The Ride- personal blog

The End...... for now :)

2009-06-21T17:45:00.000-07:00

So that's it! Our last ever project at Ravensbourne is over :(

In regards to the final film, I am pleased with the end result. I have learnt loads from just taking part in this project, from new software (After Effects and Mudbox), to pushing myself the hardest I've ever done regarding my modelling and texturing skills, not just on the models that needed to be created, but the amount of models that were needed in such a tight timespace. I should probably say that next time I take on a project I will be less ambitious, because we have worked such long hours on this, but I would be lying...I can't control wanting to create bigger and better things, and I think that goes for my team too :)

Talking about the others.... a few thank-yous, that I will try to keep unslimey :)

Callum- thanks for sorting out all our graphics, and my buisness card and just being happy to help on a project that took time out from your own work. I owe you a pie!

Jamie- (aka Harry Hinks) thanks for the sound work, and for never paniking when it was getting a little tight around deadlines.

.......And of course Dans and Jake. After being in contact with you almost every single day for three years, I wont wish you 'goodluck' becuase that sounds like goodbye and I doubt this is the end of us :D

Compositing

2009-06-21T17:26:00.000-07:00

Below are a few screenshots taken from my hand-in folder demonstrating a few of the shots that I composited together.

Compositing is not easy. It takes ages! And is extra stressfull especially when objects aren't rendering because the render farm is going crazy and time is ticking away! After going through the compositing process I feel really comfortable using After Effects which is cool, because I've previously found it confusing, but it's amazing how much you pick up, when there is no other choice but to learn and to learn fast!

Below are some diagrams explaining more about the compositing process. Please click on an image to enlarge :)

Timescheduling

2009-06-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have been taken up with rendering, (Daniel C ) and compositing, (myself, Dan R and Jake) and so we saw the demise of the time schedule. Tasks changed constantly for individuals all the time due to renders failing and them having to composite new scenes, to finishing shots early and taking others work, to falling behind and having others take your work, so a timescale was impractical. Instead, to keep track of our work, how much we had completed, how much we had left to do, I wrote it all down in my notebook (hehe sad I know) and when that finally ran out, sheets of loose paper stored in the notebook. My notekeeping must have been effective... and I'll ruin the surprise now..... as we got our film in on time. Yay!! :D

Background Props Texturing

2009-06-20T10:40:00.001-07:00

I created a texture for the helter skelter. Dan R had made one originally but it randomly disappeared off of the face of the earth which isn’t good, so a new one was needed!

Hmmm, it has occured to me that previously I have forgotten to post up the UVs and maps of objects I have unwrapped and textured etc. These are all in my folders for hand in. It seems as though I have only forgotten to show a few background obects. Here be the maps for the shopping trolley for example. I wont post the others up as they don't make particualy interesting blog viewing, but tiz all in the folders :)

Below is a screenshot of myself and Jake taking time to position objects in Kittys pirate room for Dan C to animate with.

Supernatural Room

2009-06-20T05:56:00.000-07:00

The next room that I created was the supernatural room. I had always seen the rooms colour scheme as green, but Dans had seen purple. I did a few rough tests to view the difference, but it was agreed that green looked cooler (yay!). I also made some quick tests to identify which pattern would look best on the walls, choosing the squiggly lines over the curved.

You can see from the above tests that the wood doesn’t show through the coloured patterns, so it looks a bit strange and out of place with the rest of the ride. When allowing the wood to show through in a Photoshop texture, the glow effect would go, and I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice that. There had to be glow- I could see the image really clearly in my head! Ever the technician, Dan C suggested that I should make an incandescence and glow map. This was a brilliant suggestion as it would basically eliminate my problem, allowing the woody texture I had created in Photoshop to have a glow attached to it, creating the desired effect I was looking for.

I also textured the fire exit. Dan R had previously made the model, but as time was pressing, I had to texture it. The point of the fire exit is to make the room appear fake and obvious as a ride. It is out of place with the Victorian theme we have, but that just adds to the effect. Is the ride really Victorian, or just run down, is it magic or is someone controlling it? It signifies an obvious divide between the areas that are obviously ride, such as Kitty’s room and this room, and areas that are actual worlds such as the cave and the graveyard sequences.

Jury Room

2009-06-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

My next task to complete was the jury room. If you remember, this room was meant to originally contain still puppets in a jury, with a judge puppet in a mechanical fortune teller box that would decide the girls fate. Due to time constraints, the jury was axed and just the judge remained. I had started building the judge and his belongings, as seen below, but it was becoming obvious that this idea was not going to work as time was pressing, and even when the model was finished, Dan would still have to skin and rig it.

Myself and Dan C had a discussion and decided on a new room idea, axing anything to do with a judge all together. Instead, this room would have a rocky cavern on either end, with a foggy floor, and at the sides nothing but blackness, a no-mans land, with an echoing voice asking them the question that would determine their fate.

To construct the design of the room I built 8 rocks and used a tutorial from the following website to create a texture completly frrom scratch:

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://vandelaydesign.com/images/textures/plaid.jpg&imgrefurl=http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/photoshop-tutorials-textures/&usg=__u_jrhieQMPxAL-2azbYrtKP5bb4=&h=301&w=300&sz=16&hl=en&start=41&um=1&tbnid=a_NToJhlGUq4fM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dplaid%26ndsp%3D21%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D21%26um%3D1

The tutorials on this site are easy to follow and simple to adapt into your own designs. I reccomend them!

I positioned the rocks, using the camera angles Dan C had already set keys for, allowing me to know the space the camera would be viewing, so I could frame the scene effectivly. Once I was happy with the poisioning of the rocks, doors, and 'love or hate' lights that I had built, I attempted to make fog for the scene.

I had never made fog before, so I researched some tutorials online. The one I used was:

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/simple_fog/simple_fog.html

and then proceeded to conduct some tests:

After a few tests, I realised fog wasn't what I was after at all. It was just so static. I decided that smoke would be the way to go. Dan C showed me the basics of how to make smoke and other effects using dynamics and particles in After Effects and how to animate them. I had never used After Effects before so he gave me a run through of the key features. I picked it up pretty quick, as it was very similer to Photoshop, which was good! Armed with the basics, I then created the following smoke tests which made it into the final cut of our film (but more about compositing later :P

Background Tree Animation

2009-06-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

Dan Dali had mentioned to us in a tutorial that we should think about applying background animation to our film to make sure that the environments didn't look static. At the beginning of the film, there are trees seen in the background that I had painted in previously. When watching the blockout of the trees with no animation, it was obvious that Dan was right. Jake had previously looked into a way to animate the trees automatically within the scene. However, this plan would no longer work, as after importing the trees into the scene, one of us must have deleted the history of the objects and this was no longer possible. To solve this problem, I applied curves to the trees and animated them this way.

Attempt 1:

Too rigid.

Alot smoother.

In the environment, final tree animation.

I realised that there would more than likely be more secondary animation needed throughout the film. Just animating those trees moving simply made me realise how out of practise I had become with my animating skills. I attempted to create a walkcyle for practise, in case I had to animate anything else within the film.

