Thursday 6 December 2012

A research in seasons in environment design

This series of illustrations is from<Assasin creed3> (2012).They express the 4 different seasons .I'll list 2 elements of the difference .

1.Light and colors
From the spring one, the first pic ,the light is soft, it express the sunlight in spring,soft and most comes through the cloud ,let the audience feel this is the beginning of one year and it's the brand new story to tell. The tone of the colors in this image is tend to purple mainly,because purple is the color between tonal changes in temperature.

The second one is summer,what we can see from this one is the light turns to be very strong and dazzling,the effect is a little bit solarize , it use the yellow in the front of the image and blue in the behind mainly,audience could feel the Sharp contrast between the two kind of colors.

The third one use the representative color of autumn that is the golden yellow. Light is no longer exposure,the angle of the light is inclined,turns soft again.

The last one 's light is dark and grey,colours tend to blue and very weak, we could only see it from the clearances of trees.From this pic, the author used the physical reflection of snow mainly.




2.Props

The author used the different shape and states of the trees and grasses to express the different seasons,and the leafs mainly.

My research powerpoint







I'll do further more research in the environment design through the whole semesters, to know how to create a typical scence to represent the film and let the audience to remember it .

Saturday 1 December 2012

Some researches in the character and the enviornment design in Ikaros

At first, wejust prefer to use the real face of human,we all thought it would be simple,but after the meetings with JIN, we found that we were doing something that really traditional and nothing new,we need to find something symbolize and let audience could find the theme when they saw the character.That maybe one of the point in our final film,we need to find it.

So I discussed with Isabel,we all agreed to put a mask on the character's face,that will reduce a lot of actions of the actor (maybe we don't need he or she finally).After some research, I found that gas mask maybe the most suitable mask for it ,Beacause our film is about some stuffs after war ,everything is destryed and polluted,the gas mask could express the pain that human beings suffered after wars.

The story happens in the future ,to express the ruthless feeling,I suppose to use the metal .
 This reference is a little bit similar like what i've thought, we need the reflections on the glasses on the eyes to express what he saw instead of the real eyeballs, and very dusty .
The pic that I paint before,also used the gas mask as a main element.


The matirial and the effects that we want ,really need to design it special.

Some issues of nurbs

I did some research in nurbs when I was modeling ,I followed the tutorials sometimes but it didn't work in some modeling.

1:booleans



I need a lot of booleans in my model,but sometimes when i did this ,
that yellow warning appeared just like : //Warning: Operation has history, inputs are not deleted

but i've deleted all the history and also freeze the transiformation etc.

what am i doing wrong? I've got a feeling it's really simple! Maybe some mistakes of my models lead this issue?I really can't figure it out.


2:triming
After I did some trim successfully,there comes problems!   I couldn't selet the object that i want to trim when i click the trim button  ,nothing happened, i confirmed that i 've tick the selection of face also, I 've asked some classmates but still couldn't solve it.


3.Circular fillet

I could use it somewhere ,but when i was unluck ,it went wrong , I hit this button and regulated the data to less than 1 ,but nothing happed ,or just fillet the surface inside, really strange,but I think this maybe the shapes of models related```


I 'll find more tutorials to solve these issues,otherwise , maybe ask some professinal persons for help.

Nurbs update!

Used 2 reference images to complete the modeling ,it was the first time that i used nurbs, it's quite convinient but a lot of issues appeared during the modeling

The rereference images  ,I 've modeled all of the things in the pic above and also the alarm clock below.

The final nubs with area lighting:


Well, the process was quite confusing but a lot of fun.

Sunday 25 November 2012

A primary research in mudbox

I took 3 hours to do some research in mudbox, it's quite new to me, so firstly,I found some introduction of mudbox. I want to know more about the sculpture module and the texture module with the reference pics .
The paint tool , mainly learned how to paint the contract on the surface of the model.That will be useful in the texture of the old boot .
Otherwise ,there are also some disadvantages of the paint tool, we couln't see some tiny details when we are painting, so we still need the seperated UV to solve it.
The painting with the reference pic, quite like this function,,we can use it to make some beautiful texture on it,like wood and iron.
 Finally  , the sculpture module.It's very convinience to built details ,but it's quite like Zbrush , but the amount of the brushes are seldom.For the shoe it's enough .

I tried once to import the model into the mudbox, but the x ray mood appeared again,really don't know how to solve it.So I built another model in the mudbox immediately in the mudbox to test it and used something I've just learned from the videos, that's better, but i have no time to detail it, just wait until the maya models are done.

POLYGON MODEL UPDATE


Finally finished the modeling ,I used 3 different ways to make the shoe, i used only extude in the first time  then I made it piece by piece for the second time ,at last i combined them together and made carefully to avoid some stupid mistakes.I smoothed the model then exported it to Zbrush to make some details on it.But there is a mistake that I could solve.
Just like the pic above, there was the display like X-ray , I tried many times to find the answer online ,but it didn't work.And if someone know about this  ,please tell me.

