Thursday 21 April 2016

Showreel

Showreel research
Good examples:

Bad examples:

Final Showreel
Things I learnt about showreels in this project:
  • Ideally about a minute long, so it doesn't drag on
  • Use best work first and last, and really good work in the middle
  • If including collab work, make your contributions clear
  • Progress reels are interesting, gives viewers an idea of what goes into making your work
  • If you use text, make sure there's enough time to read it (I blurred out text on some images, because it was unnecessary to read and would be distracting otherwise) 
  • Timing transitions to music makes it more interesting
  • Don't loop anything in the interest of time

Research Project: media roles & practices

For this project, my group wanted to study 2D animation and concept art. My studies began when I noticed and bought a book about the pre-production process behind the animated series 'Avatar: the last airbender'. A very fascinating read.  I tried to contact the authors and show creators Mike Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko to further inquire about the inspiration behind the show, but never got a response.

I focused on Bryan Konietzko for my research since he worked on character design, and learned:

Bryan Konietzko was the co-creator, art director, character designer, writer, and storyboard artist on ‘Avatar: the last airbender’.

He graduated with honors from the Illustration Department of the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998. He worked at Film Roman Studios on shows like Family Guy, Mission Hill, and King of the Hill. In 2000, he joined Nickelodeon to work on Invader Zim as a storyboard artist. He spent time in South Korea training the overseas animation crews and became the art director on the second season. 
When Invader Zim was cancelled, he was recruited by Nickelodeon to create an original series. 

He’d already been planning ideas with his friend Michael DiMartino for a while. In the beginning, they wanted to make a ‘coming-of-age’ story, inspired by their own childhoods, but they discovered that the network just wasn’t looking for those kind of stories at the time. Instead, they wanted something along the lines of action & adventure (without violence), and fantasy, legends & magic. They wanted a franchise to answer the trend created by films like ‘Lord Of The Rings’ and ‘Harry Potter’.

Mike and Bryan went back to square one, and dug through all of their old sketches and ideas to see if they could inspire something new that met the network's criteria.
The process was incredibly convoluted. There was one sketch of a lineup of characters that intrigued them, a robot monkey, a bald man in a futuristic outfit, and polar bear/dog hybrid. Bryan remembers drawing the image inspired by Cowboy Bebop, a trio of sci-fi heroes, that, with quite a bit of development and a lot of redesigning, would eventually become the young fantasy hero Aang and his two pets, Momo and Appa. Sokka was created as the ‘everyman’ type of protagonist, and Katara was created for the purpose of a sibling rivalry, as both Mike and Bryan had sisters.

In terms of story, they were first inspired by the survival story of Ernest Shackleton, who was trapped in the Antarctic in 1915. They came up with the idea that there could be some protagonists stuck in the south pole, fleeing from ‘fire people’ who wanted to melt the place. The kids would be rescued by the other protagonist, the young hero swooping in on his flying pets. That’s where the idea for the four nations came from, it seemed logical that the ‘fire people’ could belong to a fire nation, the south pole kids could belong to a water nation, and the flying kid could belong to an air nation, and there could also be an earth nation somewhere.

The concept of ‘bending the elements’ was motivated out of a desire to do something new and dynamic with the magic aspect of the show. With asian cultures and philosophies being such big inspirations for the setting of the story, it felt right to use martial arts inspired by the same. Bryan actually started practicing kung fu in preparation, and he let one of his instructors in on the project as a martial arts consultant, who really helped evolve the concept further.

Learning about the inspiration and processes in the industry was really interesting. This proves that inspiration can come from anywhere and hands-on research can really help to visualize and flesh out worlds you are trying to create.
















CG Project

Microphone model 360
I based this model upon a microphone I have on my desk, that I often use for voice acting. The hardest part was the texturing, I had to select a strip of faces around the side, apply the texture, and then apply two different textures for the front and back. Because it's spherical, the last two textures were quite difficult to get right. There was a lot of tweaking done in both Photoshop and Maya, and I still couldn't get the back texture to not look distorted.

Render-ball test

A small exercise in how to render from Maya. This was useful, because up until now I've just been moving things to 3DS Max to render.
Pre-rigged character walk cycle


Final character performance reference footage


Final character performance
Animating a pre-rigged character was probably the hardest part of 3D animation, because there are so many elements to keep track of and things you need to remember to keyframe. This wasn't too bad in the simple walk cycle, although there was still a lot to think about given the speed, the weight, and the secondary motions. However, in the final performance, when you also have walks, stops, direction changes, and facial expressions, it's quite a bit more complicated. Live-action reference footage helped a lot. Overall, I think I could have improved the timing of my performance by slowing it down and speeding up certain actions, but I'm quite content with what I've achieved.