Hahaha booooo!!! Attempt 1- a limp, leaning to one side, un-moving head... not very impressive.

Final attempt.

The Carts Fully Textured

2009-06-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

My original models....

to my textured models :)...

The next objects on my to-do list to texture were the carts that I had already begun previously. There were more objects than I had first noticed that Jake, due to the pressure of so much work to do, had forgotten to unwrap, resulting in me having to make new UV maps in certain areas.

The texture maps that I used and created:

We noticed as a group that the carts did not look much different in appearance when they were smoothed to when they were unsmoothed. However the poly count in both states had a massive difference. We decided that the carts within the scenes would be left unsmoothed, thus hoping to reduce the chances of crashing when rendering etc.

Bits and Bobs

2009-06-14T05:35:00.000-07:00

After a meeting with Dan Dali, I've been gathering images to put into the folders that I'm going to be marked on. For submission I've retaken many images of my models etc to replace the previous ones that I had placed on this blog. As I've worked through this project, I've learnt alot about how to take better imagry etc which I didn't know at the start ,so I'm a bit worried that some of my earlier posts may make me look like a scrape. If you're marking this please check out my folder images, if you're not... imagry will be going up on our website which will be coming out soon.. I'll let you know further details when I have some :)

In the meantime, here be a few images that demonstrate the model of the ride and Lee ,better in my opinion, as well as some wireframe shots that demonstrate the workings and polycount of the models which I didn't include before, but think are important to have included. After this post, back to describing my progress through the project... incase you think (or hope :) I'm ending my blog here, because I'm not.. not just yet anyway :)

Hair Texturing

2009-06-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

By the time the hair was to be created, myself and Jake were slightly ahead of Dan R, so it was our job to see if our plan to create hair would be successful. As I’ve already written about in a previous post, we had decided that the way foreword with the hair was to use a combination of Zbrush, Photoshop and Mudbox. The plan was to build the volume of the hair up in Zbush, bump on the chunky strands of hair and apply basic texture in Mudbox and then clean it all up in Photoshop.

We had used Zbrush once in a previous project a year ago, where we had taught ourselves the programme. It was difficult software to learn and I was worried that I wouldn’t remember how to use it. Luckily it seems that after struggling to learn a programme, its difficult to forget it. Creating the hairstyle in Zbrush was interesting, as I kept creating a massive milk maid hairstyle for some reason!

Once I had got a hairstyle that I felt I would be able to work with, I took the subdivisions right down in zbrush to keep the model low poly and exported the model to Maya. I soon realised however, that our devised plan would need some work. Bumping on the creases in Mudbox didn't look as effective as I'd hoped and making the design look presentable was taking myself and Jake on our different models, more time than I felt comfortable with. Time was slipping and we needed a way to make the hair look good, fast.

After watching two episodes of '24' with Dan C for an inspirational break, as creating the hair was beginning to stress me out, I came up with the idea to paint the highlights on in Mudbox and then use that texture map to create a bump map in Photoshop. Together we created a rough test to see if this was feisable. The plan worked, allowing our group a method to create chunky hair, in a much faster way.

When creating the bunchy, I constructed the shape in Maya, Mudboxed it as I had done with the top of her hair and brought it into Photoshop, only to find that the save button wouldn’t work! I had never even considered this as a possibility of happening, but nothing would save! I searched online for help, and found that this had happened to other people, but their various methods of fixing the problem wouldn’t work for me. I dragged poor Jake over and made him reinstall Photoshop for me, but to no avail. Nothing would save. In a last attempt I searched online again and found a blog entry where there was another method of fixing this problem. This time it worked! All I had to do was to uncheck a simple button. Haha.. ahhh. These projects wouldn’t be the same without these sorts of things happening.

The blog of wonder:

http://howardgrill.blogspot.com/2007/09/fixing-photoshop-cs3-crashes-when.html

With the bunchy and the top of her hair complete, I created a hairband and a headband and moved onto creating the fringe.

Wow, if I thought I had come across stress so far, it was nothing compared to her fringe!

I created her fringe the same way in which I had created the rest of the hair. However, this did not produce the effect I was looking for as it was so blunt with no choppy strands of hair at the bottom that it looked stuck on.

Dan C suggested creating an alpha map. This turned out to be rather tricky to get looking right, and so I produced lots of undesired results some which can be seen below :)

Finally, after a long night, I got the fringe looking how I wanted it to :D yay!

It wasn't only me who had had trouble with the hair. Jake had spent a long time working on his too. The images that Jake sent me to look over were good, but not completely what I was imagining in my head. Please see Jakes blog to view some of his hair tests. I felt the bunchys appeared too puffy and the hair on the back of her neck to be too long. I told Jake how I felt, and he was realy great at trying to get the hair, more to my vision.

An image Jake sent me of the hair looking alot more to shape, and a really quick digram I drew on the left to help:

The hair still looked a little too bulky from the side view, so I made a few alterations.

Just like I had struggled with the alphaed fringe, so had Jake. The tests that he had shown me, indicated that he was having trouble getting the alpha to shape the fringe out of an Elvis sideburn shape and the textures for her hair were not as flowing as I would like. Jake took my amendment requests really well, especially as I know I am a bit of a perfectionist, but time was ticking and I needed Jake to begin work on the grass in the graveyard. I assigned Jake to begin work on the graveyard grass and retextured Kittys hair myself, and built a new fringe, also using Lee's hairbands to keep continuity between the models.

Jake original hair and alpha map challenges:

My retextured hair and new fringe:

The above images show the hair very dark. With light reflecting off of the specular map (here the bump was used again) the hair can be seen to have more tone in the final film :) This can already be seen if you click on the image to enlarge.

Axe Internet Explorer to view My Blog! :P

2009-06-10T02:29:00.000-07:00

Hmm for some reason, Internet Explorer doesn't show all my images when you view my blog :( if you use Firefox etc, then everything should work!

Aims for the last two weeks

2009-06-09T03:38:00.000-07:00

I've managed to keep on task with the goals I've been setting... and posts proving this will be up soon! The same applies for my group, who've been working really well :) Less than two weeks to go which is scary! Below are some screenshots of the timeschedules that I created for myself and my group over the last three terms and Easter holiday. If you remember, I originally started my timescheduling using MS Project, but to be honest, even though the software is more advanced, it was dull to look at and I wanted something everyone could refer to quickly and easily, to see exactly where they were and what they had left to do. The timeschedules were updated each week and placed on our public folder for easy access. Please note that the timeschedules are not an accurate representation of all the work people have done, merely main goals. Please view blogs and final folders for full work :)

As well as the official timeschedules, alot of my organising has taken place in my notebook, which without I would have had a heart attack a long time ago :)

Lee Textured.

2009-06-08T13:43:00.001-07:00

I’m so proud of the final outcome of Lee. I have textured and built two characters in the past, and none were as complicated or as successful as her, which hopefully makes all of these recent sleepless nights worthwhile! The process of texturing however, was really stressful, due to the time limit set and all the software issues that I encountered. I think it is official that any software I touch seems to self destruct! :S Please note that every item of clothing has been modeled and textured individually so a lot of work has gone into this! :)

Lee unwrapped.

