Heartburn

 Welcome back! Well I had a fantastic summer internship at Chuck Gammage Animation Studios (http://www.cganim.com/) where I learned lots more about modelling, texturing, lighting and rendering in Maya. I'd go into more detail, but I think for now, and the rest of the school year, this blog will be focusing on developing this little film here.

"Heartburn" started up in the summer 2 years ago. I knew I didn't want to be fumbling around too much with story when I got around to 4rth year, so I laid out the premise, environment, characters and action  during that summer, along with some initial design work.
I also knew, that this film would be done entirely 3D animation, using Maya:

The city Acheron, with its massive armoured wall to protect it from eruptions.

Designs for the ship, Charon, anti-lava suits, and structures inside the city Acheron.

Old character lineup. At top, Mantel, a worker, Caldera, a soldier and another worker. Below the lineup are various ideas for Mantel, and Avalon (the stripey girl)

At the start, the story was about an engineer named Mantel who wanted to be free of the terrible conditions in the city, Acheron. Mantel builds a ship, the Charon, to cross the lava ocean to freedom. The oppressive General Caldera is angered by Mantel using resources and manpower on what Caldera thinks is a fruitless, suicidal effort, so Caldera banishes Mantel and forces him to leave before the Charon is ready. The ship breaks down out on the lava ocean, it floods with lava and everyone onboard but Mantel is killed. Mantel, clinging to the last bit of unmelted ship, then rides the ship down as it falls off an immense lava-fall at the edge of the lava ocean. Mantel wakes up on a piece of scrap metal floating in a water ocean, where the girl, Avalon, swims up and saves him.

From the start I knew the idea I had was much too 'epic' to present in a short film, so I thought of a few ways to show a snippet of the larger universe I envisioned. The design style also evolved, initially I imagined a fairly straightforward sci-fi style for costumes, props and buildings. Around August this year I realized I wanted a more identifiable style, so I had a simple thought, "everything is trains". I love trains. So I decided the costumes, props, sets and vehicles would all be designed around the world of late 1800's steam locomotives:

 Avalon's swimsuit wasn't very 1800's like, so I started considering more era-appropriate dress.

Caldera's 'steamsuit' was steampunky enough, but too limiting for movement, and still too sci-fi compared to Mantel and Avalon.

His new suit took reference from the American civil war. He's got a cow-catcher for a collar, his cane has a little boiler on the end of it. Not seen here is his monocle.

The Charon's inital design is on the top right. Current design is the big one. The top left design is again, steampunky, but you can't see a train anywhere in it.

The airship Ecclesia, Avalon's vessel that she uses to rescue Mantel from the falling Charon. At the very beginning it was a sailing ship just seen in the background on the water ocean. As I fiddled with the plot, Avalon took on a much more active role. The current story has a great big beauty shot with the Ecclesia diving down past camera. Current design is on the right, though I'm adding a few more side propellers.

These last 2 months were dedicated to getting our stories as close to where we want them as possible. Changes can still be made until December, but not very big ones. Heartburn now consists of the action of Caldera trying to get rid of the rebel Mantel, who is being supported from the outside by Avalon. Mantel is nearly killed by Caldera, and in Mantel's failed escape he is rescued by Avalon with her massive airship. Avalon and Mantel return together to overthrow Caldera.

The film is 1 minute 44 seconds long, that's including the title and credits as they are. I don't expect it to get much shorter. The voices here are all done by me, with the assistance of some audio editing, I'm contacting a voice actor to see if I can get some professional voices for the final film. Here's the leica!

Everyone says this is an ambitious project, and I completely agree. My goal is to challenge myself this year. I plan to finish this film as I envision it. However, I have a backup plan, that I can animate at least 1 minute of the entire story and call it a demo.
This week (which is reading week) I am diving head first into modelling the characters; Mantel, Caldera and Avalon. Ahead of me is modelling the sets, props and the two ships. Then there's texturing, and then rigging. All of this is to be done before Christmas break.
Somewhere in modelling, rigging and texturing I also have to figure out exactly how I will generate the lava. I intend to use realflow, where needed, and I need to learn how to handle that.

End of Year 2 (a month later!)

So I took a little break from this after the end-of-year madness. Class ended over a month ago and I was hunting for a summer job (last time I'll have to do that though! Yay co-op next summer!). Decided to finally put a few things up from the last projects, as well as a few extra art-type works I got my hands into after school ended.

Starting off with the final painting assignment:

This used line-work from a pan-background layout assignment we did, which I never put up, which included a character walking across it from our walk-run animation, which I also never put up here...

Moving on! Final storyboard assignment used our 4 characters from that big character design project, which I DID put up, and put them into a TV-style storyboard sequence. We had to plan out a 3 sequence story and then choose 1 of those sequences to board. Then we had to observe carefully the ins and outs of TV storyboarding. I'll find out exactly how I did on this project when I pick it up in September, but I did well in the class so I'm guessing I did well with this.

