Glitch - Alexander Bedminster

---------- CONCLUSION ------------

2009-06-22T03:10:00.001-07:00

Ok, firstly I must point out that through out the course of this year, there has been many obstructions that have altered my work proccess. At the very start, before Glitch was even made, I was just a regular worker that had been recruitd by 2 directors to do work on their films.
Kanika Andrews was infact the original director and story writer of Glitch. Glitch's prodction team also consisted of 5 members, all with their fair share of work. As term 1 came to the half way point, every memember including the director Kanika, had dropped out of the group except me and Prince Short.

We had a long disscussion amongst ourselfs and although most groups had an average of 5 people working on their films, me and Prince decided to continue on Glitch because we were confindent that we would be able to produce a good piece of work.

Because the group went from 5 members to 2, the work load was extremly intense. My social time was completly sacrificed and I spent most days and nights working on the film. At the end of term 1, we were feeling extremly pressured and stressed and felt that it was too late to change groups and work with other productions. Even one of my tutors suggested to work on another film and drop our film.

Before term 2 started, me and prince did an enormous amount of work during the christmas holidays. This was a big boost and our confidnce rose. We also recruited Rahul to be a freelancer just to work on a small scene in our film and work with after effects. As term 2 went underway, dissertation and other projects really got in our way. However, we didnt give up and continued to work hard every day and every night. It seemed like our once "doomed" film was slowly turning into a success.

Term 3 began and by this time, we was feeling confident and pleased with how we were working and with our project on a whole. We changed ideas and parts of the film continuly every week when we would meet up. By this time the story that Kanika originally had was completly changed and rebuilt, everything from the characters to the enviroment and story was changed. Me and Prince directed the whole production of the film aswell as working on it from start to finish.

We both did modeling, animating, lighting, texturing, sound, concept art, storyboarding, animatics, productions, posters, logos, contracts, production schedules, organising meetings, and obviously directing as well. Yes this is a lot of work for 2 people to handle but we did it, and we did it well in my opinon.

------------------------------------

When watching the final film, I am proud of my part in making this short film. I feel like we truly have risen above the expectations of people and ourselfs. The film, I felt had a good overall pacing, nothing was rushed, but there were some parts that I felt coud of been speed up slightly.
On the visual side, my part and Princes parts looked nothing like each other, which was exactly what we wanted. They looked like 2 seperate worlds in the same story.

There are a few parts that I could change but wouldnt feel that it would be that neccessary to do so. Maybe the film could have been slighty shorter but getting most of our ideas and scenes across was fundamental in the story and the running time is absolutly fine because the viewer shouldn't get bored.

Maybe there are a few unneeded gags in there but that is for the vieers to decided, because at the end of the day, the more people you cater to, the better your delivery.

So overall I must say and give an enormous thankyou to Rahul for his good hard work, and to Dan Dali and Mike for their feedback and comments, but most of all to my co-director Prince who worked along side me, day in day out to help pump out the film to the level of quality it is today dpite all the obstructions that got in our way.

(30) HAND IN PART 2...

2009-06-22T03:08:00.000-07:00

Today I Prepaerd the 3 folders (Artist,Animation,Technical) and compiled them along with production schedule, my blog address and the final film onto a dvd and submitted it in the morning. Again Everything went very smoothly :)

(29) HAND IN PART 1...

2009-06-22T03:07:00.001-07:00

I came in today (Friday 19th June 2009) and handed in the final film on disc to my tutor Mike. Everything went smooth as I was infact the first person to hand it in.

(28) MY SOUNDS...

2009-06-22T02:56:00.000-07:00

After Robert Newman gave me the completed audio file for our film, I felt that certain scenes lacked certain sound effects and therefore created my own sounds using my mouth and added them into the final film...

Here is a quick video that I compiled to show you the sounds I made at home.

(UPLOAD SOUNDS FILES HERE)

I also added music in the background to help get the different senses of frustration and mystery in the scenes.

(27) NEARLY DONE...

2009-06-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

After working our socks off, we all meet up with the final renders and compiled everything together as one video. We did a few tweaks here and there after watching the video, like Rahuls scene although speed up, we still thought that it dragged out longer then needed, also parts of princes scenes were speed up and slowed down. After compiling the video once more, we gave the video to Robert Newman (sound designer) and told him to meet a week later to check his progress.

I felt that the film is looking strong, and most importantly it is turning out how I first pictured it in my head. There are certain scenes that I fill are spot on and a few scenes that I still want to tweak, but none of which will interfere with the timing of the video or the sound that is currently being produced by Robert Newman.

Rahul made some credits which were good, but me and Prince (both Co-directors) told him to change the colouring and the font, timing and images that would be shown.

We also decded to have the text of the words "GLITCH" to appear in the opening scene just to gt a nice blended introduction to the film.

(26) DEGREE SHOW POSTERS AND LOGOS...

2009-06-09T02:28:00.000-07:00

Now was the time to sort out a few A1 boards and a complete logo for our film. I had made a logo earlier on in term 1 I belive, but after speaking to one of the Degree show organisers he told me the logo needed to be in "block colour" and there for I decided that my previous colour toned logo would need to be scrapped and I would do a completly new one for our group...

Here is the logo that I had made, I made 2 but decided to use the 1st one, for the main fact that the group decided on it...

LOGO WE ARE USING...

LOGO WE ARE NOT USING...

I personally like them both and feel that the 2nd logo might be a better concept but we all voted and I really didnt mind in the end.

And here are some of the boards that I developed for the show...

Just simple plain white backgrounds, with the main characters that I both made, showing them head to head and in poses that you know there is a conflict between them.

(25) CONTINUING WITH WORK...

2009-06-09T02:19:00.000-07:00

Every few days me and my group are meeting up, showing eachther work and discussing how the work we have done could be better or ideas and then adding the rendered scenes onto the animatic. This week I met up with the sound designer and he showed me a demo of sound that he was using for one of the scenes. I was extremly please with his work and although it was patchy in certain places and the timing was a bit wrong, he knew this and told me that this was only a demo to show you the types of sounds and style in which he was going to be working with. I then showed Prince and Rahual later on and they were also pleased.

I was also working alot faster then I should of been and I ws surprising well ahead on my schedule that I had for myself. Which is good, because I know I would also have another work load to take on board in regardess to my film in the dregree show at Ravensbourne.

(24) SOUND MEETING...

2009-05-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

Today I arrange another meeting with my group and the sound designer "Robert Newman" to come along. We all sat down and discus the beginnings of the sound design for this film. We gave him a section of our animatic to work on and that he will bring back and show u on Thursday what he has done. The main section that he will be working on at the moment is Rahul's section (the microchip room with the robot). Everything was clear and understood and there were no problems.

After this meeting we all sat down and I decided to make a list of some changes that we need to do. Not just myself but Rahul and Princes parts, to just make the film better. There were a lot of ideas thrown around to give our film a better edge and I ended up making a list to which I gave everyone to hold on to.

