Saturday, August 29, 2020

Animation Project: Hello Again I have been dead

 Okay so, I have been having a time,
I have been a bit out of it recently so my blogs and progress have stagnated a bit, I'm still trying to chug on thought, and I'm just going to try and go through what I did when I wasn't blogging.


Setting

The setting is all Modeling and Unwrapped and is just waiting to be painted but I have been out of it, and stressing over the characters,
What I need to do for this is learn how to use substance painter, so, I'm gonna start by watching through the tutorials, and then have a go at it, (I will focus on the most important assets.






2D

So far I have only set up for creating the assets, Given the limited time, I am going to have to go for a VERY simplistic style for the Animation, I have done the map but it may change to be more simple to fit the other 2D scenes that are yet to be drawn.




Story

I haven't times the storyboard yet and am having trouble, what I need is the audio to properly time around the dialog which I have been ignoring so, I need to organise a time to record and if its too far away, I will get some temp dialog recordings


Characters

I have the Z-brush models done for the dragons, however I have been having troubling transferring them into maya.
It needs to be done via Normal map (Bump Map), this has been very stressful and I have been panicking over it a lot, If I can't get the Z-brush through I will have to do what I can in maya for the body types 




I have a few recordings of me messing about in Z-brush, they are not edited though :P
I could only fit one onto blogger though the rest are too high a file size atm and I just would rather not spend time editing them right now.





Thursday, August 27, 2020

Research: Citation Bank

Frozen 2

Brave

How to Tran your Dragon

Winx Club

Mia and Me

Tangled

Kung Fu Panda

Inside Out

Late Afternoon

___________________________________________________________


References

Andrews, M., Chapman, B., & Purcell, S. (Directors). (2012). Brave. Pixar Animation Studios.

Bagnall, L. (Director). (2017). Late Afternoon. Cartoon Saloon.

Buck, C., & Lee, J. (Directors). (2019). Frozen 2. Walt Disney Animation Studios.

DeBlois, D., & Sanders, C. (Directors). (2010). How to Train your Dragn. DreamWorks Animation.

Docter, P., & Del Carmen, R. (Directors). (2015). Inside Out. Pixar Animation Studios.

Flashback cinematography and literature. (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/flashback

Greno, N., & Howard, B. (Directors). (2010). Tangled. Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Hahn, G. (Director). (2011). Mia and Me [TV series]. KiKa, ZDF, Canal+, Rai 2, Rai Gulp, Nick Jr., Nickelodeon.

Plot devices in film that really work. (2020, January 13). StudioBinder. https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-plot-device-definition-examples/

Straffi, I. (Director). (2004). Winx Club [TV series]. Rai 2, Rai Gulp, Rai YoYo, Nickelodeon.

Yuh Nelson, J. (Director). (2011). Kung Fu Panda 2. DreamWorks Animation.

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Project Managment: Post

Post Production:

I originally was going to work on post during the week break, however on the first day I panicked and noped out of the room for the week as I was a bit overwhelmed and confused at what I was suppose to be doing.

However after the break they asked for more help so I jumped on board and didn't panic this time, managing to be able to help, so yay


Forrest Scene:
3 Shots
In the forest scene I composited three of the scenes as shown below,
Its was okay, there was things that I didn't understand such as how they were doing the shading However Fabri helped me out whenever I had a problem,
The shadows were made by duplicating the intended layer 3 times, attaching one to another via something do do with 'Alpha' and putting the attached layer onto Muliplyer, making it create shadow, (then slightly moving the layer so there is a light source)|

However, I noticed that doing this we can still see the details of the layer, making the images overlap and clash, so what I did is use a Fill effect, making the multi layer one colour, (told Fabri, who passed this on)

At times I did need to do shading with a mask layer, sectioning of a small portion of a solid black layer with a mask.

For the lights, the background was spaced out in a 3D environment and the lights put in between, duplicated and one layer blurred (both had opacity down)

Lake Scene:
Two Shots
Done with the same methods as the forest

Group Project: Animation

The scenes I worked on during animation:

After the final pass each scene was rendered in parts to be later composited in after effects
The animation progress in character animator is not something I would do again for such a project as my main issue with it is that I can't go back and edit key frames already set in place or view them while editing the animation, (there is a way but its inconvenient)

The first scene I worked on was the boy opening his eyes to the cave, this was a relatively easy scene, the only problems I came across was getting the face triggers working in character animator and making sur the elbows didn't fly off in random directions while animating.

The second and hardest scene I animated was the spider walking, the difficulty was mainly due to the many legs the spider has, thankfully there is only one scene where we have the spider walking, one method I used to animate the spider was colouring the legs in according to what was moving, in other words alternating colours and using this to tell the legs apart and what leg needed to move when.

The third is a front view of the boy, this scene was alright though when squashing the face for when the boy shrinks in fear, it broke the asset so I had to play around to get it looking the best I could.

The last of the bear turning was alright, there was a lot of problem solving on how to switch in and out the assets of the bear angles, I do wish that It ended up looking much smoother, however I had to make do, I ended up making an animation layer for each turn around section and switching them in and out using opacity, leaving the trigger sets for the bears expression, using the triggers worked for the turn around but it meant not using a trigger set for the face as it wasn't letting me use both.



Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Screen Arts: Russia

Russia:

Class Notes:
Not very much animation produced In the 1990s due to low work force
couldn't only work with the permission of the government

Soyuzmultfilm
- Russia animation company
- mascot similer to Micky mouse ( Cheburaka) He is not a mouse
- Inspired by Disney
- They had their own version of Winnie the Pooh

Hoffmaniada


Animaccord Animation Studio
- Masha and the Bear

Noted media makers:
Aleksanr Petrov
- paint of frame techniques


Alexander
- The old man and the Sea 

Timur Bekmambetov
- Night watch
- Day watch
- Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Russian Films:
Mermaid (2007)
Hipsters (2008)
House of Fools (2002)

Russia TV:
Evening Urgant
Night Swollows
Better than Us
Ekaterina: Rise of Catherine 

Video Games:
World of Tanks
Solitaire and Pirate Treasure


Ukrane
- Gogol (Gothic Horror)
The comedian who would be President: Servant of the People

Games:
S.T.A.L.K.E.R



Hardcore Henry (seems interesting)


Activity: Research Animation in City)

Nizhny Nogorod
- Absolutely no animation studios in this City :(

that's sad


Armenia: Yerevan
Cat Media
Popok Animation Studio
HGTN
Digistep
Tale Wind Animation
Moovesanimation
Gazzar Studio LLC
MOON CAD Studio
TouchFX
Cadauto3D
Animation Art school
Gmotion Production
Sahakyants Animation Studio

http://sahakyants.am/
https://vimeo.com/338879620 
https://www.facebook.com/gmotion.production/ 



 Reflection: Outcome:  Overall I am okaish with the outcome, the project ended with a lovely style that ended up meshing well with the 3D an...