Alice Faces

I'm starting to work on the eyes and mouth of my character. I've just taken a screenshot in Maya for now and worked over it in Photoshop to see what facial features will work best. I'm using photos of the real Alice as reference. The character is only loosely based on her and as it is very cartoon-y I can exaggerate the face quite a bit to fit the audio. 

Mudbox introduction

Today we had our first Mudbox lesson with Simon. We played around with painting mainly and sharing files between Maya, Mudbox and Photoshop.

FV - Run through of animated scenes

 

Thought I'd put all my animated scenes together in Premiere Pro just to see how they're looking before I work over the faces etc in Flash. The intertitles are missing too but I will add these all in at the end.

FV - Arm modelling and rigging, Environment complete

Finished modelling the environments today. This one was pretty simple and started as a cube. I then extruded the faces to create the head shape and the cavities for the germs to travel along. Animating the germs next!

Background for the above scene. Just a simple polygon plane with a Photoshop image.

With Simon's help today I modelled and rigged an arm which will be used for all of my characters. I was originally going for something much simpler, but it didn't really look that great and wouldn't have all the movements I was after. Little bit of tweaking needed but pretty much there!

FV - Environment progression

So today I have been working on setting up my scene using the face I've modelled for my environment and the matte painting I have. I'm hoping to use the parallax effect that Simon showed us in my final scene. Need to tidy this scene up and light it properly and then I can bring my characters in and animate them!

 

 

FV - Environment UVing

So I exported the face UVs and worked over them in Photoshop to create some very rough shading for my environment. I want this to look quite blocky and simple. Will do lots more tweaking but I'm happy with how it's going so far!

 

Self Portraits 23/03/15

Our task today in Jordan's lesson was to do some quick self portrait studies and then take one forward to work into further. I was dreading this at the beginning but I got into it by using different brushes and techniques, such as continuous line, using the lasso tools and distorting the mirror. 

First few studies including polygonal lasso tool and continuous line

Trying out different brushes

Distorted mirror

Distorted mirror

Trying out different brushes again!

Different brushes and lasso tool

This is one of the distorted mirror studies I took forward to work into further. Quite pleased with the result :)

FV Character designs

Think this is the style of characters I'm going for in my Influenza animation. Number 4 guy is the baddy and comes into the story in the form of a dodgy door-to-door salesman. The others are healthy cells which could become infected by the 'flu. The idea is that the virus works his way around the local town knocking on doors of vulnerable people, infecting them all as he goes. As he reaches a property, he shakes the hand of the person answering, mimicking the 'key and lock' scenario that Dr Klappa explained in his video. The virus then enters the house and leaves with some of the inhabitant's possession, mirroring what the virus would do in real life. The virus would then emerge from the house as a slightly different virus and continue to the next door to do the same again.

The break this cycle we would see the characters taking precautions; perhaps having the 'flu jab, using anti-bacterial hand gel and offering tissues to people who are sneezing near them, etc. We would then see the virus trying his dirty work again but being unsuccessful this time and being turned away from the houses.

The idea with these characters is to model them in Maya and then work over them in Flash. I'd like the Maya shapes to be quite floaty and friendly looking. The real animation would then come from the details added in Flash, such as facial expressions and details which help to tell the story.

Master painting studies 09/03/15

Really enjoying the painting lessons with Jordan. Today we worked digitally in Photoshop and started off with studies of our own hands. These were about 15-20 mins each.

 

 

We then moved on to choose a still life photograph to work from and try and recreate. I started off blocking out bigger shapes and then worked into them. Lots more to be done but I'm happy with how far I managed to get in the time. We spent about 90 minutes on this and I hope to work into it at a later date to clean up some of the edges and add some further details. 

Master painting studies

So happy to have lessons with Jordan again and really excited about the things he has in store for us to do! This week we looked at master painters and tried to begin replicating several famous paintings by mapping in blocks of colour. The exercise really made us look carefully at the particular colours used instead of what we might immediately imagine them to be. Very interesting and enjoyable. I hope to carry on with these studies at a later date.

 

We spent about 15 minutes on each of these three paintings. Am pleased with how they turned out.

We began by flipping this painting and blocking in the main colours upside down. It really helped to get the proportions and positioning correct. We spent about 15 minutes working upside down and then another 15 minutes fine tuning with the painting the right way up.

 

I chose to work on just a small section of the original painting here and only worked on it for about 10 minutes, mapping out the larger shapes. Will hopefully carry on with it later on.

 

FSTS: Character sketches - Pot wash boy and bully chefs.

These are the ideas I have for the bully chefs in my story. I want a main 'ringleader' and am thinking of something like number 2. He will be the opposite of the main character in my story, so will need to be tall, skinny, arrogant - a stereotypical French pastry chef. The other guys will be his cronies. Am looking at maybe number 6 being the butcher etc. It doesn't really matter what job they do but I want a bit of a mixture.

 

The guy is roughly how I envisage the main character in the story, the poor potwash boy who is bullied by the others. I'm working on before and after sketches on him at the moment to show how he looks when he begins the story compared to how he ends up at the end.

