RootBlog

Excalibur Publishing Project

2011-08-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

In an effort to defy procrastination and laziness, I'm taking to this project for the great company Excalibur Publishing.

Initial thoughts? It's going to be nearly impossible to advertise their products seriously. They have titles like 'Farming Simulator 2011' and 'Street Sweeper Simulator'. It's going to be difficult to walk the line between not displaying the product in such a serious manner that it becomes ridiculous how straight it's played, and outright mocking the products to the point where it loses any appeal.

I've rolled through a few ideas that were either too straight or too mocking, and I've arrived at one I think is just about balanced on the line.

Procrastinate Properly

The games made by Excalibur are somewhat unique in that they're halfway between a casual game and a proper game, with an audience far different from most. Most games are played as procrastination, I'd imagine, to put off a more difficult task. The concept behind this campaign is that if you're going to waste time instead of being productive, you might as well do it properly.

The project brief, too, is to make the advertisement viral. This is the single hardest hurdle. Viral advertisements propogate mainly through YouTube, Facebook, and all your other miscellanious social sites and word of mouth. The games made by Excalibur Publishing I doubt have the core demographic of people who are highly active in such circles.

The basic concept to be fleshed out for PP is a 30s commercial slot. My time breakdown is currently looking like so, and the concept can be applied to several different but similar advertisements (allowing viral potential)

0-15: Video of person procrastinating in a boring manner. Minesweeper, Freecell, doodling in the side of a worksheet, anything. This will be the main viral-enabling portion, so gets a bit more screentime than is really neccessary.

15-25 : 'Procrastinate Properly' transition. Current concept is a soundbyte signature to the game currently advertised and movement onto displaying footage, with voiceover advertising game.

25-30: Excalibur Publishing ident on full screen, along with information on where to submit your own procrastination.

The viral part would come in an open competition with a prize for used content, with open invitation to submit a 15-second clip of 'procrastinating'. The interpretation of this would be left mostly open, and submitted entries could be viewed to find the best to make into the next iteration of the advertisement with the submitting user getting a prize (Some amount of money and, say, a gift redeemable on Steam for the collected Excalibur works. Or a tractor. Dunno.)

Going to get to work on the 5 second final part in 3dsMax, as videos will be more easily made when I return to Uni.

Disaster

2011-03-09T03:50:00.000-08:00

It seems 3ds Max decided to forget how to save following 10 hours solid work, and I now have a corrupt file.

A lesser man would be deterred. Let's see what a single day solid work can get me, from pretty much scratch.

Keep 'dem Shoggoth's rolling'

2011-03-04T05:43:00.000-08:00

The enclosure is completed using a different technique to how I was previously planning.

On the image:

Left: The mostly-finished enclosure. It's subject to being altered in shape later to appear more rock-like, but for now it's close enough to the final shape to focus on more important things.

Right: The inside of Area A (the first large cave). The feeling of still-claustrophobic size and transition into a very claustrophobic tunnel B is coming along nicely. Working on adding the pit props now; getting into the detail work over basic formation.

More progress

2011-03-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

Making the cave up, finally building the enclosure. Going a lot more smoothly than I expected so far.

Hi ho, hi ho, Y'gs'lg C'thulu n'gnlo

2011-03-01T05:20:00.000-08:00

What do you get when you combine the Great Old Ones and their tentacly appendages and consuming madness with the already creepy location of an abandoned mine?

Let's find out.

Rollin' rollin' rollin'.

2011-02-28T12:31:00.000-08:00

This work bought to you by a bowl of pasta and cheese, and my beautiful new second monitor, tall enough to use four-screen modelling on, making my tasks much easier. Been told I should be documenting my work progress better, so hopefully this counts.

Minecart - Initial Design

2011-02-28T11:57:00.000-08:00

Here's a thingy.

Tetsuo - Iron Man - Thoughts

2011-02-27T17:11:00.000-08:00

Just realised I've had this in a notepad for quite some time following a lack of internet connection when I watched it, and have yet bothered to upload it. Copy-pasting it here. Go.

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Tetsuo - The Iron Man - Budget Bodyhorror

Not certain what to think of it. To go through the whole film and it's plot would, I believe, be missing the point. Instead, I took most interest at the themes throughout it, those of violently graphic body horror and cyberpunk, with what looks to be a fairly low budget and with a total film crew that I believe in total dosen't surpass double digits.

Mostly I took the film of an example of stretching what one has and making the most of it with creative filming techniques and appropriate material (contrast with The Room). You can see it had a low budget, it can't hide this. But how it makes up for that is what becomes impressive.

The usage of sexual themes in the film also caught me by suprise. For the most part, sex either is included, and is general titilation and eroticism, or it is forgone entirely. In Tetsuo, in the most obvious sexual reference (in which the poor chap's Meat & Veg turn into a Black & Decker) serves only to make the scene more visceral, the sexuality of it all making it cut deeper to the gut (pun not intended), making it all the more sickening and personal, by striking from an angle we rarely expected. This, along with the not-so subtle comparisons with rape and abuse, create a mesh of twisted, truly discomforting themes, striking from so many emotional angles, that it distracts very successfully from the cheapness of the film.

