INTERACTIVE :: 26/09/16 - Mushroom Delay

Spent today working on the cycles of my mushrooms and attempted to find a solution to making my mushrooms delay the way I wanted them to.  Searching on google provided a few scripts, but when I attempted to put them into effect, it came up with a lot of errors and was just generally lots of things that I didn't understand.

My solution is perhaps not the right way to go about something like this, but I created a 'delay' animation that consists of a single still frame of the animation cycle.  By adjusting the speed of this animation, I can make the mushrooms pause for different amounts of time before they begin their cycle again.

Initially I had the delay play once before the mushrooms began their looping animation

but I eventually found that the overall animation of the mushrooms was not as distracting if they had a slight pause after each animation loop, so created transitions going both ways for them.

I understand that a script would be easier and make a lot more sense, but as it stands, the values and how to make them work are so difficult for me to understand.  I'm hoping classes next term will shed more light on understanding, and I think what I really need is just an expert to walk me through them and help me understand what each individual part of the script is for and how it makes sense.  Even things as simple as a yield value and labeling values left me really confused.

In the meantime though, I'm quite happy with the results and I feel like my mushrooms would be a much less distracting background element now.

INTERACTIVE :: 23/09/16 - Mushrooms and Unity

After the incident with toon shaders and Unity the other day, I decided to go back into Maya and work at my mushroom a little more.

Since I was unable to use the textures I wanted for the original mushroom, I used the vertex colors to create a different pattern.  Its a lot simpler than my original and completely contrasts the original's design in terms of where patterns and shadow are placed, but I think it still works for the context of our game.

I ran into more problems when I tried to import my animated mushroom into Unity - mainly when I discovered the animation would not play and was not even recognized as being there.  It took a bunch of exports and watching Lena's videos a few times before I realized that animating the individual verticies in my mushroom cap's mesh was not the correct way I should have been animating, and that I needed to use blendshapes if I wanted it to deform the way I needed.

It took a little while for me to remember how to use blendshapes, but once I was able to key the frames I needed, the animation exported smoothly.  Here's a screenshot of me playing around with the animation graph.

And an asset list featuring all of my animation tests (its cleaned up and doesn't look like this now):

I have decided to go with a very simple bounce/distort animation for my mushroom and just let it loop in the Unity model.  They are meant to be more background assets that ambulate slowly and are scattered around the save/respawn point or perhaps herald the exit of the level.  Alternatively they could also shoot out little particle simulations in-game - I'm not really sure how to incorporate them in at this stage.

My initial idea for the mushroom being the character spawn point has been altered, mainly due to the fact that I have no idea how to make a script for the mushroom to literally spawn a player avatar into the world.

(Gyazo's gif-maker made unity stop running in the background - the actual mushrooms aren't nearly as jumpy)

For the composition of the mushrooms themselves, I have slowed their animation cycles down to between 0.6x to 0.3x the original speed in order to make their movements seem a lot more ambient and less likely to grab the player's attention and detract from other hazards on the screen.  I attempted to offset some of the animation loops for the smaller mushrooms, but did not notice any changes in their movements or anything, so have forgone tweaking it further for now.  There are a group of three of them, as mushrooms tend to grow in little patches and rings, which further emphasizes the fairy-nature of them, in addition to the distinctly unnatural coloring.

INTERACTIVE :: 22/09/16 - Modelling Mushrooms

Last Friday was spent modelling a mushroom for our current assignment.  After playing around with toon shaders in Unity, these were the results

The mushroom is made of two parts - A cap and the stem, both of which are separate meshes.  I had a bit of trouble unwrapping the UVs as my tool malfunctioned and I couldn't go back a step as easily as I would have liked, and ended up spending most of the day trying to figure out how to unwrap the mesh in a way that wouldn't warp the textures I wanted to use.  Even now the texturing isn't perfect - I feel the stripes on the mushroom are too big - but the concept gets across and I may end up refining that later.

I used a ramp shader for the mushroom cap and UV mapped it to create the following result.  I found a tutorial that suggested putting normal and darkened versions of the UV map into the shader's color slots in order to create an effect similar to Wind Waker - which is kind of the shading style we wanted for our game.  The resulting mushroom is still pretty simple, but I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Here are the UVs

The mushroom base just uses a toon shader with 3 colors.

The animation is also quite simple - the mushroom cap springs up as though its spitting.  I want this to only happen when the player walks past it or animate once with a click using the scripts we have been provided with in our lessons.

