Here are a few sketches for my various client project ideas -
This is a storyboard for the viking idea, here's a quick sketch to illustrate my idea where there are two screens on screen, and the viking walks between them -
And here's the first half of a storyboard for the animation idea, along with a few ideas for the little animated character -
Just came back from the first lecture and seminar of the year, and even though I didn't get feedback for my script as we ran out of time, it was still very useful. However, seeing the length of many of the scripts compared to mine has made me doubt whether I can actually squeeze this story into 6 minutes... I'm not going to totally discard the idea at all, but I'll try working on some other scripts tonight just in case. This will mean tomorrow I can gain feedback on all my ideas, and then choose which one is best to go with. I have a few other ideas for stories knocking about in my head, but at the moment none of them are as solid as the time travel one, which still isn't even totally solid as it is, haha! I was also thinking of how I would design the robot. Building a plasticine robot, animating using stop-motion and then blue screening it into the film would look awesome, but may not be entirely feasible... I was thinking I could just build it out of cardboard boxes, and the robot explains that as he was created when the science department's budget was at an all-time low, he had to be constructed out of waste materials. It's a bit of a cop-out though. I also thought maybe the robot could have been built so well that he does just resemble a human being, but this is also quite a lame way of doing it. Here are some sketches for the sci-fi idea -
Mmmm, a nice, mellow Easter break has come to an end, and it's back up to the fine city of Nottingham for more work and mayhem! I sketched out a couple of really, really rough ideas for the box project. At the moment, these vague concepts are - - the back of a truck, and a suitcase, to make it seem more like the objects contained inside are portable and active, rather than just heirlooms sat inside an old dusty box. - erm, the inside of my mouth, or sat inside my recently lobotomized skull, to tie in to the identities project and to give the impression that the objects are actually a part of myself. And here they are - At this stage these ideas are all just in embryonic forms, but as they progress I'll post them on here.
Today I made out rough versions of the Ego, the Vessel and the Soul for my avatar project. As I now have rough versions of all the various characters, I had a go at putting them all together to get an idea of the finished project. I sketched the Ego a few times, and tried moving his eyes further apart, making his main peeper massive, etc. In terms of colour, I'd imagined the top of his head to resemble flames. In his current stage I haven't actually done this, but I can always change it in the final version. The Ego's 3D, erm, alter ego doesn't look quite as graceful as his sketchbook counterpart. I'd envisioned it to have the elegance of a swan, and instead it's taken on the chubby charms of a slightly ill goose. Once again, for amusement's sake, I made him buckle under the weight of superior knowledge -
The Vessel and the Soul are also a mixed bag in terms of the end result. The Vessel looks reasonable, slightly different to the sketches but kinda cool looking nonetheless. It's almost like a zombie frog. The Soul, at present, looks too much like a puppet from Play Days to me, I need to work on making it look more hopeful and optimistic, and less gormless...!
So, once they're all combined, they start to look like this - I'm reasonably pleased with this, however I'd like to find out a way to smoothly blur the colours of the different heads with the the colour of vessel's neck, just to make it look a little more fluid. Various different bits of the faces and head shapes need shifting around, I think, and Super Ego's beard is probably a little too mighty at the moment (I must have just been carried away by the true beauty of a good beard...)! Here's a fairly crude attempt at making them move -
I'll need to think a little more about how I want them to move, as if they're all just wiggling about, it'll look a bit lame. I'll spare it a thought and then wack it on here if I get a brainwave!
Man, what a hectic day! Lots of epic missions around town, coffee, packed trams and accidentally leaving several boxes of Weetos I'd just purchased in Tescos, then having to trek back and get them... Cities are mental, haha! Amongst all this mayhem however, I managed to design another one of the heads for my avatar, the Id this time. I think I'm definitely starting to improve on 3D Studio Max, and I'm finding out all kinds of new ways to make objects, and make them do things, that are easier and give a smoother final result than the way I was doing things!
Once again, I sketched him out a few times before I started, and then after I'd created the 3D model, I made him freak out a little too, and wiggle his gaping jaws about.
I really like the way he moves, but I didn't actually attach his teeth to him, so when he shakes his head there are a few moments where his teeth poke out of the bottom of his head. The other problem with his teeth is that I made them all in the view you're looking at him now with, and when you tilt him about his molars are actually all over the shop. However, both these things are problems I'm sure I can fix without too much hassle.
