Animating a very beautiful volcano erupting...

So for our group 'operation' we need a volcano erupting - this is a really rough attempt of illustrating what is going to happen...

more later =)

Cheers

Practicing in Cinema 4D

Class this morning consists of working to give the effect of the scene being a 3D 'set'.  To begin with we have the task of making the object in the  scene look realistic...

I have also learned how to make lights out of shapes - something I had seen our lecturer do last year and had never known how to do properly. We used a plane in a cloner object as the light by giving the shape a luminant material.

I think I might try something of my own in this method even just to see if I can create something nice...

Next was an animation intended to follow the idea of an ident we were shown that I am led to believe is one of Paul's personal stash of work; using depth of field and a photograph to create a realistic looking scene to drop a shape into... I quite like it as I also learned how to work the explosion tag in this program.

Anyway - more later...

Cheers

After a nice weekend getting kicked all over Ireland

So this weekend I was at a Taekwon-do instructors course in Belfast and had lots of fun bruising my toe and gaining my second degree black belt - not to mention a load of achey muscles... After my adventures it's straight back to work.

Today we have been working on animating a channel 4 ident just to try out the method in Cinema 4D.
So this is the final cut out version; we used After Effects to mask the footage together.

This is the list of things each of the group are doing for OUR ident work for E4. We're working on building the backgrounds for the animations. Below is the storyboard for the second animation in which the character falls through the Earth, in the bottom left box you can see how we plan to build the background on a layer and composite an animated tunnel to follow the footage of the live action character which are both on layers of their own.

These are the layers we all decided to have for our underground part of the idents...

Today hopefully we're going to have some more work to upload regarding the animation - even if it's just an animatic it'll be good to have something to show for ourselves...

I've been shown an advert calling for an assistant animator in LONDON... I'm going to look more into the company and the requirements and post something about it later...

However for now this is me...

Cheers

Fox...

 

I had an idea when looking at the knots in the wood of my door, the knots have always resembled some kind of animal to me so I thought I would use that to draw something out of it. I decided on a fox with glowing eyes and I made an attempt at it... I wanted it to be purple but it looked horrible with pinky purple eyes and so on so I changed it to dark blue - it's an improvement but I still wish it were better... I'm getting back into that rutt of not being able to draw well again I think :(

 

I then drew him under a tree - the Illustration Friday topic gave me the idea but I won't enter it because it's too late and it's rubbish - so it's the Fox under the Halucinogenic Tree of Delirium...

 

It may be rubbish and I may wish it were better but at least it exists so I'm happy I managed to draw SOMETHING. =D

Cheers

 

New Module

This week has brought with it the beginning of a new module, Compositing. The project requires us to create an I-dent animation in our group. So far we have been working on developing our ideas and experimenting with the techniques. However, we need to look at other I-dent animation examples, which is the purpose of this post...

Our first idea was paint splashing against the logo of the TV channel in question. This Ident is quite relevant to this =) It's by IdentsandLogos.

This is one of channel 5's Idents for 2011; it is similar to the work we have been doing today as the example we've been working on is dropping cubes into an environment. Of course I have previous experience with that whole 'bundle of laughs' but now I'm having to re-learn the lot in the new edition of Cinema 4D R14 (!) 

E4 is the ident project my group and I are doing so this is very relevant. I like the 3D in this animation, it's very smooth and I think it might have been given a touch of after effects magic after looking at the electricity effect used. I like how much it plays down the fact it is 3D by making it look regular.

So now a quick update on what our plans are... We are thinking of animating a space man falling from space and crashing through the Earth and bursting out the other side... but the centre of hte Earth contains loads of different things that we have the opportunity of making as funny as we can. We're thinking of making it in a 3 part animation as we need to produce 3 animations as a group to hand in in December.

 

Our group found this music video amusing - our original idea - one we have tried out involved a robot costume made of cardboard boxes - the idea of having a mint background in cartoon and a poorly shot live action character composited in sounds very good and I think it'll be quite effective in the final piece.

This was the first idea we had - the one we have tried out in After Effects to use as development for our actual animation...

 

 

Any way I'll post more soon,

Cheers
 

My beautiful new Wacom bamboo ^_^

So very happy that my Wacom came on Friday - I spent the whole day learning how to use it like a kid with an awesome toy at Christmas. In the standard of risks Dave speaks of - this is the exact opposite on the scale ^_^

Needed to notify 'you' of this joyous occasion.

Cheers

Lots of words... My rough script, backstory and personality development for Ava

Friend

The little ghost, Ava walks solemnly and sighs mournfully. She's lonely and wants a friend. The sound of children’s laughter breaks through her self-pity and she looks up, her face breaking out into a smile.