Unfortunately it was only after I had done all this that I looked at the tutorials for the lesson on 3D in maya that I had missed and discovered that the shaders I had used were unable to be imported into Maya.  I have since gone about adjusting my model with vertex color to create this much simpler design:

After working with Maya all day, I'm quite exhausted and plan to carry on with this tomorrow, importing the file into Unity.

CINEMATIC :: HAND-IN BRIEF

LOLITA ANIMATE CC

{Working Title}
By Adrian Melster

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TRANSDISCIPLINARY FRAMEWORK:

Lolita Animate will be a physical garment or full co-ordinate outfit that features the stages of animation in its composition and design.  It will combine the garments and aesthetic of Lolita fashion with physical dressmaking and the animation process, starting from basic form to final cleaned up product.

Lolita refers to the practice of adult women dressing in excessively frilly, doll/princess/maiden inspired clothing (Younker 2011).  It is a fashion trend that emerged in the mid to late 1990s and functions as a blanket term for a number of sub-styles (Classic, Gothic, and Sweet being the notable ‘main trio’), often referencing various forms of contemporary popular culture, including Western Goth subculture, manga, anime and Visual-kei (Monden, 2013).  The Lolita aesthetic emphasizes features of Victorian-era girls’ dress, such as lace, ruffles, high necklines and voluminous skirts (Winge 2008).  These form a very distinctive silhouette and present a refined, elegant, and doll-like appearance.

These aesthetics will influence the subject of an animation, and the physical garment(s) will represent the animation canvas similar to the way the digital artist would use programs such as Adobe Animate or Krita Animate.

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CREATIVE PROCESS:

The Lolita Animate project aims to combine signature elements of Lolita Fashion with the process of creating an animation.  I would like to explore the theme of ‘layers’ that the fashion and digital-art process both share in order to create an animation-inspired garment or co-ordinate.  

The Lolita’s outfit, is made up of pieces and layers from the head to toe that must be co-ordinated together in order and place to create the overall ‘look’ that the Lolita is known for.  For this project I am focusing foremostly on the skirt and the layers within that - first of material that forms the fluffy petticoats, and then the skirt itself, which serves as the final visual; a denser, detailed, and presentable layer.  Other aspects of the outfit contain things such as matching colors, themes and the individual pieces of clothing to make it look like a well-organized whole.  

Animation is similar, being made up of layers of art and individual frames, from sketchy basic shapes to rough frames and render passes, with the final completed drawing or animation being the only layer that the audience generally sees.  Each of these is a frame in itself, conveying movement in spite of its disassembled state.  The final pass has the potential for multiple layers as well due to aspects such as linework, color, order, and individually functioning pieces.

I am primarily focusing on the visual aspect and individual frames of these layers, and how they can be applied to the garment(s).  Because of this, the final product will not be animated itself.  I would like to experiment with the layout, depiction and subject matter of the animation process in relation to the garment,  keeping it true to the Lolita aesthetic and appearance but still expressing movement and animation.  The garments will also be handmade by myself, using tutorials provided by the online Lolita community.

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SCOPE OF THE PROJECT:

Ideally the project will conclude with a completed petticoat and skirt (or multiples thereof) that feature the experiments with layers that I will be conducting over the course of the project.  A complete Lolita co-ordinate outfit that reflects the animation stages and frames is another potential goal of this project, though it may be harder to achieve due to money constraints.  I would like for the final garment to be something wearable that can be combined with other pieces of Lolita attire and still feel like a fashion piece, as well as convey the ideas and processes of animation used in the experiments.  Results will be photographed and uploaded to social media sites such as Facebook, Blogger, and Tumblr, and the resulting garment(s) will be used and worn as a regular piece of clothing.

The animation component of this project will be completed using digital art programs such as Krita and Adobe Animate.  These will be used to create the base frames and designs that will feature on the garment(s), and the explorative aspect will experiment with how these can be added to the clothing itself and still retain meaning.  This animation will be limited to 25 frames (1 second) - a calculation based on the number of repetitions in the pattern of my own lolita garments.  This restriction may change depending on my findings over the course of the project.  

Each phase of the animation process will be saved and converted to an image sequence, which will serve as a template for the designs and layouts that I will be applying to my garments.  This sequence will also feature on social media and be noted as a guide and inspiration for the pattern and shape that the garment takes, serving as a contrast between the physical and digital aspects of the final product.

