Reflection on Imaging and Data Visualisation
At the beginning of the second semester I could barely use Maya and this module was very useful for me to practise working in 3D. The lectures were very informative, giving me a basic knowledge that I could use while working on the projects, not just for this module. All the new tricks and shortcuts I learnt helped a lot to more or less figure out how Maya works.
During our first assignment for Imaging and Data Visualisation, the Floating City project I had a few setbacks I had to face but beside that I really enjoyed it and I learnt a lot. For our chosen city, Salem, Massachusetts, I had to do a lot of research on the history and culture to get the atmosphere right, but it was all worth it, because thanks to Maggie, our final piece looked really good.
For the second project, the head model, it was refreshing to work on my own. I had mostly negative experience in teamwork this semester, so I was glad when it turned out we didn’t need to work with others. After I had some time to do some research on retopologizing, and to figure out how Mudbox worked it still took a great amount of time to finish it right. I didn’t mind it, I learnt a lot about Maya and the anatomy of the face as well.
All in all I managed to get a better understanding on Maya during the lectures and while working on my own as well. I feel like this was a useful semester and Imaging and Data Visualization gave me a big push towards a better ability to work in 3D.
Final Retopology
After starting all over with the head model mostly knowing what I was supposed to do, I am satisfied with the outcome. It was hard work to keep an eye on not making any meshmistakes and creating a proper edgeflow.
I still have to practise a lot, but for my first try I think it turned out alright.
This project made me realize how important it is to know the anatomy properly whenever I sculpt something in 3D. This basic knowledge is necessary to create polygons that can be easily animated later on to create a realistic and natural movement. It was really useful to get a hang of working with Mudbox as well.
Reflection on New Narratives
Since the second semester started I have learnt a lot considering both Maya and film studies. The lectures were always very informative giving us a great opportunity to have a better understanding on film and the assignments we got helped in gaining knowledge on how Maya worked.
On film analysis I have learnt way more than I have ever imagined I could. Not just during the lectures, but while reading some additional books as well such as The Filmmaker’s Eye, or The Cinema As Art. I’ve never thought before how much just the angle of the camera could mean to the narrative of a story. I have tried to apply this knowledge to the final project we got this year, the 30 second animation.
Our first assignment, the schematic and the artefact gave me a much deeper view into how a good film is built up. For the schematic we had to thing through Citizen Kane scene by scene, analysing every character and every action to find the connection between them. To come up with a good artefact we needed to understand the main meaning under the surface.
The next assignment, the animation, was really hard work considering the fact that there was only two of us working on it properly. Although looking back now I wouldn’t change teammembers, because I most definitely wouldn’t have learnt this much in Maya if I had the chance to let others do parts of the animation. We got a lot of help from members of other teams, but I had to figure out almost everything by myself.
I still have a lot to learn, but I feel like during this academic year I have improved a great amount.
References:
- Citizen Kane (1941) Directed by Orson Welles.
- Mercado, G. (2010). The Filmmaker’s Eye.
- Stephenson, R. and Phelps, G. (1989). The Cinema As Art.
Lights
I finally found the time to get back to the animation. We could only solve the lighting situation with one wall missing in our room. This gave a big limitation on the animation itself, so I wanted to figure out what went wrong the first time. I watched a few tutorial videos back then, but none of them could help, so I decided to just play around, and do a bit deeper research.
I started with an area light to try and lit the whole room. No matter what I tried it still remained too dark so I moved on to the desktop lamp. Here I used a spotlight. I played around with the intensity, the dropoff and the angle of the cone before trying out how it would look like in the renderview.
The spotligh itself is not too bad, I just increased the exposure on the renderview to get the whole scene a bit more lighter.
With this the only problem is that the spotlight area becomes way too bright while the room itself looks alright. So I just have to figure out the ‘light the whole room’ problem.
Using a spotlight for the ceiling light didn’t work either… I moved back to the area light to give it a try again.
