm now I'm at a point where I really need to find my own path within 3D. I have some ideas of what I want to do and where I want to work in the industry. What I do like is VFX, character creation and solving problems by scripting. I think I will use this year to figure out if this is what I really want to do, or if I maybe want to do something different. So that's that, and I hereby declare my blog officially open.
Who am i?
I am indeed the one and only Adrian Fjellberg. Famous for nothing... Yet!
Born in 89 in Oslo, Norway. Now I study to become a 3D artist, and I trive as a student.