The soundtrack was excellent and reinforced the cyberpunk theme to a tee, another fine example of money stretching. For the most part, the film made me think that it would have worked almost fine as a 'silent' film, with the soundtrack played over the top, forgoing the little speech there was in entirety.

However, aside from the positives, the plot was conveyed in such a way that it was confusing. Had it been simply the point of one mans struggle with this horrific metal-virus spreading through him, I would have been fine, but some characters seemed entirely unnecassary, serving only to complicate matters without adding much.

The jet-boot chase through a city also seemed fairly forced, not really meshing with the rest of the film which was very much clustered in one area.

All in all, I'd imagine the point of watching this was to give evidence of what can be done without a budget, but with pushing the limits on filming techniques. Ideas from it should come in handy with the AV piece, but I doubt ideas from it can fit into the other two parts.

Scary Mine

2011-02-20T15:05:00.000-08:00

Mines are scary.

They're deep pits into the guts of the Earth, with dark depths kept light only by poorly-supported lights extending in front of you, they're enclosed and claustrophobic, they're dark, they're cold, damp, there's death by crushing piles of earth held off your head by now-rotting wooden struts, there's jagged rock everywhere, the poor lighting causes shadows that seem to change as you pass them, the chugging rattle of creaking, aged machinery, stalictites that look like sharp, predatory teeth gnawing upon the path you're heading towards....

We're desensitised to most the usual horror spool. Zombies are now things to make comedy with (Sean of the Dead, Dead Rising), Vampires are now irritating teenage boys that sparkle in daylight and are in dire need of better dialogue, personalities, and plots, and skeletons are generally seen on the cover of celebrity magazines, sporting the newest Size -2 dress.

But on the news we see people being ferried out of collapsed mines, shaken and crying, blinded by the sun and mentally broken from being lost, alone, and trapped amidst cold, merciless rock and infinite darkness, waiting to starve. People get lost in mines. People die in mines. Mines are scary beyond any arm-flailing monster. A skeleton is six feet tall and even if you get caught by it, it'll just stab you or something.

But a mine, with proper application of horror, is a mile-square monster of earth, with teeth that hang from the cieling, grinding people up who have come to take from it the treasures it held. And you're already standing inside it's mouth. Add to this making the mine derelict, no longer used, shut down due to accidents, but something tore down the yellow tape, and there's a trail scratched in the floor, and the lights are flickering, still on the grid but dying of age, and they swing loosely on the breeze, the shadows extending and shrinking, like some kind of gullet pulsating around where you're standing and oh mercy get me out of here the walls are going to eat me.

I admit to being a big fan of horror, in all it's forms. Something bursting from the side of the room is startling, not horrifying. I was told when designing my track that it looked a bit too short. That's true. I haven't made it very long. If it was long, I'd be going at a decent pace. The track is simple and slow, and it dosen't wind or flip about. Horror comes in two speeds. Slow, and the heart pounding rush of stumbling for your life. My track has both, in what I believe to be the correct amounts.

Going back to horror, I believe that something mildly scary, that feels utterly believable, will cut a thousand times deeper than clearly fictional monstrosities. The works of H.P Lovecraft and Stephen King show this well; They create believable worlds and characters that are slowly sunk into the paranormal. Contrast this with the movie Van Helseing, where Hugh Jackman is regularly run-and-gunning with thirty vampires.

Of course, allowances must be made. The ride dosen't have the time to build up enough suspense and context to make something mostly insignificant horrifying, so I rely on other techniques, such as minimal actual monstrousness. The more something is seen, the more normal it becomes to see, the less it is paranormal, the less it is scary. So what I aim for in the flow, is to have the first scare event focused primarily on the fear of an unseen action taken by the presence in the mine, the second event based on a brief glimpse of the presence, followed by the aforementioned escape rush, and the final event being utterly overwhelmed by multiple sightings of the presence. At the moment the first two scare events are set in stone, but the third is up in the air.

________________________________________________________

Events

As brief descriptions:

Scare 1:
As the minecart slowly enters the first main room (Area A, coming from Tunnel A), the main light source is the flickering light from a minecart that has fallen from the tracks, lighting an area to the high left for the audience. As the light draws attention (possibly with some kind of event such as a small crumbling fall of rock in the area of the main light), a quick sound of breaking glass is heard from the direction of the abandoned cart (the audio must be clearly from the abandoned cart, nowhere else, possibly emphasised by a minor audio blackout a moment before the shattering) as the flickering lightspot on the wall is instantly extinguished (done by simply removing the light presence in 3dsMax and playing a sound in the editing at the same time).

Following will be the faint sound of footsteps moving away from the abandoned cart, and a faint rattling, with the area now significantly darkened.

Overall: A minor scare event designed to build suspense. In my hopes, an effective event created with only minor visual and audio interaction, leaving most of the work to what isn't seen.

Scare 2:
As the minecart reaches the end of Area A, which is now darkened following event 1, they are pulled further along the tracks towards Tunnel B. The tracks appear to be torn out and broken, but these are largely prosthetic parts of the track, with the true forward track being hidden to the eye of the rider by darkness, angle, colour, and distraction. As the viewer moves forward, the lights behind dim slightly and the cart light becomes brighter, increasing the viewers focus on the front, where they see a dark pit ahead of them. At this point, with the viewer looking ahead, the figure of a miner is moved onto the track behind them. When this is complete, the minecart light blows out with an audible pop as the lights remaining in Area A become a little lighter and an audible rattle plays once more, this time from close behind. This likely would bring the rider to turn around and see the sudden presence behind them. Following this, the cart immediately enters tunnel B quickly, and several events take place.

