Third Year

Hello again Blog, hope you had a good summer.

Third year of uni sounds filled with epic wins, and e

pic fails, but mostly epic hard work. Advanced Visualisation

= create a character and model it in 3D to then be used in a short 3D animation. Advanced Interaction = create a 3D virtual environment which is interactive and innovative. Screenwriting for digital media = write a piece of screenplay, about 5-10 minutes. Personal Project = pffft, who knows yet! Undecided :)

The module i have been leaping ahead with is definatley advanced visualisation, which i find the easiest to work on. Here's a small image of my character so far:

I have done enough work on advanced interaction to be able to have a finished design concept, and i have started to build drafts of assets to be used in the environment, which is a chinese inspired village:

It's a timely process though, this modelling business xD And now i am tired and ready for sleeps.

Summer Work

Beginning concepts for Douglas' game design.

Began by designing characters for the Wizard typing game, coming up with a male character and a female character.

Entertainment Design Workings

Recently been getting into entertainment design a lot more, since Greg started to code the rest of the game for us following Nathan's disappearance. Made an animation for the difficulty-change in the Battlecry game (to match the one for the anthill game), which i have uploaded HERE. Also was sorting out all my piles and piles of sketchbook work and decided to create a sort of series of summary images for my character concept design, which turned out wonderfully, here's what i've came up with so far :)

3D Production Design Completion

Well 3D is now finished :D

All 3 models are complete, and essay is 1600 words. Apart from a last look over of the essay, 3D is now ticked off as done! :)

( Very happy with the changes to the Vehicle btw )

Some finished renders:

/completion dance

Character Animation Completion

Character Animation

Animatic finished :D A couple of the frames are maybe a bit rushed and sketchy so will come back to it soon and fix those, as well as the timing in certain places, but more or less finished! Awesometimes.

Animatic would be here!

Also photoshopped my model sheet from my sketchbook - it was pretty disproportional and a bit painful to gaze upon ^^ Finished version is much better in my opinion, so worth the work.

Isn't he adorable :D

Looking to get his movie up on youtube soon - from my other module Time Based Narrative - if I can get silly Mikey to show his face and finish the last shot for me :D Watch this space

Time-based Narrative

For time-based narrative, our submission was to create a 3 minute title-sequence for a film from our imagination. For this i created a story about a man named Lewis, also used for character animation module, he is a doctor from southern England who suffers from nightmare disorder, slowly morphing into insomnia. Various flashbacks from his dreams are slowly causing him to believe that they are in fact predictions of the future, and he eventually becomes what we would perceive as insane. The title sequence that i created would show Lewis in his nightmare, running away from an invisible entity that is chasing him tirelessly. At the end he jumps off a cliff and wakes himself up, thus the audience learns that it was all a nightmare.

I found this project very exciting and interesting to do, and coming up with ideas while shooting the footage for the shots was really good fun. I am very happy with how my sequence has turned out, i went through many hours of editing to get it just right!

It's not completely finished yet, but most of it is finalized.

External files: The Battle of One (draft), Sketch/notebook

Next steps: Finish final draft of storyboard, up from drafts and finish reflective essay

3D Production Design2

For the second semester of 3D production Design our submission was to build, map, and texture a 3D vehicle, environment and character.

Vehicle

Vehicles were never really something i was interested in, making this part of the submission really difficult for me. I came up with my idea from looking at the shape of a jaguar's body, deciding i would like to design a motorcycle around it. My concept changed slightly since the beginning, but my finished model was that of a chopper design, with a large powerful back wheel, and a curved body. This model I am least happy with, due to my lack of skills back when i made it, if i had the time i would love to build upon it and make it better, but there are other things that i have to finish before i would consider re-doing it.

Environment

My environment i decided to base loosely around my group's entertainment design concept, and i designed a small tribal village. My original idea involved there being a lot more buildings but in order to stay under the maximum polygon count i had to try and make the whole thing a lot simpler. I completed this a lot faster than my vehicle, using techniques that i'd learned such as duplication to speed up the UV mapping process. The totem pole was the only really difficult piece of this model.

Character

For my character i was going to model a character i had designed for my Entertainment design module (the Demigod of Mischief) but dismissed this idea, for whatever reason, i don't quite remember why ^^. I decided instead to try and model a lion, a feat that i never thought i could have managed so well. Since none of my course-mates i had seen had attempted to model anything animal-based, i got really excited about this design, and spent many hours at a time trying to make it the best that i could make it. I enjoyed every minute of making this model, simply because it was something i wanted to make! Even though i encountered countless problems which caused endless anxiety, I feel that making this model showed me just how much my skills have progressed, which was satisfying indeed.

I named him Rory :D

External files: Sketchbook work

Next steps: touch up all 3 models, write reflective essay

Possible summer project: Try to get a copy of maya and continue building confidence!