To texture our characters we had decided as a group to use a blend between Photoshop and Mudbox, instead of Photoshop alone like we have done on previous projects, due to the understanding that with Mudbox you could paint directly over seams, resulting in the final model having none. Easier said than done. Having never used Mudbox before, I found the interface simple to navigate as it had the same command sequences as Maya.

The first item that I textured were the tights. Although the interface was easy to navigate, getting used to actually placing a texture on effectively was more challenging. To apply a texture you can either stencil or brush it on. After creating the tights material in Photoshop, I attempted to stencil and then paint on the material, finding no success with either method.

To solve this problem, I placed the woolly tights material on to Lee in Photoshop and stencilled on the hearts in Mudbox. This was a little time consuming, but worth the effort I think, as it allowed the heart textures to wrap around a leg convincingly, instead of having to try and manually paint a curved heart in Photoshop which would have been challenging and almost definitely produced a poorer result.

Happy and optimistic now that I had textured my first object, I moved onto texturing the top. I created a basic material in Photoshop which I turned into a brush in Mudbox and simply sprayed the texture on. I noticed as I was applying the texture, that small parts of the model were not painting. I checked the UVs and they were fine, so there shouldn’t have been a problem. I looked online at some forums such as http://area.autodesk.com/forums/viewthread/18260/ and many people seemed to experience the same issue but couldn’t find a cure for the problem. I took the texture that I had made in Mudbox into Photoshop and fixed the areas that wouldn’t paint manually. I also adjusted the colour of the material and created a bump map.

Front fixed:

Back fixed:

Again, with the bow I experienced the same problems of Mudbox not painting on specific UVs and me having to fix it in Photoshop. Luckily, the belt was refreshingly simple to make.

I then moved onto the facial texturing. I began by looking for an appropriate skin tone….

The last image is a refrence picture sent to me by Dan R and our friend Charley to help find the right skin tone. Although the characters had originally been designed to be Asian, this had become more vague as the desin process had continued, resulting in us deciding that the two sisters origins were of mixed Asian and White backgrounds.

The skirt was another enjoyable model to texture. I created the plaid pattern completely from scratch as this would give me more control over the appearance of the texture even though there were many plaid patterns online.

I moved onto the largest clothing item, the jacket. Little was I to know that this item of clothing would be the piece to nearly drive me insane!

Body warmers have a lot of prominent creases. I used online images and my little brothers body warmer as reference.

My original plan was to paint the creases on in Mudbox as a bump map, rather than sculpt them in as this would make the mesh unnecessarily high poly. I took the model into Mudbox and attempted to draw on some folds, only to find that the plain brush I was using, made it look as though I was drawing cracks in concrete. I sent the model to Jake, to check that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but he had the same issues. It appeared that I would have to sculpt the folds in after all.

Again no luck. I couldn’t even increase the subdivisions once without Mudbox crashing and I needed the extra subdivisions as the mesh was too low poly to sculpt. Jake suggested increasing the subdivisions in Maya and then exporting the high poly mesh into Mudbox. Unfortunatly, the jacket smoothed more than one division in Maya resulted in Maya crashing, and ultimately not being able to open the file at all.

As I couldn’t open the file with Lee in, I managed to remember through the lightheadedness and cold sweat, that I had made a backup of everything, so lukily I still had my files. Hahaha. My next idea was to create the bump in Photoshop and apply it to the object that way. I began with some quick tests, drawing on some rubbish folds and then turning the bump up really strong in either direction to see if this would work. From what I could make out from the tests, it appeared that this method would work. To make sure, I softened the bump and then mirrored the texture to the other side of the jacket to view the results. As you can see from the imagry, the same texture on the other side was barely visble. I couldn’t find an explanation for the problem. I sent the model to Dan C and he couldn’t find a problem with it either. However, he did inform me that the jacket had given him hell when he was skinning it, (due to its design.. not the modelling :P ). Argh the jacket of evil!

I had to fix the jacket up the best I could, as time was pressing, but there was no way, I wanted to produce a shabby model. I created a texture in Photoshop that had creases in and then applied only a soft bump. Unfortunately there were no actual creases coming straight from the dents on the jacket, but I feel the texture that I created was strong enough, with the appearance of folds to still look good. So after long last…. the jacket was done! :D

The hands took a while to texture, Mudbox was being extremely annoying and leaving a lot of unpaintable areas, so I had to be careful in Photoshop when fixing it up to make sure I didn’t allow seams. My cousins and sister informed me that in regards to nail varnish bright neon colours were fashionable, so I applied some to Lees fingernails. However, Dans and Jake were disgusted, so I toned the colour down as a compromise :)

The ears were fine to make, apart from a slight shock at seeing them so disfigured in Mudbox initially, but to amend the problem was simple, just reverse the normals in Maya, then re export into Mudbox.

The zip was also not a problem, nor were the wellys, although I had the typical Mudbox issue of unpaintable areas etc.

Here be some images of the various maps I created to produce the final appearance of Lee:

Aim of the week :)

2009-05-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

Last weeks aim complete! I'll post images up here soon to prove it, just need a bit of time to get the screenshots together etc as so much has been going on! Ok, aim for this week, and this goes for Dan R and Jake too, get everything modelled and textured that has to be in the scenes. It's going to be alot of work, but we can do it!

Aim of the Week.

2009-05-12T03:15:00.000-07:00

Right, this week I aim to get Lee completely textured. I'm going to attempt to use Mudbox for the first time to do this, as this seems like an effective way to paint on textures without worrying about seams and to allow material to stretch round objects which would be challenging to paint in Photoshop e.g the hearts on Lees tights. I'm a bit apprehensive about painting on the the folds of Lees jacket, as I feel they could be difficult to get looking right, but I'm going to try anyway and hopefully succeed.

Putting the Exteriors Together.

2009-05-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

When we began placing objects in the normal world exterior, it began as a group effort, taking it in turns to place objects and helping to direct each other where we felt items should be placed. However for the tree and prop placing in the ride area exteror, and for the shots looking back to the normal world, myself and Dan R did the placing, as it had become aparent that we are way fussy when it comes to posisioning objects within scenes. We positioned the items in the scene shot by shot, to make sure that everysingle shot was nicely framed etc. For the normal trees, we used the trees I had made previously and altered their colour to make them appear more dead around the ride. As usual the colour wheel was playing up, producing bright, luminous shades, but I feel we managed to do a successfull job in the end.

Checking props in different shots.

One thing that I noticed and wasn't happy about was the camera angle when Lee gets the idea into her head to enter the ride and drag the others along with her. Above we can see the altered camera angle. Previously the camera had been distinctly further away which didn't exagerate enough a turning point in the plot. I hadn't noticed this until the scene was framed. Because the camera was now alot closer, I felt that Lees expression should be more exagerated and more devious looking. I described to Dan C what I was thinking and he made a note of it to alter. Thankss :)

Lee has also been unwrapped, all ready for Mudbox :S

Dan C's Birthday, Painting Trees, Building Hills and a Trolley.