Overall: An event that utilises some startling, but primarily relies on directing the viewers attention and using the audio connection of the rattle, rather than jumping out. Nothing jumps out, the figure is still and only moving at a normal pace towards the cart, but it is unexpected. Event relies primarily on controlling and directing the audience attention.

Scare 2b
Following the first part of scare 2, the cart enters tunnel B. Tunnel B is designed to create the feeling of extensive and dramatic movement within a small area, by combination of several factors:

Audio: The ride has a constant sound of bumping connections in the tracks, running at a pace concurrent to the carts speed, coming from a speaker within the cart. This will increase in tempo dramatically.
Textile: A fan will be hidden within the walls, and will blow air directly towards the rider to simulate the feeling of wind when moving quickly. Not actually done in 3dsMax, but hopefully the effect will be clear.
Instability: The cart will rattle slightly from side to side and front to back, as if becoming unstable from the speed.
(Possible) Visual: A sheet of material designed to appear rock-like, surrounding Tunnel B will be blown by the fan and dimly lit, with the rapid flapping hopefully appearing similar to a rapid passing of the walls. Otherwise, simply use complete darkness and rely on other factors

Following this, the cart will reach the ground and enter the rest of tunnel B leading to Area B, a part of the mine that is slightly flooded (a splash of water as the cart stops 'Moving' sprayed at the viewer will emphasise this and nicely transition from one to the other), the cart now drifting on a slight current through Area B, in near complete darkness.

The exact event that will happen within Area B is yet to be decided, but it will be the most powerful, using elements of both previous scare events, and finally throwing the rider to the exit of the ride.

Note: Considering a few things I am considering altering the presence in the mines to be something more Lovecraft-inspired, rather than the skeletal things I was thinking of. Hopefully this will add some more originality; I'd imagine there'll be no shortage of skeletons and zombies, but I doubt many people will be including Yog-Sothhoth and the Great Old Ones. At this stage in planning, such is very much still possible.

Beginner design concept, art style, etc, for website

2011-01-20T05:48:00.000-08:00

Digital Me - Design Asthetic thoughts

2011-01-19T15:50:00.000-08:00

More brainstorming.

Color Scheme / Design ideals

- Looking at various portfolios and such online as well as general design themes.

http://www.vilepickle.com/

http://www.artviper.net/web-design-portfolio/3d-design-portfolio.php

Requirements:
Clear
Lots of space for media
Look professional (but prefably humble, too)
Simple navigation.
Width ~980
Display on all web browsers
Use style sheets

Digital Me - Initial Design Thoughts

2011-01-18T17:39:00.000-08:00

Brainstorming ideas here. Don't mind me.

1/2/3 Columns -

1 column -

+ More space for content with galleries
+ Simpler layout, scroll up or down.
+ More easy to lead the eye of the audience.
+ Room for more design on sidebars, unlikely to squash site content.
- Harder to seperate information
- Mostly forces navigation bar to be across the top of the page
- Makes perhaps too much use of empty space.

2 column -

+ Allows content to be seperated into seperate parts, eg. Images on one side, notes and comments on image on other.
+ Can be used for a navigation sidebar
- Content can seem disconnected
- More compacted content

3 Column -

+ Lots of space for different content.
+ Space for both a navigation bar and extra content.
- Heavily compacted content

I personally think the single-column design would be favourable, considering that the sight will contain a lot of media. The other columns severely restrict how much space can be available for an image. and therefore will make displaying content more difficult.

eXistenZ-ial thReshOldZ

2011-01-16T18:33:00.000-08:00

Having missed the first session, I've found the work assignment on NOW and the film on YouTube. I watched through it, and noted down some of the most glaring flaws, amongst the threshold concepts it attempts (and sometimes fails) to pass through.

Based on the ending, I begin to assume that eXistenZ is either well-written, or badly-written, and if the question of that is raised, it is almost always the second option. A film that for 90% of the playtime seems to be badly-written, illogical, and unbelievable that in the final 10 minutes sort-of explains all these flaws and inconsistencies by a plot twist, is still a movie that for the vast majority was bad.

If I wanted to try and give it credit, I'd suggest that maybe the point the writers were attempting to make was that, by noticing all the inconsistencies and difficulty in crossing thresholds, the viewer might roughly guess at what the ending would reveal, thus freeing themselves from 'eXistenZ' in the way the characters couldn't.

An idea with potential, but the execution of it just came across as a film that appeared illogical and inconsistent. If the objective was to write a film that broke the immersion of the viewer to make them believe it was in fact unreal, it succeeds at the first part, but for me, fails at the second and just makes it seem like a badly-written, illogical, and immersion-breaking film. Introducing themes of doubt and questioning earlier on would have made it much more possible for the viewer to take the mental jump to the conclusion that this might not be reality.

I made a small list of things I found it possible to believe and those I didn't, or had extreme difficulty.