As always, feedback much appreciated. I know the work needs cleaning up and I'll do this once I've got a definite 4 or 5 characters.

FSTS: Kitchen sketch

Sketch of the kitchen just to get my head around where everything is. I referred to the layout of a 1920s restaurant kitchen to help me as I wanted it to make sense. This is where my whole story will be set. Working on developing characters next...

 

 

 

Kitchen layout 

 

 

 1920s Kitchens

 



Final Concept Art??

Any comments or suggestions for my potential final concept painting? Not sure if it's not 'clean' enough anymore?! Aarggh!

Final Compositions

 So these were the compositions I narrowed down to and I'm working up the bottom one as my final piece. Very late in the day I know, but I'm still not completely decided on key assets and colour schemes. I am happy with all of these, so I have tried to amalgamate them as much as possible while still trying to keep a sense of space.

 

I like the colour in the first image and the sense of space, so these are the two I'd narrowed down to work on further.

 

I felt this one was becoming a bit too overcrowded and closed in, but I liked the colour, so will use this in my final comp.

So I've used the first image above (which is from my original thumbnail no. 123) and incorporated all the elements I liked from other thumbnails. I feel like I've got a good space here and want to try and keep everything quite open. I see this as just getting to the busier, more built-up part of the city, so we start to see key buildings and links to other parts, such as the entrance to the underground transport system and walkways to commercial areas, and we begin to feel the hum of the heart of the city.

More thumbnails (122-125)

A few more thumbnails from today. Trying to add in a bit of colour - need to be braver!!

Thumbnails 114-121

So I've taken some of my weird, warped, skewed and pleated shapes and put them together in compositions. I'm churning more out but feel like I'm still wrestling with Photoshop a tad - getting better every day though. Quite like 116 and 120 but can see other combinations within them all.

Thumbnails 82-97

So following on from Phil's feedback on my OGR, I've been trying the warp tool out in Photoshop to create some more interesting but clean shapes from simple solid circles and squares. I really enjoyed this exercise and will do more over the weekend. Issey Miyake deliberately cut oversized simple shapes for his garments and then formed them into clothes afterwards. I've also tried mimicking his 'Pleats Please' range using the lasso tool in Photoshop to create a pleated effect and then warping and skewing cut out shapes using the marquee tool. I love the effects this method creates and I'm sure this will crop up in my city a lot. I'm sticking with greyscale for the time being as I want to concentrate on form before I start adding colour. I want to try adding blur next to create depth and will also try building up more layers to form some samples of the city as a whole.

Thumbnails 60-81 and a possible name for my city...

 A few more thumbnails and getting more of a 'city' feel about it, though I still don't have a clear, clear view about how it will look just yet.

 

I quite like 60, 61 & 65. The idea with 66-68 (and also 63 a bit) is that things are adaptable, so this could be canopies, tents, fencing, walls even. With 63, I was thinking of having walls that had openings which could be made bigger or smaller (a bit like the swishy doors in Star Wars!), so people have more or less of a view etc. Issey Miyake's work shows how the clothing and the body work together and he also tries to highlight the space between the two, with the feeling that the clothing can be adjusted to suit the user. I want my city to have lots of features that can be changed, depending on different things - the weather, the mood, the time of day, special events, the preference of the inhabitants of the buildings etc. I also think I'd like to incorporate certain features which are affected by the weather, for example, fabric canopies or parts of buildings which expand when the winds hits them, or parts of buildings which could change colour in the rain - that sort of thing.

 

These are a few initial quick sketches which I did right at the beginning of the project. I'm going to carry on with a few more in my sketchbook as I feel a bit more productive working with pen & paper, rather than the graphic tablet, though I do feel like I'm improving! Going to couple this with putting together the Travelogue as I'm still a bit hazy about things. Am hoping the two tasks will help each other along!


About the name - a few people have named their cities and this is something I hadn't even thought about! Am thinking of going for 'Efileno' and there's a reason for it; Issey Miyake uses a lot of 'play on words' with his collections. For example, he has a collection called 'ELTTOB TEP', which although sounds like a range of Ikea furniture, is actually 'Pet Bottle' backwards. He also has a fragrance called 'L'eau D'Issey', which sounds very similar to 'L'Odyssey'. Issey's name in Japanese means 'one life', so 'Efileno' = 'one life' backwards! Does it sound ok, or just a bit cheesy? Honest comments are very welcome!

A few more city thumbnails 24-59

So here are thumbnails 24-59. Just trying to get a feel for the shapes and textures Miyake would have used. I'm also starting to think of structures, like bridges, supports and canopies. Got a few ideas for possible main structures, though I need to do many more thumbnails. Might include a bit of colour in my next set of thumbnails though I quite like starting off in greys now. Starting to get key words down for the travelogue too. Getting there slowly...

Final shots - mostly there...

Still a bit of tweaking to be done, but here are my mostly finished final shots of Anastasia...

 

 

 Exterior establishing shot

Exterior low angle shot

Interior establishing shot

 

 

Am beginning to really overwork these, so will leave them for now and revisit tonight for final tweaking!