The End of Semester One!

It's already the end of Semester One! How time flies, also how I realize I've been a horrible blogger. Anyways, I've been productive while away just not been posting like one should. I finished 5 of the 6 models for the semester, the last one I am waiting on the reference images from the original artist. She's busy with her Senior Year, plus I've had plenty of stuff I've been working on that I didn't feel the need to bug her obnoxiously for it while doing other things. So hopefully over break I can get the references and pump out the character before returning. There's a couple other creatures from the scottish mythologies and legends I'm researching as well that I may attempt some design for.

I've also for class been working at learning zbrush, and one of the projects included a self portrait..... well lets just say mine was very unsuccessful at looking like me. It's an interesting portrait, which I didn't finish the ears cause I was getting frustrated with the program. But overall I called it quits cause I knew there wasn't salvaging it into a proper self portait so I'll just have to practice more in the program over break. I've already seen a couple tutorials on Lynda that look very helpful. Now it's just sitting through and doing them. Haha.

I'll post all the photos at the end of the post, so you can browse at your leisure. We did some interesting green screen work, working with a DJI Osmo camera which retails at 500 pounds. But it's a steady track camera that shoots in 4k, that attaches to you're smartphone and is hand held. Pretty awesome deal if you ask me. We were learning about it and how to shoot with it just a week after a trip to Rome, and I was just thinking about all the different kinds of awesome videos I coulda taken had I known about this thing. But alas, that is life. Maybe I'll check one out next time I visit? Probs not, I don't know if there's a day restriction on those cameras or not. But it was nice to learn we can use one of those instead of getting a whole tracking rig for a large camera anytime we wanna film something for the green screen.

 Anywho, next semester holds ton's of prospect. Both for my individual project and everyone else's. We'll also be working with a studio for a live project and get some hands on experience. Also developing my color psychology research and how it might affect my characters and their design. I'm really interested in learning how to make the best characters I can, so that I can get a job producing these models for company's after graduation.

 This semester has been a informative one, though I don't think I ever adjusted time wise. My sleep schedule is wack, but then again that could be because I'm use to being a night owl but they have constrained work hours here. It will be nice to be home over break and be able to work till 3 am on a modeling project cause I got in the groove and could work to my hearts desire. But hey, they do want us to have a life here out side of school so I can not complain too much.

On to the images! Here's pictures of my latest work and adventures! Enjoy!

*I've just realized all the pictures I thought were posting to my blog have not been attaching like they should. I've fixed the ones for this post, but will have to wait to dig up the photos for the others and reattach them.

 

             

               

      

Let me know what you think of the characters. I think they're a great mix of cartoony and 3D. Some of my best pieces yet!

   

Workshop Results

One of our days we got to do a workshop with Mark Grindle. Great guy, and he really knows what he's talking about. We got to talk about story development and things of the like. My notes are kinda sporadic, and I really shoulda done this post closer to when he talked to us but I decided to be a procrastinator and here I am, so bare with me. :D So one thing crucially mentioned during his talk was simplicity. Getting things too complicated can make you go down inspirational dead ends and then the story doesn't quite wrap up nicely. So when in doubt, keep it simple. There are 3 main things that can develop or drive a story; one Authority/Power, two Desire/Emotion, and three Destiny. Now, all of these can drive a story or just one. You can pair these with a theme for further success. Themes for storylines are, Need for Desire or Need for Love, Want for Acceptance or Desire for Validation, Desire for Order, Good vs. Evil, Desire for Morality, Horrors or Fear of the Unknown, and lastly Desire for Justice. After he gave us this list I saw a lot of these aspects in movies I'd watched, and it gave us a great base of knowledge to add to our own story development.  So when it comes to a story, you definitely get characters. An important thing with them, is to keep them true. No matter how they're developed, you don't want them being all back and forth in their ideology. Some of the main characters include the Protagonist (main), Antagonist (opposite of main character, could be anything that needs dealt with person or objects), and your obstacles.  Once creating a story, you need to follow some basic steps. You need to establish a setting, theme, and the where and when. After you tick off that, your character needs to solve something in the real world. You can follow the structure of a 3 act or 5 act system. In the 1st: Time, Place, Character, Antagonist, Desire, Event all need to be learned. At the end of the act comes the *Insighting Incident* This would be the why a character goes on his or her journey. An example being Bruce Wayne's Parent's being killed in the alley way and his need from then on for Justice thus his journey to becoming Batman. 2nd: Point at which you can't go back, challenge, confrontation. 3rd:Resolution, who do they become? Over the course of a five act, you can add more details in and stretch the story out a bit more.  After this we broke for lunch and then when coming back, were suppose to come up with a quick storyline of our own either as a group or singularly. This could be for a 3 min or 90 min film or a 6 part series and would incorporate the elements we went over during his talk. I worked with a classmate Penny for ours.  Our setting, is a medium sized American City. Not a large one like Detroit, but also not a small one where the population is 20. Its modern day. We chose a theme of Justice.  Act 1: Charlie and his wife are out to dinner, you see them acting like a normal couple. Small details like a couple empty glasses next to this dinner plate, her looking at the glasses with slight contempt. Things go blurry, flashes of scenes start to play out almost through hazy eyes. Charlie's wife is walking, him near her. Lights blare on the screen. Disorientation is shown. A car schreeches, you see charlie holding his wife as a car drives off. Cops show up, start investigating, Charlie's being questioned. In his drunken sadness and anger he lashes out and hits a cop, they arrest him for Public Intox. Results in ordered AA treatment. Act 2: He gets sober, learns cops have no idea who did it. He wants Justice. Starts looking into it himself. Looks over cop reports, Finds time gaps in his memory and their facts. Report of his wife yelling at him when leaving the restraunt. Challenges with himself if he could have done what he thinks he's done. Keeps delving to only find out it was him who killed his wife and his memories were a drunken lie. Act 3: He falls off the wagon, wars with himself on what to do. Does he turn himself in? Keeps drinking. Next, see him eating in the restraunt where it all began, no glasses next to him this time. Then he's in his car, drives to the scene where his wife was killed. Drives off into the ditch as fast as he can, totaling his car into the nearby trees.  One thing Mark mentioned we could do is open up with the crash and rework the first Act some. We kinda planned the Crash and accident being the Insighting Incident. But he said that could be the AA and getting sober, and thus since he's overcomed this he should find Justice for his wife as well.  It was a fun exercise and we learned a lot on story development. All and all a good class that we had. 