Believable Thresholds

Virtual-reality through blobbish things - This is alright. The Matrix did something similar but not quite so obscure.
Gristle-guns - I struggled, but I made it through. If lizards can be genetically bred to be spinal-column-interfacing control pads, then heck, they might as well be able to be guns, too.
Mutant lizards in the first place - Why have they mutated? It's never really explained, but it's the future, so I substitute any of the various reasons for mutation, deciding to settle with it being an accidental by-product of the gene-alteration being done on lizards. Makes enough sense. I just wish less time had been spent watching people fondle them or turning them inside out.
Everything within the explained video-game world. It was a video game, that was our explanation. However, since this was toted in the introduction session as being incredibly advanced, and is mentioned as being 'five years of passionate work' with millions of dollars in it, I'm slightly confused as to how all the non-player characters seem to be mindless automatons that need certain phrases saying to them to progress the 'games' plot. Considering even Fallout 1, released two years before this movie, allowed the player to actually type questions to certain NPC's and have them react based on keywords in the text, it seems odd that in the future, we've actually regressed to single-option choices in terms of interaction. So believability of the gameworld passes, but the apparent laziness in the design of conversations and structure has more trouble.
The Cult of Reality : Okay, but I wish they'd had more explanation. As one of the most interesting parts of this film, they didn't seem to have much representation beyond using fish-bone-guns and hating the games. Why? Who leads them? What caused the hate? This is interesting but ignored.

Unbelievable Thresholds (when not considering the ending, which the audience cannot)

Alegra's Mary Sue - A Social Recluse who somehow has perfect hair, common sense, and no problems with human interaction unless it's within the games that she apparently spends her entire life on. She also, apparently, is sexually fustrated or a deviant, based on the innuendo she constantly spouts.
'Copies? Oh, bugger....' - It is proven in the story that making a copy of a game is an easy enough task, based on what the thick-accented balding man says about copying the entire unit's memory core in his effort to steal the game. If this is the case, why is there not a hundred copies in the original building, five in a safe, and one in another safe in another state? They have the funding to do so, clearly, and it would even be believable enough to say that the other copies were destroyed or corrupt rather than just nonexistent, especially considering how fragile the content apparently was.
Where did the money go? - Apparently Alegra is the only producer of the game which is worth tens of millions. By extension, she is worth tens of millions to the company. Why, then, is she freely available in a room with a total of one unarmed security guard who's on loan from their PR department, to the point where a character was able to draw a gun, stand, walk slowly to the front of the room, raise it, proclaim her a demoness and his quite strong opinion that she'd be better off dead, fire a shot into her, pause, and finally shoot another man before he's taken down?
Bio-ports don't get infected! I mean mouths don't! - This entire explanation bridges over a massive leap in logic and realism with weak, damp paper. Mostly it marked the point where I stopped taking the film seriously. Since every other entrance to the body has a clear defensive mechanism such as mucus, saliva, tears, stomach acid, etc, the explanation made no sense. If this had been a turning point at which the security guard openly questions the logic of this, but is again shrugged off by Alegra, the audience would have suddenly had reason to question the reality of this world, and hang onto the plot more tightly. Furthermore, how can a bioport be 'removed'? Short of some way of healing the thing up instantly, a hole in the spinal column can't just be removed. Some explanation here might have helped.

For the most part, it seemed the film was pretending throughout to make no sense, only to finally remove the wool from our eyes at the very end and laugh as everything was quickly and clumisily explained.

As an audience I was left with raised eyebrows and the feeling that any concern I had for the characters or their fates had died along with them (several times).Too many leaps of blind belief are expected to be made without explanation or the focus they needed to be significant parts of the story.

The audience needed to be kept in closer touch with the plot to not be sent reeling off into confusion, as I felt the script was written with the ending already in-mind, but not making any sense until it. If the script was written without the assumed knowledge, the concept could have really pulled through and made sense. As it was, it was just not believable.

A much-needed update

2010-12-11T11:50:00.000-08:00

Not sure why I haven't posted in so long. One way or another, I haven't.

DP1 is now over, and my content is all submitted. Including this here video.

I suppose I should put some explanation of what went into it, since I don't think I've put it down in writing yet.

This video was more about trying something new than demonstrating skill. Had I decided on a different plot, I could have done some good modelling and lighting and worked a normal animation. But I ended up with this concept since it allowed me to explore Reactor.

Reactor, for the uninitiated, is the physics simulation engine built in to 3DS Max. It's what let me set up all the dominoes, and animate them dropping, without going through frame-by-frame and animating every single collision and drop with keyframes. It uses Havok physics, which is used in many current-generation games (such as the Bethesda RPG's, Starcraft, and pretty much every Valve game) for dynamic physics simulation in real-time.

Once you get around the basics, it's all a matter of just figuring out what sliders do what and how you can use this to make what you want to do. Anyone scared to press a button to see what it does isn't going to get far in 3ds Max, so I just flipped through a few tutorials then started tweaking dials.

Lighting used Final Gather, which is significantly more realistic than the default lighting engine in return for significantly increasing render time. Significantly. The whole peice took around sixteen hours to render on my laptop.

There were bugs about whilst trying to make this piece. Most obvious being the render on the original scene bugging somehow and preventing me from rendering anything but single frames. I ended up having to import all the scene info into a different scene entirely which was rendering okay, and use that one instead. An odd fix, but it worked.

Also, been building contacts, which is cool. I now know a guy who knows a guy who worked on Heavenly Sword. Since I'm considering a sandwich year, knowing people in the industry could be a big help one way or another.

Been told that we're doing something haunted house related in the Animation section for the rest of the year, so soon I'll start working on various haunted-ish ideas.

Motivational Words from a Clever Man

2010-11-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

http://blog.semisecretsoftware.com/asking-the-right-questions

I particularly like the first one.

Something involving water, spaceships, and wobbly cameras.

2010-11-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

Here's the final, 7+ hours rendering of my little practice session in Max.

3ds Max practice from Dan Routledge on Vimeo.

I went for a sunset kind of feel, being a sucker for how the light from the Daylight system reflected from the water. Played with the cameras a bit, too, having a bit of interaction between the moving ship and the camera, causing it to shake out of alignment in the draft. The animation part was quite fun, though I am missing out on being able to 'ease' animations, which makes for some more jaunty movements.

Also, I try a little to use the rule of thirds in this with regards to camera positioning. How successful I was is up to you.

Overall though, for a simple practice clip, I was happy with how it turned out, and learned a lot of things in the process.

In other news, my illness is still ongoing, with my throat feeling like it's being punched every time I swallow. Hopefully it should clear up over the weekend.

Here begins the grind

2010-11-03T06:12:00.000-07:00

Got quite a good work-feeling going on today, despite being ill.

Target: 3ds Max Bible 2010.

Picked it up from the library a while back, and as luck would have it, it came with a DVD that contained the entire book in .pdf form, and all the lesson material. As well as about 1200 big, big pages. The book has long since gone back, but I now have the whole thing saved up to use (though I do really prefer having a physical book.)

Big task.

I'm starting from page 1, chapter 1, which I can see already will be patronising at some points considering I have a bit of experience in Maya to the point where being told how to zoom in and out and what different primitives look like seems obsolete, but in any case, I'm starting at the start, because I've never used Max properly before, and it's likely there will be some small but utterly crucial bit of info hidden in the basics.

Bring it on.

Edit, the aftermath: Okay, after a large amount of pattering through the basics, I finished the first tutorial, and then some. Copious amounts of experimental button-pushing took place, so whilst this incarnation took a lot of time, I could probably replicate the whole thing in the space of around 15 minutes. The scene is going to be rendering tonight.

A few of the textures on the tutorial assets weren't working, annoyingly, so instead of stone-like buildings I have utterly smooth blank textures. Meh.

Tomorrow I might play about at adding some sounds to the clip as a bit of polish. Or I might do some work that actually counts for marks, hyuck. ( Plans for interactive media piece and essay assignment are done )

Edit: The Morning After:

Oh dear. Five hours night-rendering and I'm at 182 frames out of 251.

Work Submission: 10 Frame Hitchcock

2010-11-02T05:48:00.000-07:00

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/7692/10framehitch.gif

Linked to the picture, as I used full-size images making for one long strip.

Hopefully the idea will carry along. I won't explain it here, it shouldn't need explanation if it's done right.

A Game of Cards: Thoughts

2010-10-28T12:27:00.000-07:00

So, the metaphorical rollercoaster cart has reached the end of the three-point-lit camera tracks that make up the Moving Image section of the first half-year, tumbling down into Aitch-Tee-Em-Hell and the Interactive Media section.

What an extensive metaphor that was.

So, the previous post has the final (ish) submission, a minute-ish-long film in tribute to the various 'Silver Age' films such as Charlie Chaplin skits, characterised by their black and white colouration, slightly sped-up action due to the manually-turning cameras (I even credited our camerawoman, Jessica Fung, as a Deguerrotype Operator, hyuck), use of intertitles for speech, ragtime piano music, and other miscellanious themes and nuances that are hallmarks of the style.

I think I managed to get a good deal of these features into the film with varying degrees of success.

The biggest fault was possibly that due to the small amount of footage that had to be sped up for the desired effect, about 40% of the clip is comprised of the text intertitles. However, it still comes to a desired length, and fits well with the music, especially at the end.

I tried to make the scene as comical as possible, to contrast the seriousness of the original footage. The cheery tune of music and ridiculousness of most the text was part of this. I tend to get a bit of a smile from the suprisingly apt timing on the music right at the end of the clip.

Was my first time properly using Premier Pro, but nothing that an hour or so's combined Googling, hitting random buttons and drinking tea couldn't fix.

Altogether, and as is my way, I tried to do something pretty heavily different. And for once, I don't think I made too massive a mess out of it.

Assignment Submission: A Game Of Cards

2010-10-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

A Game of Cards - NTU One Shot Assignment from Dan Routledge on Vimeo.

Credits are in the clip, and on the Vimeo page. Personal notes coming soon.

Something interesting...

2010-10-16T18:09:00.000-07:00

We were asked to post about something that interested or inspired us, and I think this video sums up a few things that interest me very well. There are clear imperfections, but that's to be expected in something that isn't a budget-backed project.

OCB Roll' n Rock
Uploaded by renderyardchannel. - Check out other Film & TV videos.

What I like is the style. To say it's stylised dosen't do it justice. The entire clip is crackling with personality, and the animation using only black, white and grey is, whilst not entirely unique, far from the norm.