Somewhat better. The only thing I don’t like is that the nice shadow’s that the spotlight created almost disappeared because of the light coming from the ceiling. And the scene is a bit still too dark for me, on top of it the plane almost disappeares, so next to the area light I’m gonna use a spotlight as well to light the plane.
The next step I changed the area light to a point light.
I liked this one way better than the area light. Mostly because the pointlight seemed to take away the harshness of the colors of the objects in the scene which is not a bad thing at all.
It seems this time I found the right sources to use. I had a lot of help from the Solid Angle website, and also a book I got from the final year’s Bake ‘n’ Book Sale, 3D Animation Essentials.
References:
- Beane, A. (2012). 3D Animation Essentials.
- https://support.solidangle.com/display/AFMUG/Lights
Retopology part1
Before starting the retopology, I’ve made a bit of a research. I found a good tutorial on the 3DArtist website by Steve Holmes on the subject (in references). I also had a look at a few videos on the plurarsight website. I’ve seen everywhere that it is important to pay attention to how the muscles work on the face.
With my first try on retopologizing the done head model I made a few mistakes. First, I started out with too small polygons which made my work much harder. After a while because I made a lot of mistakes in the edgeflow as well I decided to start over.
This is my messed up mesh. I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it now, so I hope the second one will be better.
References:
Character Design and Principles
For the final assignment for life drawing we have to present four principles with our character. Since my last post on the subject I managed to came up with a design that I think is good for appeal. (The final designs are in my sketchbooks, the first one pg75-76, and the second one pg1-17.)
The second principle I wanted to show is solid drawing. I think my sketches prove that I have a clear understanding on the character’s anatomy.
I had to pay attention to balance, that’s why at the end i chose him to have bug like legs and arms. Two legs were necessary, but I didn’t want to add more, the four arms could be very expressive.
The first pose I draw was – of course – Hamlet, just because Shakespeare is awesome. From this on I just grabbed random quotes from my favourite books for a few more sketches before moving on to the other principles.
At the end next to appeal and solid drawing I chose arcs, follow through and overlapping action, and squash and stretch. (second sketchbook, pg11-15) (I already talked about the principles in my previous post.)
As for the articles we talked about at week 12… Only the second one, the one about gender representation influenced me somewhat while thinking about the character. First I didn’t even want to give a gender to it, it doesn’t really matter if it’s male or female, but considering the fact that it’s based on a moth I changed my mind. Altho I wouldn’t change the shape, just the color to keep it simple and real in this matter. I haven’t done a coloured version yet, but I imagine the male would be brownish, and the female would be a grayish colour just like in nature.
I really feel like this year’s life drawing helped me a lot. I pay more attention to perspective, anatomy and proportions than before, and altho I still struggle to get everything right I came a long way.
Reading list
My academic reading list for the year:
- Russett, R. and Starr, C. (1988). Experimental Animation.
- Read: 9th November 2016 – 29th November 2016
- Maltin, L. (1987). Of Mice and Magic.
- Read: 6th December 2016 – 29th December 2016
- Williams, R. (2002). The Animator’s Survival Kit.
- Read: 27th October 2016 –
- Vogler, C. (2007). The Writer’s Journey.
- Read: 30th January 2017 – 2nd March 2017
- Hogarth, B. (1996). Dynamic Figure Drawing.
- Read: 1st December 2016 – 9th March 2017
- Mercado, G. (2010). The Filmmaker’s Eye.
- Read: 28th March 2017 – 5th May 2017
- Thomas, F. and Johnston, O. (1995). The Illusion of Life.
- Read: 1st May 2017 –
- Stephenson, R. and Phelps, G. (1989). The Cinema As Art.