As this project focuses on clothing as a base, a lot of it will have to be made physically - either by hand or with a sewing machine.  The cost of material is something else I need to consider, and whether or not I can make a convincing garment with potentially cheaper materials.  Patterns and tutorials for basic Lolita clothing are available for free online, and I intend to use these to create the garments for my project.  I expect the first few attempts at creating clothing from scratch will not be the best, but I can use any early prototypes for practice experiments and exploring my capabilities and timeframe.

Other constraints and parameters to consider are my limited sewing ability, and the time it takes to make lolita garments.  The skill I have to recreate something digital may also apply, as I feel fabric printing is not an option for me at this point.  Because of this I may have to turn to traditional mediums such as inks or fabric paints, and will need to understand how it can be applied to different types of material.

Documentation of the process and records of change will be posted to Blogger.

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OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT:

Through experimentation with layout, layers, and subject matter, a complete and functional garment will signify the success and end of this project.  The piece must clearly express features of the animator’s process, and focus on the theme of layers, while still being a recognizable Lolita garment.  For the animation component of this project, research will be conducted for the most suitable subject matter, and one final animation will be chosen out of 3-4 test animations for the print/decoration basis for the garment.

Quality will be measured on how presentable the garment is and whether or not I would feel comfortable wearing it in public.  This mainly applies to the amount of ‘poof’ to the petticoat layer, and the neatness of the skirt’s design/print.  A good petticoat produces a distinctive silhouette, and a good skirt should sit nicely on top of the petticoat while maintaining a distinguishable print.  As long as the print does not look rough, rushed, or unrecognizable I will consider it a success.  Animation must be fluid and utilize as many of the 12 principles as possible, and remain on-model and recognizable for all 25 frames.

In terms of the subject of the animation, I would like to create something simple that fits into the Lolita style/aesthetic.  It must use aspects such as Lolita symbols/motifs, colors, and patterns.  It must still be recognized as an animation, even in the form of its individual frames.  It will be created in a combination of Adobe Animate and Krita - Krita for its easier sketchy style for rough frames and passes, and Animate for its stability feature and cleaner lines that would provide a much more refined final pass.  These will be rendered out into an image sequence, which will then be applied to the garment.  The subject and depiction of the animation is an area I would like to dedicate a decent amount of project time to.

As someone who is quite new to Lolita, I hope to gain a better understanding of the fashion itself, as well as learn how to better craft garments for my own personal wardrobe.  I also feel as though I could use this project to improve on my basic understanding and technique of 2D animation and familiarize myself more with the programs involved in its use.  I feel as though there is a lot I can learn from it overall, and I am eager to explore new ways of combining two subjects that I am passionate about.

Members of the Lolita community might take interest in the theme of animation I intend to use, and understand the struggle of making classy garments from scratch.  The sewing and cosplay communities might also take interest in the way the garment is made and any shortcuts and issues I run into.  This project could also find appeal amongst the abstract art crowd, as it stands out as an art piece due to the focus and treatment of layers that I am exploring.  There is a significance to the idea of the layer and extra meaning behind it based on the process I am trying to show and describe, and I feel like other artists with similar projects would appreciate the effort put into that meaning.

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PEER FEEDBACK:

The biggest challenge that this project will face is making sure that the garment does not simply turn into Lolita with an animation theme/print.  I understand that many may assume it is so at first glance, and so peer feedback will help me get to a point where the observer’s interest is piqued enough to examine the deeper meaning.  

I would like to use peer feedback to help influence the kind of displays and layouts I choose for the garment(s), as I want the final product to appeal to a wide variety of people.  Their feedback is also important to the initial animation phase of the project and will help deciding what the most aesthetically pleasing and appropriate subject matter should be.

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REFERENCES:

Fubari, N., Perkins, M., Krischer, O.  (2013)  Asia through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation Across Borders [book].  London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury.

Winge, T.  (2008)  Undressing and Dressing Loli:  A search for the Identity of the Japanese Lolita [article] Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/368549 on 13/09/2016

Younker, T.  (2011)  Lolita: Dreaming, Despairing, Defying [article].  Retrieved from http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/33840753/Japan5.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1473717110&Signature=gPMji9L6BlG%2FlfAOwIVZfudUXLI%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DLolita_Dreaming_Despairing_Defying.pdf on 13/09/2016

CINEMATIC :: 15/09/16 - Transdisciplinary Exercise - Embodied Thinking

Our brief for this exercise was to take the details of someone else's happiest childhood memory and recreate it in animated form.  We were supposed to do this with our classmates, but I was away on the day and asked my partner for details on their childhood memories instead.

