Kynan's Art & Sketch Blog

In my previous entries I forgot to talk about my target audience, with my final animation I was aiming it at a audience from 4 to 12 year olds. To appeal with my target audience, and to take advantage of the cartoonish looking max rig, I have created a cartoonish sneak walk with exaggerated movement which is easy to read and understand.

To identify my key poses I have used this example from ‘The Animators Survival Kit’, I drew out the contact poses and the passing pose, as the down and up ones aren’t as important. I successfully did it with my sneak walk but I actually drew out the wrong poses for the old man walk, I think its due to the weight shift is really subtle.

Reference image outlining key poses in a walk cycle

Old Man Walk Thumbnails

Sneak Walk Thumbnails

During class this week I prepared and showed two blocked out walk cycle animations. I have decided to go with the sneak walk as it was more fun to make and it is more expressive. The teacher and my classmates gave the following feedback, for the old man walk:

-The contact poses aren’t actually the correct poses, instead of the front foot just making contact the weight has already completely shifted towards the front foot.

-Add more movement to the torso, such side to side, and arching.

-More hip movement, right to left.

For the sneak walk:

-It has good arm movement and finger movement. Especially the way the arms make an arching movement.

in this project we undertook the completion of a pitch bible that satisfied the clients brief. We developed a property called free.run that involved robots doing parkour in a bottomless city.

My group and I maintained a strong communication throughout the project, we had several face to face meetings, but we only recorded four. I think we failed to take advantage of the meeting minute template, if they were used properly we could have identified issues with the project easier. We also communicated casually through Facebook where we we showed the work we had done and received feedback from each other, this was an important step in QA.

I was trying to make the inside of the building dark and mysterious so lighting was important, so I spent some time setting up the lights.

I animated the character lowering his visor and drawing his sword, but when he actually draws his sword in the scene it swings the wrong way, but it was still clear so I left it.

I had to readjust the lights from previous shots so that the shadow actually dropped on his foot to achieve the feeling that he is entering a dark new world.

It took a while to adjust the lights, I wanted them to barely illuminate the scene and the use the spot lights to make it more dynamic. I replaced some of the pillars from the animatic and replaced them with statues to make it more interesting. This is my favorite shot. 

The lighting was tricky in this one, I was trying to insinuate that the room he was walking into had more light, I think the results were awful but it is good enough.

This shot what the hardest to light as I wanted light filtering through to the two windows, I couldn’t figure it out. Chris then told me to make the windows transparent and translucent and then extrude them so they look like filtering light, it works fine.

This is where the animatic falls apart, the model of the dragon is really distracting and the rig was really rushed. The shot is one of those classic quick zoom outs to slowly reveal what you are looking at but it was disappointing.

This shot was simple, I had both hands tighten the grip on the on the sword to suggest tension, it isn’t apparent but it works with audio.

This was rough run where I just simply rose each foot rapidly, it works fine. I added to the shot a camera shake to help with the illusion of speed.

This is probably the worst shot of the animatic, the CAT rig for the dragon wasn't agreeing with what I was trying to do, so it looks like a bunch of noodles. I added and impact shake to show how strong and big the dragon is.

This is a simple tail swing it works well with the next shot.

This is the impact of the tail swing. I added a camera shake to add impact, it worked out well and it actually looks painful the audio isn't very good though.

In this shot I added a camera shake to show how hard the dragons tails is actually swinging. To animate it I basically attached  the tail to the characters head.

This week we where given the task of researching and preparing 2 blocked out animations, this is a key step in completing the walk cycle assessment. I like the idea of proposing several different walk block outs and letting people with a fresh view give you feedback, it seems like something that would happen in an actual production, as maybe the director or lead animator is unsure of what kind of walk he wants until he sees it. To conduct my research I first watched many 3d animated walk cycles to identify what was appealing about them and what kind of walk I would be interested in producing. I have decided to attempt a sneak walk as it it has a very interesting motion especially when it is very cartoonish, it has the potential of showing extra personality when done well. The other one is an old man walk cycle, there are many ways to do this one but I would like to do a very slow and stiff walk, as from what I watched it seems hard to make look right and I like taking on a challenge.