2009-05-10T03:27:00.000-07:00

It was Dan C’s birthday on the 1^st May….. and most of it was spent working.. that’s dedication for you! Although we did have a BBQ in the evening and he got to open my extra cool birthday gifts (Dan R’s gifts were late in delivery, cough *bad friend* cough :p )

I constructed the background hills and painted in the background trees in the normal world.Unlike the trees surrounding the ride that were to be stylised and creepy, the trees on the other side of the fence in the normal world were to obviously appear normal. The further away a tree is to the ride, the more life it appears to have, as though the ride itself were sucking the life out of the objects around it, in order to stay alive. I went through shot by shot, positioning the trees, making sure they framed the characters nicely etc, altering their attributes, to provide variation etc.

Cho framed.

Shot 2 trees.

Altering the trees attributes.

The simple hill mesh.

The season that I had always envisioned the film to be set in was early Autumn as the colours would contrast nicely with a twilight sky and the clothes the children were wearing seemed to fit this season. However adding colour to the trees was more challenging than I had expected them to be, for example, if I wanted to add more yellow, the tree would suddenly turn bright green or if I added green the tree would become multicoloured. The colour wheel apeared to have a mind of its own. I looked online for help but couldn't find any and Dans and Jake didn't know why this was hapening either. It looked as though the season would have to be summer for a little while, until I began to get used to the ways of the colour wheel, working out which colour was hidden beneath another colour. Although it was difficult to get the exact colours that I wanted, after a bit of time I got there. Maybe the answers really obvious.. if anyone knows, let me know! :)

I created a possible ground texture to use within the scene.

I also found time to finsih Dans model that we had used as a proxey to make the final shopping trolley background prop.

Initial Stages of Cart Texturing and Unwrapping.

2009-05-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

Lees and Chos cart at present.

Previously, when Jake was slightly ahead, (me and Dan R are all caught up now :) I asked him if he would be able to unwrap my carts whilst I finished texturing the ride, which he did and saved me some time. Thanks! :) However when I finished the ride and came to start texturing the cart, I noticed that Jake had missed parts, which needed to be UV mapped, some you can see below. For example the seat, the side edges, lamps, the handle bar etc needed to be re-done by me. Jake still saved me time though on the big panels :)

As with the rest of my models, I built my own textures, and below just shows a brief example of how I created a rust texture.

The Caves.

2009-05-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

Jake finished modelling and texturing the caves, which is fantastic and means that we actually have one environment finished! Wooo!! Dan C composited two shots and showed us the results. As a group we chose the second shot for the colour direction the caves should go, as the image had a much more hellish feel to it. As the film progresses, everyone will have a turn at compositng.

From the initial pillars Jake made me choose a style between, to........

Ive put Jake to work on Kittys room whilst I work in the Jury room and Dan R in the graveyard room. Me and Jake picked out images online for him to adapt for the sun and dolphin and he is going to keep the wave design I made in the first term. As for the jury room, that has had alot of changes made to it. In fact the whole clown jury has been axed. There's just not going to be enough time to create, rig and skin a new detailed model. The film is also over running a bit, so it makes sence to axe these shots where not much is hapening and it wont affect the narrative or pace. Instead, we have opted for just a judge puppet who asks the question to the girls and determines the nature of their ride. The model will appear to be made of wood as opposed to material like it was going to be previously, as this way the puppet can be animated simply with joints and no skinning is required.

Windmill Animation

2009-05-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

I animated the sail turning , not Cho :P Not exactly groundbreaking animation but it's just an example to show the sort of background animation I will be attending to. I wont be attempting anything major with the characters, as that would defiantly take me a while and would mean that I would slip behind with the rest of the jobs I have to take care of. Also.... Cho is not going to look like this in the final film!!!!

Big Wheel Background Prop

2009-05-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

I unwrapped and textured the big wheel. As it is a background prop it didn't matter if the texture was slightly repetitive.

Term 3- The Ride Exterior Textured.

2009-05-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

Hmmm the images look quite small. If you click on them, then they should enlarge :)

I unwrapped and textured the ride. When unwrapping, I used the checker shader to help identify where the UVs were stretched etc so that I could ammend them. I thought that unwrapping the planks would be a bit of an issue as unwrapping them individually would take rather a long time as there were just so many. However, the planks were surprisingly less complicated than I had imagined. I took a plainar map, then in the UV editor window selected the UV’s of the bottom plank, dragged it down so you could see it as a whole and then proceeded to do this to each individual plank so that when I applied a texture to them in photoshop I would have minimal hassle.

As you can see, parts of the ride that would not be in shot were not textured.

Above we can see all the UV maps created for the ride, placed into thumbnails as well as a close up of the UV map of one of the sides of the windmill.

I made the textures in Photoshop, using free online textures and then manipulating them and making them my own. Getting the textures exactly right was tricky sometimes, for example a colour that looked right in Photoshop would not look right on the model, as can be seen above.

Thumbnails of all the texture maps created for the model and their bump maps.

Organisation in Easter Holidays

2009-05-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

I knew it would be important to brand our film, for the degree show and any promotional work we wished to carry out etc. However, this was not the strong point of any of us in the group and time was ticking away for our project. Sticking to the rule of only working with people we know and trust to do a good job, I contacted a good friend of mine called Callum Parish, asking him if he could possibly create us a branded title and some promotional work. Callum was really great and sent us a variety of options for the branding of our film. As a group we chose the font that we felt represented our project the most. For full images see the group blog. He also made a few promotional posters for the film. This was particularly nice as we couldn’t provide any finished renders for him to work with etc. Callum also created the opening title sequence for our film and constructed a business card design for me :)

Our chosen font.

A poster design.

As the degree show is coming up I invited a few contacts that myself and Dans made at the London Games Career Fair, giving their contact details to Mike. Jake did the same with some contacts he knew at Nicolodean. To help promote our film further, Dan R’s brother who is a professional website designer is going to setup a website for us :)

We met up with Jamie a few times this holiday, tocheck up on his progress. Sound seems to be coming along well, especially the sound in the cave sequence, although we had to request that the girls footsteps walking to the ride to be a bit less gravely as the floor would be made more of dried mud than stones.

In regards to group meetings, we meet up every day. Before beginning a days work we discuss what work we have done, what we are going to get done that day and then have a mild panic on how time is flying, then we are ready to start the day :)

Big Wheel and Helter Skelter Background Models

2009-05-08T18:31:00.000-07:00

One of the scenes props is the big wheel. As the model is going to be in the background and never close to the camera, as long as it looks good from a distance I could build the model with less detail.

I also created the main body and slide for the helter skelter with Dan R completing the top ,as we were having to balance jobs as time was running out according to our schedule. Making the slide wrap all the way around the ride with the top faces always facing upwards instead of rotating when following a curve was challenging. A way to resolve that would be to use that as a template and manually extrude a slide around the ride. However, as the extrusion up the curve had resulted in a few successful loops, I simply cut out the appropriate faces, duplicated and scaled them up the ride.

