This week I shared with nick the link to my sync. I made an animated clip of the minor arm. Nick suggested I pay attention to the blend part. In fact, I was thinking about where to design the bent position as I wanted to make him look more unique. I then needed to finish the whole arm and the mapping and textures. He gave a lot of reference videos for the surfaces, which was very much appreciated. In the meantime, I need to catch up as soon as possible, as we’re going to start shooting some footage next week to composite the arm.
This week we continued to study the binding section. Nick showed us the simple rigging section in class, and I added some designs to my model about the mechanical joints of the binding. I hope he will make an animation of the robotic arm after the modelling. It might be fun to composite it on my arm through ae.
I tried to add some metallic materials to this model.I made the inner and outer shells of the robot arm because I wanted to animate the transformation later on and layering the model in advance would help me to rigging the model next week.
reference videos
I tried to find some reference videos as I felt I still had a lot to learn about mechanical design and construction, I also got some inspiration from steampunk style robotic arms that other people had made in reality, and I found some mathematical modelling that I thought would be very interesting to incorporate the principles into the arm
This week I started working on the palm section and thinking about how to make the individual joints and how to design some small loop animations and subsequent joint bindings. One very interesting point I noticed in this class was that the way Nick used to make the round holes was different to the way I normally use bridge and muti-cut after repairing the holes, I asked my classmates and they had different ways of repairing the holes or Merge vertices, this was very good way and I learnt about the three ways of repairing the holes from the others in the class.
This week Nick led us to learn the production robotic arm. I made my finger part this week and thought about the design draft I wanted to make. I like to make some hard-mech designs. And the production method of each moulder is different. I usually prefer the card line and fall backwards, but Nick provides me with a new idea. which is very helpful to me.
Draft of the arm design
At first, I wanted to make this soft machine arm, like fish or glass and mix skin material, but I found that if you make heavy mechs, like some powerful machines in Marvel movies, add some small animations, which may be very challenging. So I am going to design another new machine arm draft
reference
I’ve been looking at a lot of reference drawings and I’ve noticed that each author has their own unique way of making the joints and incorporating their own modelling style, so their work looks very distinctive and I think this is something I should look out for in the next few weeks of making the robot arm
I was thinking about using XGEN to create the hair. Still, after looking up a lot of references, I decided to go for the faceted hair, which will be very easy to modify if I develop the project further in the next term.
3D storyboard
Environmental design
Character Design-Reference Tutorial Video
I have not yet learnt Blender as software, so I have more references to his production ideas, and I find that Blender is superior in creating the pupils of the characters. My main character is a poker face. Most of his expressions will be focused on the eyes and two hands, so this tutorial was very helpful to me
This week I have been working mainly on the 2d split-screen, as I really like to draw things as I go along, my initial idea was to create a butterfly（maybe another creature animal） flying around the character and leading the surface into the forest, this shot is very important to my story so I designed two versions of the draft split-screen
For this shot I wanted to do a leaf falling and the man holding his mask for a moment before starting to chase the little kobold, it might have been very cool to have a leaf as a segue
A melancholy little boy breaks into a forest. The little boy walks carefully in the forest, and suddenly he finds a strange octopus lying in a pond, just then a small flying insect that looks like a snake flies towards him and leads him deeper into the forest. However, the moment he gets close to the tree house, all kinds of strange little animals approach him, and he has the happiest time in the forest, but will eventually go back to the real world.
Keywords:
Autism, Anxiety,Spiritual Worl, Fantasy Forest, Strange creatures
Genre:
The story takes place in a fantasy forest world with very fantasy mushrooms, tree houses, scenes and creatures animated
Goal:
As I get older, I miss more and more the various fantasy genre movies and anime I watched as a kid, but nowadays animation is given a lot of esoteric meaning by various industries and is also used in serious areas. I still want this film to be light-hearted, healing, and use lots of strange, cute creatures, play to animation’s unique strengths in creativity, and focus on exploring the emotional connection between animation and the audience.