I chose to focus on their memory of going to the park, and because of the young age that they were when this memory occurred, I tried to stylize my animation to suit the mood.

CINEMATIC :: 15/09/16 - Transdisciplinary Exercises - Synthesis

Our synthesis exercise required us to take two of the exercises we had done previously and combine them together to answer the question What does society look like when it is working at its best?

The two exercises I looked into were personification and synesthesia - Society as a whole is made up of individuals, which are personified into the little spheres in the composition.  They are blank due to the idea that features are unimportant and actions speak louder than deeds.  When one sphere has a thought or makes an effort that benefits society, the color of it changes, and it influences the spheres around it.  When society as a whole is working, brilliance and color radiate out of it, creating a vibrant and warm sensation that I imagine harmony would look and feel like.

Next semester we will be putting our project into action.  I will post the brief I have created here once I am finished with the synthesis exercises

INTERACTIVE :: 12/09/16 - Further Concept development

Part of our current brief requires us to develop two assets further into coherent concepts.
My two are the ideas of a Save/Respawn mushroom (top) and a checkpoint mushroom (bottom).

With the first mushroom, the idea for its animation happens when the character respawns - the x shape glows and then the mushroom cap springs upward (similar to a spitting motion) as the character bounces out.

The second mushroom serves as a checkpoint, and remains dark until the character walks past it.  Then the mushroom stalks twitch back and forth and the bulb just inside the mushroom cap begins to glow, signifying that the player's progress has been recorded and they can restart from this point.

CINEMATIC :: 09/09/16 - Exquisite Corpse completed

Friday was spent adjusting my current animation to fit in with Matt's first frame.  I'm actually pretty pleased with the subject matter because my other idea for this project was also a creature morphing into a mask.

It does look a little shoddy in a couple of places due to shape tweens however.... still, i'm looking forward to the full animation!

INTERACTIVE :: 08/09/16 - More asset concepts

After looking at my mushrooms, I realized that they're all pretty simple in design and look a lot like the kind of thing one would find in the natural world.

When we were brainstorming ideas for the game, Patrick suggested that the Unseelie had opened portals up into the mortal world, and vegetation from the fey world was spilling out of it.  I kindof want to run with this idea and make my mushroom save-point look more ethereal and alien, showing that it came from a different kind of environment.  I've drawn a few more concepts in order to explore this:

At the moment I really like the idea of the star shaped mushroom and the big puffball mushroom - They retain enough of the original mushroom shape and feel, but have animations that could set them apart from a regular human world mushroom.  I guess the same features, movement and light, could be applied to all the mushrooms I've drawn to mark them as fey mushrooms though.  Adding an unusual color palette might help set them apart as well.

I particularly like the idea of the main character respawning out of the top of the x in the puffball mushroom though, and bouncing off the mushroom itself before carrying on with the game.

CINEMATIC :: 08/09/2016 - Exquisite Corpse exercise

Dane had us doing an Exquisite corpse exercise for our final workshop, that fun game where you fold a paper into three parts and a different person draws each bit.  It plays on the idea of collaboration and surrealism, with different ideas and viewpoints factoring into the final abomination.

We've been tasked with creating an animated exquisite corpse for Friday's class, where we make an animation, take the first/last frame, and pass it on to another student so that they can transition it into their animation.

I did something pretty simple - a lil mandrake bouncing out of the ground.  Currently i'm waiting on the starting frame from another student in order to complete the transition of my animation, but here's what I've created so far.

INTERACTIVE :: 07/09/16 - Asset concepts

Working on a save point asset, thought to make it look like some sort of fey-plantlife.  Mushrooms in particular are pretty heavily associated with the fairy realm, so it seems only natural that you should be able to save by them!

I'd like to draw a few more concepts for these or make them look extra floaty/ethereal/fey-like.  Here's a bunch of pictures for further exploration

CINEMATIC :: 03/09/16 - Transdisciplinary breakthrough

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to take part in an animation workshop led by Japanese Animator, Mirai Mizue.  His work is highly abstract, featuring characters and shapes derived from cels, and he experiments through use of stream of consciousness drawing and by limiting what he can and cannot do with the resources he has on hand.  A lot of his work is very high-action and chaotic, which left me feeling both excited and somewhat unable to look at the screen at times.

In particular, his video JAM kickstarted an idea in my head for my own project.

