Tuesday 20 March 2012

Unit 5: OGR Part 2

OGR - 2

Unit 5: OGR Part 1

OGR - 1

Unit 5: New Story Development

Here is the logline, premise and structure. I still need to redo my script and step outline L sorry

Logline:              An Automobile with extreme enthusiasm and traits of insanity brakes down and needs repairing at the local mechanics.

Premise:             A slight mechanical problem lead this Automobile to be its own master but the price of freedom caused it to go insane and wore itself out and now its needs repairs to the parts that are broken and need replacing.

Structure:         Act 1: It starts with a car crash just before the title of the animation comes up, you then see a little worn out car heading to a local garage sad and broken, as it goes inside a mechanic comes in to assess the damage (you cannot see the mechanic, only  hear him).

                       Act 2: The car looks to the towards the mechanic as a hand approaches the car from off screen the automobile hisses and rolls back, as it protects itself from shock of the accident but with maniacal traits. The mechanic tries to calm the automobile down but things start to get worse before they get better.

                                Act 3: The automobile is now trying to escape, franticly knocking things over and revving its engine at the mechanic, as the mechanic tries to step back the car plucks up its last bit of energy as it drives into the mechanic going through a wall and into the distance as the camera stays in the garage looking out from the hole the automobile has made, you can see the automobile in the distance as it finally brakes down and smoke is now coming out of the automobile, as its insane traits killed itself and the mechanic.

Unit 5: Maya Session 2.0 - Rigging Spine

Here is the second session of Maya I carried on and finished the leg rigging, it’s a little of balance but it’s something that I will learn not to do again with Maya. After I did that I moved onto creating the joints for the spine and the joints for neck and the head.


Wednesday 14 March 2012

Unit 5: The Maniacal Automobile - Character Thumbnails

There will only be one character throughout this animation, it will primarily be about the automobile but I thought just adding a character to be inside the automobile will bring the animation bit more of an impact to the story and make it more funny and essential to the story. I won’t be doing too much work on the character, he has to be just a basic office worker who looks depressed, in his middle ages and is losing his hair (the worst fear known to man).

Unit 5: The Maniacal Automobile - Car Thumbnails

Here are a few thumbnails that I have sketched out of different style automobiles, I want them to look kind of cartoonish so there will won’t be too much detail but still want it to have an impact to stand out. Thumbnails 1, 2, 5 and 8 (The one by itself at the bottom) stand out the most for me at the moment because of their body characteristics and there head lamps which give off the feeling off maniacal.



Unit 5: The Maniacal Automobile - Logline, Premise, Structure & Step Outline

The Story - Logline, Premise, Structure, Step Outline

Tuesday 13 March 2012

Unit 5: Animation Session 1.0 - Gesture Lines

Within this Animation session we started by drawing paper flowers but we weren’t allowed to look at our drawing while we were drawing we had to feel the lines and gestures that lines were giving us as we continued to draw. We had to get out how natural it felt to draw outlines and move onto drawing from the inside out and concentrating on the lines itself. We did a few drawings of the flower, trying it with our other hand, drawing faster and without so much care, it was good to learn but hard to break a habit.




After that we then moved onto two groups and had to draw each person doing a pose for a certain amount of time but worrying about the gesture lines and not so much on detail and outline. Throughout the time doing this our time drawing each other was shortened with each person so we had less time to draw them using there gesture lines with the pose so the drawings got a little frantic and messy.









We then moved onto starting a morphing session with our groups using the inanimate objects we were given. Within my group I had Amarit (Sorry if I spelt that wrong), Emma, Anita and Stich. I had to morph Stiches lamp into my automobile using around 19 frames. I have drawn all the frames and am ready to put them into Dragon to make a stop motion with the rest of the group, but with circumstances that have come up during these last few days I will have to sort it out and put it up on Thursday or Friday. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Unit 5: Influence Map - Character

Within my story that I’m planning on doing for my one minute animation I want to have a character in there to be the one that drives that car to work but of course is afraid of it, He won’t take away the lime light from the ‘automobile’ it’s just that the character I believe will give it a little more of a spark. The kind of fashion sense I wanted my character to go buy is something with an office feel smart, business like but is still what I explained him to be within the Initial Idea one.


Unit 5 - Influence Videos Maniacal Cars/People

These influences are scenes and adverts off people/cars that give off the impression of ‘Maniacal’ which have helped give a better understanding of how I will design and make sure that the automobile will give off traits of insanity.

This first video influenced me by the style of the automobile, this is the kind of style I’m going to aim for (I’m going to do other styles and models but this one stands out most to me by its body and characteristics).  The red car to me gives of manic characteristics by its smile and when it starts to eat everything in sight the grill turns into a mouth with sharp teeth which really drew me in and has become a great influence so far.