- Read: 5th May 2017 –
Tribute to Chase Your Dreams
There’s not much to say here… I was hoping Caitlin will do the facial expressions, but I didn’t see anything of that yet, and without it there’s no point in cutting the whole thing together again, and unfortunately I don’t have the time to do it myself. I still plan on playing around with the maya files, figuring out the lights, but we are running out of time. I sure won’t have time for rendering, and noone else will do it, so our Chase Your Dreams project seems to remain unfinished.
Here’s a short tribute to what it could have looked like if Caitlin had done the expressions.
(Pictures made by Caitlin 10 minutes before the final presentation are shown below.)
Could have been awesome! I’m really sad about this… if I’ll find the time I might go over it during the summer break.
Principles of Animation
I feel like it’s really important to be aware of the twelve principles of animation. I already looked at them every now and again before we got this assignment from Mike, but it’s never a bad thing to look through it again and again.
I found a few useful sources next to the book The Illusion of Life, which was the first book to talk about the issue. Honestly, it was still the most useful text to look at, although I got a much better understanding while looking through videos like Alan Becker’s tutorials on youtube, or Aaron Blaise’s course on the subject. I also learnt a lot about these things while reading The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams.
According to the book the first principle is squash and stretch. It emphasizes speed, momentum, weight and mass. It’s important to keep the volume of the object/character consistent while using this principle.
The second principle is anticipation. It’s basicly preparation for an action. With the help of anticipation the audience is informed what will happen next. It also helps the character to gather energy, so the action will be more realistic.
The next principle is staging. It’s the way of presentation of an idea so it will be clear for the audience. The staging directs the eye where to look, and if it’s badly done the main action can be lost among all the other things going on on the screen even if it’s just in the background.
The forth principle is straight ahead and pose to pose. Theye are two different methods of animating a scene. The first one is about animating as you go, draw the first frame, and then the next, etc… This is a great approach to be creative, but it’s more likely to make mistakes and it’s harder to fix as well. The second, pose to pose means that first you draw the key poses and than add the inbetweens. This gives more control, and there’s less opportunity to make mistakes which are easier to fix. According to every sourse I read and watched they are the best when used together.
Follow through and overlapping action is the fifth principle. An other word to describe it would be ‘drag’. It means that when the main body moves the tip of the appendage is the last that catches up, and follows through the body. The amount of drag someone gives to an object gives it weight and mass as well. It’s importatnt to keep in mind that this movement is always the result of the main action.
Slow in and slow out, the next principle, gives life to the motion. It covers the fact that all movements start slowly, build up speed and finish slowly. In hand drawn animation it means that the drawings are closer together at the start and the end of an action, while in computer animation it depends on the curves of the graph editor.
It’s also important to keep in mind that most living things move in arcs, which is the seventh principle. It gives more character and it’s a more natural way of action as well.
The eighth priciple is called secondary action. These are mostly gestures that support the main action. One has to keep in mind that is only to support, and it shouldn’t grab the audience’s attention more than the main action.
The amount of frames inserted between each extreme affects the nature of the animation and the movement. The more frames there are the slower the action is. This is called timing.
The next principle, exaggeration is used to encrease the impact on the viewer. There are different levels of using it, if there’s less the action is more realistic, if there’s more it is more cartoony.
I think solid drawing is one of the most important principles – and the one I have the most trouble with. A character or an object have to keep its weight and volume consistant throughout the animation. You have to keep in mind perspective and balance, not to mention anatomy. It takes a lot of practise. An important note is to avoid ‘twinning’, which means the body is symmetrical, and the arms and legs do the same things at the same time.
The last principle is appeal. It means that the character has to be pleasing to look at, the design has to be dynamic with a variety of shapes. Keeping it simple is important as well, a design that’s too detailed lacks appeal in animation.
References:
- Thomas, F. and Johnston, O. (1995). The Illusion of Life. Disney.
- Williams, R. (2002) The Animator’s Survival Kit. Faber and Faber. London.
- https://creatureartteacher.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/user/AlanBeckerTutorials
River in Camelot 