Please note the top of the ride is not what will be in the final scene. Please see Dan R’s blog.

The Rides Exterior.

2009-05-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

This was another model that was going to be seen clearly by the camera, so it was once again important for the model to look good close up.

I began by constructing the windmill. I built a standard rectangular plank and began trying to construct slats up the side of the windmill. However this was taking rather longer than I had expected it to and wasn’t looking that good. I wasn’t sure if the overall effect was going to be impressive and didn’t want to waste a lot of time on something I only hoped would look good in the end. To solve this problem a little faster I used the duplicate special tool. I began by using the tool to create many planks heading straight up then positioned them on the model. Then by moving the pivot point of the planks to the centre of the windmill I used the tool to duplicate the whole row around the windmill base model in one go. I could then see the overall effect.

Aside from looking like a massive Darlek, I liked the overall effect. However, there were clear flaws in the design- most definitely the planks of wood. Being exactly the same and not particularly stylised they made the model look bland and unrealistic. To resolve this issue I created 4 different stylised planks of wood and then duplicated them and mirrored them to create 8 planks of wood in total.

These planks came in extremely handly thoughout the making of this film. You can find them in the cave sequence on the track, and on Dan R’s stalls. I then used the same technique as before, using the duplicate special tool to create 8 separate windmill bodies. I proceeded by taking away planks off of each windmill in such a pattern that when I brought the windmill bodies together the planks fitted into place to create a solid windmill.

For the top slats of the windmill dome and the bottom ones surrounding the ride, I used a pattern of planks again but didn’t bother creating 8 separate models and instead applied them manually. I worked in this method this time as the dome and the bottom slats were much smaller models than the whole windmill and this way would be the most time efficient.

The roof, floor and wall panels were all made with separate objects as opposed to big block shapes with extruded indents. I had found with the construction of the carts that if a model is going to be clearly in shot, unless done really well, it is more effective to create the objects as they would be in real life. To save time, the ride is not panelled all the way around where the camera will not see and parts of my old proxy model can still be found in the scene.

I added fairy lights to the sails to complete them. I planned to extrude a polygon down a curve to create the wire, but drawing the wire itself was rather frustrating, trying to manoeuvre the points on the correct position of the sail. Just as I was starting to get irritated, I heard a quiet voice behind me say, ‘Why don’t you make the model live?’ Not knowing what he was talking about, Dan C showed me how to make an object live in order for you to draw straight onto it. Thanks Dan :) I used this method to create wires around the rest of the sails and the posts.

To make the lightbulbs, I made one and then converted it into a paint brush and then proceeded to paint lightbulbs onto the verts of the wire. I researched the following tutorial that instructed me on how to do this:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Bd-HKkbV8CsC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=how+to+make+a+custom+paint+effect+brush+in+maya&source=bl&ots=eALj-zoNhV&sig=1XLO2xbsPvNz3NAW50CSq-xMVlc&hl=en&ei=osv8SajAAobKjAeOxYGZAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#PPA12,M1

As the holidays were coming to a close, I didn’t want to spend much time on the creating of the bunting. However, when just adding a triangle to rope, I could see the effect was very flat. To solve this problem I created a cloth deformer, setting a key when I felt the bunting looked most realistic. This was a quick method of creating an object that looked as though it were actually dangling from rope, instead of trying to model this in manually.

Notice the rope that has broken and fallen to the floor. I included this as I felt the ride was looking too symmetrical. This was also the reason I added a ladder going up one side of the windmill, to help break this symmetrical appearance.

Building Lee

2009-05-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

Appologies for the generic pose of Lee- I haven't got a rigged version back yet :) The making of Lees face took two attempts. Apparently, constructing a face is one of the most complex objects to model according to people in the industry, and I defiantly agree. As the characters faces have a lot of screen time, obviously they must be well built. We followed this tutorial when building our characters, as it provides a method that includes good edge flow to your model, which is important for when a face is rigged, to avoid unwanted creasing etc.

My first attempt was dismal unfortunately, as I began cutting in too many lines to add detail to the nose, completely excluding the mouth area which I assumed I would fix later. However, I soon realised when I got to that part, that this would be impossible as there was just too much detail on the mesh. There was no way I was going to be beaten by my own character and so I proceeded to have a second go, making sure to adjust every vert of each new edge that I added. In fact, this advice can be used for any model built. It hadn’t taken long for me to see the original face was wrong, so I still managed to keep to my time schedule. Once the basic face was modelled out, adding detail was not a problem. You can’t fix something if the foundations are wrong.

I then went on to build Lee’s clothes. I started with the body warmer as I thought this would take the most time to construct. I wanted to make sure the puffs weren’t too puffy because as her body warmer is yellow I didn’t want the audience to think she was wearing a life jacket! The collar of the jacket took a while to look the way I wanted it to but it was just a case of adjusting the verts accordingly. I chose to include strips of material that would hide mostly where the zip line would normally be, as I have found on previous characters that making a zip line is a lot of hassle to get looking right, and when its on right people hardly notice, but if its wrong everyone notices. So the less zip on show the better! In the images above you can see that although I have modelled the zip handle, there is no zip line at all, as I am going to model that in the programme Mudbox. This software will allow me to add more detail to my model. In a previous project I had used Zbrush for this same reason but as Mudbox is made by the same company as those who create Maya the controls are very similer and so should in theory be easier than Zbrush. This is a link to some really clear tutorials for anyone interested in learning:

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/video_mudbox2009/sculpting01.asp

When Dan redesigned my character, the belt he included was to be made of ribbon. However as I was creating the belt, I felt that if Lee were real, the belt she’d be wearing would be made of plastic, with a shiny plastic bow, the type that I would think young, trendy girls would buy from Claire’s Accessories. I spoke to Dan about it and he didn’t mind me changing the design of the belt :)

I then made her top as I wanted to make sure that I had left enough space for her arm to come through the jacket.

The skirt.

The tights, like the face took two attempts as once again I added too much detail too soon, which made any errors I was making unfixable later on. My first attempt looked like a leg of lamb, was completely flat and so was unusable. My second attempt was a lot better I think.

With the body modelling done, my friend Charlie noticed that Lee didn’t have much of a figure, even for a child. I had been modelling the clothes so closely I had failed to notice that. Once again the lattice deformer saved the day, as I indented her waist a little and gave her more of a bum and curve to the back.

I also created some hair tests for Lee. As a group we had sat down and discussed how we wanted the hair to appear. We had all agreed that the Maya hair tool would be unsuitable for what we were looking for as it was far too realistic. As the modelling style of our characters was very chunky, we needed to find a way to incorporate that look within the hair. Dan R had an image of Poison Ivy and I had some images from the film Monster House, and it was decide to try and make hair that looked similer to these models. The only problem was how. I suggested Mudbox or Zbrush as we had used this before in a previous project but the only problem with this was that it might take too long to get the model to look how we wanted it to and maybe modelling it straight from polygons was easier? Myself, Jake and Dans all carried out tests in Maya, each with dismal results. Mine are shown below. I attempted multiple times, extruding a polygon along a curve. Out of the four of us, Dan C created something that at least covered a characters head, even though it looked like ribbons. It seems that in the end we will have to use Mudbox after all, although that is not our main priority at the moment. First, the environments have to be worked on further.

