CINEMATIC :: 22/08/16 - Further considerations

After thinking over my choices last week, I am leaning very heavily towards combining the idea of a fashion style and animation.  I would like my brief to state that I am exploring the combinations of these two disciplines and the animation/results I could produce with both of them.

I think in order to keep things simple, I would like to look at the main styles of lolita and potentially narrow my exploration down to a single style in order to prevent spanning out over too much material.  Off the top of my head, I know that there are three main lolita styles - Classical, Gothic and Sweet.

FASHION ELEMENTS:

- The lolita's ensemble consists of a blouse - often with flared/puff sleeves or buttoned cuffs, a mid-length skirt or jumper-skirt (must end just above the knee and not higher), a fluffy/poofy A-line or Bell-shaped petticoat, knee socks or tights, mary janes, chunky heeled, or wedge shoes, and some form of head accessory (from bows to headbands to bonnets).

- These components create a very distinctive silhouette.  Lolita is defined by the fluffy 'cupcake' shape that the skirt and petticoat create.  This creates a potential for shape language for the animated portion of the assignment, which may help if the direction becomes more abstract.

- The lolita's appearance plays on the idea of 'the princess pining for her prince', and has a very 'doll-like' appeal.  These could lend to potential narratives or themes.

- Other features of the lolita style are whimsical prints, color palettes, lace and elegance - all components that I can play around with in order to help create a final imge or product.

- The history of the lolita seems to draw a lot from fashion choices of influential musicians, and may count as a 'copy culture' that held to the ideals and themes of those musicians.

- Dane has suggested that I look into the physical aspect in order to tie the two mediums together.  He has suggested that I look into the physical process of creating an outfit (i.e dressmaking) and perhaps applying the concepts of animation to that, or vice versa.  I have been struggling to find a way to tie both fashion and animation together, so this idea of the physical component could be what I need to look into in order to begin really creating my brief.


I feel at this point that I want to create a bunch of small things, documenting my process and turning my mistakes and experiments into completed pieces for display.  I have also considered exploring things such as the concept of play or emotion or aesthetic in order to tie the mediums together.

RESEARCH TOPICS:

- Dressmaking - there are plenty of tutorials and patterns for the lolita who wants to make her own clothes.
- Kinetic Fashion - What kind of things have people already done with movement/animation and fashion?
- Principles of Lolita and Animation - What kind of rules and guidelines can I set for myself in order to stay true to the fashion style/animation?  What is similar?  What is different?

At this point I feel like it would be best to educate myself on as much as possible before I begin to write up my brief.

CINEMATIC :: 24/06/16 - Finalizing and Finishing Up

Its been over two weeks since I last updated, and I unfortunately can't say I've been up to anything different outside of mattepainting the backgrounds.  I've had quite a few external issues that slowed my progress, and I was struggling to keep on top of these backgrounds and work on assignments for the other classes, but overall, the past two weeks have proven to be enough in terms of completing the mattepainted scenery for our final animation!

I realize my efforts seem quite minimal compared to the contributions from the rest of the group.  Still, working on all these backgrounds really gave me a feel for painting scenery in general, and encouraged me to try out a lot of new techniques and brushes and it was a good experience overall, minus the looming deadlines.

There are 10 background plates in all, and Tea ended up helping me with the last two shots - I couldn't figure out how to angle the islands for the intense low and dutch angle shots, and she ended up sketching the positions for shot 8 and giving me a really rough paint of shot 9 to clean up.  A lot of shot 9 is reused assets, just warped, in order to save time.  I would like to think that it doesn't show unless you were specifically looking for it.

Here are all the final plates for our assignment hand in, and the shots that they are used in!  Some of them like the complete dark world and a giant version of the dark world's tree weren't used in the final production, but pieces of them such as the islands and bits of the tree branches will be used for other shots.