Sneak walk cycle reference

Old man walk cycle reference

This week my team and I presented our final project pitch, all of our work wasn’t completely ready, but all of us worked as hard as possible to get the most ready and presentable. During this presentation I didn't stumble over my words as much as lasts week’s presentation, although we did have some trouble with the slides and the playback of the videos was very dark. James spent a almost 10 hours rendering out the flythrough and it turns out that some of his materials and lights were broken so the final render was almost pitch black which was disappointing as the team was looking forward to showing off the city. After the presentation Brett solved the lighting and material problems and pointed out that final gather should be turned down and that we should use a skylight instead to fill in the bounce lights, I actually had the same thought, if he had of done that then he could cut down his render time and potentially he could have identified and fixed the problem with the lighting. This was a useful lesson when it comes to long render times.

In CUF200 I worked on my individual Performance Review, it was though talking about my weak Key Performance Indicators as sometimes the strategy is obvious but it is hard to put down onto paper.I have learnt many important lessons from my team project and I believe it will make me a better 3d artist because of it

Question WEEK 13

Describe and show visual examples of a creative showreel/s and 2 things you can emulate and why.

Daniehl Kho 2014 Demo Reel

A showreel is of an animators best tools to gain recognition and to gain job offers. A showreel should be made with a specific target in mind, there shouldn't be any content that isn't relevant to the  job one is trying to obtain. I have selected  this sculpting and modelling showreel as it is the field I am most interested in at the moment, also this is the showreel of the student who won cg student of the year run by Autodesk. 

First I would emulate the way he breaks down the structure of the images, first the finished product, the concept art, the mesh,  and finally the original sculpt. I would emulate this because it clearly outlines his process and it also the viewer to appreciate the quality of each of the elements.

This week I began to worry about the amount of work that still needed to be done for DAN 230, I still had the two character rigs to be done as well as most of their texturing. The team worked really hard this week with of us coming in almost every day including Saturday. In class we talked about getting a job after the diploma and the importance of networking and preparing a show reel, I identified a internship in Halfbrick studios as a potential first step in my career. Brett also shared a few tricks and many useful job searching websites, I actually signed up to one of them and I have received several emails with job opportunities. As I was finishing the rig for the Par character I learnt that the bones should be drawn as straight as possible from the front view. especially any hierarchy that involves any kind of IK setup. The problem was that when I assigned a controller to the swivel it actually changed the pivot and position of the knee or elbow bone. This week we had to present in CUF200 and maybe it was because I was really tired or nervous, but I completely stumble along though the presentation forgetting my points and taking big pauses, I think I will have to prepare more next time especially when entering the degree.

Question WEEK 12

Identify and Discuss two local companies/studios and the skills they are looking for when hiring new artists. 

Gameloft

http://www.gameloft.com/corporate/jobs/job-apply-details/13/?group=86&job=4280&loc=125&applyby=categ&mode=job&iis=Job+Board&iisn=Indeed.com

Gameloft is a mobile game developer, for the job i have the most interest in, they are looking for someone with more than 5 years experience for other 3D related jobs they were only looking for 2 years experience with some kinfolk of 3D software. They are interested in the applicants interests including a passion for games, which does make sense for a job hat involves developing games, this passion would be especially important with a medium to small sized team.

Halfbrick

http://halfbrick.com/careers/#game-artist

This week most of the assets were made for the flythrough. We didn’t have a meeting this week but instead helped each other refine the assets and textures for the fly through. We decided to let James do the lighting as he has the most experience with lighting and he was excited to do it. Tommy finished unwrapping the tower and the bridge and made some high quality hand painted textures. I was worried that when we placed Tommy’s assets in the fly through scene they would contrast with Tas’ photo based textures, but that are actually far enough from the camera that the contrast isn’t noticeable. I wasn’t to happy with the placement of the signs, as in my vision it all be more clustered, but I will probably make my own adjustments with scene before rendering and handing it in. I started rigging the par model, it is a fun process and I’ve learnt more than I expected about the process, especially how make a foot roll and how to make custom parameters.

Question WEEK 11

Describe and show visual examples of Lighting and Rendering in a 3D Production pipeline.