This week I made a low poly model of scenes to help me understand the story further, as this is not a full animation. I can only do a little narrative, so I have to think about the balance of scenes, characters, and a short storyline. I refined the mini script for the story and started thinking about storyboarding.
shots
Shot 1 A lonely flower picked by a little boy
Shot 2 Octopus in a pond reaching out its tentacles to hook a lotus leaf
Shot 3 The octopus slowly climbing up the lotus leaf to sunbathe
Shot 4 The boy looks forward curiously
Shot 5 At this time a small flying insect came
Shot 6 The boy looks up and tries to touch the flying snake, but he gets away.
Shot 7 The little flying snake happily carries the boy forward
Shot 8 The boy stumbled and followed the snake
Shot 9 Seeing a tree house covered with mushrooms
Shot 10 Raising his foot, he sees a small carrot head
Shot 11 Turnip head quickly shrinks into a ball
Shot 12 The octopus and the little flying snake are looking at the little boy curiously
Shot 13 The boy subconsciously hears his mother’s voice
Shot 14 The boy subconsciously wants to leave
Shot 15 The head of the carrot stays and gives him a flower
Shot 16 The boy takes the flower and cuts to the lonely holding the flower
End
Start building the environmental scenario
Process-Screen recording
This modelling video is very long, so I’ve used variable speed, and it contains some of my ideas for the build, as well as structural errors I found in the design draft during the modelling, which I’ll be tweaking next week
Model display
When I was making this model I was thinking about how the background of this model should be designed, as it is a fantasy world and I would love to have him floating on water or hidden in a huge forest, George gave me some advice and next week I need to make the surrounding rocks and mountains and then decide on the location of the shot
idea 2
In this story I wanted to test the standing of the characters, as our requirement this term is to make previz shots, so I thought I should focus on designing the position of the characters and the background, but I have tried making scenes for two projects this week and the first one was perhaps more appealing. So I will be developing the first project in depth
This week we have learned how to create scenes. George helps us understand scenes and composition and build a world. In the 3D design process, I am most interested in the design of the scene, because my personality likes to find some object and scene details. This course will help me greatly, which is also my favourite course in the second semester.
In the design process, we need to know a few elements
Place
era
time
Space and subject matter such as magic | steampunk
The ideas of dominating the world, such as myth | and religion, and how these affect the world.
These elements form the structure of the world.
Previs
Before shooting the visual shots and angles of complex scenes, Previs, as guidance before the movie, helps to build a bridge between different thoughts and conducts some experiments to help the rhythm of the planning story of the rhythm of story.
Rule of third
This lesson RULE OF THIRDS AND THE GOLDEN RATIO
Camera Crane Rig
Creating 3 previz ideas
First idea
Location: A fantasy world in the forest
Characters: Little boy and various strange creatures
Elements: magic, fantasy world, loneliness
A little boy breaks into a fantasy forest. He sees little snakes flying in the sky and is guided into the forest by the lively snakes. He also sees little kobolds who are as lonely as he is and they keep each other warm. The boy gradually has friends of his own and a smile appears on his face
Second IDEAL
Era: Victorian (the height of the industrial revolution)
Elements: Steampunk insects Small children obsessed with insects
Space and subject matter: technology meets magic, mechanisation and gigantism
In a future world where many animals have died out due to bad air quality, it is no longer possible to see real insects. At the same time, a young child, who is very fond of collecting broken insect corpses, discovers one day that the monolithic punk model he has made can actually imitate the movement of insects… and possesses a consciousness.
The idea came from a set I had previously produced, for which I had created a script and a draft set design, and as I was drawing it I became obsessed with the anime “Evil Child” by the Japanese animator Taiyo Matsumoto, so the set was influenced a lot by his style. I tried to develop the set, but it seemed to be a bit too much for a previz shot, it was more of a set design
George gave me some advice. He helped me look at some minor issues with the set design as well as telling me that I needed to create three storyboards for the next week and that I could choose the one I liked best to continue working on the project
I’ve thought about the advice I’ve been given. Personally, I’m pretty keen to produce a second project as I’m very good at modelling and some design work, but I’ve already been involved in the design of an interior scene for a group project this term.I want to try different directions. So I’ve decided to refine the first set as it’s just a rough idea and I think the characters I’ve designed so far lack appeal, so I’ll try to refine it over the next week