An example of Zbrushed hair, made on a previous project. Instead of such thin strokes, larger ones would be more appropriate for the look we want to achieve.

Once the characters were built we realised that there was another problem. Kitty. Although she had looked good on her own, next to Lee and Cho she just looked out of place. This wasn’t bad modelling from Jake or a bad character sheet from Dan. Kitty had just not converted well from image to model when next to Lee and Cho. As we didn’t specifically know why she wasn’t fitting in, we again spent a considerable amount of time huddled around a PC with the soft mod Maya tool attempting to squash her face into a more appropriate design. Dan C eventually took the model home and showed me two options. Image 1 or image 2. I chose image 1.

Easter Holidays

2009-05-06T18:04:00.000-07:00

Because the dissertation took up so much time, there was no time to lose with the Easter holidays coming up. Apart from the actual Easter bank holiday, we came in and worked every single day. Myself and Dan R’s main priority was to get the characters built. Jake had already made Kitty and so was building the cave, whilst Dan continued animating.

Term 2

2009-05-06T17:09:00.000-07:00

This term was mainly taken up with dissertation, especially for myself and Dan R who seem to write slower than Dan C and Jake- curse them :p. Although I thought I was doing well in it, after a tutorial with Kieran, he told me that to get a better grade I needed to research differently, which led to a lot of all night studying sessions with Dan R as he worked on his too. Hopefully it was worth all the effort that we went to, but as we wont know our grades for ages, there’s not much point worrying about it. This is not to say that no work on this project was covered this term, far from it :) (we officially have no lives, hehe).

The first objects that I modelled were the carts that transpost the girls around the ride. The cart with the rounded front is for Lee and Cho, whilst the flatter fronted one is for Kitty.

Lee's cart:

I was aware that the carts would be in around 90% of the film, and in many close shots, so they would have to be modelled well with no shortcuts taken. Although now that the models are complete and I feel I could model them quickly if I were to remake them, when I first began I found it a bit challenging and came up with some hideous results when trying to build the model out of a solid cube. I realised that before I could begin the modelling I should take a moment to think about what I was doing and reassess my design. The design I was working from was a quick pencil sketch that I had made in term one, and showed only the side of the cart. After making some rough sketches, I realised that the best way foreword both aesthetically and logically was to build the cart out of separate objects like it would be in real life as opposed to trying to build it out of one object and extruding sections etc.

Above shows some of the construction proces of the cart. You can notice some changes in the design as I modelled, for example a bumper around the cart. I had always imagined the cart with a bumper, but once it was on the cart, I felt it was out of place and didn’t seem to fit into our Victorian theme, so it had to go. The cart was also appearing too big and needed resizing. Although I had measured the width to fit Cho in comfortably, it was maybe a bit too comfortable as when I added the proxy model of Lee into the cart, it looked ginormous. You can also see the way the cart was modelled out of separate sections on one side then mirrored across to complete the other half. Not wanting the cart to obviously look mirrored with every bump etc symmetrical, I used the lattice deformer to bump and dent the cart unsymmetricaly.

Once Lees cart had been completed, it was now the turn to construct Kittys. Kittys cart had to be more compact from the front as the end of the film has an embracing sequence between the girls over the two carts whilst they are inside them. To construct Kittys cart, I duplicated Lees and then pulled back the front, again using the lattice deformer. This however crushed the previous floor, wheels and front bolts and they had to be reconstructed. The lattice tool was once again used to make sure that the model didn’t share the exact same bumps etc as Lees cart. Two panels on the front also had to be completly re-modelled as this design did not include headlamps.

Dan C also needed environmental proxy models to be built so that he could begin the animation in more detail. A proxy model is a quick rough model, made to the correct proportions so that they can be replaced later in the scene by the real models. Using this method, Dan could blockout the animation which he could use both for the animatic and the final animation whilst we worked on our models. I created proxy models of the actual ride, the helter skelter and the big wheel.

Dan R also created some proxy models, and combined with mine, and Dan C’s proxy models of the characters, were placed into the scenes that we would be using for our films.

As a group we huddled around a PC, as we did when creating the blockout environment, and decided where objects would go in our new proxy environment, taking turns to position objects. As before, it took some time whilst we discussed what would look good where and why.

Director decisions:

Whilst we worked on our individual tasks, I made sure that I was kept updated with all the work the others were producing, and made sure to show them mine for their feedback also. Usually we work together at Uni, but this term due to the dissertation, it meant that it was more convenient to work at our separate homes, where it was less distracting and we could concentrate on writing. I had to make some slight directorial changes to Jakes and Dan C’s work, but nothing major: Jake sent me some screenshots of the character Kitty he was creating where I suggested that her nose round the sides needed to be more defined. I also didn’t feel that her teeth were quite right in style and Dans and Jake agreed. After a few attempts Jake created teeth that much better suited our overall film style :)

The only thing of Dans that I wanted to alter was the shot where Cho gets her bum stuck whilst going through the fence as I felt it needed more exaggeration. It wasn’t a big deal, and as time was short it didn’t need priority. However, I told Dan that if there was time at the end, I wanted that pose exaggerated. Its not even the end of the project and he managed to find time to fix it for me :D

The medieval room also had to be axed. This wasn’t a directorial choice but more of a group realisation as we could tell that with the dissertation taking up so much time there just wasn’t going to be time for this room. The room also wouldn’t affect the narrative at all, so off it was axed!

Christmas Break.

2009-05-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

Over the Christmas break, I kept in touch with Dans and Jake socially as well as with work :) During the festive season, Dan R modelled a hand, Dan C updated the animatic and Jake made a miket of Kitty as he felt this would help him later on when he would have to build this character. Apart from dissertation research gathering, I didn’t do much Maya work, except refresh myself with the softwares interface with some speed modelling practice, due to unfortunate family health problems that occurred at this time as well as my nans death and funeral. However, I am determined not to let personal issues interfere with my work once term has begun. On the bright side, we did get our grades back from the previous term, which were all really good so that's encouraging.

Term 1 Summery.

2009-05-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

Looking back over my last post, it appears that I may have gotten a bit carried away with the Christmas spirit to be that optimistic! The dissertation took a lot longer than expected- but more about that in due course!

The following is a brief summery of term one:

As a group:

· Discussions on the storyline, editing it to construct a narrative that was better structured. Together we would debate our suggestions until we had created an overall story that we were satisfied with. Although it was important to me to keep the basis of my original story, I felt that editing it as a group instead of individually would make the film be something everyone wanted to work on and feel apart of.

· Thumbnailing a storyboard. Evidence of this can be seen on our group blog. Together we went through shot by shot, of what we imagined would be shown on screen. Everyone had equal input and although people would get outvoted on certain shots in preference to others, the task was successful, in my opinion, in constructing the basis of a film that the whole group would be happy with. Everyone was then assigned different areas of the film to storyboard up more presentably so that individuals outside of the group would know what we were talking about!