Lighting in a 3D production pipeline is the process of setting up various lights with different properties to fully achieve the potential of a 3D scene. A lighting artist must understand the vision that the director wants for each shot. They have a large amount of control over the mood, colour scheme and overall atmosphere. They must indicate how each light interacts with specific material and textures to achieve the best results possible. It goes hand in hand with rendering as for a lighting artist to fully understand how the lights interact they must render certain elements of the scene.

Pre-rendered frame from Halo 2 cinematic

Capture from Halo 2 gameplay

This week my team and I continued to discuss the flythrough, I drew out a simple storyboard to demonstrate the camera movement and give them team some direction and goal to work towards, this actually helped and I’m surprised that I didn’t try it out earlier. With the new direction of the storyboard we started developing assets for the environment, such as signs, windows, balconies and railings. Tas did most of the models, we discussed how we should make the signs, one option was to paint the sign as a texture on a plane, but we opted to make them with the spline tool so then we could apply a glow effect on the mesh in After Effects. A couple of days later I discovered that there was actually an option to create text and make it solid but it was already to late. In class we redid the animation principles and looked and some examples of walk cycles, this made think about I should animate the characters to give them a personality and to reflect their description in the treatment and the bios. Tas also helped with retyping one of the assessments we failed, he is really pulling his weight. He then started to make textures, but he was using photographs, something I didn’t have planed and I was worried that it wouldn’t look good but when I saw the finished result I was quite happy and although the resolution of the texture was low it was far enough from the camera it didn’t matter.

Question WEEK 10

Describe and show visual examples of biped and quadruped animations from animator showreels.

Quadruped and Biped exampe - Showreel by Liam Reynolds

Quadruped example - Showreel by Daniel Fotheringham

Biped animation refers to animating a human or any other humanoid creature. This is the most common type of animation that an animator will encounter, reference is useful for animating humans but a lot of the subtleties are filled in by the animators intuition as they have their own movement as reference.

My team and I had our fourth meeting, there wasn’t many matters that needed to be discussed as most of us knew what we had to do. I made sure everyone read the asset list I prepared and allowed them to add any other assets that they believed would be necessary for the set dressing. Tommy also shoed the progress on his second concept and it looked excellent, although as we had already started making assets, the 3d scene isn’t very loyal to the concept and we don’t have time to start over.I showed my finished 3D model for the Par character and everyone was happy about, I also finished the unwrapping and started working on the other character.This week in dan 230 and in dan 210 I learnt about rigging, I have been studying 3d animation casually for the last 2 years and rigging was the only elements of 3d that I really had no idea about, I thought it was going to be boring but it was interesting and poses its own challenges especially the weighting process.

Question WEEK 9

Describe and show visual examples of Character and Vehicle Rigging in 3D production.

Character Rigging

Rigging characters is done by placing bones within the 3d model, these will end up dictating how the character moves, for the animator to effectively manipulate the joints and bones, the technical artist must assign controls to each bone, and in some cases setup complicated hierarchies for simple movements. With character there is the extra layer of how each part of the body will deform as it moves, that is why the technical artist must assign weights to each vertices which will dictate how that specific vert will be affected by each bone object. For characters the rigger must also setup facial rigs and deform each facial muscle to give the character a wide variety of emotions. 

Vehicle Rigging

This week me and my team had another meeting, we continued to discuss any changes to the characters and we have finally decided to start working on 3d assets.Tommy brought in his first environment concept and it was excellent Me and it was excellent, it had some excellent designs for the main buildings and set the mood i was looking for. We gave him some feedback and then he came up with an updated version that looked even better.  Me and James decided to start working on the composition of the fly through to decide what we needed to model, we decided it should be a night scene. It being a night scene would make lighting harder, but it would bring interest to the neon lights and hide any flaws with modelling and texturing. 

Question WEEK 8

Describe and show visual examples of typical 3D Modelling & Animation Project Stages

PRE-PRODUCTION

Storyboards

The storyboards are used to decide the composition and rough timing of each shot required for the project, this is especially important for a 3D production as the storyboards help the production team understand what parts they have to model and it helps out with laying out each scene. It outlines basic movement and camera movement for each shot which is useful guide for the animators.

