Final Piece

Production Designer Profile

Production Desiginer by Servare on Scribd

What if Metropolis Reflective Statement

Where to begin... Where to begin... Well this project has was far more stressful then it should have been. With all the misshaps with the essay that had to be handed in not even a week ago, it slowed my workflow, though this could have been avoided as it was merely a form of miscommunication that caused the extra workload.

I feel I should be sure to understand exactly what it is that is being asked of me so as to avoid such levels of stress again, i'm often told I ask too many questions but when I don't ask then I make rather large mistakes... While it may be annoying I feel I should stick with asking questions.

As for 3D Modelling, I let slip my upload schedule of the Maya Homework, now not only will I have work to do over the christmas break but I could also fall behind in the level of skill required to further my study here on the course. I would rather not jeapordise myself like that again.

Same goes for the Film Reviews, that will definitely effect my grade for this project as I failed to keep up with work flow.

Overall this has not been a good project for me, the work itself was fine and not terribly difficult in itself but my lack of ability to juggle workloads is a serious issue that I need to address.

What If Meropolis Art Of

What if Metropolis ART Of by Servare on Scribd

Compositional Pianting Buildup

 Still:

 

Animated:

Matte Painting Animated Buildup

Still:

Animated:

What if metropolis progress update.

Here's what i've been up to today:

First i started with basic blocking out of buildings, getting the shape right and placing down where the town swuare will be.

 

After that I modelled the statue, repositioned the background building and positioned a camera for the rendering.

 

From there I started adding details including street lamps, windows and low poly buildings in the background, I also took out each window pane ready for when I need to place lights. I also made some adjustments to the camera positioning for something closer to how I want the final render to look.

Christmas Animation

Merry Christmas! Be sure to keep your puppies away from the presents! Seriously my pup destroyed my tree and opened here gift too early!

Cottage Lighting

Here's a Cottage, it was used to help understand lighting in Maya.

What if metropolis update.

The city is built of simple materials but used to trick the viewer, similar to post-modern building design where windows appear to have no frame or a building that functions with now windows at all.

After getting feedback I decided to go back to basics and research engineering methods, looking at how steel beams are connected or welded and how materials of different consistency hold together.

I have found the information to be quite enlightening. Steel, Glass and Concrete are so versatile that they can be used to create anything from stock homes to elaborate illusions.

Initial ideas are to create an illusion of buildings made of paint by using steel girders of various sizes as structural pieces whilst attaching mirrored glass that is painted to look like huge paint strokes… heck perhaps they are made with a huge brush (maybe too cartoony?) so it is actually a single stroke.

As for textures I will need:

• ·         A brush stroke.
• ·         Concrete.
• ·         Swirled plaster.
• ·         Glass or something with high reflectivity.
• ·         Brushed Steel.

Here are some sketches:

Constructive criticism or ideas are very much welcome!

Life drawing comparison

From 05/10/16 to 30/11/16 my life drawing skills have changed, I wanted to document this, it's a good way to see how much you have improved.

So the first one is from 05/10/16, the first time I drew this particular Model.

This second one is from 30/11/16, the latest drawing of this particular model as of 2/12/16

This post is open to any and all comments/criticisms

Life drawing 30/11/16

More life drawing, I was very happy with the feedback I received, was told that i had improved quite a bit in such a short time, I shall post a comparison from the first week and this weeks after this post.

What if metropolis OGR 2

My rather late submission for the OGR.

What if Metropolis OGR 2 by Servare on Scribd

Initial Orthographic Sketches

Here are the pencil sketches of some orthographic designs.
Once able I will finish them on Photoshop.

Maya Homework Update.

I have been behind on my Maya Homework, with a week spent rebuilding my computer after a fatal crash I was very behind.
This is where I am on each 3D Model in Maya, I appologise for this delay and I am working on getting everything finished as soon as I can.

Scooter:

The Scooter is almost complete, only needing to be coloured and textured, or so I believe.









Old Alley:

 The first video was finished and the alley walls modelled, now i am modelling the lamp post.









Alien: I have not started the alien.

After Effects 25/11/16

In class we were tasked with painting a lanscape and then animationg it in After Effects.
This is how mine turned out:

Photoshop 21/11/16

Two different styles on how the buildings textures could look like.
I very much like how the bottom one looks but I can't help but feel that it may not capture Franz Kline in the way I want it too.