Here is the list...

May 14th

CHANGES

* Credits overlay on beginning scene

* Change cuts on veron introduction scene

* Clock to show time

* Never have static camera on Princes scenes and animate binary moving.

* Electrons/orbs going through wire on first transition, camera follows orbs into mother board and into the Rahul's room.

* Prince's scenes need to be rendered with Quantel PAL res (NOT 640x800)

* Alex needs to give Rahul 5 second clip to show in my credits.

* Prince Glitch scene, have glitch close to camera, flash steps away a few times then on last flash step Glitch is right up close to the screen to make the viewer jump back.

* Vernon not sitting at desk in scene 10, but squatting on his chair typing frantically.

* When Vernon puts in anti-virus CD, camera zooms into CD drive and follows police orbs through the wire into princes scene.

* Vernon face turns red like thermometer using prem pro/after effects.

* When critical error on princes scene, camera starts with a red screen, zooms back slowly to reveal glitch then zooms back even further to reveal the red glitch infected world. (Make sure the whole screen is filled with storms, clouds, red lighting, red binary, red electricity etc......)

* After Prince's red infected glitch world scene, grabs keyboard and smashes it, letters fly out towards screen spelling out "Glitch". camera transition back through the wire and looks at Vernon from behind the screen. Vernon grabbing screen(camera) and shaking it and falls over and drops the screen on it side/diagonal position (Vernon looks distorted/fish eye/concave).

* Last scene, Vernon peeking his head from underneath the table and looking at the screen, screen says "welcome to....the worlds most reliable computer systems ever)

(23) FLASH AND THE INTERFACE...

2009-05-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

In my scenes, I have tohe role of not only animatng Vernon and his enviroment, but also his computer and what is going to be going on his actually monitor. This is the first time that I will be combining 2d animtion with 3d animation and I must admit I am nervous.

At first I tried a test on Maya to simply render the scene whislt having an animating movie clip as the texture of the screen. This however did not work for the render settings I was using (Mental Ray) did not allow this to happen.

I was stuck and couldnt seem to find any help on methods to accomplish what I was trying to achieve. I finally took this into my own hands and created my own method. I animated the screen using pictures and imgaes I made in flash and then used Premier Pro to over lay the animation onto the maya rendered scene.

I also took a sngle frame created by Maya (Scene1camera01.tiff) and I would edited the static image in Photoshop. I would cut out the monitor frame and anyother things that will be infront of the flash animation layer and put that on top in Premier Pro.

Heres a simple diagram of how I layered this in the animation in Premier Pro...

Desgining the interface was not to bad. I didnt want to rip off anyothe GUI like Apple Mac or Windows Vista/XP etc... so I just mad my own in photoshop. Here are the basic animations of the screen that I animated in flash...

Normal Screen...

Error Screen...

(22) CHANGES TO THE ANIMATIC...

2009-05-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

After viewing our animatic, there are a lot of issues that me and my group felt needed to change in order to get the best out of the film. Firstyl we felt that there were too many transitions from my scenes (Vernon's office) to Prince's scenes (Glitch mini-universe). There were simply to many and they were giving us a slight sense of dizziness. We still want to have a few in there but we are going to taking out 70% of them. This will also help the run time of the film be shorter.

Another change I am going to be making in my scenes in particular are the amount of cuts and camera changes. In some of my test playblast renders, I noticed that the camera would often stay on the character for too long. The viewer can get bored from looking through the same camera and the same angle for too long and so I'm going to simply add a few more cuts in certain scenes to keep the animation looking busy.

(21) PLAN AND SCHEDULE....

2009-05-13T03:57:00.000-07:00

Ok now that I am in the last weeks heading up to the final deadline I hav just remade and corrected the correct plan of action that I wil need to follow in order to meet the targets this term.

As you can see, Ive made sure that not 1 day is wasted this term for there is alot to get through.

(20) THE START OF TERM 3...

2009-05-06T02:34:00.000-07:00

Ok it is the start of the last term. Everything that me Prince and Rahul need to do has to be done this term! I had a nice Easter because of the weather but my girlfriend was in hospital and I spent a lot of time with her so my work process slowed down quite a bit. However this is not an excuse and I WILL make up for lost time.

During the final thoughts of the whole class in a group discussion I made a contact with a sound designer. His name is ROBERT NEWMAN. A second year sound designer. We exchanged emails and numbers and were in contact with during the Easter. I held a meeting in the Easter for him to meet up with me and my group and discuss what type of work with sound we are looking for. After the meeting we finalised the work load of everyone and Robert is now going to be put in charge with the sound. He stated that he mainly focuses on sound effects and not actual background music, but I told him that both are going to be as important as each other.

The next step was firstly for him to do some experiments with our animatic that we gave him. and the step beyond that is to make a complete playbasted of the whole film and give it to him so that he can use the correct timing to make his sounds, effects and music.

So after looking at everyones work after the holidays it was clear that the group was on the right path to completing the project and it was looking good. We had a new tutor for this term DAN DALI and we introduced him to our team and our working to which he gave a bit of feedback with. After this meeting with him we agreed to meet every week and my group and I are going to cut a few things out, mainly the transactions between the scene because the risk of creating a dizziness.

Let the final hurdles BEGIN!!!

(19) CONCLUSION (TERM 2)

2009-03-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

The term comes to an end and so begins the final stages of the film making process. During this term I have actually gone back and reworked a lot of the old ideas and concepts for this project. Storyboards and animatics were redone as well as the finalising of the modeling of both the characters and the environment. As I look forward to term 3 I know there is still much to do. Sound, editing and compiling as well as animating will all be addressed in these final stages. However there is one thing that will need to be addressed earlier on in term 3 and that is Vernon's computer. His screen will be animated with 2d graphics from FLASH and therefore I will need to look into how about I can compile this 2d animation within the 3d animation. It is something that I have never done before but look forward to trying it out and changeling myself again.

GROUP MEMBERS

To be honest now that the old members of the group have gone and the new member Rahul was taken on board, this new team seems to be a lot more organised and in touch with each others workings. We meet up face to face many times a week to discuss and show each other our works. So far this term has been (I feel) a lot more organised and structured compared to last term.

Rahul's work: From looking at his work and his blog I am please with the work he has produced. It fits in perfectly with what me and Prince invisioned and seems like his work will fit in nicely with mine and Prince's work. Next term he will work alongside Prince with the Glitch world, and help to texture and visualise Princes environment.

Prince's work: Prince's work seems to be making a good shape. I wasn't 100% sure on how he planning on going about making the Glitch micro world, but after seeing some new animatics he did I was pleasantly surprised. I got excited and now just await him to finish his part for the film. Next term he will continue working on the glitch microworld environment and start animating as well as compiling a few transactions between the scenes that we had previously discussed.

My work: Next term I will be able to animate and add sound to my scenes and environments. This for me will be the fun part of working. Creating my character and environment is fun but making them come to life is even funner. I will stretch my animating skills as far as I can and attempt to put real character in Vernon. Term 3. . . here I come!

(18) TEST AND COMPARE....

2009-03-10T03:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, now that the 3d blockout animations have been fully done to my satisfaction, I got feedback from my group members and everything seems to be on track. They were pleased and so I moved onto the next step. This is just the final step before, the main animating process starts.

Firstly I did a quick small render of test animation using both the environment and the modeled character Vernon...

Everything seems to be in order. The lighting is fine, the texturing seems to be correct and the general mood is perfect for what I had invisioned in my mind.

--------------- COMPARISION OF ANIMATIC TO ANIMATION -------------------

Here I made a video doing a comparision to the animatic and the real animation to show how I will utilise the camera shots in the animatic and take them across to the animation. However this is not the final rendered version of the animation that I will produce, but more of a guide line just to compare it with.

It is safe to say I am pleased with this and my animation of my "Vernon scenes" can commence!

(17) BLOCK OUT ANIMATION...

2009-03-06T09:40:00.000-08:00

Now that I have everything modelled, textured and rigged up and ready to animate, I made sure that the camera shot that I was going to use would be good and work well with tthe content of the scenes.
There is absolutly no need to get too detailed in the block out for its purpose is to just make sure the composition of the scenes will fit into my storyboards and visual ideas. So I created a cube like figure to represent Vernon and a quick blocked out moel of the environment to animate in.

SCENE 01 (BLOCK OUT)

SCENE 06 (BLOCK OUT)

SCENE 08 (BLOCK OUT)

SCENE 10 (BLOCK OUT)

SCENE 12 (BLOCK OUT)

SCENE 14 (BLOCK OUT)

SCENE 16 (BLOCK OUT)

SCENE 18 (BLOCK OUT)

SCENE 19 (BLOCK OUT)

(16) RE-WORKED ANIMATIC...

2009-02-24T02:30:00.000-08:00

After doing the storyboards I also re-did the animatic to help follow
on from the proccess. Again I kept what was already needed and input the
new material where appropriate. Here is the final animatic of my
scenes...

SCENE 01: Vernon settling into the office, knocks over pen pot, camera
zooms into computer

SCENE 06: Vernon get first error and types in sequence and clears the
errors

SCENE 08: Vernon gets second error, types in same sequence but doesn’t
work. Gets angry and types franticly.

SCENE 10: Vernon runs a virus scan

SCENE 12: Vernon’s error disappears, Vernon is happy and relaxes with a smile.

SCENE 14: Vernon flips out because the error comes back and says
critical error.

SCENE 16: Vernon going crazy, smashing up office, spills coffee onto
key board and causes sparks and computer starts sparking. Computer
screen blacks out

SCENE 18: Computer resets

SCENE 19: Vernon is happy

And here is the final Animatic of the whole story, (along with
storyboard and animatic videos from Prince Short)...

(15) RE-WORKED STORYBOARDS...

2009-02-24T02:28:00.000-08:00

After reviewing the latest scene order and what scenes were now deleted and which new scenes were replaced, the story boards had to be redone. Using some of the old storyboard images and putting together some new ones in the correct place here is the new flow of the storyboards that I have developed...

SCENE 01: Vernon settling into the office, knocks over pen pot, camera zooms into computer

SCENE 06: Vernon get first error and types in sequence and clears the errors

SCENE 08: Vernon gets second error, types in same sequence but doesn’t work. Gets angry and types franticly.

SCENE 10: Vernon runs a virus scan

SCENE 12: Vernon’s error disappears, Vernon is happy and relaxes with a smile.

SCENE 14: Vernon flips out because the error comes back and says critical error.

SCENE 16: Vernon going crazy, smashing up office, spills coffee onto key board and causes sparks and computer starts sparking. Computer screen blacks out

SCENE 18: Computer resets

SCENE 19: Vernon is happy

---------------------- GROUP MEETING ---------------------

2009-02-12T02:50:00.000-08:00

Ok, my group had a meeting to discuss where we were and where we need to go this term. After talking through our progress with my tutor, he gave us a few ideas and directions to go to which me and my group feel we should definatly consider.

The first issue addressed was "the glitch world". Prince and Rahul are in charge of this department and the idea of not having such "literal" world was pushed to the surface. This ment that the character "Glitch" would not look like how I have made him. instead they will go for a more abstract approach with a sureal visual style.

To clarify all of this, a new set of storyboards were made and a new animatic is now going to be developed. Luckly I dont have to change too much of my department, but a few things will be tweaked.

I decided to make a list of the new scenes and who will be in charge of those scenes...

GLITCH STORY AND SCENES

ALEX SCENES
PRINCE SCENES
RAHUL SCENES

PRINCE AND RAHUL SCENES

SCENE 01: Vernon settling into the office, knocks over pen pot, camera zooms into computer

SCENE 02: Through the wires and inside the hard drive, shows motherboard, camera trails into section of mother board and into a room via air vent (following an electron)

SCENE 03: Inside the room. Camera emerges from air vent, follows 2 orbs through the course, then on the 3^rd orb, it gets infected and turns red. Camera shows infection and creation of glitch. Camera zooms into infected glitch orb.

SCENE 04: Inside the glitch world, glitch is created. Camera shows establishing shot of glitch world with binary etc. Glitch emerges and starts flying towards binary.

SCENE 05: Glitch infects the first string of binary. Binary changes colour to red once infected and the binary stops moving as well.

SCENE 06: Vernon get first error and types in sequence and clears the errors

SCENE 07: Shows binary (infected) becomes blue or green again, but glitch infects another one, which then creates a chain reaction and infects another.

SCENE 08: Vernon gets second error, types in same sequence but doesn’t work. Gets angry and types franticly.

SCENE 09: Glitch has almost infected the whole world. Camera shows glitch world slowly being infected to the max

SCENE 10: Vernon runs a virus scan

SCENE 11: Virus scan works and police orbs start flying around shooting the infected binary and returning it to normal until all is clear.

SCENE 12: Vernon’s error disappears, Vernon is happy and relaxes with a smile.

SCENE 13: police orb drives off camera and the camera shows glitch hiding behind binary.

SCENE 14: Vernon flips out because the error comes back and says critical error.

SCENE 15: Glitch world completely infected and glitch flying about with evil laugh etc…

SCENE 16: Vernon going crazy, smashing up office, spills coffee onto key board and causes sparks and computer starts sparking. Computer screen blacks out

SCENE 17: Glitch world blacks out

SCENE 18: Computer resets and so does glitch world

SCENE 19: Vernon is happy

(14) MODELING THE ENVIROMENT...

2008-12-15T07:26:00.000-08:00

Ok now before I go crazy with the modeling of the environment I will do simple block out style modeling for the environment and then once I'm happy with it and feel that it is working then I will go in and add the detail...

