Vis Lit: Vintage

So I came up with a new idea for vintage. When I thought of vintage I think of people in Top hats wearing monocles drinking wine. So I wanted to use that in a, sort of, funny way. I took inspiration from a Meme, Feel like a sir (see below), as it is an image used to be funny, for example, If you don't have any normal glasses that are clean you may use a wine glass for your juice and you would then "feel like a sir". So I wanted to take this and combine it with my retro gaming theme and this is what I came up with.

Visual Lit: Happy

I showed my initial idea for happy to Belinda last week and she gave me some good feedback. She recommended I take out the text and just use the image as it is a very powerful image in itself. I basically took the image in black and white and gave it a bit of a faded border then I increased the yellow, to make the whole image yellow, to show that sort of cliché happy along side my more unique interpretation of happy. Finally I made a combination of the two images, half yellow and half black and white. So here's what I've done:

Elementary Animation

I have just finished drawing out my images for my hand drawn animation of a ball and tail. I still need to take the photos and put them into flash to make sure it works well, so lets hope it's just a one take animation.

Dynamic Communications

Hi, I've not really posted much about my dynamic communications, even though I thought I had, so there is a small amount of catching up. Firstly I have decided upon a direction I want to go in for my ident, down the boxing side as I've been doing it for around 8 years and it is a big part of my life. I came up with some ideas for how I would like it laid out. I wanted a boxers silhouette in between my first and last name and here is what I came up with.

With this I was experimenting with different text and layout of the boxer with the text. The one I liked most was probably the third or sixth design.

After this I thought up another logo idea, which incorporates the two boxers, but in a more professional style.

With these designs I experimented with different colours, red and blue and a gold colour. The red and blue are fitting with the corners in boxing but I find the gold just looks that bit more professional. I was also thinking that with my ident I want to have the silhouettes boxing each other and freeze when one hits the other (like in the above image) so I thought I could have the boxers fighting and when it freezes, have them fade into this style and then the camera zooms out and shows my name with these guys in the middle, or something like that. I am still not 100% sure what I want to do exactly yet.

Visual Lit. Idea

For visual literacy we need to come up with some stills for a song, poem or something of that sort. So I wanted to go for a narrative based piece, Rorschach's Journal, from the movie Watchmen. Its full of imagery in what he says and the actual clip itself doesn't really depict what he is saying in the journal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgmdHvBabAQ

Visual Literacy: Help

With the feedback I got from my "Crit" session today I have taken that and used it in my image for Help. I think it looks A LOT better because before the background was just very nothing and stuck out a bit much. The only difference with these two images is the lightness wee guy in the middle. I'm not sure which one I prefer yet though.

Visual Literacy: Happy, Final Image

My final image for "Happy" (not that I'm not allowing change). It is very similar to my image in my last post but I made the grungy texture a bit lighter/more visible.

Visual Literacy: Happy

For my word "Happy" I wanted to do something a long the lines of my boxing, as that is something I really enjoy and feel happy when I do it. What I love about it is probably what a lot of people would HATE, and that is the exertion. I love giving it everything I have and that feeling exhaustion afterwards. So I decided that I wanted to an image with a boxer on the left side of the image, fading out and "Blood, sweat & tears" on the right. So for the model to be the boxer, who better than myself! The first two images below are the images of the boxer (first is the raw image and second is after I made it black & white in Photoshop)

These images below are all fairly similar besides the text layout changes in one of them and there is a different grungy texture in the background of each of them. The second one I think is my favourite but I think I will lighten up the grungy texture in the back to make it slightly more visible.

Help Mood board

Here are the images I used as reference for the monsters in my image.

Final Ideas for Help

Visual Literacy: Help

Here I have all the silhouettes basically finished, now I just need to add in the eyes and mouths and I should be done with the monsters. That will just leave me with white guy and possibly highlights on the monsters to do.

Visual Literacy: Help

Here I have the initial rough outlines for my digital image for "Help". What I am going for here is a bunch of black creepy silhouettes of monsters all around one white character, in the middle, who is screaming into the air. The eyes and mouths of the silhouettes will be white so that they stand out.

Vintage First Draughts

Here are my first two digital trials for "vintage". I went for a retro gaming point of view for my interpretation of vintage. Enjoy.

Boxing Silhouettes for Dynamic Communication & Error Message

As I have decided to have a little animation of two boxers fighting for my ident I pieced together this useful mood board with plenty of silhouettes to use for inspiration

I also noticed that my videos did not work, so I will tinker about with that and try to find a way to det them to work! Sorry for any inconvenience.

Flour Sack Animation

Today I made a flour sack animation as a trial for the one we will actually be doing this semester. It is like a side scroller and I based it in hell (the sack said "self raise" when it was in fact "plain", so that's why he is in hell).

Canon Firing Animation in Flash

Here is my animation for a cannon firing. I decided to do this one in flash and here it is. Enjoy!