A group of children are playing in the field with a battered Frisbee. Ava enthusiastically floats over and tries to join in. A child throws the Frisbee with all his might and Ava flies up to catch it. To her dismay the Frisbee merely passes through her body, unaffected by her mass; and smacks another boy in the face.

The children cackle cruelly at the boy but poor Ava sinks to the ground as though they were laughing at her. She turns her back on the children laughing at the boy and goes on her way.

She floats past a busy road, one with cars moving so fast it frightens her; as soon as she is accustomed to the noise and the speed, she begins to formulate a plan.

A little girl, no older than Ava herself, is waiting patiently to cross the road. Ava sneaks closer for a better look; a van is speeding its way towards them and Ava sees her chance. 'If this little girl dies, her ghost could keep me company.' she thinks to herself. And with that she puts her little hands at the small of the little girl's back and gives one al-mighty PUSH.

 Her hands pass straight though the little girl as if in slow motion and nothing happens.

 Crestfallen she moves on, letting the little girl cross safely.

 She moves on to an older haunt of hers, the old theatre, in which she hears a voice. A man bellows to no one in particular, his eyes drift aver her for a second or two and she smiles gleefully, 'Finally someone who can see me!' she spins bashfully in the air and her hair curls around her. She waves with a little smile at the man who ignores her.

 Realising he actually can't see her; Ava unwinds from her hair and floats directly in front of him.

 Frowning at him she reaches for her hair and in one fluid movement floats round and round, wrapping her hair around the man's neck.

 She pauses and pulls her hair tight, but her hair simply floats gently through him to the ground.

 She signs forlornly and sinks in the air, following her hair.

 Her last attempts increase in desperation, from attempting to drown a swimmer in the local pool, to pulling an oxygen mask off an old woman in a hospital. Each attempt is more futile than the last.

 Finally a man stands atop a bridge, nervously looking down; she half-heartedly pushes him with one hand whilst barely even looking. He falls forward and careens toward the river below.

 Completely shocked at her eventual success, Ava looks at her hand in excitement and awe, it is only when the man springs back up that she realises he was merely bungee jumping. Disappointment taints her frown and she half stomps, half floats off.

 She finds herself sitting alone on the steps of an old mental asylum. She sighs unhappily and rests her head in her hands.

 A polite cough makes her look up and before her stands a little boy with a shy smile. He's holding a red balloon, which he holds out to her, blushing crimson.

 Ava blinks; it dawns on her that he can see her and she springs up. She floats around him, studying him with excitement. 'He's living, but he can see me!' she thinks happily.

 He hands Ava the balloon and as soon as he lets go of the string it passes through her hand and floats off.

 The little boy smiles and she smiles back, finally she has a friend.

 

Backstory of Ava

Ava is a little girl of about eight who is one of the deceased of our world. She was murdered several decades ago and was left alone to die. As a result of this heinous and unsolved crime, Ava is lonely; trapped only half in this world as an unseen ghost because of her unfinished business. She’s still only young and has no understanding of how her actions (if they were impacting at all) could cause consequences for herself and those around her. Because of this she does not think twice about the lives of those she decides to kill to have as friends. However she is ineffective in this world so all of her attempts fail, which is upsetting to her. In the end she is a little girl on her own looking for someone to give her the attention and emotional support every human needs.

Personality development exercise

We were given the task of writing a short story about how our character would react to stepping on a worm. This was quite irrelevant for my ghost character as she floats and makes no impact on the living world around her; but I could see the point of the exercise so ignored the elements of my story that were conflicting with this plot and wrote it regardless. As a footnote - I enjoyed the task, and found it fairly easy to do, as I like writing creatively like this. However I’m not sure I quite demonstrate her lack of consideration of lives in this excerpt.

The little girl skips carefree down a dirt path in the forest. She hums happily and swings her arms with a huge grin on her face. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a squelch shudders through her little shoe and she stops. Ava looks down and lifts her foot, underneath lies a mangled worm still wriggling. Her fingers reach up to cover the small ‘o’ of her mouth.

“Oh!” she cries in terror, “Oh no! I’m sorry!”

The little worm lies silent and Ava’s lip trembles, “I didn’t mean to this time.”

After a moment of silence a small blue glow emerges from the worm and Ava drops the carcass. The worm’s spirit floats before her and she smiles shyly.

“What did you go and do that for?” the worm huffs moodily.

Ava opens her mouth to explain but before she can make a sound the worm harrumphs once more and vanishes into the great beyond.

“Take me with you?” she whispers to the now empty space before her, but no one is there to hear her. Solemnly she turns and continues her journey quietly, secretly glad she hadn't just made a friend of such a grumpy worm for eternity.