Life Drawing - 27th February 2014

Went along to the life drawing class this morning. Used charcoal pencil and white conté crayon on brown paper, the poses this week used dramatic lighting, so practiced some tones, shadows and highlights:

Left = 20 mins, Middle and Right = 4 - 5 minutes each

4 - 5 minutes each

Supervisor Meeting - Wednesday 26th February 2014

Had a supervisor meeting in the afternoon to look over designs and the 2D animatic:

Dog design needs finalized - try the designs with and without the jumper to help decide. The breed of dog was discussed. Sharon suggested that maybe we pick a British dog (one that is common or associated with Britain) if we want our film to be recognizable as a British garden. Could it be a black dog? I wondered if it would be more difficult to see, but it might help with silhouette.

The pumpkins in the set design might also suggest it is an American garden...
Maybe look for things to dress the environment that have a cultural reference to Britain.

The owner could be moving a wheel-bin, maybe even stuffing leaves into it.
Maybe it would be better if the garden looked a bit sparse and barren, might help back up the reason for the bird being hungry.

One of the pieces of feedback on the animatic from a focus group was why would the bird still be hungry after already eating 2 biscuits. One answer to this is the bird is really hungry and storing up for winter. However another suggestion is to have the events happen over a few days, but we did try this originally and found that the film was much tighter when it all happened in one day.

Feedback from my focus group yesterday was it would be even more funny to have the dog actually be lifted off the ground by the bird during the tug of war.

Should the owner be wearing more suitable autumn/winter gardening footwear?

Could ask Undergraduates to help with the sound and music - what sound and music will we need? - something to consider...

Animatic is under 2 mins, and there should be some walk cycles and flight cycles that can be re-used throughout.

Overall colours need to be decided before texturing begins.

Maybe bird modelling could find someone else to start?

We all have things to work on for next time, including 3D animatic, animation practice, Character rigs started, Character modelling still underway, Dog design finalized, Shot list created, overall colours decided.

I'll be working on the 3D animatic, practicing animations with free rigs, finalizing dog designs with Sheng.

Reflection On The Week (21): Starting Monday 17th February

Week Summary

Reflection on Practice - Writing the abstract this week has helped me to summarize my research. Some minor edits to it need to be done before the final hand-in next Wednesday. I think also next week, writing out a plan (bullet points etc) for my paper/conference presentation will help to start work towards those and have it clear and focused on what points need researched and presented. I also planned and advertised my Focus group this week for next Tuesday. Found two suitable video clips I can use which fit in with the questions I want to ask the group and will hopefully provide clear but interesting answers.

Advanced Production - Got the storyboards and animatic completely re-edited this week. Had regular team meetings this week as well to get feedback on the storyboard and animatic, also to look over designs and keep reviewing what everyone is working on currently. Designs for the characters and environment need to be finished at the start of next week. Also can start to begin on the 3D animatic, however I might wait till after my focus group/peer review on Tuesday to see what feedback I get for the 2D animatic in case there are any major changes.

Going Live - Looked over everything that is being worked on at the moment and realized that not very much had been done for one of the assets. Therefore I did some research and put together moodboards for this asset then created some concept art work. Will be showing my work to the rest of the class next week to gain feedback in order to move this asset forward into the modelling stage of production.

Monday 17th Feb
Programme Meeting followed by Going Live Team Meeting.

Done lots of new drawings for the storyboard for main film project - Relevant Blog Post Link here
Had the team have a look over them to get feedback, there's just one sequence left to re-draw to make more clear what is going on.
Had a quick team meeting to discuss what we're all working on and what needs to be done for next week, I'll be finishing the animatic this week and also try some colour concepts.

Done some more writing for the Abstract assignment.
Researched visuals which I will be able to use for the Focus Group assignment.

Recorded narration for Kirti's animatic in her research project.

Tuesday 18th Feb
Finished writing out the draft for the Abstract assignment.
Also sourced some visual references for the Focus Group assignment and put together the PowerPoint. I'm keeping the presentation very simple with just 2 video clips to compare to allow sufficient time to develop a good conversation about the subject and not have to many variables.

Wednesday 19th Feb
Abstract Group Crit in the morning. Worked in a team of 3 and read over each others Abstracts. There's a few sentence structures to sort out in my Abstract and a couple of re-wordings. It was interesting to read through others and look at the overall structure. I have tried to follow the structure that is given on the brief, which is to mention the field of study, address the problem, state the methods that will be used to address the problem and how will this benefit the field of study.
Had a quick meeting with Sharon to check over the 2 video clips and questions that I want to ask at my Focus Group, to make sure I had picked 2 clips that contrasted and could provide some answers and discussions to what I wanted to ask.
Booked Animation Seminar Space for next Tuesday from 12-2pm, to have time to set up my focus group for 1pm, with some spare time in case it over-runs.

Finished drawing all the storyboard panels for main film project. Then took the storyboard panels into After Effects to time out the animatic.

Thursday 20th Feb
Life Drawing in the morning. Link to Relevant Blog Post here

Talked over the garden layout for the environment with Sheng. I sketched out the layout of my house and garden to help with what you could normally find in a garden. We discussed that the owner could mainly be busy with chores on the left side of the garden, and the dog's action could mainly be in the right side of the garden. Some flower beds around the outside for the dog to dig holes in and a vegetable patch for the Owner. The neighbour's garden should be right next to this garden in order for the football sequence to make sense.