Elementary Animation: Ball and Tail

http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/gallery/clip/1B01168_0005.do?assetId=clip_16318080
This link takes you to the BBC Motion gallery. It is a clip of a monkey swinging in a tree. I chose this as I am wanting, for my ball and tail animation, to have a ball with a monkey tail swinging from a tree.

Elementary Animation Research: Cannon Animation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHvzj_kYJ6o&feature=player_detailpage#t=221s

The above link takes you to a specific scene from the wile e coyote cartoon where he is using a cannon but unexpected things keep happening which results in him failing HARD! These unexpected events add a lot of humor to the scene as it just gets ridiculous.

Visual Literacy Mood boards

HELP Mood board

VINTAGE Mood board

Dynamic Communication Moodboard

End of Graded Unit

Hey, not updated in a while because I got carried away with getting my graded unit but i'll be doing an overview of what ive done in this post.

For the first week I got all my research sorted. I created mood boards with different anthropomorphic characters and I explained why i picked them and what I liked about them. Also I created an action plan where I spoke about my interpretation of the brief, why I picked it and different animation ideas I had.

The next part was the ideas and development. This is where my ideas took off and I really began to enjoy the brief. I ended up with a whole bunch of sketches as the brief demanded a model sheet for each of my characters (I had 5) on top of all my ideas, development and facial expressions. 

Once I began my modeling I came up with the idea for my animation, which was sort of a Toy Story theme, where when the characters are as there objects when someone is in the room but when alone they turn into their characters. When I came up with the idea I was worried that I would not be able to fully follow it as it was ambitious, however I did, almost to perfection.

When it came to animating it went pretty well, I managed to get everything to go how I wanted it to and the facial expressions turned out to work really well and from there everything went really well.

As for my grade I got a high A grade which I am over the moon with and to be honest, because of the amount of time, work and effort I put into it I wouldn't have been happy with anything other than an A. But I do always try my best and always want the best.

Graded Unit

I have just handed in my character modeling and movement studies brief. I passed both fine and I feel my work was good and to a good standard.

I have now been given the graded unit and I have decided to choose the Anthropomorphic Characters. I feel this is going to be least restricting with regards to realism. I have had my first session showing my planning stage and I feel it went pretty well. I am now onto doing my sketches for ideas.

update

This week I have been trying to finish my briefs. In 3DS Max I have finished just about everything except for the squash modifier which is causing problems. However I did render my animation even without the squash modifier.
With my maya work I have had a lot of problems with my character as at one point it was running really, really slow so I had to sort of do it again where the character wasn't smoothed so it would run better which it does. I have got my environment done as well the character so I only need to animate it.

Update

This week was the first week back from holidays. It was a bit of a shock as I didn't realise just how close the deadline was. However in 3DS Max I have set up and animated my animation of a robot arm building a robot which then walks off the assembly line. I will tweak it before totally finishing it. In maya I have created my character but just need to add a few features and clothing to it before rigging it for the animation.

Today I got given a challenge from a 3D company where I need to make something in order to see if I am the one they want to employ for a part time job while at college and a full time job after finishing college. However even if I don't get the job I will probably get some freelancing work which would also be great so it's sort of a win win situation.

Holiday Work

Hi, I have not submitted a post for a while now so I have a lot to go over.

With my organic modelling brief I have finally decided on a final character. I had ideas varying from post apocalyptic survivor to a mad scientist to steam punk design which is sort of where I ended up. So far I have not exactly Began modelling my character yet, but I have done some tutorials for rigging in class. However at home on my laptop I couldn't find the pre-set character that I was using in class so came to a bit of a stand still there. But I did find a good tutorial on-line which explains how to make a female character on this website, http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/tutorials/character/c/real-time-character-modeling-tutorial. I did have a few problems with this one as it was my first but next time I changed it to a male character (as it has less curves and an overall simpler shape) and this one turned out a lot better.

With my movement studies brief, before going on holiday, I had made a robotic arm, robot and rigged them both. However they were quite basic and I then decided to make new ones. My new robotic arm looks a lot more impressive and cool. I also added textures to it to make it look modern and pristine unlike a simply functional robot arm. In my animation I am wanting to make the robotic arm build a smaller basic robot which will then walk off the assembly line into a box and this will repeat a few times. The robot which is going to be built I wanted to look simple and cute and to contrast with the modern arm so I made it be built out of cardboard which is a good contrast to the modern look of the robotic arm.

We were given a surprise brief a while ago where we had to come up with a character for a Disney cartoon and had to pitch our idea to the 2nd year new media students and my idea was one of the two chosen to go into the main competition. My character is a new experiment in a lab, his ability is unknown so the scientist at first doesn't know if he will be a virus or the cure for cancer. As it turns out he is the cure for everything but he doesn't know it and as the series  goes on his abilities become apparent and he develops as a character.