· At the same time that the thumbnails were being constructed, a rough blockout environment of the film was being created, with basic shapes. Dan C made the basic shapes and placed them in the scene under all our instructions, so we could get a better understanding if our chosen shots would be appropriate.

· Character moodboard. We gathered images together to decide on a style for our characters. The word to describe the style we are going for is ‘chunky’.

Individually:

Concept art and research into visual references etc as I had a strong idea of what I want this film to look like. I also assigned the group members tasks and organised what we were going to do about sound, as I didn’t want to leave this to the last minute. For this project I only want to work with people I know I can trust with their working skills and reliability. The sound designer that I have chosen to work with is called Jamie Spinks, who like Dans and Jake, I’ve worked with before and know is up to the task. Conveniently, he lives down the road from me and has been dating my cousin for the last few years, so hunting him down if he starts to slack shouldn’t be much of a problem! :p I also created the group timescale and drafted out the group members contracts.

The group worked really well together this term as a team, and we managed to get alot of work done. I sent Dan Ryans character designs back so many times, because even though they were good, there was still something missing. He didn't moan once, and now we've ended up with designs everyone is really happy with. So hopefully we will all continue to work as strongly through the coming months :)

End of term 1.

2008-12-17T04:15:00.000-08:00

Wow, term one has finished! We ended the term by presenting our work to the class. Our group went first. It was a little nerve wracking but I think we pulled it off well- we got good class feedback which is positive but you never quite know what your tutors are thinking... until you get your grades back :S

Ok, so now it's Christmas break. I'll probably put this project on hold over the holidays and work on my dissertation instead. Last term, so much time was spent on our essays and presentations that there wasn't much time to spend on our project. I figure that if I at least get 3/4 of a first draft completed of my dissertation that then I can spend the majority of my time next term working on this project :)

Have a great Christmas!

Contract and Timescale.

2008-12-04T14:51:00.000-08:00

Because time was slipping away, I wasn't sure if I would have time to completely design and make the contracts for the group. I wrote down some points and gave them to Jake to make into a contract as he could fit it into his time schedule. Below are my points, however Jake added a few of his own, which seeing as they gave me more power I decided to leave in as the group seemed happy!

Original Contract Points:

By the signing of this contract, I agree that:

This will be the main project that I work on.

I will not abandon the group. In the case of wishing to leave permission must be obtained by the director.

I will put my full potential and ability into my work.

I will not take credit for work that is not my own.

The directors decision is final.

I also created a timescale way back at the beginning of this project, but until now, forgot to upload screenshots of it into my blog. The full version is located in our groups public sharing folder and is updated every time we complete a piece of work.

Layout Drawings

2008-12-04T14:41:00.000-08:00

I created a layout drawing so that it would be easier for my group to see how I viewed the surrounding environment for the ride. When I showed it to them I was happy to see they imagined it the same way. Great minds think alike! This image isn't up to the best standard, so hopefully if i get time later I can improve on it. At the moment its clear enough to serve its purpose :)

I tried the cutout filter for this one in 'Photoshop' because as a group we've used it successfully on our work previously, like in the Gargoyle animation. Although I think it is too much to completely render out the film in this style, I think it does work well when using the tool to create individual textures for objects. A method we will probably use again.

A quick testjust for me really. The group know I like black lines around objects, a personal preference, but none of the others do :( siigh, so the outline will have to be axed!

Colour tests

2008-12-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

Scary, scary! Big deadline tomorrow! I miss the good old days where you just handed in all your work and could go and recover at the Chinese restaurant with your friends. Now the Chinese food has to wait a few hours while we have to present our work to the whole class :S Ah well.
Anyways! Here be some colour tests that I constructed.

Normal tree colour. I feel that we need normal trees in our environment as well as tinted ones so that at first glance the environment appears normal but on a second glance, it is much more mysterious... adds to the whole mood of the piece :)

After working on my film analysis essay, I have become really interested in colour symbolism and how artists incorporate it into their work, so I thought it would be cool to add some in our project as well, by finding trees that look creepy tinted, but also represent something. I thought about having one side of the glade that surrounds the ride have positive coloured trees mixed in with the normal trees, and on the other side, trees tinted that represent danger etc. This represents the two parts of the ride, the good one for good people and the bad one for bad people.

Although purple looked mysterious, it didn't really fit in with what the trees are meant to represent. However it did inspire the colour for the main body of the ride, as its meaning really worked well there. I spoke to the group about it and it was decided.

Although as with all colours, green has both good and bad representations, neither side again really fitted in too much. So at the moment this is in my mental 'maybe' category.

Yellow fits in perfectly in the negative representations and would work well against blue. So amongst the normal trees, look out for blue trees on one side of the ride and yellow on the other!

A test for the old market stall colours. I couldn't decide which one I liked the best visually, between pink and blue, as I thought yellow seemed a bit bright. I chose red, returning to the colour symbolism theme- pinky/red as a warning about the ride perhaps :S

A test for the sign above the entrance to the ride. When I showed the group we decided against having a clown on the sign altogether as the clown gave the impression that the ride could be a fun house. We thought it a better idea if the ride remained looking neutral so that the audience would have no idea what sort of ride the characters would be entering and it be a surprise.

Designs for the exterior of the rides wall. They were inspired by looking at the patterns on the carousels that were in my moodboards.

More tests. (Just click the image to enlarge and read the text).

Although judges always wear black, when I was sketching out the design, I had it in my head that he would be wearing red. However, after a quick colour test I realised that wouldn't really work as the audience might not be able to recognise him as a Judge or just think that I'd got the colours wrong accidentally. I like this test because it looks like he's a deranged news reader :)

The clowns in the jury when the girls enter the room. They are completely still.

The clowns when the girls turn back after making the wrong decision after the Judge asks them a question.

A quick wave test. I don't want the waves in Kittys room to be stereotypical wave shapes. I prefer it slightly stylised like above.

Concept sketches

2008-11-30T15:38:00.000-08:00

Here are some concept pencil sketches for the exterior of the ride, the jury room and the graveyard.

These are items for the outside of the enclosed area of the ride, or for just inside of the fence. Normal, everyday items that you find in restricted areas. These help to identify further that the ride is deserted and abandoned. I thought it would be cool ,if as the children got closer to the ride, the abandoned objects became older and more decrepid, such as a child's china doll, or a hoop, returning to the Victorian theme, as though the ride is magic and has slipped the net of time.

I had a group meeting with the others the other day, and we discussed our concerns that the ride at the moment was just in a sealed off area and that there was nothing in the environment to give it context or to suggest that anything existed away from the ride. We decided that instead of having just the lone ride, there would be ruins of other rides, wrecked and overgrown with nature. We also decided that away from the ride, nature would be in full force, over-grown and wild, but surrounding the ride, everything was dead, as though nothing can ever really harm the ride, unless it wants them to.

An old sweet stall.

The first sketch of the outside of the ride, in order to get a general feel for it. I haven't included the sign on the top of the main body and below the windmill, as I haven't decided on that design yet and will need to get the groups opinions. There are eyes carved into the wood, and on the bunting, subtle images to help boost the overall feel that the ride is alive and watching the children.