Layouts

The basic position of each element in every scene is placed in a 3d scene. This is when all the locations are designed.

Model Sheets

The model sheets are clean drawings of each character, showing all their possible expressions as an aid for animators to keep them consistent. These are also sent to the modellers as reference.

Animatics

Rough animations are made for complex scenes and VFX heavy scenes to help the director plan them out.

PRODUCTION

Layout

In this stage the layout artists reproduces the storyboard into a 3d scene with basic geometry, in this stage the camera movement, character movements and composition is decided.

Modelling

The modelling departments are usually split into organic modellers (characters) and hard surface modellers (buildings, weapons, vehicle, etc.). The modellers us the model sheets and work with the original artists to produce a loyal reproduction of the 2d reference, they also work closely with technical artists to make sure the rigging process is easier. They finally produce a model that has enough detail and has efficient topology. They usually also unwrap the models so they are ready for the texturing stage.

Texturing

Texturer’s reproduce the colours and detail of the original concept onto the 3D model. They do so by painting or manipulating photos on the flat uv map made by the modeller. In this stage some of the detail that wasn’t efficient to make with the model is painted in a way that it look as though it is part of the model.

Lighting

With lighting the mood and believability of scene is set. A lighting artist has to bring the development team vision to life , as well as keep all the 3d elements together by considering light intensity, how it interact with shaders, and colour theory and harmony.

Rigging

The technical artist has to define how a character moves, or how a mechanical objects move by assigning bones and controls to a finished model. They have to make basic animations to see how the mesh deform and make correction if needed, by adjusting the wighting of individual vertices.

Animation

In this stage the animators meticulously work on several scenes assuring the poses, timing and flow of the animation is at a finished level. If it is motion captured animating then animator will work on cleaning up the animation and animating the eyes and hands. In this stage the effects team work highly computational effects such smoke, water and explosions.

POST-PRODUCTION

Compositing

The compositing department is in charge of bringing together all the lighted 3d scenes and making the final render. They make corrections were needed, they do colour grading and other rendering related tasks.

Sound Editing

They prepare the final sound mix, adding any effects sounds and ensuring lip sync.

Editing

This week I finished all of my character designs, I was quite happy with all of them. For my team meeting in DAN 230 my team and I discussed any changes I should make to the characters. Some of the changes we decided to make were to make the evil characters more intimidating and we took some time discussing the logic behind the par characters legs, but we haven’t decided if we should change them or not. The team member that is responsible for the environment design hasn’t finished his designs so I might have to tell the team to start modelling assets for the environment even without any concept art, it’s not the best result but we have no other option. My plan for the environment is to create individual modular assets, for example we will be making 3 different doors that can go on three different buildings to keep each building unique and interesting. This week I have set up a management folder for my group and hopefully this will help keep everything on track.

Question WEEK 7

Find and link to the blog of a practitioner who has contributed to a piece of work that inspires you. Show examples of their work and describe the details of their role on the project.

http://droidsforsale.com/home/

https://www.facebook.com/ArtOfJoshHerman

3D sculpts by Josh Herman

This is the work of Josh Herman, he has contributed many films that inspire me, these include Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers and Iron Man. He is a 3D character artist and works for Marvel Studios. He has worked on several video games and other films.

His job is to design and sculpt 3D characters and suits using concept art as reference,  and sometimes he just uses comic book reference and actually designs the character as he goes along (as is the case with his model for Groot). He mainly uses Zbrush to produce high detail models that are the visual reference for many marvel movies.

This week I’m trying to complete the documentation necessary for the CUF200 aspect of the project, the information that me and my team have to provide is tedious, specifically the risk assessment document where it is hard to asses what is a risk as most of it is assumed. The most important document for me will be the schedule as I have to set my team deadlines so that we don't all fall behind as some of them are waiting for the concepts to be complete so that they can start modelling. There is also one member that isn't particularly doing anything at the moment so I have to figure out what role I could give him in the concepting stage.