During my modeling I am constantly looking at the concept arts and layouts for reference, but note: colours, lighting and texture are bound to change from this block out version...

Step (1) - I started off in a birds eye view. I looked at my layout design and started to make the floor structure starting with the main executive offices with box polygons...

Step (2) - I then added doorways and added slight tweaks to the model...

Step (3) - After that I started on making the cubicle walls out of panels...

Step (4) - Here is the basic layout of the cubicle areas and the main offices on the outer rim of the floor. I done simple "Lambert" colouring to help the colour coding of the floor.

Step (5) - I added a transparent layer and glass to the main executive office area and put quick simple low poly buildings.

Step (6) - I then added ceiling lights to help light up the floor...

Step (7) - I added a simple directional light out side the building to shin through the glass walls of the main executive offices.

Step (8) - I made a quick video of the virtual space of my environment to show you a greater sense of the 3d space that I will be building upon...

Step (9) - I am pleased with the basic foundation of the environment and now to concentrate more on the place of action (Which is inside Vernon's cubicle). As you can see the cubicle is square and box shaped and looks boring and dull. It is my job to make this space into a believe office space but maintain the dullness...

Step (10) - Firstly making the table was pretty simple. A simple "L" shaped polygon with legs was place against the walls and was given a dull grey surface to it.

Step (11) - Making props for the room. Now this is probably the longest part of the modeling phase. The props will need to be detailed enough for close up camera shots and also be intractable with Vernon. I also want the objects in the room to be taken notice of and not just there for the sake of being there.

On the pin board I have actually put postit notes and papers that contain "Actual" information and messages to the viewers to help the viewers pay more attention to the animation...

Step (12) - Making the computer... Now making the computer is vital for the computer screen plays a vital role in the animation. It is the interface between Vernon's reality and the Glitch world. The screen will be animated but as of now, animating the screen will be done at a later date...

Step (13) - Storage Space... There has to be storage space in an office and obviously all the storage space and draws will be made so that Vernon can interact with them. Opening and closing draws, pulling papers out of cabinets etc... will all be implemented into the final animation

As of now, the cubicle is looking to my satisfaction, the colours are not to bright and it still feels like a dull boring office that is beginning to look believable as a working environment...

LIGHTING

Now, I am going to quickly touch upon the lighting system here because it is a system that I have never used before. Not only is the lighting system different the rendering setting is different as well. I am using Mental Ray for Maya. It is basically just a more sophisticated rendering system that utilises a better and more realistic depth to lighting. I have never used this system before and a large scale project and the rendering time does increase dramatically, but the overall effect is better and more realistic, especially when using detailed textures, materials and lighting.

(...Example Below...)

I have used many lights, over 20 in fact just to light the environment to my satisfaction. Most of these are point lights, from the ceiling lights. That including the global illumination and final gathering enabled, the light really pours into the scene perfectly.

(13) MODELING AND RIGGING GLITCH...

2008-12-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

Ok I will be modeling Glitch is a similar way to Vernon but with some certain differences. The render style is going to be changed and the rigging is going to be completely different to Vernon's rig set up...

MODELING PROCESS

Step (1) - I began in a similar way to how i started with Vernon. I modeled the basic head shape (half the face/head) using polygons and manually moving the vertices's...

Step (2) - I then selected faces and applied basic colour to the model so I could model more accurate and see what the outcome was like. I also made a simple hole to were the mouth will be

Step (3) - After doing that, I extruded a face from the top of the end along a CV curve to make the tail...

Step (4) - I then fine tuned the tail and added the point at the end (Mouse cursor style) as well as adding divisions to the tail to smooth the curve slightly better...

Step (5) - I then made a start on making the teeth with polygons.
Note: I applied a "Toon shader" to the mesh

Step (6) - After completing the teeth I mirrored the teeth as well as the mesh of the head and made sure all the lines and borders are connected properly...

Step (7) - I then smoothed the mesh and added slight detail around the eyes and fixed the teeth more, for the middle teeth i the bottom row were not looking right...

Step (8) - A profile screen shot was taken and compared to my concept art to make sure it is accurate...

Step (9) - Side and top views were also viewed upon to show the exact dimensions, making sure the head was looking correct, the tail is not too thin or too long etc...

Step (10) - Then I applied an outline of black using paint effects. This was done because the world that Glitch will be in is not like Vernon's world. It is not the real world and therefore it was decided that the glitch world will be more surreal so I am just making sure Glitch will fit into his world better...

RIGGING AND WEIGHTING PROCESS...

Step (1) - I started off by making normal bones all the way down the tail, with bones for the jaw and eyes...

Step (2) - After rigging the main bones structure of the character, I parented the relevant joint to the teeth and I made a mouth controller from a curve to control the opening and closing of the mouth. I also made a global control for the whole rig...

Step (3) - Here you can see the complete rig with a the curves I made. I made control curves for the tail so it is easier to animate each joint, but I might add more controls to the tail if when I do a test animation it is a little bit stiff...

Step (4) - After smooth binding the rig I fine tweaked the mouth and tail using the component editor for the weighting to make sure everything moves and deforms how I want it to...

Testing the animation...

MOUTH TEST ANIMATION...

TAIL MOVEMENT ANIMATION...

---------------- SUMMATIVE ASSESMENT 5th December 2008 ---------------

2008-12-05T07:22:00.000-08:00

It was the last day of term and my group presented the work that we had done so far and the progress to where we are. The tutor felt that our idea was interesting bu the connection of the story was still not structured properly. This is largely to do with the animatic and how it did not portray the ideas that we wanted clearly. After sitting down afterwards for a very long discussion, myself and Prince got a solid story and fixed all the issues addressed in the assessment that were raised by the tutors. In term 2, Original members, Kanika, Natasha and Mehmet are 100 disconnected from the project and a new member Rahul will be jumping on board to help Prince with the Glitch City.

We decided to redo the animatic and story boards over the Christmas break so we are all set for the start of term 2

(12) BRANDING...

2008-12-04T05:56:00.001-08:00

As the term has come to an end, I have made a logo to go with the story and this is my result...

Colour was an important factor, I tried using reds and blues but none of them seemed to capture the essence of the virtual world other than the colour green.

-------------- END OF TERM CONCLUSION -------------

2008-12-01T07:33:00.001-08:00

Its the end of term and the end of the Post Production section of this project. I decided to show my thoughts on everything.

MY ROLE
Well my role has been changing every week since the start of the project. More and more work has been slowly piled onto my shoulders as this term has progressed. With an original 5 members to just 2 now, the work load has really been injected into my face. I am pleased with my work and how I have conducted myself this term. Instead of moaning at people and getting angry I just smiled and got on with what needs to be done.

The importance of working together in a group is extremely important and valuable and I believe I have shown leader like qualities when doing this project. Groups don't always work out how you plan, everyone knows that, but the main thing is, you get the job done at the end of the day, and the job IS done.