Don't think you've seen the last of the trains! Having this sequence occur on a moving train, and viewed through various camera angles makes the sequence quite special layout-wise. And what do you know, I used part of it for my final layout assignment, which I'll post up if I ever get around to fixing 1 or 2 things with it.

Finally, away from assignments, here's some paintings I've done for my own enjoyment. The first one here I started back in August of 09, most of the work was done then but I finally got around to finishing the thing after class ended. Also, if it looks similar to the image at the top of this blog, that's because the top image is a previous version, one with a more cartoony rendering style. For this painting I wanted a lot more realism:

This next painting had similar motives, improving my realistic-rendering skills. I wanted to try my hands on something complex and metallic, so I choose Samus Aran from Nintendo's Metroid Prime series. I was also inspired by watching some people doing a playthrough of Metroid Prime, I would start replaying the game myself, but I've got loads of art stuff I'm trying to do right now, plus work, plus I probably enjoy painting more than playing anyways. Or rather, painting is a sort of playing for me, sometimes, which I'm sure is a very good thing.

The blue stuff is a crazy radioactive substance called Phazon. Samus is firing her Plasma beam, which is the strongest in the game, and since the sun is made of plasma I figured I'd make the visible innards of the gun resemble the solar surface, whereas in the actual game it looks more like lava. Also at first I didn't want the gun to be firing, but rather show the inside of the barrel glowing. But then I felt the void around the gun needed something more compositionally-speaking, so I went ahead and added a big fancy beam blast.

Well this post is more than big enough, as I said I have lots more art stuff in the works, so if all goes well there should be more pictures for you guys and gals to glance at soon!

Semester 1, Year 2 in teh bag

Well 1st semester of year 2 ends tomorrow! All the projects are in, only reason I'll be at class is to get my exam back and head off to see Princess and the Frog with my fellow animators. Hoping the story works great, I don't doubt the animation will be good. If 2D is to survive in the feature film market they need to remember to do what 2D can do that 3D and live action can't. There's certain liberties that can be taken by 2D and still hold the all important suspension of disbelief. That's what will keep 2D around, like how painting managed to stick around after cameras showed up.

Anyways, finally got enough time to grab and upload some of my animations from this semester. I'm not showing the walk and run, cause I hope to fix it up a bit (though that won't happen over the holidays so it will probably have to wait till summer!). What I do have is the finished Weight Lift and Toss, as well as the final animation for this semester, the Expression change, which was produced mostly this week, hence lack of work-in-progress shown here.

Oh, and I've also put up the final version of my "I Can't Sleep" (aka: Magician vs Clownz) leica reel. Music is changed because we weren't allowed any video game music at all. The 'Tetris' theme does not count, since it is a Russian folk song that is well in public domain and Nintendo only holds copyrights over its use in games, not movies. Enjoy!

Weight Lift and Toss:

Expression Change:

Storyboard Leica:

Yep, more with the clown

What this project has made me realize is just how much you will be seeing your characters/story when you plan on making an animation of them. Might seem obvious, but actually doing it gives a proper understanding of the experience. Actually I can't even say that, this is a leica reel, it's not a complete animation either! But yeah from character design, to making the rough storyboards, then the good boards, and now the leica, I've seen this clown and his two magician buddies a lot over this past month.

Anyways, sound and music are all compiled, only reason this is not the final leica is because I still have to make the fixes to the images that were suggested. Luckily none of the boards actually needed to be removed, so I was able to work with the old boards for figuring out timing and music.

Sound effects come from all over the internet as well as the deep wells within my computer. I know you'll all recognize the first song, the 'climax' music is from Super Paper Mario, specifically from a similar giant clown battle, which is why it works so well thematically. Enjoy!

And at some point I really ought to put up things from other projects!

Why so Serious?

Well, it's a rather serious clown now isn't it?

Got the line work for my storyboard done, which extends across a span of, 87 panels

There's a section near the beginning, the part where they make the flower vase dissappear and then the kid bring it back which might be cut for the sake of time constraints, but I hope to keep it in if I can since I feel it helps develop the relations better, and also shows that the kid asking for the wand and attempting the trick himself isn't just random. But boy does he screw it up!

My suggestion for viewing, right click and open each big image in a new window, maximize each window, then close them as you go along. Hope you likes!

There's gonna be a fade out to black at the very end.

So I need add shading/tone to ALL of these (well, if I don't cut panels 2-20) and make a colour version of one panel as well. Luckily making the colour version also takes care of about 15% of the next painting assignment (and layout is directly linked with this as well) so while there's lots to be done, at least I'm working on multiple projects with the same drawings.

BEWARE CLOWNS

Consider yourself warned!

So onto the next storyboard project, really there's only 2 this semester it's just divided into beat-board and storyboard segments which forces us to develop our stories at a certain pace, which for the most part is good.

For this one the whole class had to base their story on the conflict "Can't sleep", but other than that the sky's the limit. First class we threw around character and setting ideas that we didn't have to use but was helpful to get us thinking.