Photoshop 14/11/16

In class I tried to focus on getting a style down for the cities development.

After effects animation 18/11/16

Here is the video of my After Effects class work.

Animation class 18/11/16

In class we were tasked with making a run cycle without any examples, we could run in the classroom to get an idea on how to animate it but that was about it.

Instead of running around the classroom I looked up examples online on how professionals make them, I then sketched out an idea in Photoshop before moving onto Adobe Animate.

The Sketch:

The first animation:

After creating this animation I was asked to make him/her run on the spot, this is a good way to see if things don't match up or are out of place.

Once this was done I was given permission to make edits, I added a secondary action, ears.

When I have some free time I want to polish this up and add some more features to turn it into a  character, possibly add more than one to give depth.

I really want to improve so constructive criticism is welcome! Feel free to comment on what could be improved or what doesn't look right.

Animated Fox Box

In class we have been animating our box characters using After Effects, here is how mine turned out.

The Gif compression caused some interlacing.

14/11/16 Maya Class

In today's class we started work on the "Modelling 1: Digital Sets" tutorials on the CG Artists Toolkit.

This is how far we got in the class:

Edward Scissorhands Review

Fig. 1. Edward Scissorhands Poster (1990)

Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990) (see fig 1) is a gothic heroes tale of love and loss. The titular main character is Edward (Johnny Depp), a man who was constructed by an inventor (Vincent Price) but was never finished due to the inventors untimely death. Edward is found by a woman who brings him back home to a conventional suburban housing estate, at first everyone loves him but actively uses him, some for financial reasons and others for pleasure. It takes a turn for the worse when the town betrays his trust and runs him out of town, one boy even attempts to murder Edward.

Bo Welch was the production designer for the film, he used creative visuals to show the extremes of both worlds, the colourful suburban housing estate and the gothic castle atop a dark forested hill. “One of the biggest challenges I had was marrying the film’s two distinct visual aesthetics,” Welch said. “It took some time to wrap my head around that.” (Bo Welch 2015) Welch explains that designing the movie was not an easy task. A great example of this contrast is towards the beginning of the film when Peg Boggs adjusts her car mirror and sees the castle (see fig 2) this shows just how juxtaposed the setting is, considering a "modern" american housing estate is accompanied by an ancient european castle.

Fig. 2. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Welch found a newly built development of homes in Tampa, Florida and knew that was the location they needed, a new slate they could do anything with. The inhabitants were relocated to hotels during production. “This neighborhood in Florida also had a particular graphic quality, and interesting skies with its clouds.” (Bo Welch 2015) Welch states his interest at the time with the location and how he felt it had that particular look that would suit the movie well. In 2015 a photographer named Andrew Creameans traveled to Tampa and took photographs(see fig 3) that matched the stills in the movie to show how the location looks now.

 

Fig. 3. Tampa (2015)

The film's aesthetics are designed to be what Edward see's the world as, the town is the same as any other in reality but to Edward it's a mystical land of fantasy, something he could only see from his window far away in his home, the shapes, the people, the cars and even the colours are designed to be what Edward sees, as the tagline states: "Innocence is what he knows, Beauty is what he see's" (Edward Scissorhands poster 1990) or as Welch puts it: "We designed the neighborhood to appear as though you’re seeing it through Edward’s eyes, the great thrill is the friction between those two aesthetics within a single frame." (Bo Welch 2015) As Welch explains, the point of the set design wasn't just to look nice for the audience, it also acted as a catalyst allowing the audience into the mind of Edward. Beauty truly is what he saw.

Bibliography:

Burton, Tim Edward Scissorhands (1990) Directed by Tim Burton [DVD] USA: Tempa, Florida: 20th Century Fox

Welch, Bo (2015) [Interview by Jason Guerrasio, 12th October, 2015]

Welch, Bo (2015)[Interview by Matthew Chernov, 7th December, 2015]

Illustrations:


Figure 1, Edward Scissorhands Poster (1990) [Advertisement]

Figure 2, Edward Scissorhands (1990) From: Edward Scissorhands Directed by: Tim Bruton [Film Still] USA, (Accessed 13/10/16)

Figure 3, Creameans, Andrew (2015) Tampa [Photograph; Comparison of set design to modern day location] at: http://mentalfloss.com/article/67093/what-edward-scissorhands-candy-colored-neighborhood-looks-today (Accessed 13/11/16)

11/11/16 animation class

In class we were tasked with animating a walk cycle, we were told not to worry too much about making it flow or adding slow in slow out, this is my first attempt and how I built it up.