SPIRIT SHOT 01 - Establishing Spirit Shot:

SPIRIT SHOT 03 - Low angle Islands:

SPIRIT SHOT 04 - Birds eye of Islands:

SPIRIT SHOT 05 - Close up of the Spirit Tree:

SPIRIT SHOT 06 - Low Angle Phone Shot:

DARK SHOT 07 - Extreme close up of Tree branches:

DARK SHOT 08 - Low Angle Dark Island:

DARK SHOT 09 - Dutch Angle of Island:

ASSET 01 - The complete Dark World:

ASSET 02 - The Dark World Spirit Tree:

CINEMATIC :: 12/06/16 - Long overdue updates

The past two weeks has been a bit all over the place for me in terms of productivity and development!
After the decision to move me into animation, I was placed in charge of in-betweens for shots 4 and 7; the creature circling the island from overhead, and the creature turning its head to look at the screen while twitching its spines menacingly.  Tea's keyframes for the idea were amazing!

Shot 4 was tweaked a bit from last time, making the creature's movements a lot more evenly spaced and fluid.  It now moves in 3s, the purple lines being the parts of the animation that I added.

Shot 7 needed to be redrawn, with barely any of tea's original keys left in place.  Keat told me to straighten the creature's pose when it turns to the camera to show its attentive state, and the movement of its spines is now keyed in ones.  I spent longer than I wanted to on making them move convincingly, as the angle was one I found difficult to work with.

Both shots have since been passed onto Oscar, who has done a wonderful job of cleaning them up!

Since then, I have been placed back on backgrounds, and I'm now trying to get as many of them up as quickly as possible.  Over the past week I've been working on the dark world, a larger dark world tree to be used in several of the later spirit world shots, and the three remaining pre-glitch backgrounds of the dragon flying towards the tree, the dragon landing on the roots, and the dragon looking up towards the ipod.  There is potentially a third dark world island that I will need to attempt for one of the shots Jo was working on.

I was told to tackle the dark world and its tree asset first, as the islands and tree can be reused in many of the dark world shots.  I had to scale the tree up significantly and repaint it in order to get rid of the pixellation lines, and made the mistake of painting of the pipes on the original small tree.  I lost a day re-painting them for the larger tree, and ended up scaling the tree's island down to insert into the full dark world scene.  

Having updated the large tree's shading, I shrunk it down and added it back to the original spirit world pre-glitch background for the sake of consistency.

In addition, I also completed one of the spirit tree shots.  Hilariously the branches took me a long time to do, while the leaves which are mostly texture took under half an hour.  The branches don't have the right contrast level on them at this point, but if I have time once the rest of these shots are done, I'd like to go back and adjust them so they stand out a bit more.

I hope to at least get the other spirit tree shot done by the end of tomorrow.  It might be a bit of a long shot, but I'd like to have all of these backgrounds finished by next weekend.

CINEMATIC :: 01/06/16 - Role changes

I spent the later half of last week sick, so regrettably I wasn't able to get a lot done.  Our group has been making a lot of good progress with how we want things to look and the kind of animation that we're striving for, but the tutors really want us to crack down on animation so that we have the animation there, even if it needs a lot of refining.  It'll be solid and set and out of the way, and the sooner we can get that done, the better

But because of this, I've been moved from mattepainting duty to animation, where I'm currently working on in-betweens for Shot 4 and shot 7!  There isn't a lot for me to do that Tea hasn't already captured beautifully, but the sooner I get these done, the sooner I can work on whatever else she needs me to add to and the sooner we can have these roughs finished!

So far this is all I have to show.  I'm noticing now that my timing might be a little off - it not as fluid as I'd like, but i'll see what the team thinks tomorrow.

As for my mattepainting, this is where I had to leave off working on shot 4:

CINEMATIC :: 18/05/16 - Extra Shots

Keat asked me, Tea and Jo to work on the spirit world animatic shots, so the past couple of days has been spent planning and working on those.

The shots I was given were the establishing shot of the spirit world, the shot with the giant ipod cutting out, and the resulting creature transformation shot that follows afterwards.  We spent tuesday planning what to do with each shot, and after looking over my notes and working on shot framing today, I nearly have everything ready for putting it all together tomorrow.

I have added some very rough wires to the base of the tree's island, and Tea was very helpful in providing images from the Matrix for me to reference:

And here's what they look like so far based on the source material:

I also took the opportunity to update the Dark World, adding in a background from the nebula painting program:

Most of today has been spent messing around in After Effects, trying to update and harmonize the establishing shot of the Spiritual world - adjusting the depth of the islands was surprisingly difficult to get just right!  The main issue we ended up having was with the background i was using and how bright it was-

Tea ended up providing one that was a lot more spatial and worked better for the composition.

Hamish has the background assets that we need to complete the other shots, so we plan on finishing up my other two tomorrow, as well as adding in the jellyfish and smaller creatures to this shot.  We're hoping to have all the spiritual world frames complete by the end of tomorrow so I can start mattepainting the new shots and Tea and Jo can begin animation.

In preparation, i have animated some very bad and hasty creatures

CINEMATIC :: 16/05/16 - Feedback

Feedback session went really well today.  The animatic and camera shots look so nice put together and the film feels like its really coming together!

Hamish has sussed out a lot more shots for me to work on over the next week, and while it was suggested that I also work on the dark world version of the background, it has become priority to mattepaint over these new shots so that Jo and Tea can begin animating for those scenes.  We will be reusing assets wherever possible, but Hamish has given me some very clear and nice sketches to work with, that I am sure I will have no trouble cleaning up into good background plates.

The nebula painter program I suggested was also very well received, and it has been agreed upon that it could work better than what Hamish could come up with in Maya.  I mentioned that we could record someone painting in a nebula and use that as the background, adding in that extra depth and movement, possibly even making multiple layers to give the background more depth

CINEMATIC :: 13/05/16 - Updated References

Not much to report in terms of progress updates - most of my time over the last week has been spent refining the background and getting my model sheets up to scratch.  They are now all finished and ready for our second submission, but I will post them here too as proof of progress:

TURNAROUND - BIG CREATURE

POSE SHEET - BIG CREATURE

And bonus progress on my mattepainted background!  

I've run this past the tutors, who are happy with it in its current form.  After the team talked about how to progress the shots in the spirit world, I'm sure I'll have more work, creating the close up parts of the scene.

While I was working on this, I did entertain the thought of using this Nebula Painter for the background.   The app allows you to create your own nebula and save the image, which could easily be layered into the rest of the composition.  I might try it out and post the results here, as well as discuss whether it might be an alternative to giving Hamish even more work with the way things currently are.

CINEMATIC :: 06/05/16 - Background updates

Since last term I have had a lot of feedback from the tutors for improving the background that I have created.  Initially it looked very flat and it was hard to get a feel for the composition due to the lack of any nebula-esque backdrops.  I have added a temporary backdrop that i found through a quick google search, and the last few weeks as well as the holidays have been me playing around with and updating the way the background looks.

The last piece of feedback that I got in term 1 was that I needed to correct the islands for atmospheric perspective, as well as add some more natural looking grass/texture to the islands.  I was also told that the islands looked quite washed out in comparison to the background, so I might want to work on the saturation and values in order to create a more naturalistic looking piece.

This is where I was at by the end of term 1 - the background definitely helps the composition, but it is still hard to get a sense of space since the objects still look quite flat:

Over the holidays I added a texture to the closer areas, and once I returned to class for term 2, Keat suggested i make the closer islands appear as though they were more in shadow in order to enhance the depth further and help to place focus on the central tree.

Here is what the background looks like currently:

Shadows have been added, as well as an overlay/add layer to most of the islands.  The further ones are more washed out which handles the atmospheric aspect quite well.  The closer islands are more texturized as well, giving them softer edges.

