Blender - completed spaceship!

I have now completed this tutorial from Andrew Price. It was great to learn the ins and outs of Blender in terms of modelling, applying materials, lighting and compositing. I'm quite happy with this final result :-)

Blender spaceship model

For those who are unfamiliar with Blender, it is a completely free 3D program, open source with a lot of free resources available.

I found this cool spaceship tutorial online by Blender teacher Andrew Price from Blender Guru. Over the past couple of days, I've spent a few hours modelling this spaceship. Blenders interface is nice and intuitive which makes it nice and quick to learn.

Here are a couple of pics of my work in progress:

For those who know Maya or 3ds Max, you are well catered for in Blender as you can use all the same hot keys. My next step will be to do the 2nd tutorial, texturing and compositing to create the final image.

In the mean time, here is some Blender Inspiration!

I am also intending to download a trial of Cinema 4D soon, it seems like every motion graphics job out there has it on their job description so it would be wise to learn it.

Release of our 3D Grad film - "Kernel"

It has been over a year since I graduated but at long last, our fantastic 3D animated film "Kernel" has now been released on Youtube! Be sure to check it out with the lights turned off, the sound turned up and in full HD!

Synopsis:



Film:



Team:



Olly Skillman-Wilson: Director, Writer, Lighting Artist (3rd from right)
Laurence Nairne: Creative Producer, Script Editor, Animator (1st on left)
Charlie Minnion: Lead Compositor, Editor, Storyboard Artist (5th from left)
Hugh Herbert: Writer, Animator
Dan Emmerson: Animation Director
Luke Jefferson: Rigging, Texturing, Technical Director (5th from left)
Kai Fraser: Dynamics, Stereography (2nd from left)
Liam Fraser: Dynamics, Stereography (4th from left)
Jake Jones: Modelling, Texturing, Compositing (4th from right)
Ryan Mace: Modelling, Texturing, Compositing (2nd from right)
Nigel Kitts: Lead Texture Artist, Animator (1st on right)
Alan Matthewman: Fluid Dynamics, Cloth Simulation (3rd from left)

CBT promo film complete!

It includes time lapses, a composited news room, a sound track and some nice motion graphics. The image below the embedded video provides some idea of the content.

Kickstarter CBT promo video update & making of

I have almost finished this project now! It has been a bit of an epic and has drawn on my skills as a motion graphics designer, compositor, camera man, editor, 3D artist, time lapse recorder and musician! If anyone has any ideas of one word that I could use to fit these different roles, I would appreciate it! Audio-visual artist could be a good umbrella term.

Just a quick reminder - this work is for a promotional video made to represent Clear Blue Therapies on Kickstarter. Clear Blue Therapies is a therapy business founded by Saskia Griffiths-Moore. The video utilises motion graphics and draws on a news broadcaster theme to promote interest and help delineate Saskia's four phase plan.

Here are a few screenshots showing different parts of scene 2 on which I have created some nice bits of animation / motion graphics. The actual film itself will be out on Kickstarter soon - I will keep you posted. I just have a few final bits and pieces to sort out following some final feedback from Saskia.

I enjoyed getting the pencil out and drawing this piece to represent a conference.



Following this, I worked over it in Illustrator, then animated it in After Effects. Playing with the opacity of the fills adds a nice element of visual interest to the image. Also, conceptually, I reckon it enhances "the meeting of minds" element.



I also found it quite rewarding and satisfying working in 3D for parts of this project. The spinning logo and the books turning. Simple but effective!

And - this is a bit of an odd one - I'm quite proud of the train style LED text I put together. The font itself is called LCD Dot, and was created by Omer Kose --- http://www.omerkose.net/ I downloaded this off Dafont.

The bit that I'm proud of is the nice repetitive dot pattern I created in Illustrator for the LED light background! This lines up with the dots of the font. Then of course the colour and glow effect. It mimics the train style LEDs quite well. As things have turned out, I have been asked to change this style as it could be confusing, and takes away from the cohesion of the other fonts in the video. Think I may have taken Saskia a little too literally when she said 'text like you see on train displays'. Nevermind though!

Watch this space! The promo video will be out shortly....