My biggest concern with the project is that my team still doesn't completely understand the look and story of free.run, I believe it is my fault and I will focus in explaining the story and look thoroughly. If they truly understand the project I think they will be more passionate and will understand how what they are doing fits into the bigger picture. I’m currently designing the secondary characters and at this stage I'm trying to identify elements that would allow the robots to look like they exist in the same world, such features include a large of light in the middle of the face and large and exaggerated proportions. Considering that I don't want the characters to look to similar either as that might make them too monotonous that they are part of the same squad. Im also refining the story treatment, Im hoping my team can provide me with feedback about the treatment such as elements that don't make sense or that don't fit, and I'm also trying to incorporate any good suggestions they might have, but I dont want to get to the point where there are too many voices involved with the story development. I do want to incorporate a villain as it is better for young audiences to have a tangible representation of the bad side.

Question WEEK 6

Find an inspiring Image or Screenshot, create a Colour Swatch and discuss Why the colours work/or don’t work.

Image by Eve Ventrue (check him out)

Colour Swatch made with Adobe color

This was the first week where I really discussed how we should approach the deliverables with my team, the hardest part was actually allocating each member a role that would suit their strengths. My first priority was to get all the concept and art bible work done so that when it was time to make the 3d elements it would all look consistent. I think the biggest lesson I had this week was regarding paperwork, it was really boring to write, but I am starting to understand the importance of management documents even for a small project. I hope the fact that we have documents that outline our schedule will help the team to stay on track. Presenting those documents was a big challenge as it was all dull information that repeated itself in a few areas. With the scope I am a bit worried about how we will produce something effectively conveys the scale and look of the city concepts I’ve made.

Question WEEK 5

Find an example of an imaginary Animated world and Discuss how they’ve made it believable.

San Fransokyo - Big Hero Six

This week I made my pitch in front of the class, I wasn’t sure if it would be successful as I had swapped ideas about a week before, but I think I am way more excited about the parkour robots idea and it carried over into my presentation. I wasn’t able to produce all the concept work for the presentation but I finished all by the submission date. In the end my idea got selected and I got three members that I get along well with, which might be a good thing for communication but might also make the process a bit less professional. Through this process I have learnt the value of designing characters based of of a story and character traits, for example I wanted the main character to be agile so I gave him interesting legs. I have to improve on my writing as my script wasn’t to impressive, but hopefully I can rewrite it the group process.

Question WEEK 4

Find an example of a Creative IP court battle and discuss both sides of the case.

http://ipwhiteboard.com.au/fun-games-copycat-litigation/

Magic: the Gathering

                                                          VS

Hex: Shards of Fate

This IP battle is quite interesting as it concerns a big hole in the IP protection of original games against copycat games. Wotc, the company that own the online card trading game Magic; the Gathering, had trouble pursuing any legal action against Cryptozoic as game mechanics and design aren’t protected in any copyright law. So fundamentally a simple visual change to a game is enough for it to be free from any consequences.

On the side of Hex I can see the work that is put into making new art, audio and code to complete the game, but when it comes to game design I think they haven’t made an effort to be original. I understand that most games have inspiration from each other but original games usually introduce new mechanics to the formula or give a unique spin, developing these mechanics takes time, effort and money so if they cant develop new and interesting game design elements they don’t deserve to get away with copying Magic.

In this week I was developing some ideas for my robot world but I wasn't satisfied with any of them, as some of the brief elements restricted some of my ideas especially, the g rating. I came up with an abstract idea of a robot world with overgrown jungles, the idea wasn't great but as I was making the moodboard for my current idea I encountered a piece of concept art that really inspired me to completely change the direction of this robot world property. It was a solid direction and it was the first idea that got me truly excited. I further developed the idea visually and finally I wrote a script to solidify all the elements that I had in my mind. I’m not that capable of a writer so I tried to keep the plot simple and avoid overcomplicating it. Keeping in mind that the target audience includes children I included themes of brotherhood by making the two main characters estranged brothers, and to entertain the older audiences I included underlying themes of corruption and the consequences of urban development.

Question WEEK 3

Find a Pitch Document available online and Discuss what you believe is the weakest part of the pitch and how you would improve it.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/32211144/Bioshock-Pitch-Document

This pitch document for the 2007 game Bioshock is effective at outlining the scope and goals of the games. It defines the mechanics of the games clearly and it mentions very ambitious goals, which in the end product I believe they surpassed their original scope.