I started by animating the frames one at a time, I made the two ends and then the middle, halving it each time until I drew every frame.

I then compressed them, making the feet line up so the character doesn't slide along the ground.

Afterwards i changed the colours and added in more frames to make the animation loop.

Finally the animation, The blue signifies the limbs in the background, behind the body.

Halloween animation

This animation was made in class before halloween, my apologies for uploading it late.

Maya work

Some more maya animations.

Animationg with rigs:

(There was some corruption but I was able to salvage most of it.)

Animating Ball and chain physics:

Maya homework

This week has been very troublesome when it comes to the Maya homework as some files were not available for some time, some are still unavailable at the time of typing this and maya itself refusing to work correctly by crashing or refusing to load the files.

I have been able to get these done while at home:

Animating the 3 bouncing balls.

Using MEL.

However the Motion paths files are no longer available to be downloaded, the Using rigs files refuse to be loaded into my Maya, the Dynamics animation works well until i add gravity, then Maya instantly crashes.

These will need to be done monday lunchtime or after class.

What if Metropolis OGR

'WIM‘ OGR by Servare on Scribd

Halloween special life drawing

We had a Halloween special, at first I drew almost only the upper body so I dedicated a page to the lower body.
The many inked images were to try and capture movement.

Maya Animation 24/10/16

Here is the animation we made during class on monday, i could not upload it until now due to the file corrupting.

La Belle et La Bête review

(Figure1) La Belle et la Bête [Poster]

La Belle et La Bête(see fig1) or in english: Beauty and the Beast, was produced in 1946, directed by Jean Cocteau, it tells the story of a man who picks a rose from a beasts(see fig2) garden, the beast gives him the choice of either dying or giving the beast one of the mans daughters, "Belle" the youngest daughter takes the mans place but the beast falls in love with her, as the story progresses she slowly falls for the beast who transforms into the handsome prince he once was.

The film uses visuals to tell the story more than it's dialogue which is far more life-like in acting, the characters natures are always coherent and really feels like something said characters would do in the situations they are placed in, from Ludovic (Belle's brother) teasing his sisters to how Avenant (Ludovics friend) attempted to slay the beast to win Belle's heart.

(Figure2) The Beast [Still]

Visually the film stuns it's audience with it's deep, dark shadows(see fig 3) and contrasting bright lighting that really puts emphasis on what is going on rather than having the set pieces take precedence over the actors.
A lot of the movie is filmed at "Raray" a commune in northern France, praised for being a beautiful place: 'many of the exteriors having been filmed for rare architectural vignettes at Raray, one of the most beautiful palaces and parks in all France' - Bosley Crowther (1947) 

(Figure3) The beasts dining hall [Still]

Upon release the film received critical acclaim, Bosley Crowther (mentioned above) was a critic in New York City at the time and reviewed the film: 'priceless fabric of subtle images,...a fabric of gorgeous visual metaphors, of undulating movements and rhythmic pace, of hypnotic sounds and music, of casually congealing ideas' Crowther obviously really enjoyed the film, praising it in all aspects but mostly focusing on how it was pieced together: 'fabric of subtle images,...a fabric of gorgeous visual metaphors' the fabric of the film that holds it all together that according to his statement was the visual side of the film.

Crowther was not the only reviewer of course, in 1999 Roger Ebert said: 'one of the most magical of all films" and "fantasy alive with trick shots and astonishing effects, giving us a Beast who is lonely like a man and misunderstood like an animal.' Evidently the film reaches deep into the human psyche and pulls fourth emotion and understanding, it's designed to make you care for a monster which at the time was not common at all.

 Bibliography:

• La Belle et la Bête (1946) Directed by Jean Cocteau [Film] France: André Paulvé
• Bosley Crowther (1947) Review of La Belle et la Bête: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critic/bosley-crowther/ (Accessed 27/10/16)
• Roger Ebert (1999) Review of Beauty and the Beast: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-beauty-and-the-beast-1946 (Accessed 27/10/16)

Illustrations:

• Figure 1 La Belle et la Bête [Poster]
• Figure 2 The Beast [Still]
• Figure 3 The Beasts dining hall [Still]