Editing the animatic together - sorting all the timings:

Also updated the storyboard on Shotbox.

Made an event page and put a post up on the Animators student Facebook page to invite people along to my Focus Group. Created an image for it and am using homemade cake as an incentive :D

Friday 21st Feb

Maya class dynamics in morning with Dylan Gauld - Introduction to 3D dynamics. For 'Tug of Biscuit', we may not be needing any fire or water fountains but it certainly got us thinking about what we can do with dynamics in Maya. Leaves in the garden is certainly what we will be looking into for our film.

Team meeting in the afternoon for Advanced Production:

With the realization that pumpkins don't grow in the ground... D'oh!...We discussed what other activities the owner could be doing each time the dog comes back to her. We looked up other veg/fruit that are harvested in Autumn, but then came to a discussion that she could just be raking leaves in the garden the whole time since it is a short time that passes anyway. Also when the Owner does her mad dash towards the Tug-of-War, she could maybe run through her pile of leaves? Plus after a Maya class in dynamics this morning and a Digital Tutors tutorial I have found on how to create 'wind-blown leaves simulation in Maya using nCloth', we all feel this could be an achievable aspect of our film to do. Counted through the animatic and there are about 5 shots which would need dynamics. However we will still have some pumpkins in a patch in the garden to add some interest to the look of the film, and add to the Autumn-feeling. Any fruits in the garden though will be covered with a net or similar to protect from birds, as then it might seem weird that the birds are hungry when there's fruit and seeds lying around the place. So I will be redrawing a few of the boards to change these things.

We then discussed the dog design and reflecting on the process so far of designing the dog, realized maybe we were having trouble with it because the dog breed had never been decided. At the moment the dog design looks too much like a Bull dog. So we looked through some different dog breeds, such as Labradors, Collies and Terriers, discussed what elements we liked about each of them and what needed amended in the current design. Some of the areas that we discussed I circled on a sketch, the snout made slightly thinner, ears moved forward a bit and be half floppy, more defined shapes in the front leg to determine where joints will go, the body shape needs evened out so he is less broad-shouldered, and a slightly bigger tail so swishes can be easily seen:

We then all went over ideas for the colours of the characters, I thought some purple colours in the characters clothing would look nice and help make them stand out a bit more against the Autumn colours in the garden. We're going to try some colour variations with the dog's jumper, however myself and George wondered if the dog needs a jumper at all or could just have a collar.

I brought up the issue with how will we do the grass in 3D. Would it be just a textured plane, or will there be stands of grass. My concern with this is that we have characters moving on the grass, therefore strands would have to interact with the characters, which sounds like it will be more trouble than its worth. Some testing needs to be done for this.

George also brought up how might it will be possible to do the bird character's wide mouth when it eats the biscuit whole, so we went over a few possibilities. Again these possibilities will need some testing.


Had a think over everything that is being done at the moment for Going Live, then realized that nothing much has been sorted out for one of the assets, spoke to Kieran about it and different ways this asset could be designed, modelled and rigged. So I will be having a look over this at the weekend and creating some artwork and tests for it.

Weekend
Finished editing and redrawing some shots for 'Tug of Biscuit' animatic (Owner now raking leaves for whole film):

Also done some research and concept artwork for one of the assets in the Going Live project.

Life Drawing - 20th February 2014

Went along to a life drawing class this morning, finally didn't have a class or meeting that clashed with it! Started with quick 1 minute poses followed by some 5 minute poses. I started to run out of the nice brown paper so resorted to very thin newsprint for the last sketches, which I found my charcoal pencil didn't agree with, so used a black ball-point pen which worked quite well. Will take some better quality photos of my sketches when I get them home, but here they are for now:

1 min poses

1 min poses

5 min poses

5 min poses

Storyboard Revising & Editing

Opening shot was redrawn to include gardens right next door, with a football goal and a football being kicked and bouncing off the fence (so the football later is not so random). The owner and dog can also both be seen out in the garden together (First shot is a pan down):

Added some leaves and moved the characters over a bit to frame better:

During team discussions the idea was brought up that the owner could be digging a pumpkin out of the ground, pumpkins are associated with the Autumn season, adds a bit of colour to the frame, and is also quite big which gives the owner something to struggle and be preoccupied with:

The last scenario with the dog asking for a biscuit from the busy owner (who is still busy digging the pumpkin out of the ground):

This is the scene with the stand-off between the dog and the bird:

This is the shot after the owner finally notices what's happening and runs towards the tug of biscuit situation to shoo the bird away and pick the dog and biscuit up:

Owner picks dog and biscuit up (I thought the Owner should be holding the biscuit as well to be able to make the final connection between what's been happening before she gets her idea to solve the problem) and looks over towards the bird:

Bird flies up onto the fence, looks sad as his tummy rumbles loudly:

The Owners realization, played out by her looking between bird, dog and biscuit before getting an idea:

Added in a panel for the very last shot to include the dog in the shot. Both bird and dog happily munch away on their own food: