Narrative: "Love Bird" Making Of

The Making of...LOVE BIRDS

Narrative: Origami Crane idea

In our rough script we have one of our characters trying to get the attention of his colleague in various ways and in the end makes and origami crane, it drifts over to her and ultimately he finally gets her attention.

I had a quick thought in regards to the whole origami crane sequence for our story. There's a legend about making 1000 origami cranes to make your wish come true (Senbazuru), so instead if it being one crane and getting picked up by a draft, maybe we could have origami cranes trickling down the conveyor belt to the girl? (We obviously won't do a thousand since that's a lot of work to do, but it would get the idea across?)

Here's a rough sketch of what I mean, and this would also make her finally look at the other character after all of his attempts?

Narrative: Initial Character Ideas

Since the three of us agreed that cardboard boxes would be a good idea to incorporate into our designs in some way I did few sketches.
I wasn't sure how literal we wanted to be so made a few cardboard characters:

I also did a quick stylized human character to go along with it, inspired by the Animal Crossing art style:

Scarlett, Megan and I all agreed that we wanted to work more on the stylized human style for our character rather than literally being a cardboard box. We plan to play around using cardboard textures on our characters/environment.

Character: Initial Ideas

In today's briefing we were given three cards; one red and two blue, to base our character design on. 

My three were:

• Weaponry
• Mutation
• Air

Trying out different combinations for my three words; weaponry, mutation and air, my first thought was to decide on the type of environment and genre of game I wanted. I've been leaning towards platform games, these games can be action/puzzle/speed based.

I put together an influence map of a variety of platform games from different generations, some with different game mechanics. 

For my character, I wanted to incorporate the mutation as a "splicing" power. This mechanic is more of a power boost element i.e in Mario with the mushroom/fire flower, but this is taken directly from the enemy (and lasts a certain amount of time). 

Before seeing Justin, I started to do some quick drawings. My main plan for this project is to do a style out of my comfort zone and do something more creature based than human.

These are few rough doodles I did, thinking about the type of shapes I want my character to have.

My influence for my sketches come from a few game and anime characters. Noticeably the head shape and mouth.

After talking to Justin he gave me a few ideas of how to incorporate "air" into my project. We both agreed that if I were to include it into the mechanism of the game it would over complicate things and just doing it for the sake of it, so I'll be focusing on using it for the character and environment.

If I were to use "air" for the character I can relate it to emotion, the examples Justin gave me were:

• Since the air can have something dramatic like lightning, the character can be very short tempered
• Can also be "free and not tied down", like a free spirit. A character that's more like an airhead.

Another thing we discussed was the game format. Originally my idea was to go down the platform game route, but the idea of an open world has opened up new possibilities. A platform game would be a bit too restrictive for narrative. I feel this will be easier to decide on once the environment has been developed.

[ @Phil ]Fantastic Voyage - Fern Life Cycle Animation

Due to time constraints there's a scene or two missing.

 

Making of:

Fern Life Cycle Making Of

Fantastic Voyage: Fern life cycle

Taking on board the feedback, the primary focus for this is too embrace the 3D a bit more. My models were incredibly flat and the lack of camera use emphasised that. So there has been some readjustments to the storyboard where that is concerned.

The main areas I've focused on for this is; the sporangia, spore dispersion, the gametophyte, fertilisation and developing sporophyte.

I quickly scribbled the new storyboard down to keep it on track:

The fern was remodelled:

 As was the gametophyte:

I've still tried to keep to my simplistic designs from the original concepts:

Fantastic Voyage: Archegonium model

Archegonium model:

For this scene I decided to change the order which was originally shown in the storyboard. Here I have the antheridium model morph into the archegonium model.

Fantastic Voyage: Gametophyte to Antheridium sequence

Gametophyte model:

Antheridium model:

Sequences between the spore to gametophyte to antheridium using a series of blend shapes and extracting the mesh to split the pieces up.

Fantastic Voyage: Leaf model pipeline

Final model:

Wireframe:

Untextured model:

Fantastic Voyage: Fern pipeline

Final model:

 Wireframe:

Untextured model:

Fantastic Voyage: Gametophyte model pipeline

Final model:

 First model:

This was first made before I worked out how to do blend shapes, it also didn't turn out how I wanted at all so it was scrapped.

Wire frame:

The roots are separate to the main model for easier animating.

Untextured model:

Fantastic Voyage: Blend Shape tests

Did a few test animations to get the "morph" transition in, by using the blend shape in Maya. I made some mistakes which halted the progress but I finally managed to overcome it.

The first test is a simple transformation of the spore:

Next is the morph from the spore to the gametophyte, which was done quickly just to get the basic shape of it and to get use to the blend shape:

Fantastic Voyage: Meiosis model

For this the opening animation needs to be worked on to look smoother as the tops slightly come off before reattaching.

Next step is to animate the spores into this scene.

CG Artists Toolkit Drawing: Still Life 4

This weeks set up:

Again this week I used dyes and coloured asatate, but painted out the background with black acrylic. Overall I'm happy with the "cosmic" feel of the piece.

Fantastic Voyage: Fern Life Cycle Animatic

Timing needs to be worked on, however due to my Premiere trial running out this won't be able to be worked on until during the week.

CG Artists Toolkit Animation: Oldman Walk

Fantastic Voyage: Fern Storyboard

The transitions between each stage will rely on the "morph". The animatic will show this process a lot clearer.

Fantastic Voyage Visual Concept

My chosen bio-scientific scenario is the life cycle of a fern and my target audience would be secondary school students.

For this project, the type of style I want to present my final animation is an oriental shadow puppet inspired style. 

Work in particular that have inspired me are; part of the opening sequence for the Japanese role-playing game Drakengard 3 and the "Tale of the Three Brothers" sequence from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 . The black on a plain, paper-textured background is very appealing to me, and if done well the whole thing looks incredibly mesmerising as the objects morph.

Drakengard 3 gifs

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1; "the Three Brothers" sequence

Influenced by Alexis Liddell's concept art for the "Tale of the Three Brothers" sequence in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

Animation Showreel

CG Artists Toolkit Animation: Walk Cycle 1