After making the Id, I went back to our old friend the SuperEgo to see if I could sharpen up his beard. And, lo and behold, after actually constructing one and playing around with the shape rather than trying to draw it with lines and then lofting it with a circle, I made a not too shabby beard! Before -
After -
As for the 3D Studio seminars, last week we made our own little versions of the BBC3 worm. Mine ended up looking a tad more evil than the actual worm, due to his rather charming green hue and the horns that Andy showed me how to put on him. I had a bit of trouble with animating the worm using the Morphing technique, and unfortunately lost his eyes in the process...! Still, he manages to give off quite a mighty bellow -
Today we made little walking pairs of legs. I managed to construct the legs without any major difficulty, but when I made them take a little stroll, after the first step one of the legs went a bit weird and he looked like he was ice skating! Unfortunately 3D Studio crashed as I was working on the legs, and even though it managed to store a back-up copy of it, it kept telling me that the file was corrupt and I couldn't do much with it. Uploading it to YouTube failed miserably, and it wouldn't seem to let me render a still image. Alas, a valuable learning experience but one I now have nothing to show for.... Brutal!
And, last but not least, I managed to grab a shot of my Second Life character - He still needs a bit of work, as I got quite carried away with distorting his face into all kinds of crazy shapes and couldn't really return it to it's normal state too well after. He looks a bit rough around the edges too, but I'm not sure whether that's my fault or just what Second Life looks like! I haven't managed to venture to much into Second Life that much yet, but I recently installed it on the laptop I'm typing this on right now, so I'll be able to wander about on it when I'm bored, waiting for a pizza or just generally sitting about. What a plan!
Today I finally signed up for Second Life, and created my own personal avatar. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the snapshot feature to get a decent photo of it, but I'll try and get one soon! I tried to make it look more or less like myself, and it sort of almost does, heh! After getting to grips with the controls, figuring out where you had to wander to to change your appearance, etc., I started walking around the initial area talking to people. The first person I spoke to didn't speak any English at all, and the second approached me totally naked and said they were new, and wanted to know where they could get some clothes to conceal their virtual modesty, so I directed them to the place I got mine. The final person I interacted with was an unfortunate fellow who I accidentally smacked with a car, pushing him into the ocean. I apologised, but he remained silent. Funnily enough, hit-and-run in the virtual realm comes with none of the feelings of guilt I imagine it'd be accompanied by in reality... Still, I'd probably better not make a habit of it, just for etiquette's sake. After this, I started flying about for a bit and was then kicked out of the room as a lesson was about to start there. Second Life seems quite entertaining in a slightly surreal way, I'll venture into the actual main hub next time!
I started work on my other 3D avatar today, and made a (very!) rough model of the Super Ego's head. I don't know why I started with the Super Ego (or SE from now on), maybe I was subconsciously drawn to it's sense of discipline as I sat down, readying myself for some serious work, and maybe I was just attracted by it's delightful beard. Who knows? I sketched SE out from a few more different perspectives, just to get an idea of how it would look in the third dimension, and then constructed him out of a few basic shapes. I had a little trouble making the nose, and a lot of trouble making the aforementioned delightful beard. I tried quite a few different shapes, and eventually settled on this one for the time being, even though I'm still not happy with it. I couldn't figure out how to fill in the centre of it, as I'd originally hoped to have a nice, satisfyingly full beard and then draw the mouth over the top, but every time there was a big gaping hole in the middle. With the beard I eventually went for, it does kind of look like the hole in it is actually his mouth, but it's not perfect. I think SE also needs smoothing over, as there are some parts of him where I joined two shapes together and they haven't quite stuck together as smoothly as I would have hoped, but it's totally cool to see SE starting to take shape in 3D. Just for my own personal glee, I made SE get himself flustered over some deep moral dilemma -
I've just started to doodle some ideas for this Identities project, and I accidentally spewed this out -
I'm not sure if this is quite what the brief has in mind, but running with the notion of symbols and images feeding in to humanoid figures, I thought I'd extract all the parts of a person, give them a face that kinda fits with what they're all about (so, for instance, the Id, the primal desires, urges and instinct of a person is strained, wide eyed and feral, the Super Ego, the person's sense of morality, our conscience, is lofty, contemplative and superior, while the Ego, the person's mediator, their way of keeping the balance between the Id and Super Ego, must maintain a careful balance, stay alert, and never allow itself to cast too much of an imposing presence over a person). Back to the multimedia side of this though, I do like the idea of a big floating head as an avatar, hovering just above ground level. As for the kind of environment I'd place this creature in, I hadn't quite thought that far, but vague embryonic ideas include a big black and purple cavern type thing, like the inside of a brain, or maybe something more ordinary, maybe a tranquil field or something. I'm not sure, I'll give it some thought.