Inspiration Trip

So this last week we had readers week, which is basically a mid term break in terms of American Colleges. It basically gives the students time to catch up in studies and a week off of classes. This didn't really help us much as we're just now getting into classes but it was a nice break. Threw off my sleeping schedule though. On Friday, Jackie and I decided to go to Inverness and visit the Loch Ness, we also went and explored the Urquhart Castle along the Loch Ness and it was beatiful. I saw this as a sort of "research" opportunity. As my piece is dealing with Mythlogical creatures from Scotland.  We went and visited Leakey's, a magical bookstore in Inverness that I totally reccommend to any book lover that visits. Found a couple old books, one at least a hundred years old and a first edition woot, we stuck to Scottish related ones. I even got a new book that's all about Scottish Myths and Tales. Can't wait to read that, and it counts towards my research. After that and getting a brunch from a cafe, we got on a bus and went to go see Loch Ness... We tried to find Nessie but she must have known we were coming and hid. Urquhart Castle was beatiful and along the Loch Ness. We got a neat history lesson on it, and signed up for a Historic Scotland Membership to get into a bunch more Castles for Free. Woot. Plus Student discount. So anywho, that was our big adventure, I'll know flood you with photos I know you want to see.   

 

References

 Bean concept, hand drawn by Erin Chon and digitally redrawn by Me.

                  Bean Reference drawn by Erin Chon   

                      Nessie Reference drawn by Erin Chon   Timeline: Restoryboard ending, make sure short clip can be satisfactory with a story. Beginning, middle, end. Get front and side views of all characters to begin modeling. Look up videos on bipedal rigging/animating for future refence on Kelpie. Figure out motions for each character to show off their personality.  Creation List Term 1: Bean Kelpie, pretty and ugly version Siren Fairy Nessie Basic Human x 2   Extras if Time: (can show off the world of Bean’s adventures, gives characters personalities and styles to go into) Wulvur Other Scottish creatures   Timeline Term 1.  October 17-23: Bean October 24-30: Nessie October 31- Nov 6: Fairy November 7-13: Siren November 14-27: Kelpie (most complex character) November 28- Dec 4: Basic Humans x 2 Dec 4 – Jan 15: Touch up and finish any characters that need work. Make sure meshes are solid. Can make up extra characters during this time as well. Creation List Term 2: Environment of Scene -rock -trees -river? Decide if that aspect needs to be added or can be reworked. -moon lighting Texture models Rig models Weight Skins   Timeline Term 2: To be made first couple weeks of term two to get a feel of the pacing and work load   Creation List Term 3: Final details and characters Animate Characters demo reel actions (10-15 seconds each) Animate the intro of Bean Animate Bean meeting Kelpie Animate Kelpie chase scene Animate Kelpie tackle scene Animate Kelpie skipping and jumping in river    Extra:  If time animate the hand coming out of the river for credit scene to show Bean is still alive to have many more adventures.   Scene as animatic runs 50 seconds, can cut down to 40 if don’t add Kelpie skipping back to river though that adds some comedy to it. Challenges in story will be why he’s looking for fairies, could cut it to just in the forest and runs into the kelpie no fairy sign and no fairy action during chase scene. For the section i’m animating doesn’t necessarily help or hinder the animation. If explained it is apart of a larger short, then it’s fine to keep. Use summary to set up the actions if don’t want to cut.    14 seconds for hand out of river, won’t be needed if don’t show river during scene. 

