Final show

I haven't posted since my last hand in because I've been busy getting everything ready for my final show, mainly finishing my animation. I finished my animation just in time and although the effects and sound weren't perfect, I think the final piece was good considering how much time it took. Final show went quite well, was a bit difficult because it was so busy and being in Newcastle all day was a bit tiring and uncomfortable, but I got some good feedback there and I'm very happy with that. Ill uploads my final animation here.

If i had more time to spend on it I would have made quite a few things better, for example, cutting scenes to better lengths, improving the robots movement and motion clips, using better effects and sound, adding splash effects in the water, and adding more screen shake as he walks. But as I've said, with the time I put into it I'm quite pleased with the animation in its current state.

From this point my blog might become more focused on my own work and not college work. I might also start posting more often since all my time isn't taken up by getting my animation finished. Either way I will get my final grades on Friday as well as exit tutorials, and from what I have heard I've done quite well, possibly getting a distinction grade. But I suppose ill just find out then.

Hand in week

Its the deadline this week and its been quite the push to get everything done. My animations aren't finished but I think I've done a good bit of work on them so as least they will be ready for final show. I've been getting all my PPD research work printed and organised and it really takes longer than I thought but I think I will get everything finished. My script, storyboards and animatic are already done for work related and I have written up my work on the rabbit animation too. I've pretty much finalised my robot animation now, there will be a lot of rockets flying around and lasers going off. On my group animation with Gareth we have got our creature nearly finished, it took a bit longer than we expected but that is mainly because of all the other stuff we have had to do. I've uploaded some examples and tests of both animations.

smoke trails

while creating my pyrocluster smoke trails for my animation I was looking for tutorials and found this, in the end it wasn't what I wanted and I had to get the settings right on my own, but its a fairly good tutorial on a smoke trail.

SpeedTree

I've wanted to upload this for a while now, because its one of most impressive 3D programs I've seen. Speed tree lets your create trees, with varying quality very quickly and ready textured, there are a lot of pre-sets for different variety's of tree and plants. Speed try has its own working physics engines for trees and branches can break off under different tolerances. Speed tree is used in both games and films, a bigger example of this is avatar, in which all the vegetation and plant life was made using speed tree, or at least a lot of it, in gaming "Homefront" used speedtree, as do a lot of other games, but using the software costs thousands. With speed try the branches and trunks can just be drawn in but clicking in 3D space. This video is a good example of what it can do, showing a high detail tree being drawn, and then showing the physics working on it.

Updates

I've had a number of posts typed up ready to upload for a while, but annoyingly blogger has been down for a good while, so I'm going to put them up now.


02/05/2011 - 08/05/2011 weeks recap
This week was pretty harsh because I've had a lot to do leading up to hand in, including getting my new script sorted, doing a quick final show presentation for PPD, and filming/working on group brief with Gareth. I've managed to get my script pretty much sorted but I'm not completely sure about the end, because my idea was that he is shown as a giant rampaging robot through the animation, but is revealed as a tiny toy robot playing around at the end, and this concept would be a little bit hard for me to get across. After talking with Dave he said that I should go for an idea where he slips on something falling over and blowing himself up, I think this idea would be much easier to get across and would allow me to do some nice animation. I thought that maybe slipping on a ball could make sense because he is on a beach and someone could have been playing with it. I need to do some testing for my comps because now I am doing it all with still for better quality and I will have no need for annoying tacking. Friday was quite a full day, because on the morning I had to present my ideas for final show, I was just going to go with some straight forward things, including a screen showing my animation, a large high quality print of my robot, and possibly a small real model of my robot. in my presentation I was given the idea of making some fake coins in some way, to go with the theme of a coin operated robot, having my branding on the coin, as well as my blog/website address replacing the writing around the side. I think I will try to do this idea, and if the coin can be the size of a real pound coin it would be used as one of those trolley tokens in supermarkets which you use in place of a pound coin which people sometimes have on key rings. I think the presentation went quite well because I got some good ideas. After PPD on Friday me and Gareth went out filming because we both needed additional footage for our animations, I think that we got pretty much everything we needed done, and we were quite lucky with the weather, because it was the same as the first filming trip so we have some continuity.

Back after Easter

Today was the first day back after Easter, and I had a tutorial with dave and I'm pretty sure I know what I have left to do, and what to get on with. Dave said it is fine for me to go with my new ideas for my robot animation, but I need to make some storyboards or a script. After finalising my new ideas I will probably have to film some new footage, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem, and the other stuff I filmed should be useable somewhere anyway. I also made a little bit of progress on my group brief with Gareth today and we made a little progress on our character. I will probably spend the rest of the week working on my ideas for my own animation, progressing my group brief, and doing paperwork for ppd and work related briefs.

Pictoplasma Cont. 4

This was a picture of Rilla Alexanders character walk. Her character had a series of story books behind it, and Rilla's lecture was read in a very scripted, storybook style.

These pictures were taken at Jeremyvilles character walk. Jeremyville's work is done in a simple cartoon style, and i have to say this doesn't appeal to me at all. I don't think it is bad but the distorted perspective and weirdly drawn in environments, which seem like an after though get to me a bit and its not for me.

Ill end my pictoplasma posts for now, and ill end saying i quite enjoyed the trip, i found almost all of it interesting to at least some degree, and some of the lectures and work i saw gave me some ideas on how i can do some things a different way.