"Sparkle Mouse" in the making...

This is a personal project that I have been chipping away at for a while. The basic idea stems from a simple and effective technique that I came up with when I was juggling glowing balls. "Sparkle mouse" is a working title - I'm open to suggestions!

The basic idea

Here I am, juggling (such is the life of a creative ey?) -

+ some After Effects trickery =

Pretty cool! What if the ball had a bit of character -

                                                             Introducing... a background!

The plan (aka pre-production) and production

Brief: To create a short visually interesting and entertaining animation, using the above technique.

Here is a rough plan of my idea. The ball interacts and navigates itself around the environment. At one point the ball transports from inside the laundry basket to above the bongo. The numbers on the plan have helped with the editing as this was not all managed in one take. It took me around 7 hours to dress the set, photograph some stop motion animation of the furniture and film myself in the dark moving the glowing ball around.

Post production

This has been the lengthy part of the process. It took me another day to edit the ball into one cohesive sequence. (I recorded about 8 seperate takes as the moving-a-ball-around process was a bit fiddley.) With the help of Maya and a handy tutorial, I animated a cool 3D sphere cracking effect for the transportation bit. This took about half a day.

Most of the work has involved cleaning up areas using masks where there are discrepancies between the environment and the ball. It has taken several days to go through this process. The moral is - use a good tripod!

Half way through, I thought "hey wouldn't it be cool if I kept the effect of the bounce light caused by the ball on the environment" so that added another few days of After Effects work! In the process I have learned better ways of organising my AE comps. Firstly, using colour coding for layers makes things much easier. Secondarily, rendering out pre-comps as you are going along helps a heavy composition become much faster to work with. Here is a screenshot of my work organisation in AE.

At the moment Sparkle Mouse is nearing the end of the clean up phase, and will enter a final edit, possibly with the addition of sound and a title before final delivery. WATCH THIS SPACE :-)

Animation, vfx and self-promotion work

Since moving to London in September, I have actively been seeking work in animation and visual effects. Alongside this I have been developing the look of my website, creating a visual identity and two new showreels - one for my general moving image/animation work and the other - more specifically for my compositing work. Here are the shots I have been working on:

Unidentified sea creature - 2D animation

A 2D animation created using Flash, textured in Photoshop and composited in After Effects. This was sparked by a quick doodle I did of a Fish/Robot hybrid that breathes fire. No fire breathing in the animation yet but perhaps this is something I will come back to in the future!

'Harry' the crab - Match moved

I initially created this crab in 2010 using Maya to model and texture it. I always wanted to place it into a real world environment striking a pose! Back in Cornwall I filmed a bit of it's potential environment and last month I finally got round to stabilising the footage then placing the crab into this environment using Match Mover and Maya. Following this, I added a touch of colour in after effects. This is best viewed in HD. To do so - click this link, turn on HD and scrub to 00:54.

Vfx breakdown - Placing a house onto Bodmin Moor

Here is an image I used in an earlier post. I have uploaded this image here again in order to precede the matte painting breakdown of this shot that I completed a week ago. Breakdowns are always a fun way to display the amount of work that has gone into a shot. This shot was created for a MA student film project entitled 'Gone.'

  

These shots have been included on my Moving Image and Compositing showreels respectively. This week I am going to continue applying to jobs and learning new things!  

Butterflies

Here's something I've been working on - following a tutorial but customising it to fit my own textures, backdrop etc. It has been fun to create these butterflies and interesting learning about how particles work in Maya. I have been keen to do some effects stuff for a while so I'm glad I have now got round to it!

Showreel 2012

My latest showreel, marking the end of my Digital Animation degree. A selection of shots from throughout the last few years which focus on compositing but also demonstrates my skills in animation and 3D. The first two shots are from our 3rd year final major project: Kernal. A CG animated film I worked on as part of a team of 17 which we have now completed and anticipate entering it into festivals.

Dissertation and Kernel progress

Dissertation

Here is my dissertation. In it I relate art to modern forms of commercial animation and digital media. My argument is that audio visual areas of commercial digital media and animation could allow for the most 'artistic freedom'.

Art, Animation and the Audio Visual: An exploration of art and its relationship with commercial media forms

I enjoyed writing this. I found it interesting learning about and applying the fundamental attributes of art to contemporary and commercial animation/digital media.

Some of the music videos I referred to in my dissertation are the following:

Everytime (2009) by Oi Va Voi. Directed by Kijek and Adamski.

So So So (2011) by Rone. Directed by Studio Funf.

Frozen (1998) by Madonna. Directed by Chris Cunningam.

Joga (1997) by Bjork. Directed by Michel Gondry.

Yes I Know (2011) by Memory Tapes. Directed by Eric Epstein.

There is also this great web page which documents in detail the making of Jonsi's live show visuals: 59 productions.

Kernel progress

Things are getting pretty busy at the moment as we have less then 3 weeks left to complete our final major project. Kernel - our CG animated film which is looking fantastic. My role on this currently consists of overseeing the compositing and editing. Below are a few finished stills - Its an exciting time!

                                   

32 bit colour implications
Heres a little 32-bit colour related compositing mystery I recently stumbled on whilst analysing the final awesome touches Olly added to the first city shot shown above. This may look pretty boring but it was quite intriguing from my point of view!

Other stuff

I'm currently working on a website, aiming to promote myself and my skill set (a mixture of concept art, storyboarding, compositing and animation.) Here is a screenshot of the current layout.

Furthermore, I'm hoping to create a business card, C.V. and up-to-date showreel all in time for the Annecy animation festival which I'm greatly looking forward to! Woop :-D

Progress!

I have been very busy since my last blog (hence the lack of blog posts.) I am currently working solely for Kernel which is the main 3D animated film being produced in our year. Since completing a lot of concept design work I have also created the new storyboard for Kernel. From this, I have been able to develop an animatic that has progressed through 6 stages (from an epic 6 mins 38 secs down to a more realistic 4 mins 11 secs.) In the process of refining the animatic, I have kept the essential story information, cut out whats not needed and maintained a good sense of pace and rhythm.

From the animatic, Olly and Hugh have been creating block-throughs in Maya. These Maya shots - that dictate basic animation and camera moves - are being carefully timed to fit with the animatic. (I have also helped by going into Maya and adjusting the camera sequencer lengths to block-through shots that were completed prior to the final animatic.)  The idea is that people who're doing the animating can work within the appropriately timed shots that maintain the correct pacing to the film as a whole. Its an intuitive process and of course, the animation will probably not stick to the frame counter exactly - so long as it roughly fits with all the original timings then we're on the right track!

My roles on the project have extended to editing and compositing for which I have been getting to grips with Adobe Premiere (CS5.5) and The Foundry's Nuke (6.3 v2) software. For both of these I have been working my way through some helpful books - 'Adobe Premiere - classroom in a book' and 'Nuke 101' by Ron Ganbar. Both of which, give you files and exercises to work through. As the editor, I will be constantly updating a premiere project file, as the shots gradually progress from the block through stage to animation and eventually the final composited shots.

The image below shows what I have learned most recently in Nuke. Using a rendered 3D sequence of exr images, I have rebuilt a basic beauty pass which mirrors the way a beauty pass would be created in Maya. The advantage here though, is that the beauty pass has been divided to its essential elements - which I can tweek independently. Working this way should prove highly efficient as it allows one to have good aesthetic control over the shots and save on the lengthy processing and rendering times Maya would incur. The bonus is that the files that Ganbar has provided with his book is of a lemming 'road-skiing' using a car. Amazing!

The Kernel team have been working really well together and it feels like we're building up a creative symbiosis of all our talents. If we maintain this kind of momentum then we should have something good to show by the deadline which is now less then 100 days away!

Aside from Kernel, I have been working on the dissertation and am currently 2 weeks away from completing a Web Communication Dreamweaver AQA course. Busy busy busy!

Final Concept and Background art pieces with WIP

To say I have been busy is an understatement! Over the last 4 weeks I have completed and handed in work (in time for deadlines) for 4 separate projects - including my CND film.

Final Pieces:

Kernel directed by Olly Skillman-Wilson.