Our feedback today suggested that i tweak the tree so that its colors stand out from the islands around it, and soften its edges so that the silhouette is less sharp.  I also need to add a blur to the islands closer to the back, so that they appear more out of focus, further highlighting the central tree.  I may add some texture to the middle layer of islands as well.

I've also been working on the model pack for the large creature and have the roughs and poses for it sketched up.  I still need 3/4 clean views but I should have those done in a reasonable amount of time.

CINEMATIC :: 07/04/16 - Mattepainting Updates

Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on the mattepainted background for our animation.  Admittedly I've struggled a lot with it composition-wise and have been neglecting to update my blog about it - so here's where I'm at currently.

Last week I refined the concept sketch of the spiritual world, removing a lot of aspects of the floating islands in order to create a stronger and simpler composition.  This was the final sketch that I got out

It ended up being a really dense, naturalistic landscape with a lot of trees and foliage, with one central floating island.  The group seemed ok with it and I started messing around with colors and brush types/shading technique

In the end, this was as far as I got with it, as Tea came up with a much nicer composition based on my sketch and Hamish's test images.  I was told that we were going to add the phone in through use of 3D, and my task for the rest of that weekend and up to this point was to refine Tea's sketch into our final mattepainted background.

Currently there is no background and I'm still debating on whether I need to deepen the lighting/shadows on the islands, but I'll work on that over the weekend.  All of these islands are on separate layers and having a background set up this way means that Jo and Tea can start adding their creatures into the scene!

I do still need to add pipes under the tree for when the Spirit world turns dark, but the rest of the island changes can be done in post production, as far as I understand.  At least the basic setup is done now so that I can play around with lighting and composition effects.  I'm still not sure if I will be doing a background or if Hamish is going to quickly generate one, but for now, it is safe to say that the background plates are more or less done!

I'll probably be helping with animation after this, assuming that I don't need to put too much more into the mattepainting.

CINEMATIC :: 25/03/16 - progress and updates

The week after submissions was a pretty hectic one, as we spent all Monday filming our footage.  I was in charge of mostly holding sheets and mirrors while Oscar and Hamish took on the biggest roles amongst our team of acting and filming.  The rest of the week was covered by tutorials, but I did manage to make some depth plate/compositions based on guidelines Hamish gave me

These were done mainly to observe how compositions form in nature, and how we could apply it to the very naturalistic spiritual world.  Things that I have noticed are that compositions where the focal point is in the center tend to be quite small and generally have harmonious circular shapes to strengthen them (second row first image on the left is one I'm particularly fond of).

Over Thursday, I sketched up a few background concepts with Tea and Jo giving me feedback as to what they would like to see.  Much as I love environment design, composition isn't my strong point, so it really helped to have others look at it and tell me what things they thought I should add and where.  We found an absolutely gorgeous landscape image on tumblr that has become a central source of inspiration for our backgrounds, due to the symmetry and colors captured in it:

With this in mind, I managed to come up with a set of rough sketches for the Spiritual world and slapped on a few experimental colors

At this point I'm still not too happy with how the colors in the spiritual world look, but I'm assuming I can tweak those later.  We had a discussion on Thursday about the central focus of the composition as well, and an idea came to light about replacing the central tree with a huge monolith that would help to convey the idea that the ipod in our video would be cutting out.  Tea has sketched up a beautiful concept for how it would work and how it would bring about the transition from light to dark worlds, and her 'monolith' looks a lot better than the sketchy ones I've drawn here.  I might have to resort to pillaging her ideas again.

What I would really like to do over the next few days is livestream a session for my team where I work on the background and they can give me feedback for it in real time.  As I'm having issues with my internet, this probably won't happen, but it would be something I'd like to do at this stage.

I'm going to aim to have a background with proper perspective drawn up by Monday Night.  So stay tuned for updates.