MY WORK
Looking at my blog and all my work, I am quite proud of the amount that I have done. Looking at other peoples blogs and their work is good and everyone seems to have done great work and a lot of it, but what I feel my work has that most peoples hasn't is variety. My role has me doing a bit of everything and I like doing that. I don't like to limit myself to one thing, its great challenge to push yourself and take that risk when working, for I could of easily given up on this project and worked with other people.

PRINCES WORK
I look at princes blog and monitor his progress daily, we are in constant communication with each other and take this project very seriously. If I had Princes role to do the scenes in the Glitch City I admit, I would have done it completely differently. The style and environments would look completely different but thats only because we are 2 different people. His work is good and I am totally please with his ideas that he has come up with. What I realise is that our 2 styles are beneficial to this project. We are working on 2 separate worlds within one story and by having a completely different style in the 2 worlds will help contrast them and distinguish to the viewer the differences in the 2 realities.

LOOKING FORWARD...
Now I look onwards and upwards to term 2. Term 2 is going to be getting ready for animation. This will include bringing all our concepts to life. Modeling characters and environments will be time consuming especially with a 2 man project but I have worked so hard on this project and sacrificed a lot of free time and social time to just sitting at the computer and my desk and making the magic in my imagination come to life in my work. I look forward to the challenge and with no more confusion with people dropping out and costing me time and work I can focus better and accomplish my goals.

!!! NO WHERE LEFT TO GO BUT UP !!!

(11) GLITCH CHARACTER CONCEPTS...

2008-12-01T02:48:00.000-08:00

Now originally the character Glitch was going to be concepts and designed by an Ex-team member, but seeming that every member including the director has left the group, only 2 people remain, Prince Short and myself. We therefore have to take on everyone elses original responsibilities and As for the character Glitch is concerned, I will take on the responsibility.

Now Natasha actually managed to show me some of her early design concepts of Glitch before she left and I find them quite interesting....

NATASHA MONK---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Also taking on board Ex-Director Kanika Andrews original drawing on Glitch when she pitched her Idea to the class

KANIKA ANDREW----------------------------------------------------------------------

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I like both ideas for the character and I don't want these concepts to go to waste. I have decided to try and incorporate them all within my final design of Glitch. Now when I read the script for Glitch I immediately thought of Stitch from Lilo&Stitch animated film. Glitch was described a lot like Stitch in terms of behaviour and the image is so strong in my head that I don't want to ignore it.

My mood board...

Now the hard part comes in combining my ideas with the other concept arts to make 1 complete final design.

I have more influences that pop into mind which gives me a lot of ideas, and here are some main ones...

MAJIN BUU - He is a character from a popular show called Dragonball Z. He is evil and small and has a tail like part of his body on top of his head. I like this idea and like the way the artist incorporates the evilness of the character by BLACK eyes and the cute but dark look. I also like the tail thing on his head and want to look to develop a similar idea.

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PUMPKIN'S - It is the scary face that attracts me to this idea. The large mouth and large eyes resembles that of Stitch and the visual idea that I have for Glitch.

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OTHER INFLUENCES - Here are just a few other images I put together. Everything from the mouth, eyes and shape of the main body can be seen in these images. It is the sense of exaggerating the features that I want to put across. I don't need to have arms and legs if all i do is fly about and eat the environment around...

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Here are my sketch Ideas...

FINAL PROFILE -

I am pleased with my final design for I have tried to incorporate all design ideas above. Hopefully you can see the arrow on the tail like from Kanika's concept art, the pumpkin like face the Majin Buu style tail features, the black eyes of Stitch and the scariness of Natasha's concepts.

------------ PROCESS CHECK ------------

2008-11-19T03:18:00.000-08:00

This is the 7th week now, and there were some formative assesments that took place recently. A few members of the group such as Natasha Monk, Mehmet Izmen and the Director Kanika Andrew have taken a step back from this project and are either not working on this project or cutting their work load considerably due to other commitments in their other primary group work.

This means Prince Short and myself will have a hell of a lot more work to tackle now and will be carrying this whole project on the shoulders of just us two. We will have to change and switch some of the work loads of the other members between the two of us taking on board that we are also now the joint directors on this project.

After speaking further with my tutor on the matter, I believe we can accomplish what everyone originally set out to do on this project and try and acquire freelance works to give us help if we require it....

NEW* Roles and Group Members...

Alexnader Ricardo Bedminster + Principe Samuel Short ( DIRECTORS)

Alexander Ricardo Bedminster (Me) - I will be focusing all my efforts on all the "Vernon" scenes withing the animation. I realise that the work I have put upon myself to do is of a larger and broader scope then other members but I believe as long as I keep to my production schedule like i have in the past this would not be a problem. So for every "Vernon Scene" I would be doing the character model, character rig, storyboarding, concept art, environment modeling, lighting, camera work, sound as well as all the animation involved in those scenes.
*Now included the modeling and animation of the character GLITCH

Principe Short - Focusing on the "Glitch" city world scenes, Modeling, Enviromental animation, Lighting.
* Now included concept work and storyboarding

Mehmet Izmen - Freelance

Natasha Monk - Freelance

Raul - Freelance *New addition, looking to do a lil bit of environment modeling on Glitch City

(10) ENVIROMENT CONCEPTS

2008-11-07T08:10:00.000-08:00

Now I have successfully made the main character I can now move onto the environment he will be placed within. I can also use my character model to help portion and size the environment correctly when modeling.

But first to get a fully developed environment together I will need to work on the pre-production side. Doing a few sketches, some concept art and final design layout so there is no confusion when modeling.

To get started on this I have made a mood board looking closely into the environments that have a similar mold to what Vernon's Office might look like....

Influences; The Office, Wanted, Matrix, Incredibles, Truman show

I want the office to look dull and systematic. Everything looks the same and colourless to give the sense of an inhuman atmosphere almost to suggest the workers (including Vernon) are just slaves/robots to the company they work for.

Now there is going to be a over top view of the whole office in the opening scene, so I hill have to model the environment for the whole floor while concentrating more on the focus area which will be Vernon's office cubicle.

I have been researching office layouts and how some offices are structured and I came across these images...

These are black and white and colour versions of different office layout schematics. This is my first time modeling a proper environment of a large nature so I think by doing this, it will help me to stay on track on my accuracy of the model. Also by seeing the right top layout of my environment I will be able to see if the office layout generally makes sense to the eye or if the furniture or walls are in inappropriate spaces on the floor which could cause negative elements when the viewer is watching the sense.

I started out making a few black and white layout sketches of my own and doing some block outs...

Layout 01

Layout 02

Layout 03

Layout 04

As you an see there is a colour scheme I am trying to stick to in scenes throughout my animation so here is a colour panel I made to help me stay on track with colouring withing the environment...

Like when settng the mood of the character I did a test of an overlay colour over an imagine to reinforce the feeling of an atmosphere via colour, and by adding and tweaking colours it really does change the feel and mood of the office...