The texture test:used the photoshop to draw the map .find a lot of details need to improve in the texture , and also need some bump map.

Thursday 15 November 2012

The first storyboard of the Ikaros project

  
  • After a disscussion in the whole afternoon,we've made this storyboard.Jack and I designed every shoot and tried to painted them out.We designed to let the character to come out from the clouds,Micheal will focus on the visual effects such as the clouds and the explosion at the end of the movie.
  • We decided to use 4 scenes :London ,Eygpt,Rio and Manhattan,and set the London eye,pyramid,Statue of Jesus,buildings as the symbols of the 4cities. 
  • We'll only model the some parts of the scenes to let it be more achiveble .And use the different angles to  let it comes alive

Two attempts in the polygon modelling

The first attempt for the shoe.Only used the extude tool to build them all,Then,when I wanted to give the facets a thickness,so I uesd the extude again,but some horrible mistakes appeared when I was almost finished!I could hardly corrected them all!I spent approximately 5hours to correct it,but it didn't work.So I decided to use another way to madke it.
I built the shoe by pieces this time, and then extude , it seems more clearer and easier to build, and almost no mistakes in it, I will finish it and then import it to Zbrush to build more details.

Sunday 11 November 2012

Birthday cards sketches for my roommate!

Design and paint all of the birthday cards, really fun!Some were from "Kungfu panda"!

Mood broad of the project:Roses and Dust

Quite like the inflatted modellings of the character,so I collected some girls with big head and Three head body,and also the guy with the long legs,but that could be more complicated in modelling and animation modules .And I also find some references for the enviornment ,and the color as well.

The sketch of the character and enviornment of the "Rose and Dust"

The three head body ,quiet like the inflatted style of the characters.



The house,I was thought of the tree house , but that's not easy for the girl to look after her garden and then the actions will be more complicated, so I just painted a simple one.

Saturday 3 November 2012

Hardly recommend this video!Like the style of the expression so much!As our group has no animators  ,I think this form of expression could be the most achieveable ~There is no complicated animation, just the camera moving and the beautiful angles of shooting.That's what we need maybe.And all of the characters were built in 3D but rendered like 2D .Really amazing~

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Collabration and the mind mapping 2!!!

Well ,first of all , I want to develop my spirit of teamwork.In China,students often do the work all by themselves,and all my supervisiors required that we should complete a subject by ourselves step by step,that includes concept design,illstrations,modelling,textrue,lighting,animation and other stuffs that you could even image in making animations,that is really huge engineer!even though I've already get used to it,but I think that if you could do everything just a little ,you could not get a job either,they need the professionals in a specific area, not every point 。So maybe it's the most significant thing that I should to focus on.


And secondly,the techniques.Softwares are the biggist chanllenge in the master course,I thought that softwares are only tools and I need not to learn it at all when I was a undergraduate student.But now i think that i should know more about the techniques to improve myself ,even they are just tools ,I should know how to use them!So I'll focus on the modelling and the texture,I have some telents in colors ,I really like to bring them to my 3D world.And the character modelling will be the most important part in this course.


Thirdly, concept art.I don't really want to give up my concept art, but as i cant focus on all the things I am intersted in.So I decide that maybe the character design will be the big point that I ll figure it out.As I really like the inflated characters ,just like the characters in the movie<Dispecable me>.Like CGI more than visual effects.

The most influenced artists:Tim Burton ,Craig Mullins,Dagang Chen,Guangjian Huang and the Dreamwork studio.

The methods:Visit relevant people in this area and inteview them,keep doing with my visual diary!

Aim:make a shrt film from 2min to 5min as my final project,and get a job as concept artist or modeller~

Let me fight for this!

Friday 12 October 2012

Today's sketch and yesterday's tutorial


There must be some problems of the blog!I've tried 2days to publish!But i've lost my documents again and again!Ok ,Finally ,I can talk alittle about yesterday's tutorial.Well ,I really enjoyed it!Now I begin to recoganize if i could work in the area which i really like ande could develop my strengh  ,that will be fabulous!Even though i haven't many expirence of the softwares , but as i am a guy who like adventrue ,i really like to try my best on it!Just not want to fall behind the others!
At last  today's sketch practise!


Monday 8 October 2012

Finally!

Finally finished my first writting here!It was quiet confusing me at the beginning,but thank godness!I've done this!And I have to say writting is quiet helpful to my reading!I've finished read 2books in 3days!I can't even image it!
PS: The book<Animation:from pencils to pixels> and <The animation bible>are so brilliant!Strongly recommond!