Tree designs for the environment around the ride. I wanted the trees to be stylised to enhance the general mystical feel around the ride. I drew silhouettes of the trees as well , because when the children exit the ride, the sun will be setting and I wanted to be certain that the shapes of the trees would be just as effective silhouetted.

More tree designs. This time when I was focusing on the main trees I drew them as though they were pointing towards the ride, surrounding it, trying to get at it perhaps, but never able to reach it. It also provides more of an intimidating feel as though the children are being shepherded towards the ride without even realising it. I also practised stylising a few weeds.

More silhouette tests.

Some rough designs for the rides name sign. I will make further tests, placing each sign on my sketch of the ride in 'Photoshop'. Hopefully, one will work and the others will like it too.

Little sketches. Dan Ryan made a rough thumbnail of a cart in his sketchbook which we all really liked, so I cleaned it up a little and enlarged it. An example of some bunting, complete with eyeball. I looked at ventriloquist dummies that would be hanging on the outside of our ride. From the reference images that I found for my moodboard, I noticed that they all seemed to have the same head shape and features. I thought it would be funny to try and make a dummy each, that looked like members of the group, but it didn't really work. From left to right we have Dan R, Dan C, Jake and me (who looks so much like a man in drag!) Ha, I might keep them, they make me laugh and they are definitely creepy! I've also drawn some patterns that I found on my moodboard on the carousel that I thought could be nice to decorate the walls with (I'll do colour tests in 'Photoshop'). Lastly, I made a very rough sketch of where the music usually comes from on a carousel. I thought that if we used that idea, the pipes could make a sound like breath and steam come from them as the ride wakes up as though it were alive.

Designs for the clown puppets in the jury room. Although originally we talked about the clown in the mechanical fortune teller box looking identical to the other clowns, I thought it would make more sense if this clown were dressed as a judge, as he is the one who judges the children and sends them on a bad ride, and it fits into the court room scenario better.

The original sketch of the fortune teller box.

A concept for the graveyard. The grass nearest the children is cutout but the further away from the children the background gets, the more realistic it looks, with real grass etc as though they have actually been transported to a completely different environment all together. I'm going to talk to my group tomorrow- I'm not sure about the furthest background, whether to show the walls of the ride or to make it appear as though they really have been transported to a completely new environment away from the ride for the time being.

A little sketch for the mausoleum that the giant zombie hand smashes out out in the final finale. If there is fire outside of it, it could look quite effective against the gloom and make the building appear more spooky and intimidating.

Pose Sheets

2008-11-30T15:31:00.000-08:00

For my storyboards, I drew out the characters separately to the background incase Dan needed to animate them. Away from the storyboard backgrounds, the sketches work as pose sheets.

(Slightly) neater storyboards

2008-11-29T16:02:00.000-08:00

After completing the rough thumbnails together, we each took sections of the film to storyboard neater so that it would be easier for people who didn't know our work to understand whats going on, and so that it would be easier for Dan to read when animating. My section begins as soon as the children enter the ride....

Moodboards

2008-11-28T16:40:00.001-08:00

After creating our thumbnails as a group (see group page) we each created moodboards to help inspire us for our neater storyboard images and design work. Here are mine, along with colour palettes.

Film Inspiration

2008-11-25T14:32:00.000-08:00

Argh, it seems like ages since I've had a chance to update my blog. Too many essays and presentations! They've taken so much longer to do than planned :S We have one week and two days until all our pre-production work is due in. Scary, scary! This is going to be an intense week for me, because our pre-production work has been neglected a little as of late, and it takes ages for good quality colour drawings to be produced! (For me anyways)

Ok, first things, first, I'm just going to update the blog with all the work Ive been doing in between, starting with some video research.

The very beginning of the trailer is the only part of significance, inspiration wise, for me. This is very similar to the look of the mechanical fortune teller box that will be in our animation (this will make more sense hopefully when I have uploaded my storyboards!) and that will give the 'bad' characters a choice. Our fortune teller should move just as stiffly and mechanically. However, ours will not have a moving mouth. Speech asking the characters a question that will determine their fate, will come from the fortune teller, but sounding like a voicebox in a toy.

This is just plain creepy. When I saw the jester design, it really inspired me to making my clowns in the jury look more of a cross between a clown and a jester as opposed to just being a clown, as the clown image is used alot in film etc, and the jester less. The design is just as disturbing, more so, as you are less certain what to expect from that sort of character. Also, note the girls hair. I like this plasticine look for hair, a bit similar to the characters in 'Monster House'. Easier to animate and more opportunity to stylise.

This advert helped us alot when we were developing our story and convinced us, that just showing things that were obviously stereotypically scary could work, if we stylised them up and reinvented them as our own.

Ah, the good old Indiana Jones mine cart chase! Never gets old! We have a mini rollercoaster sequence in our ride, that was influenced by this, a fast action sequence to grab the audiences attention before plunging them further into our weird little world!

Finally we have the opening to the old kids TV show, 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?' This shows objects that you would not normally associate with scary, but when shown in a particular way, like in this clip, are. This is what I aim to achieve with the appearance of our ride. The exterior, for example, will not have bodies dangling from it or be covered in blood, but with good lighting, sound and camera angles, will hopefully make the audience feel uncomfortable and spooked.

Story and Design Development

2008-10-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

The storyline has changed many times over the last week or so, with us hopefully ending up with something more coherent. David Bull, who previously worked for Aardman animations came round each of the groups to discuss our storylines and offer us advice on what we should keep or maybe change etc. He liked the vibe of ours, being set in an abandoned ride etc, but gave us valid points to think about, such as why the children were out in the middle of nowhere, alone, and it getting dark etc.

We decided to change the storyline, in that the two eldest were leading the youngest to the abandoned ride to throw stones at it. It would be a place they were not aloud to go, but knew of, and was scary and exciting, making them want to vandalise it, to make themselves out to be brave etc infront of Kitty and to tell their friends later.

Another aspect of the story that was altered, was the 7 deadly sins theme. 7 sins would be too many , so we decided to maybe focus on three, but aspects of the storyline were not making sense. We then thought about making the story about their greatest fears, but as we began brainstorming ideas, we realised that people can be scared of anything, so this would be hard to portray. The easiest option, and the best, in our opinion, would be to create rooms with themes that were stereotypically known as scary such as clowns etc and graveyards, and try to portray them in an unconventional way, that would surprise the audience and liven up traditional fears. For Kittys room, we decided on a mix of conventional happy images such as balloons but as I didn't want the happy rooms to be soppy, we added more fun themes such as pirates and treasure!

I have axed the character Cho and replaced her with Dan C's character from the pitch he gave up :)

I have allocated tasks to my group to complete in order for all the work to be completed to a high and unrushed standard. Dan Ryan will create the characters sheets, Dan Cripps will animate the blockout, and myself and Jake will create the concept art. We will all take part in the drawing of the final storyboards as this allows the work to be spread out evenly between us.