CINEMATIC :: 20/03/16 - Creature Profile

COMPLETED CREATURE TURNAROUND:

CHARACTER PROFILE:

Name and Age: No name, Ageless
Ethnicity/Race/Type/Gender: Cosmic Spirit
What makes this character worth creating a story concept around?: Along with the other spirits, this creature is timeless, ethereal and inhuman, providing a contrast to the meditator in our story.
Most important thing to know about the character:  It can go from peaceful to frightening in less than 2 seconds
Current occupation: Protector of the realm
Physical Attributes:  A mask-like face and ethereal flowing mane. It hides spines in its tail and on the backs of its legs.
Present Problem or Crisis: A human in its spiritual realm
Basic Belief system and Political Beliefs:  Spirits = good, intruders = bad
Taste in Music, Art, Stories, Sports, Hobbies:  Probably things beyond human comprehension
Clothes: None
Description of home environment:  a vast, natural cosmic realm with floating islands and water that mirrors the sky.
Significant family relationships:  The small spirits that inhabit the world with it.  They all get along peacefully and in harmony.
Best character trait and other outstanding qualities:  Very big and very imposing.
Worst character trait/flaw:  Can become terrifying in less than 2 seconds if it feels something is wrong with you
How is the character thought of by others versus their own self opinion:  Those who see it find it frightening, but it considers itself a peaceful thing.
Sense of humor/what kind:  It takes itself very seriously in constrast with the smaller and playful spirits it lives with
Ambitions and general philosophy of life:  Keep the realm protected.
Habitual expressions and mannerisms:  Usually it doesn't have a face unless its being scary.
Fears, frustrations, emotional style and temperament: Very quiet and very passive for the most part.  It doesn't fear anything, especially not humans.

CINEMATIC :: 17/03/2016 - Feedback

Had a feedback session with the tutors today, and progress seems to be going quite well.  I cannot contribute anything to the animatic at this point, so I'm just going to be working on more background plates and refining my creature over the next few days.

In feedback, i was told that my creature was too bulky and did not quite suit the elongated form.  My team has asked me to slim it down and change its limbs a little in order to fit Oscar's ideal a bit better.

Tea has created some really amazing character concepts based on my design though, and has given me permission to use them for the central character:

It works really well as it contains all the modifications that i already wanted for my own character With this design in mind, it would be really easy to draw smooth, undulating shapes for the mane and tail, and the small creatures are very similar in design and shape too.  Jo has adjusted her creature to match it, and I feel like all i could really do to improve it is to modify the dark-world version a bit - maybe add  more bones down the neck and make the legs more skeletal?

I received some advice for Matte painting as well - to keep my edges harder and to play around with brushes.  Once i figure out some layouts, I might try this out over the weekend.

CINEMATIC :: 14/03/16 - Plans for the week

After meeting up with the group today, we discussed our plans for the week, which are finalizing our storyboards, and thinking about a date for filming.  We are expected to have an animatic completed by next Monday, so a lot of our designs need to be finalized so that we can put a storyboard together.

My goal for this week is to finalize my creature and figure out the plates for our Matte Painting layout.  Feedback on the artistic impression that I had drawn over the weekend was positive, and people seemed to really like the color palette, so it might be one that I stick to for future attempts.

I plan to use Hamish's plate method to come up with a few compositions myself, and aim to do this tomorrow or Wednesday.

In the meantime though, I have begun to play around with my character and try to solidify its movement and expressions.  Thinking about the dark world transition came to mind today, and I have drawn upon some previous dream images as inspiration for how my spirit might change.  Both of these images are from 2012.

With these in mind, this is where I am with my character sheet:

The spirit's expressions reflect the transition from a calm spirit world to a dark one, the small sequence is a potential transformation it undergoes as the world changes.  The sketchy images were just me getting a better feel for the character and how it is shaped and moved, and the bottom two images are what I would like to use for its model sheet - they just need to be cleaned up and finalized once I've run it past the group.

I'd like to tackle layout plans for the environment before I attempt to figure out the colors for this creature, as how the environment looks plays a big part in how the creatures will appear in order to contrast it.