Your Name:




Title of Your Review:
The limitation and combination of 2D traditional and 3D technical methods of making animation

Your Contextual Review (700-800 words)

As the modern staffs developing so quickly today, many traditional fields have be frustrated by the developing of advanced markets. In this critical review I will try to figure out what the advantages and disadvantages of the processes of making both 2D and 3D animation.

Tony White (2006)’s investigation about the evolution of 2D and 3D character design (,p.31, 2006)distinguished the processes of how they developed. The 2D” rubber hose characters” appeared when the professional fields required. Disney grabbed the chance to use that movement in the early time , however, even the challenge of improving design of the characters of 2D animation is very difficulty, they evolved the new style of character skeleton structure: the limbs could never be distorted . Otherwise, the limitation of 3D character design is more wider than2D.It required more foundation of skeletons, and the aspects of the representation of them is different “While 2D animation is usually defined as cartoon, 3D is ….. or superhero.” However, no matter 2D or3D, the limitation of the character design is still exist. Character design need a lot of angles of the characters, with 2D, the designer will cost a lot of time to draw every perspective of them, but with 3D it could be twisted to see the every angle of the characters. On the other hand, details would be required in animation and rendering modules, so the3D designers need to think about all the details on everything from the beginning to the ending which make it more complicate.

The exploration of the production of storyboard is another significant thing that Tony has done. He indicated that: with3D techniques, cameras could be moved to shoot every angle of the scene, so we need not to consider all the scenes previously. However, as 2D animation, all the characters and background should be considered at first and draw them frame by frame, so the cameras could not be moved a lot unless there is a lot of time and strong fund.2D still requires strong foundation of traditional techniques.

“The key production process of an animated film or game is the animation.”(Tony, p.184, 2006),they could be separated to 2D and 3D.As many people think that you must have strong ability of drawing and many artistic skills to be 3D animator, but that things do not be required in 3D animate area. Sine Tony(2006) argued that it’s not totally true:”3D animators are better at what they do if they pay attention to drawn observation skills”(Tony,p.185, 2006),and this opinion is confirmed by some best 3D animators. For instance, Kathy Smith, an Australian animator strongly believes that:” Traditional animation techniques are not in decline.”(Maureen ,p.309,2008),she insists that all the animations we’ve seen is a” mixture of 2D and 3D” and “understanding traditional processes will always enhance whatever you do in digital world.” Since I will focus on concept art [character design] and animation in this course,3D techniques could not be separated from traditional skills in drawing and artistic is firmly convinced ,even though the limitation of 2D animation is quite broader than 3D,it will still be the foundation of all sorts of animation . As the three-dimensional staffs could do many special effects and make animation more simple, Tony(2006) himself thinks that 3D was still can’t shock the fields of animation movies. The new medium still have a long way to go.

Then what the meaning drawing of animators? Don’t just think that the only the pure art need the traditional skills .All the best animators need that! This view has been insisted by Tony (2006) that if you think computer can do everything for you in the digital age , it’s totally wrong.” Indeed, the better animators.....they are certainly in the skills of traditional drawing.” As I want to focus on animation, then the comprehending of observation is required in high level, drawing can help me to understand more details and structure of the human beings and other biological. You could only be called technicians if you only can use software to animate, Tony (2006) believed that drawing “is something that separates good animators from the bad, the artists from technicians.”(Tony,p.285,2006) As Tony examined that the trend to employ 3D character animators requires the strong ability in 2D animation and drawing, because they can make the best animations. So I insist that concept art is very valuable, it could improve my foundation of art and help me to do my character animation better. Although the paperless age is coming, but that doesn’t means it’s the end of drawing.

In this master course , I will be focusing on the 2D concept art and 3D character animation, even the limitation of each medium is still exist, I’ll going to combine the elements of them , especially on drawing and creation improvement on 2D ,software skills on 3D ,try to figure out the connection of different mediums.



References: 

Tony, W., (2006) Animation from pencils to pixels (classical techniques for digital animators) Elsevier Science Course Content Delivery, Oxford
Maureen F.,(2008) The Animation Bible! Laurence King Publishing Ltd, London


Bibliography (optional)


Your five key words:
Limitation, Traditional, Techniques, Combination, Foundation



Sunday 30 September 2012

Mid- Autumn Festival!

Today is Chinese traditional festival!~Mid-Autumn Festival!Really miss it!Chinese gathered together celebrated it!Fabulous night!
Spending the whole day in the main liabrary````really perfer the library in DJCAD!
I almost can't find any referrence books in the main liabrary!What a shame!Now i can only try to find the key words in my mind~
I ve only found the arguements that i want to search
 is the limitation of the softwares and the pure art(art without any business value)  That maybe intersetinggggg~
It seems that  i need to go to the liabrary ofDJCAD tomorrow agaian!Hope i'll have a good time!!~