There's no real story to speak of, but I see it as a showcasing of some creativity. The stretching of characters, sentient cactus and ability of the main character to withstand being hurtled down a mountain speak of old-style Hannah Barbarah cartoons, but with an appearance of stylised realism.

Thinking around in circles a bit, I come to the thought that how good a film will be from a visual perspective comes from three things:

The art direction, the quality of the art, and the way it integrates with other parts of the film (sound and story). Avatar was an example of this done fairly well, for me. The art direction of a completely original world with a lot of interest to be drawn from it, the graphical quality was stunning, and it meshed in with the plot well enough.

The above clip has good art direction and visual gags, and meshes in well with the audio (the sound of the gunshot particularly made me smirk), which makes up for the lower quality of animation compared to budgeted released (not that it's bad to begin with).

I'd entered this course with the thought that I'd just be content to learn about the graphical quality and how to be good at it, but like a science, learning one without knowing anything of the other won't get you far.

Work Submission: Ethics

2010-10-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

Ethical implications in filmmaking, especially at such a low level as we're operating at, have a snowball effect. A scene that seems simple in the imagining will give rise to some problems, which will require extra consideration to avoid, which will then generate more implications and problems until the project soon becomes unfeasible due to the amount of effort needed to make it ethically secure.

For example, filming in a public place, by a road. First you have to consider the bypassers, can and will they all give permission to appear? If not, how can you stop them? Are you able to stop them? What about cars? Can the road be temporarily blocked off? Is this feasible? What other options do you have? Does the size of the crew support such operations?

And so on and so forth. So yes, it does impose boundaries on creativity, but half of creativity is the ability to adapt to problems like this, either through overcoming them with the proper measures, or by adjusting the plan to the point where the concern is sidestepped entirely.

In higher-level filming, these problems can increasingly be phased out with CG. Using live animals is problematic, ethically, requiring a large amount of care to ensure the animals are treated according to standards. But a CG animal needs none of this treatment. Massive crowds are hard to organise and require a lot of care in terms of keeping the filming safe whilst using so many people, but if the first few rows of a crowd are human, and the rest are well done CG, it'll be hard to tell the difference without trying.

This progression will likely mean that scenes that would previously only be possible in massive-budget A-movies will become more possible in cheaper and lower-budget films over time, as it always has. Going back to the start, hopefully this will mean that instead of finding ways to avoid a problem, which often comes at the expense of losing the original vision of the scene, that these problems will be much more easily dealt with, allowing filmmakers more freedom.

Long story short, I believe ethics are likely to become a less and less restrictive element in filmmaking as technology progresses that allows easy workarounds.

Work Submission: Oneshot Practice

2010-10-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

Work Submission: The Design Process

2010-10-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

Having completed a small design task with the specific goal of identifying what steps I took in designing, it seems that I draw the most from Market Research and Prototyping, in that order.

Originality is important to me in any design task, but so is a certain amount of drawing ideas from other designs. Looking at these designs and thinking of ways to retain a recognisable feel to them, whilst building new ideas into it is generally how I go about things.

For example, in designing the banner I looked at similar blog banners to find appropriate dimensions, but adapted somewhat by using a design that actively blended in with the background of the blog, to make the separation of the background and header clear, but less jarring.

A problem I encountered was that if using the actual background of the blog, via cut and paste, I'd have problems with image compression. The gradient effect on this background means a significantly higher number of colours are used, which when applied to the image means that a much larger file size is produced, and the blog automatically compresses it, giving the image a layer effect rather than a gradient. I worked around this by removing the gradient effect, and outlining the header with white borders to conceal the difference. Though this does make the change between the background and header more obvious, the outlines make it obvious that it was intentional rather than just a design gaff.

Repeated small changes like this are part of my Prototyping stage. The more prototypes I end up doing and testing, the closer to a good end result I get.

I notice that following the Market Research, I avoid diving straight into designing without laying down some planning. Again in a similar way to how I try to create originality without going too far as to produce something that's clearly begging to look different, I also try to set myself up so I can work with spur-of-the-moment creativity without just randomly cobbling whims together.

This is shown in my notes for the small task:

QUOTE FROM TASK NOTES__________________________________________

Things I think about:

Context of the image: Where will it be positioned, how will it link with other areas of the blog to look like part of a whole design, rather than misplaced.
Colour scheme: I dislike going for 'Dark' colour schemes, but white text on dark grey or black is easier to read and causes less eyestrain. And eyestrain is bad. Orange tends to be a colour that goes quite well with a dark colour scheme, in my opinion. but I might also want to use a white majority for the header for contrast with the rest of the blog.
Information needed: What needs getting across quickly to the reader.
Style: Professional, casual, colourful, modern, impressive, etc.

__________________________________________________________________

My design process in larger projects can be summed up most simply in a handy diagram, like so.

I did only create the one plan to design the header, since it was only a test run.

On blind drive and human sacrifices

2010-10-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

During my first proper tutorial, a bald man whose name sadly escapes me completely asked us collectively if it's possible to give 100% to a task.

I didn't think it was, but then, I'd rarely been given tasks I actually enjoyed. In the past week or so, I've discovered that I can be an incredibly driven person, a veritable tornado of unstoppable effort, if the task is one I enjoy or set my mind to.

I've also discovered that this isn't necassarily a good thing.

Without planning, 100% effort can be wasted, and with a team who are more focused on planning and therefore not sharing in my blind drive, things get a bit complicated. That said, for the most part I had an excellent team who've done a doubly excellent job at putting up with me so far. And the torrent of work we've pumped out today has left us with a strong framework for what we're doing tomorrow, and I for one am feeling good about it.

That said, we've managed to get a good mix of ideas, taking parts of a lot of peoples thoughts to come up with the final theme for the scene, which is good. It's a hard thing to actually throw your ideas into a public pool for a lot of people, with the fear of sounding stupid or ridiculous being quite hard to overcome, despite how silly that sounds.

I don't tend to suffer from this massively by virtue of knowing that I look ridiculous and stupid the majority of the time. But then, if I was the only one willing to give out ideas, people would feel forced into something. Luckily this wasn't the case, and after the ground idea was set, I lost track of the times people added their ideas to the pool and the whole thing was twisted, changed, and adjusted until we were (insofar as I can tell) happy with the result. And despite how much it deviated from my original thought, I truly think the final product is going to go a lot better than anything I could have thought up alone.

So, yes, massive thanks to the rest of my team for both putting up with me and being generally brilliant and, as Jools would say, engaged. And for reigning me back before my blind drive ran me directly into a brick wall, metaphorically.

(Side note: Already been playing with 3d Studio Max and ploughing through the tutorials on NOW. It's made more entertaining by the fact that the narrator sounds a little bit like Chekov from Star Trek. (Even more side-note: I am a massive geek) )

So, on my to-do list is now to write a prototype script for tomorrow (other people are also doing this on the theory that since we're bound to have good ideas and bad ones, more scripts means we can fit more good ideas together), write the short essay for Jools on my design process, get a shower (lots of ground covered today, running and walking, I probably smell like the devil), then if there's any time left, save the post-apocalyptic world from mutants and cannibals.

Oh, the life of a student.

Edit: An idea for a final one-shotter, when we have more time to prepare...

A Rube Goldberg machine. Always wanted to make one of these babies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

Unnecessary Glorification

2010-10-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Note: Not my actual submission for the design process task, just ~~pointless fluff~~ note material.

So, we've a week to write a small journal about design processes, and how we work with our ideas.

Last real design project I did was my portfolio. I could just crank out a page or so about that.

...

Nah.

This blog is looking a bit plain. As of writing, that title at the top is just some kind of Arial text saying RootBlog. In white. Against grey.

I'm beginning to hate it.

First thing's first, figuring out what I'm going to do. Answer is, create a header image for this blog.

How do most headers look?

Not sure. So, I shamelessly look at other blog headers. I suppose this section of my design process could be considered Market Research. Looking at what other kind of material is out there and how it's being used.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/05/blog-headers-for-free-download/
http://www.freewebpageheaders.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/533

Okay, looks like 800x200 pixels is a good size for them. By no means am I going to glue to this boundry, I'm aware larger ones are possible, but they run the risk of becoming too dominating if not done right.

I've not much experience with Photoshop, and unless you really know what you're doing with the program, images just tend to become swirly masses of pointless filters that just look amateur. So I go for Fireworks, which is far simpler.

Now I consider the design.

Things I think about:

Context of the image: Where will it be positioned, how will it link with other areas of the blog to look like part of a whole design, rather than misplaced.
Colour scheme: I dislike going for 'Dark' colour schemes, but white text on dark grey or black is easier to read and causes less eyestrain. And eyestrain is bad. Orange tends to be a colour that goes quite well with a dark colour scheme, in my opinion. but I might also want to use a white majority for the header for contrast with the rest of the blog.
Information needed: What needs getting across quickly to the reader.
Style: Professional, casual, colourful, modern, impressive, etc.

I kind of want to include an image I'd make, but that's a matter of time. Hence, I'll complete the important aspects first to give myself freedom to focus on the hardest part.

I decide the colour scheme will be bright, to contrast with the greyness of the rest of the blog. It's an easy change to make later if I ever choose to redesign the entirety of the blog with a more optimistic and less gloomy theme.

The information I need is my name, course, and the blogs title. I write these down on a notepad next to my laptop so's I don't forget.

As for style, I already know what I want. Something that looks fairly professional, whilst not being serious in the slightest. Good old reliable pixels, 8-bit design.

Context is figured out with a test image.

Anyway, time to make a start on the actual header with all these in mind. Tomorrow I'll probably finish it and add it to the blog, and then start writing up what I was supposed to do in the first place, that being the design process.

Edit: I notice I'm doing a lot of test exports and then previewing it. I suppose this could be considered prototyping.

Edit 2- The Addition Strikes Back: Just finished a little 8-bit image of me, intentionally based on the Megaman sprite. The whole theme of the blog header is currently a kind of tribute to 8-bit video games. Which I'm happy with.

We couldn't find the 'Pause' button...

2010-10-04T04:12:00.000-07:00

So, I glean from my first Lecture that we're going to be doing a one-shot movie, which intense research from extremely reliable sources (two minutes on Youtube, then another five watching giggling at various submissions) lead me to discover that this basically means we record the entire submission in a single, uninterrupted run. No pausing, no editing, just from Record to Stop.