NORMAL IMAGE...

COLOUR OVERLAY...

RESULT...

After doing these block out versions of a layout top view, I think I will go with "LAYOUT 4". I chose this layout design because I like the fact the main executive offices engulf the normal cubicles. This gives a sense of empowerment from the bosses over the workers. The workers would be surrounded by their bosses and be looked upon like slaves in a way. There is also a simple sense of space on the aisles which can be occupied by reception desks, dull plant, cabinets etc...

Now I will develop the LAYOUT 4 idea more into a more detailed schematic...

LAYOUT....

CODE...COLOUR LAYOUT...
I have to say as the basic construct layout goes, I am pleased. I like the way there is a comparison between the normal dull office cubicles to the "upper class" executive style offices. There is more colour in them with plants and wooden flooring as well and glass walls and windows to let as mush light into the room as possible making it feel bigger, whereas the normal office cubicles are dull, with no colour and have grey-ish walls which give a sense of confinement.

I have done a few concept pictures of differnt areas of the office floor to get a better understanding of how it can look and the feel of it in 3d...

Im please with these concept deigns of the office floor. They dont have to be too complicated because in my animation the camera is barely going to even focus on it, As you an see in my storyboards, 95% of the shots will be from within Vernons office. So it is in the office cubicle where I need to focus most attention.

I have taken some images of cubicle interiors to get a better sense of how I can approach modeling it and also researched and made a few boards to help when it comes to modeling the actual contents of the cubicle...

Now in alot of the pictures and refferences I came across of Office cubicles, most of them were either messy or clutered with equipment such as posters, little toys etc... I am not sure if I will recreate this for in the case of my office floor I want al the cubicles to look the same, I want them to be boring with no personality and with too much personilsed apperatus in the cubicles, that sense of slavery and boring dead end job feeling will be taking away a little bit....

Heres more detail close up concepts of how I picture Vernons actual cubicle...

------------ PROCESS CHECK ------------

2008-11-07T05:46:00.000-08:00

Ok after the 5th week of working, there seemed to be slight confusions going through the team in what needs to be done and what everyone is doing. I therefore held a meeting to discuss any problems and issues any members had on this project. After sitting down and discussing the work load and schedules a lot of progress was made. Everyone has an even clearer idea of what is happening and what they need to do and how there work will be contributed.

We also made a break down of the story boards and the scenes in the animation and who is responsible for those scenes animation/modeling...

SCENE 01 - Intro to Vernon and his office
MODELING: Alexander Bedminster
ANIMATION: Alexander Bedminster

SCENE 02 - Introduction to Glitch and the city
MODELING: Prince Short, Mehmet/Alexander
ANIMATION: Mehmet Izmen

SCENE 03 - Computer first error, Vernon typing
MODELING: Alexander
ANIMATION: Alexander

SCENE 04 - Glitch City building getting eaten by Glitch
MODELING: Alex/Mehmet/Prince
ANIMATION: Natasha Monk

SCENE 05 - Error comes back, Vernon gets angry
MODELING: Alexander
ANIMATION: Alexander

SCENE 06 - Overshot of the Glitch city being destroyed
MODELING: Prince
ANIMATION: Prince

SCENE 07 - Vernon gets so angry and smashes up the office in anger
MODELING: Alexander
ANIMATION: Alexander

SCENE 08 - Glitch finished destroying the city, laying down with a full stomach
MODELING: Alex/Prince/Mehmet
ANIMATION: Mehmet

(9) STORYBOARDING...

2008-10-28T04:35:00.000-07:00

Ok I have modeled and rigged up the character Vernon and before I start on creating the environment for the animation, I think it would be best for me to lay down some story boarding which will help me later on when I eventually come to setting up the environment.

First I will make simple thumbnail storyboards of the scenes that I am in charge of and after those thumbnails I will then develop the storyboards into a 16:9 size layout and include a more detailed representation of the scene...

Here are my thumbnail storyboards

SCENE 01 ---

SCENE 03 ---

SCENE 05 ---

Ok the pictures above are all the scenes in this film that have Vernon in them. These are rough thumbnails layouts of what I plan to have in these scenes. However these are only rough sketches and the later final storyboarding might alter from this depending on how the development of ideas go. I will also do a larger and more details storyboarding sequence including more information about character actions, camera movements etc...

Now I have come up with a storyboard that I will follow on my animation. This story board is solid and I will remain true to its direction in the core but may tweak parts if whilst animating I m not satisfied...

SCENE 01 --

CAMERA: Rotating clockwise, birds eye view, slow zoom
DESCRIPTION: Over head of Vernon working in his office

CAMERA: Static/Extremely slow side scrolling around Vernon
DESCRIPTION: Vernon drinking his coffee and catches sight
of a picture on his desk

CAMERA: Zoom In on the picture frame
DESCRIPTION: Vernon looks at the picture of "Employee of the month"
with pride

CAMERA: Shot of the hands, zooming out very slowly
DESCRIPTION: Vernon typing away at great speed; a normal day at the office

CAMERA: Still, focusing on the pen pot and coffee mug
DESCRIPTION: Vernon (typing with one hand) then with out looking goes to pick up the coffee mug, but is reaching for the pen pot accidentally

CAMERA: On the table looking at the pen pot
DESCRIPTION: Vernon accidentally knocks the pen pot over spilling all the pens on the table and the floor

CAMERA: Behind the computer, Static
DESCRIPTION: Vernon goes to pick up the pens that have fallen on the floor

CAMERA: Zooming into the computer screen and fades into the screen into blackness (Transition)
DESCRIPTION: Vernon goes to pick up the pens that have fallen on the floor

SCENE 03 -

CAMERA: Camera, Zooming out slowly to how ERROR sign
DESCRIPTION: Vernon notices the error message...

CAMERA: Extremely slow rotation around Vernon
DESCRIPTION: He calmly inputs a sequence of buttons to rid the error message

CAMERA: Split screen, first screen, Static
DESCRIPTION: First screen; computer accepts Vernon's input and the ERROR message goes away. Second screen; the error message pops back up on screen.

CAMERA: Slow zoom on Vernon's face
DESCRIPTION: Vernon becomes confused for he never has computer problems

CAMERA: Camera, Slow side scroll from right to left
DESCRIPTION: Vernon starts to type with angry, fast and pressed up to the screen

SCENE 05 -

CAMERA: Close up on the eyes, extremely slow zoom out.
DESCRIPTION: Vernon is getting more and more worked up trying to fix the ERROR message

CAMERA: Static, close up on the screen
DESCRIPTION: A positive BEEP sound comes from the computer to indicate the ERROR is finally gone.

CAMERA: Over the top view, with a slight rotation, clockwise
DESCRIPTION: Vernon swings back on his chair comfortably, relieved and satisfied the error has gone.