 

48 Film... sorta

One of our very first projects was a 48 hour film, we focused two main days to it and had a week to edit and refine it. My group included class mates Sean, Chingiz, and Kelvin. We had a nice ratio of 2 serious workers and 2 off the wall idea workers. Sean and I fell into the serious situation, while Kelvin and Chingiz had fun with their Tinder police ideas.  Sean headed our project, him having the most experience and owning the equipment we used. He was able to find us a couple actors for our main characters and then Chingiz and Kelvin just hand to play some thugs.  So our brief started out pretty open, all we had to include was a quote, a prop, and a iconic location of Dundee.  Our Quote: Today, I am the luckiest man on the Earth. Or something similar to that, I don't have the paperwork in front of me so I can't remember it verbatim.  Our Prop: Cell phone Location: We used the water edge and also had a clip of one of the bridges in the film.  We met up right after to brainstorm some ideas, got a basis of how each of us think and work and skill level. We wanted to do something Crime style that led to a mix up of "cat fishing" on tinder and someone being kidnapped for it. So we went dark comedy on this film, and roughed it out in the script that our guy Morris, is failing in the dating scene. He's using tinder for one, so I don't think he had much hope for success. Anywho, he's gone on yet another failed date and while walking away and swiping through more Tinder dates, he gets kidnapped. Turns our our sapless romantic has a habit of stealing money from the wrong people. Well, to his surprise he gets a guest thrown in the back trunk with him. Maya joins then, and some comedic scenes take place in them removing her taped up mouth and head covering off. Overall their meeting is the most optimal but they connect as both stealers of the wrong people, and their failed attempts at online dating. Thus "love" was born. They make dinner plans, make out, and get interrupted in the process. Only to get tradgically killed isn't he end... told you it was dark. But it was quite amusing to film and write up. I helped mainly with the audio and lighting. Kelvin and Chingiz helped with lighting when they could and did their fair share of acting. Sean did all the shooting and edited. Chingiz even made our tinder animation, and credits animation. I helped post production with a muzzle flair and Kelvin did some blood. Sean cut and lined up audio. Thus we created our 48 hr film! Now on to some behind the scenes photos, I take no credit for these, kinda didn't think to take any photos. These are from Chris, our actor of Morris, Sean, and Chingiz. I grabbed them via facebook. 

 

   

Introductions!

In case you do not know me, my names Ashley. I'm a recent Alma College Graduate with a BA in Art and Design. Alma College is in Alma, Michigan and is known as Scotland USA. So it's fitting that I've continued my education over the pound in Scotland at the University of Dundee, pursuing my Masters in their Animation and VFX program. While in Alma I self taught and emphasized in 3D modeling and texturing. I'm hoping to continue that path and develop a strong portfolio in 3D modeling and texturing, as well as advancing my general knowledge in regular animation and working in a team situation with the class. As part of our work here, we all are keeping blogs about what we're doing and what's inspiring us.  This space I'm gonna use to throw out my ideas and inspirations, to not only help continue to inspire me but to inspire others as well.  So to start off, I'll explain the program a little so as to give you a gist on the process I'm going through.  First Semester: Here we are doing a 40 credit module and a 20 credit module. The 40 credits is developing practices. So on fridays we all learn maya (I've spent 3 years in maya but that was all self teaching), we're also using this time to figure out ideas on our final project, that needs to be decided in just a few weeks. The 20 credit is a research module, this takes care of the writing part of the university's standard and also allows us to develop criticism analysis skills and able to research more into our areas of expertise.  Second Semester: Another 40 and 20 credit module. 40 credits is focused to more developing practices, and learning the skills we need to go into our fields. The 20 credit module is now a going live project. We will work as a group (class will probably be split in two) and work with a live production company. Working with them and ourselves we will pitch and create a short animation or special effects piece for them.  Third Semester: This semester is a full 60 credit module, and is all about finishing and creating our final project due at the end of August.    So here, you will see my ramblings on ideas for said final project, inspirations, and other tidbits from side projects we're doing to accomplish the skill set but the end of the year.  I hope you enjoy!