Wife Left Home directed by Tom Gameson

Newgrounds project - London riots animation - Directed by Tom Gameson

Kernel directed by Olly Skillman-Wilson.

My role: Concept Art.

Brief: A concept art piece establishing the Greenhouse in it's city setting. Composition to look down between 2 buildings. There must be a layer of mist caused by the pollution.

At first I was unsure how to go about this - how does one draw a futuristic city with realistic perspectives? To get the ball rolling I went on intuition and made a little futuristic city in my bedroom out of stuff from around the house.

Maya came in very handy for this project.

I printed this screenshot off and worked from it getting the colours, adding in new ideas and more detail inspired by the photos I took of the city I made in my bedroom.

The next 4 images were achieved in one all night session as the deadline was approaching..

These billboard sketches are an important part of the setting. The protagonists character is enhanced and developed through his conflict with the doctrines of the society in which he lives. On a visual level these messages should stand out. Olly states in his script: "...the darkness of the smog and urbanity lit only by its media"

Olly gave me some pics where he caught water droplets on the lens of his camera and took photos of lights at night. I then brought this into Photoshop and applied the linear burn layer style to merge this in.

This last pic is with Olly's additions. He has added a looking-through-window effect which has really enhanced that 'you're there' feeling about it. The flares are a nice touch too. Nice work Olly :-)

My friend Marcel gave me some good feedback suggesting that further improvements could be made by lighting up the front of the skyscrapers at the bottom of the screen. This would help define them a bit more against the background without taking away from the murky misty effect.

Wife Left Home directed by Tom Gameson

My role: Concept Art

Brief: Design a nice morning environment around 'Dim' (the main character.) It is a typical English town.

Some of Tom's inspiration. Artwork from Pixar artists using marker pens and ink.

I used the same media here:

Using Photoshop I enhanced the colours:

Shell and Paddy directed by Thomas Spettle

My role: Background artist

In this shot we see a chase. Paddy chases Shell but then trips up over this branch-like creature. I reckon it should be quite a funny scene!

I checked with Thomas about not getting this done in time for the pitch - he was cool with it. Unfortuantly I couldn't complete it in time with all the other projects going on. Hopefully I will get it done soon. From now on I will add in 1 contingency day every week into my schedule to allow me to achieve all projects in time.

Newgrounds project - London riots animation - Directed by Tom Gameson

My role: Background artist

Tom did a bit of animation for my CND film. In exchange, I have produced 2 backgrounds for his project that he was working on throughout the Summer at Newgrounds.

For these, I have worked a lot by hand before going into Photoshop. Ralph Steadman has been a big inspiration for Tom so I tried to incorporate elements of his style into my work.

City background

Prior to this I did 4 half hour A5 tests of different styles. Tom picked out the one he liked the best - a bit of collaging with Ralph Steadman style lines. He wanted the buildings to surround and overwhelm the character.  For the final piece I worked in A3 using the same method as I did for the test. I then worked these up in Photoshop.

This is where Photoshop came in.

Park background

In this shot we will see the camera pan down on the right, then track to the left (hopefully these are the correct film camera terms I'm using!) Tom specified that the background is a bit run down, tucked away on a hill somewhere in London.

Tom's layout design:

My 20 minute Photoshop sketch just to get the depth values and a bit more definition.

I produced these elements by hand using Ink and pastels. I used pastels purely to get the colour and Ink for everything else. Here are all the different elements brought into Photoshop.

My first real go at Photoshop painting (of the rubbish) - using photographs for direct reference. Halfway through I thought 'Hang on - I can get Adobe Illustrator to do what I'm doing' so I did that for a test. It was a bit quicker doing it using Illustrator (the colour 6 filter) but I was pleased that when I did it myself in Photoshop the result was 10 times better.

The resolution of the full Image is 6344 x 2813 to allow for all the camera movements.

In this close up shot you can see the level of detail with a crisp packet stuck in the tree and plastic bags trodden into the dirt.

That's 4 weeks worth of work crammed into a couple of hours of blogging!

On a side note, I will be going to Bristol this Saturday as I have been invited to the showcase and prize-giving event of the CND film competition at Watershed cinema. I'm quite excited about seeing my work up in front of an audience!