CAMERA: Slow Zoom on the computer
DESCRIPTION: The screen suddenly goes black and a CRITICAL ERROR message pops up

CAMERA: Static, focus on Vernon, (slightly moving as if it was hand held camera)
DESCRIPTION: Angry and confused a fed up Vernon jumps up in anger and starts to go crazy, hitting the keyboard over the computer and wreck the office.

----------------------------- ANIMMATIC ----------------------------------

I have also made 3 animatics for each scene without sound. I choose to exclude sound becuase I want to see how the shots will work purley on a visual level to get across the story...

SCENE 01 - Opening

SCENE 03 - First Glitch

SCENE 05 - Glitch Returns

(8) WEIGHTING VERNON...

2008-10-26T16:15:00.000-07:00

I thought rigging was the most tedious task but I was wrong. I had forgotten about the wonderful process known as "Weighting" :(. Weighting is the process given to when you bind the rig to the mesh of your character and fix any unnecessary deformations that may occur when moving the character. These deformation are always 100% likely to occur when you first bind your character to the rig (skeleton). Maya cant know exactly what join its meant to move what part of the mesh and deformations occur...

as you can see in the image above, when I bend the leg at the knee, the inner part back of the knee deforms in an unnatural way to how it should be. It is deformations like this that need to be tweaked in my rig and getting them right and realistic is always a task that feels impossible and stressful to do...

I learnt a new method of "Weighting" the character in this project. Normally I would use a paint brush with values between 0 and 1 and adjust the influences that way. This new method seemed to work alot better in my opinion and it was easier to test the joint while working on them to see if it was correct. I clicked F8 and went into component mode, and then selected the vertices's around the deformed areas that I wanted to fix, and used a slider to adjust and play with the amount of influence a joint had around that particular set of selected vertices's...

This may all sound a bit complicated, but....well it is and that's why its so difficult to do. Practise is defiantly the key to getting better.

Here I used the "painting weights" method that I normally do (mentioned above). Some areas of the character I just felt more comfortable using methods I have used before, but still weighting the character 90% with the new method for a challenge...

(ABOVE PICTURE - Before painting weights)

(BELOW PICTURE - After painting weights)

Here you can see the legs are starting to look cleaner and have more of the correct deformations when joints are rotating...

Now the shoulder joints... these areas I found were always the trickiest areas to fix. As you can see, there are horrible deformations happening on the arm pit. Hopefully my new learnt method of weighting can prove itself...

After spending a bit of time, look at the result! As you can see the Vernons left arm looks much better and cleaner after my weighting and now I need to repeat the process on the other arm...

With my new learnt method, I found the shoulders 10 times easier than in previous models I have created, so here's a render shot of the mesh shoulder section wen pulled down at the side...

Finally, working from the ground up, the head and neck. There were horrible deformities happening n this area and here after some before and after screens of the weighting...

BEFORE-

AFTER-

After much frustration and time consuming, painful, backbreaking, finger bleeding, headache creating, anger exploding, suicidal thinking weighting, I think I have done a good enough job. The best thing about weighting is that you can change it when ever you want, so if I'm unhappy at sections of the mesh during the animating, then I can simply adjust it to how I feel fit...

Heres a little quick video of how a few basic movements in a test render...

(7) RIGGING VERNON...

2008-10-25T03:37:00.000-07:00

OK rigging is described as the most tedious task to do in animation and I must say that is certainly the case. I believe if anyone can do a complex rig for a character and have everything working efficiently then theres nothing they cant do.

Here are the steps I recorded when making an advanced rig for Vernon

Step (1) - I started by making a simple joint chain for the left leg, making sure there were appropriate bends for future use of IK_Handles...

Step (2) - After that, I then created the basic setup for a "Foot Roll" (set driven animation I will be able to activate to create a realistic foot movement when walking)...

Step (3) - I mirrored the joint system of the leg and colour coded them for visual purposes to make sure I dont get confused down the line when the rig starts to look more complicated...

Step (4) - I created Pole Vectors for the knees so that when I come to move the legs using the IK_Handles the knees will stay locked onto the direction of the Pole Vectors and not stray away. This helps make the movement of the knee more structured and easier to manipulate...

Step (5) - Creating the "Foot Roll" attribute; I used set driven keys to create an controlled preset animation for the foot to roll to use at my will with a custom made slider...

Step (6) - I made the back bone that stems from the pelvis all the way up to the top of the head. I also created a "Spline IK" running down the spine. This will later on enable me to move the back effectively and get the realistic deformation for the movement of the back...

Step (7) - I converted the vertex points of the "Spline IK" into Clusters, which act as handles to moving certain joint of the back realistically...

Step (8) - Further more I made simple boxes around the hip and chest area to act as controls for the joints. (In stead of moving individual joints, I would be able to jut click and move the yellow boxes for movement...

Step (9) - I also did a similar idea for the neck but used a circle instead of a box. (Note thee boxes and circles are made using the "CV Curve Tool"...

Step (10) - When making the joints of the arm, I added an extra joint in the forearm. This is done so when I come to rotating the wrist, the forearm will have a slight twit as well...

Step (11) - Now when making the hand and joints system there was alot of tweaking that had to be done. As you can see I had to change the "Local Orientation" of the joints. So all the joint follow each other correctly (in this case all the X axis face the next joint). All this means is that when I want to make a fist or bend a finger, all the joints bend in the same Axis and create a natural curl...

Step (12) - I then made an arm control (the box in blue situated at the wrist). This is so I can pick up the box and move it and the wrist will move where ever the box is and the arm will bend automatically...

Step (13) - Earlier I explained about making the forearm joint twist partly as I rotate the wrist. Here is the set up in which that was accomplished. I used the expression editor to create a direct link between both joints. As you can see for every turn the wrist makes the forearm would rotate in the same direction but at a third of the speed. Its sounds complicated but it really isnt...

Step (14) - Just like the "Foot Roll" I made a set driven key animation for the hand. On right is the custom made attribute "Fist" wen it has a value of "0" that means its and its default position, but as i slide it to "10" or even "-5" the joints in the hand open and close as indicate to make a Fist or an open palm...

Step (15) - I then create control for the eyes. The large circle controls both eyes and the smaller circles can be moved individually and they control each individual eye. (The big circle is the parent of the 2 smaller ones, so when I move it, the smaller circles move as well)...

...here are some examples of the movement that was made (I used "Point Constraints" to get this effect...

Step (16) - I finally made a quick IK/FK Blend system on the arms, so I could make a switch on the arm controls. This switch would allow me to toggle between using the IK handle or manual joints handle to manipulate the arm movement...

Step (17) - Finally the Rig is complete. I made a Global control at the base of the rig to control the overall scale and rotation and movement of everything. Here is an overview of what my completed rig looks like...

(6) FACIAL EXPRESSIONS...

2008-10-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, now I have made the complete mesh with the correcting texturing I now need to move onto the more dawnting task of Rigging the character. (Rigging is the method in which you give a character a simulation of bones, muscles and controls to animate.