So for my story I actually went with one of the characters mentioned, a magician. We needed two characters minimum so I went with a master magician and a kid student magician. First go at making the beat boards I was planning on the master magician being a stuck up sort of teacher, who then has his trick demonstration go horribly wrong (more on that later), but I found it would be simpler to have the master be the student's father, and the student is the one that messes up, then the father saves the day. So here's the first idea:

Lots of fun drawing the maniacal demon rabbit! Don't worry, MORE of that to come! Anyways, first beat he's shoving the rabbit into the hat for the ol' rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick (notice the skull-n-crossbones on the hat, clearly the wrong hat to use!), second beat the beast emerges, last beat kid is back safe at home but severely traumatized. If I had expanded this version the rabbit would go around destroying a town, and either be put back in the hat by the magician or escape into the wilderness, in which case the last beat would not be so safe-n-sound with the fear of the rabbit's return. Whether the rabbit is still loose or not, this kid won't be sleeping for a while. However, as mentioned I found that the relation between the magician and the student was more complicated than necessary. Also, as much as I love the demon-rabbit-spawn-thingy I recieved a much better idea for something else coming out of the hat that (I hope) also uncomplicates things. So here's the second version, and the purpose for the warning in this post's title:

DON'T TRY TO PULL STUFF OUT OF JESTER CAPS! (caps, get it? sorry)

So a few things, last beat is in fact the same piece of paper used for the 1st version, surprisingly little amount of tweaking was needed there! So I've decided the clown will be caught, but of course not before causing a good amount of mayhem. And again, this kid ain't sleeping. I was actually a little worried when I presented the original idea that I couldn't make the 'can't sleep' conflict be the ending like I have, but the teacher didn't seem to mind, I'm assuming because the story at least works. If I had to, simple re-arranging of last beat to first beat and the whole thing reads as a dream sequence, in which case the ending would be with the kid asleep after the 'dream clown' is caught. But I kinda prefer having this as an actual event. Advantages over the 1st version are that, again the motives for the father magician are easier to understand, the jester hat is easier to recognize and easier to undertsand why it would A) do something bad and B) spawn a hell-clown. Also, as I'm sure some of you are experiencing now, clowns can be a lot scarier.

Other ideas include having the father stop the kid from trying the trick and then flash back to when the father made the mistake, but I found it was too tricky to show a flashback is occuring, it would lean towards using dialogue which is a big no-no for this assignment.

And that's enough text for today, working on painting, should be putting up a few things that got handed in soon.

Yes, more Easter Island Heads 2

SO scanning took a bit but I got my storyboard project all digitized and ready to hand in and put up here as well! There's 8 pages, 45 panels:

I had a lot of fun with the story for this one, at one point I honestly considered using it for a film later but we'll see what goes down over the next few years, likely will get a better idea. Anyways, I used a thick graphite stick, I think of 6B hardness to get the thick lines and put down tones really quick. I think if I had more time I might have actually gone overboard with the shading, it's easy to make unimportant things upstage what is important when you start diving into small details. Well glad this is done, happy with how it turned out, and now I think I need to ban myself from using Easter Island references of any kind for about a year, otherwise I'll probably start drawing Moai even when I'm trying to draw something completely different...

Yes, more Easter Island Heads

Probably at the addiction level now, this is the 3rd assignment I can think of that I used easter island statues for, but whatever. Storyboard! This is the 1st assignment, we needed to make storyboard beats for one of 2 poems we were given. Beats differ from boards in that, well first of all there should be a lot less beats than boards. Beats basically describe all the action of an entire scene with one image (picture worth a thousand words pretty much taken literally) as opposed to boards which go into much more detail as to how the action happens and how the viewer sees it.

However, as with everything in art, composition/viewpoint is still very important in beats to get the mood and/or message across even if, when moving from beats to boards, the composition changes completely.

So my interpretation of the poem goes like this: these two body-less heads feel like a bunch of nobodies, but when the see what they have in common they feel happy being what they are (especially since they can do a cool totem pole trick!). But, if the statues with bodies ('somebodies') catch them fooling around things would be bad. Still, whenever they can they enjoy their time together, and mock the somebodies who's proud demeanor seems dull to these fun loving nobodies.

And now to reduce what I just used 72 words to describe into 4 images:

Now that that's out of the way, it's time to work on some wave animations!

The Ant and the Dove

This is the final project for storyboarding class (or Mauryboarding as the 1st years call it), we needed to make a storyboard (surprise!) based off the Aesop fable of the Ant and the Dove, this is what I put together:

Instead of a gun the hunter is supposed to be threatening the bird with 'lime twigs' in the original fable, but hardly anyone knows what those are and even if you do, they're a REALLY boring plot device so the gun works so much better. Yes, the Dove makes an origami/papercraft sail boat to save the Ant.

Just 3 more projects and 3 tests left!