Milky Way - Red Car/Blue Car (original 1989 ad)


The second videos is about different characters from films complied together with their maniacal characteristics and there manic laughs. Some of them do not give off much of an influence, but the rest of them like the bit before there maniacal laugh gives off some good impressions that I would like to incorporate with my inanimate objects facial features.

(Maniacal laugh)


The third video is a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel ‘The Shining’. This scene did it for me as an influence by the slow change of a sane man succumbing to the evils of the house turning him insane day by day. This scene is an influence to me by how the character portrays traits off insanity with his facial expressions and words Jack Nicholson character uses to expresses what he wants to do.
The Shining- Best scene ever!


Unit 5: Maya Session - Rigging Legs

This was quite daunting to me at first, because I still need to do most of the tutorials and put them up on my blog; I need to know the basics before jumping straight in the deep end. I actually did quite well got through most of the tutorial got the basics underway rigged the whole of the left leg and know moving onto the right, halfway done with the right so just some minor adjustments and I will post the rest of it later on as an extended ‘Rigging Leg’ session.




I started off by getting all the joints into place and making the leg look life like, after that moved onto the IK’s which is to give you controls of each point of the leg, for example; making the left foot turn left and right but not doing a whole 360 degree spin. Have to make sure that the settings are set with a maximum range and a minimum so it will look plausible. After that then moved onto making sure that the translates x,y,z were matched to the right parts of the leg as well as adding in other attributes, twist, foot roll, pirouette up down left and right, etc.




Once all the settings, IK’s and joints were all set up for the left leg, we literally had to do the whole same process for the right leg. Copy and pasting it would have been a much easier process but it doesn’t really work like that within Maya.

Saturday 10 March 2012

Unit 5: Cars Influence Maps 1 & 2

Here are my two influence maps based around my object ‘Automobile’ There are different types of cars within my influence map, I wanted to get a range of different body shapes and head lights for each style of car before I create my draft thumbnails for my animation. I have been majorly influenced by the blue car from Disney Pixar’s ‘Cars’ and Who Framed Roger Rabbits friend who is a car as well, both those styles of car stand out for me quite a lot.



Thursday 8 March 2012

Unit 5: Inital Ideas

1.     The first idea I have is off a cartoon style car and car owner, he is a middle aged depressed man with his life in a stuck end desk job, every morning he dreads going to work because he has to drive his Maniacal Automobile which frightens him every day by its excessive jittering and its major case of ADHD. Eventually he plucks up the courage to step into his car. As he turns the key the engine starts and his daily nightmare begins and he has to try to survive the journey to work and arrive there safely. This animation gives of a funny original style of crazy car filled with speed and craves excitement and a middle aged man who has a boring life and is dull and has no aspiration in life but with the clash of the two sounds fun and inspiring to do.

2.      The second idea I had starts with a teddy bear falling in slow motion onto the screen with sound effects of a car screeching and crashing. The screen then goes black and goes back to the very beginning were we see an insane car with overconfident skills driving furiously down streets and around corners and then with a slight distraction of light blinding the view of the automobile it swerves and hits to stand buyers waiting to cross the road. This then goes back to the scene of the falling teddy bear and then to another scene of the car depressed and alone either in a prison of some sort or a junk yard for used and broken cars. This animation gives off a good message of speeding nothing humorous about it but serious and provides drivers with a clear message.

Unit 5: Animation Components

Animation is the aim for this new project, by creating a one minute two frame a second line drawn animation throughout the next five weeks. We were each given two components to base our animation around, an expressive word and inanimate object, the two that I got were:

Expressive word:             The Maniacal

Inanimate Object:           Automobile

The word ‘Maniacal’ to me gave away the impression of insanity or extreme enthusiasm and I was a bit off at first of the idea of it, with the object I got which to me doesn’t seem to original like a crazy car, but I’ve got two ideas which seem to benefit and to aim to keep both ideas sweet and simple.

Thursday 1 March 2012

Unit 4: Crit Presentation

Unit 4 – Story Telling - Presentation

Unit 4: Final Script

Final Script

Unit 4: Character Sheet: 'Eustace'

Here is the character turn around sheet for the main character ‘Eustace’ we have from left to right, front, side and back. It is a bit sketchy but it gets the point across. I have also added in tone to show the light from how it would look like from the front side and back.

Pri-Viz Animatic (Act 2 - Scene 10 to 18)

Here is my Pri-Viz Animatic I have only done part of an act throughout my story only because I was starting to run out of time and needed to get other things completed for the submission, I apologize for an unfinished piece but from what you see enjoy.

Unit 4: Final 2D Animatic - 'The Crimson Corn'