Before I create bones and the rest I did a few simple blend shapes of the expressions that Vernon will use. There is no mouth on the model for it is digused underneat his facial hair, so when making blend shapes for the facial expressions I need to concentrate on the eyes to capture the emotions...

Here is the list of major facial expressions he will need for my scene...

Normal Face....

Angry Face....

Shocked Face....

Confused Face....

Grinning Face...

Those are the basic blend shapes I will use before starting the rigging process...

(5) MODELING VERNON'S HEAD AND BODY...

2008-10-23T05:33:00.001-07:00

The method of modeling that I normally use is polygon modeling. Although I want to create a realistic model representation, the model will not b exactly like a real human. The proportions of the feature will be exaggerated like the nose, head shape etc...

This should be fun to model as I have never made a model with these cartoonish features.

Step (1) - I start of with a basic low poly model of half the head...

Step (2) - I mirror the geometry and add a subtle smooth to the mesh, as well as adding some eyes for modeling reference...

Step (3) - I added a Blinn node as the base for the texture of the skin....

Step (4) - I UV texture mapped the whole head and used a .PSD network to include Bump map and Specular map. (.PSD is a texture that can be imported into photoshop which includes layers. in this case i used 3 layers (Colour,Bump,Specular) controlling the colour the 3d texture and light)

Step (5) - After doing the UV texturing of the skin I needed to add the hair. I had a few choices when attempting to do this. I could either polygon model the eye brow and facial hair, using realistic transparent textures, use Hair dynamics, or use Fur which I have never touched before.

I ended up using Fur in Maya because it was something new and it was a challenge to learn a different skill.

I had many problems when applying the fur. For example the fur was hard to control and I had to make really accurate Fur maps so the fur would only be generated on the areas of the geometry that I wanted it to be. Note here I used 2 different Fur systems for the facial hair and for the eyebrows...

Step (6) - Ok, now I added dynamic hair on top of his head just as a quirk for the character and made a start on the shirt Vernon would be wearing....

Step (7) - Using the same process I mirrored the geometry and smoothed, and again applied a layered .PSD Network of textures to the shirt...

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During this time I came across an error with the Mental Ray rendering process. My Maya kept on crashing freezing and producing error messages and would not render AT ALL. After 4 days of screaming, googling Maya troubleshooting forums and hitting my computer in frustration I realised by myself that the .PSD network textures I was creating were too high in resolution and Maya simply could not translate and render the images due to my computers CPU running out of memory. So I simply re-made all the .PSD files using a 1024x1024 pixel size instead of the 2048x2048 that I was previously using and everything seemed to work fine after that.
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Step (8) - Making the arms was tiring, for the modeling of the hand area took time....

Step (9) - Now the top half of the body was looking ok, onto the bottom half. Starting with the trousers...

Step (10) - The trousers were looking fine, but I had to do alot of editing on the textures to get the right look. In the picture below the trousers are slightly too saturated and in the film (the scene I am working on) it is set in a dull office, so all the lighting and texturing must be quite desaturated and "dull"...

...here you can see the dullness increase with subtle texturing and colour maps...

Step (11) - I made a simple belt with leather texture. I used a simple cube extruded along a CV curve going around the waist as a nice feature for the model...

Step (12) - Lastly, making the shoes were again done with polygon modeling, using extrusion and vertex manual manipulation.

I made the texture of the shoes using the .PSD network layers, but had difficulty getting the right specular mapping. I wanted the material to look like leather that was once shiny but isn't any more.

the picture above was looking good, but the shine was still to much and the leather needed more of a worn out but preserved look (As if the shoes were owned for years and years), so I simply darkened the specular map so light would reflect as much on it, and also toned down the specular slider on the Blinn Node that was assigned to it...

Step (13) - 13 is an unlucky number but in this case it was the number of steps used to make this model. Here are a front, side and 3d view on the final model...

I am pleased with the model. It is the first time I have UV texture mapped a character and the first time I have even used Fur ever!!

(4) CONCEPT CHARACTER ART...

2008-10-22T05:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, now I decided to do a few concept art images of Veron to help me when modeling. These workings will help me get a better feel of the tones, mood, colours and overall characteristics I need to take on board when modeling...

Here is a mood board focusing on the Incredibles. When I got the script for this film "Glitch" I kept on getting image of the scene in PIXAR's animated movie "The Incredibles". There is a scene where the main character is at work in a small confined cubical office and is looking extremely board and you can tell that the main character hates his job. This is a parallel to Veron (The main character in this animation). He hates his job and feels stuck and confined.

As you can see the way the lighting and rendering is done, there is a dull atmosphere portrayed. I wish to reproduce the same atmosphere by recreating all the same lighting and smooth rendering. The colours around he office are desaturated and have low contrast, almost as if everything on screen has a light grey coloured layer on top...

Take this Pixar image for example, where I have added a simple tint of a colour to change the mood of the atmosphere to create a more duller and depressing feel...

ORIGINAL IMAGE...

LAYER ADDED...

FINAL RESULT...

As you can see the mood changes to a dull, more lifeless atmosphere and it is exactly this feeling that I want to recreate in the office scene with Vernon.

It is this PIXAR style which I am looking at for my inspiration in terms of the feel and style. The clean, bold smooth paste like modeling and colours I want to recreate in my animation, but add my own weak to it by making the colour mood more desaturated.

In these images you can see the "Smooth" look to the modeling and render visual style that I am referring to. There are textures but they are not made so the models and environment look "Hyper realistic". Its almost as if the models in these scenes are very "plain" and only have detail where it is absolutely necessary....

To get the ball rolling with the appropriate mood and colour theme I will need for the scenes I'm in charge of I will need to do a colour board containing the colour references I will be using.

As you can see an image like this from "The Incredibles" is a perfect example and way to see the colours and theme present in scene...

I decided to make my own...

Here's a colour scheme I developed for using in my character. There are desaturated colours and tones which will help make a dull scene to help set the tone and mood of the characters emotions in the scenes...

Colour Schemes...

(3) MODELING BEGININGS...

2008-10-16T02:49:00.000-07:00

Now although I was give rough character sketches, to make an accurate model I will need profile pictures of accurate measure. A front facing profile and a side on image would be needed to use as references when modeling. So i took it upon myself to make my own sketch of the character in a reference image for help with modeling. Obviously everyone has different drawing styles and I had to draw in the style of Kanika (Director) to get a model that looked like her drawing instead of my style...

My reference image that I made...

(2) SYNOPSIS OF VERON...

2008-10-16T02:39:00.000-07:00

On taking on board my role Kanika Andrews (Director) gave me a loose character design of Vernon and a synopsis of him to help me understand the character in a better light...

(Click on images to get larger clear picture...)

VERNON...

VERNON FACIAL EXPRESSIONS...

VERNON SYNOPSIS...