Not yet sure if time-lapse is appropriate, but I reckon I have time to find out if it is or not.

Tricky to come up with ideas, which is always a good thing. So far I've thought of two...

Idea 1: What's in the fridge?

The camera is placed on a shelf inside the fridge, along with something obscene / hilarious / terrifying / provoking-of-general-reactions (not sure what, yet). Then, various flatmates, work partners, random bystanders and/or extraterrestrials are invited to open the fridge, and have a look in it, without having any idea what they'll find. Hopefully the resulting montage of shocked, startled or outright bewildered faces would make for a good watch.

Still got to decide what the trigger object is, and whether or not the video will actually show the viewer what the object is at the end or not. (considering some of the ideas for a trigger I had, this might not be a good idea... (Note to self: Get mind out of gutter))

Idea 2: Freedom of Speech

This idea would use time lapse, and was given to me mainly by the way certain members of our flat insist on putting post-it notes everywhere physically possible. Essentially, the camera would be set to time-lapse on a tripod in front of a large, paper-covered notice board along with a stock of post-its, pens, crayons and possibly even more archaic materials like spray-paint, other paints, stamps, a polaroid camera, etc, depending how hard they are to get hold of and safety issues (along with not wanting to void my deposit in the first week for getting paint all over the floor).

Everyone is then given free reign and encouragement to write whatever they please on this over the course of the day / few days, with the camera constantly recording the noteboards progress.

If internet forums (or an unnamed member of out flats previous actions) are anything to go by, the resulting collage will contain enough offensive material to cause heart attacks in the elderly and mental breakdowns in those of nervous disposition.

Oh, what fun!

The most fun you can have in 11 seconds.

2010-10-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.11secondclub.com/

Anyone with any interest in animation needs to know about this place.

They don't call it the Wasteland for nothing...

2010-09-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

So, I'm a big fan of the apocalyptic / post-apocalyptic genre. Mad Max (film), The Book of Eli (film), Stephen Kings Dark Tower series (books), the Fallout series (CRPGs), all of them. Though the settings vary between them, if I were to choose my favourite take on the setting, it would be the one from the Eli universe.

The post-apocalyptic setting gives a really interesting sense of perspective, in a way that I find can cut quite close to home. Fallout and Mad Max go fairly humorously, so this is generally lost, but I found that the Book of Eli did this best. I was unable to shake the feeling that amidst the ruins of civilisation, the entire place looks like what little I know of third-world countries.

The whole idea of an economy that's been turned on it's head, with everything that was once valuable (gold, gems, expensive clothing, status symbols) now being next-to-worthless and things needed for survival (clean water, sunscreen, safe food) now being the biggest commodities, is one that I enjoyed being immersed in. Anyone who's also read the Dark Tower might recall the section where Roland (the protagonist) finds his way to real-world New York, and is alarmed by how cheap and easy sugar is to come across, where in his world it's seen as a rare drug.

And the worlds that are produced by these kinds of settings are almost always massively impressive, mainly coming from the way a building or object has been put to a vastly different use to what would be expected. Bottlecaps being used as currency, tyres being fashioned into clothing or armour, cars being stripped down and used for furniture or housing, and so on, along with everything being a mix of pre-apocalypse technology crudely repaired or amidst piles of improvised junk.

I find a lot of enjoyment in interesting and unique settings and worlds, ones that don't go so far from the norm as to be overly comical (Hitchhikers Guide) or to the point where they're too far into High Fantasy for any meaningful comparisons (Narnia, Harry Potter), but instead use the setting as something truly believable whilst also being intriguing.

As a side-note on Fallout, I've always liked games in which non combat-focused characters have some viability. I recently picked up Fallout 3 cheap, and though it's a long shot from the old-style isometric turn-based Fallouts of the past, it's done pretty well at maintaining the theme. The biggest qualm I have is with having the game practically hold my hand. Fallout 1 just dumped you in the middle of a deserted wasteland and told you to find your own way. No quest markers, no clear way to complete your objective, just a world out to get you, the clothes on your back, and a ticking time limit reminding you that every day you spent lost or distracted, your people were running out of water. Fallout 3, however, has very clear and obvious quest markers that require little outside thought other than just going to the marker and killing / talking to / picking up whatever it's set to before going to the next one, and the time limit has been removed along with all sense of urgency.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. I leave you with the trailer to Book of Eli. 0:36 to 0:45 really shows off the scenery of the world that I like so much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKfZrbS79To&feature=related

(Anyone knowing how to embed a video to a blog, do tell)

Touchdown

2010-09-28T05:49:00.001-07:00

So, here's the start of what I'm told will be my place to open up my head and dump everything found therein at for the next few years.

I'm 18 years young, study Multimedia at Notts Trent University on date of posting, and find most my interest in 3D design and animation, for everything in movies (both fully animated and animated effects), games, art, and anything you find inbetween.

I claim to have some experience in Maya, but such is really dabbling with everything I found. I have, however, got a 1200 page book on it, and if the Fallout series are anything to go by, I should be able to use it to improve my skills by at least 2.

I'm currently lacking important doo-dads to contribute any real content, so... Nothing of interest.