JAM operates on layers, sound and timing.  Each part of the musical track corresponds to a cell-like 'character' that can only be seen when the piece in question is heard.  Put this together into a full arrangement and you get a kind of visual score to match what you're hearing.  As the music evolves, so does the image on screen.  There is no narrative, just images corresponding to sound and coming together to fill the senses.

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In particular it was the idea of layers that got me thinking about my own piece.  Animation has layers, so does clothing - just like there are layers to music and image.  Why not make the idea of the layer the unifying element for my project?

JAM also got me thinking about the idea of the canvas or workspace of the artist - for a seamstress it'd be a table and a sewing machine, but for someone like me, its the digital screen and the pixel dimensions that I define.  I would like to explore the idea that clothing can become the animator's workspace.

With those two in mind, I feel like I have a solid basis for a project now.  I would like to take the components of the lolita's dress and turn them into the layers and stages that an animation goes through.  The lolita skirt in particular functions similarly to the layers of a canvas - you have your skirt or JSK - the final product that is displayed to all, but underneath lie the petticoats, made up of layers of thin fabric that bolster the skirt and give it its signature shape - just like the basic shapes, guidelines, rough passes and cleanup that go into making the animation look picture perfect.  The petticoat also functions quite well as the idea of the onionskin, seeing as the fabric it is made from is quite transparent.

I would like to coordinate a full outfit around this concept, but as things stand I don't think I will have enough money for materials.  Because of this I would like to focus the brunt of my project onto the skirt and petticoats, taking tutorials from the internet in order to learn how to craft the right garments and repurpose them for my needs.  I would like the final piece to be something I can wear with the lolita outfits I already own, and feature lolita motifs in an animation context.

CINEMATIC :: 03/09/16 - Transdisciplinary Exercises - Abstracting

We were required to abstract our chosen discipline into a character or creature concept, drawing up something that contained the essence of what we were looking into.

Mine being lolita, I figured it would only be natural to abstract the character into a passive, doll-like shape and feature the typical colors one might see a classic lolita wearing.  Her face is very abstract and appears quite serene, reflecting the lolita's elegance and poise.  She could probably do with a bit more patterning on her skirt, and I am rather worried that I didn't abstract her ENOUGH as she just appears to be wearing the discipline more than embodying it :S

In addition to doing two views, we also had to do them performing an ability, so here's my lolita doll playing with some lace.  I figure she can just ribbon it out of her sleeves and wrap people in it?  Maybe its a defense thing.


Gothita's evolution line probably gets the point better across than mine in all honestly

CINEMATIC :: 03/0916 - Transdisciplinary Exercises - Modelling

Our modelling exercise required us to encompass all of history into an image using whatever tools and techniques we liked.  The only condition was that it had to be visual - no numbers, words symbols or sounds.

I tried to think of all the things humanity has discovered throughout the years and put as many as I could think of here in a rather gritty sketch.  Things such as space travel and technological developments.  I'm not sure if some of them such as knights and soldiers count as symbols for war but, they were still a part of history correct?

I found this exercise particularly hard.  How do you describe history without giving it words or symbols?  I feel like there's too much symbolism in my final sketchy piece.

CINEMATIC :: 03/09/16 - Transdisciplinary 03 - Patterning

The patterning exercise required us to look at a clip of flowing water and create an animation out of that.  Mine only follows the first few seconds, but it made me think of a fish or microbial creature swimming in a rather playful way, so that's what I ended up making.

I would have liked to spend more time texturing it and abstracting it to truly distance it from the source material, but I think for now giving it characteristics like an almost-mouth make it feel more alive and playful? than a simple imitation of the patterns in water.

CINEMATIC :: 03/09/16 - Transdisciplinary exercise - Remixing

I've fallen behind on our transdisciplinary exercises, so I may spend a little time organizing this journal to fill them in.  I've made a few strides in terms of finding a medium for my project and figuring out how to go ahead with it, but I'll be posting those once I have all of these exercises out of the way.

The idea of 'remixing' comics can often be used for humerous effect, but I struggled with this one a little as I have no idea about the theme and tone that the original narrative was trying to convey.  It leaves me feeling at a loss in terms of this kind of work - I'm not the most comfortable taking a knife to someone else's production and repurposing it for my own means.

Still, I have taken one of the comics available on moodle and tried to change the narrative from forcing a girl to sign up for a club (?) into a minimalistic, silly yuri romance with a terrible punchline.

No homo bro.