evaluation of rig

This module was a tougher one for me because I was working in 3D, which I don’t feel as strong in; I chose to use it though to further my skills in the field. As far as research and development went I was happy with what I found and had a clear picture in my mind of where I wanted to go with this animation, sadly that has not yet been translated into 3D. Although the final model I made was the shape I had desired it was not yet fully finished and detailed. As well the 3D part of this module really slowed me down when it came to creating the model so I was tight for time when it came to the animation side of things. I was happy with the animation I created in the end and I think it’s a very good starting point for eventually animating my character and having a 3D animation. But what I’ve created here is just a line test and a basis to work from so I’ve achieved my goal. 

University research

University research and analysis

As I was coming to the end of my foundation degree I needed to look ahead to the future and this involved researching universities and courses that would suit my abilities and aspirations.

Bournemouth University

 I started by looking at Bournemouth university because I had heard good things from both my tutors and it was where I originally had looked at inline and in person back when I was in sixth form deciding where I wanted to go from there.  They offered a variety of courses within the animation/art based area but it was the computer-based courses that I was more interested in. Another decision I needed to make before going to deep into my university research was weather to go on and do a full 3 years honors degree or weather to do just a top up year. The money was a factor when making this decision because to do another 3 years would be another 3 years of student loans and another 3 years I wouldn’t be in work and going out into the working world is something I’m craving.  Because of this I decided to look mainly at the top up courses but also keeping an open mind about a potential 3-year course

Bournemouth offered a one-year top up course with the following details.

3D Computer Generated Imagery: Modelling and Animation BSc (Hons) - (Top-up)

Course overview

For 2013 entry: This course is open for late and UCAS Extra applications (UK/EU and non-EU).

This course is delivered at Bournemouth and Poole College, a BU Partner College.

The course is designed principally to meet the needs of today's industry and for students who wish to qualify as modern day technical illustrators. The course will produce graduates who are innovative designers in 3D CGI- based design, able to research, develop and utilise the modern technology needed and used by industry. At the end of the course, graduates will have developed the capacity to:

•  Innovate

•  Effectively work within a team, taking initiative where necessary

•  Make informed decisions using initiative

•  Respond to and create solutions to complex challenges

•  Communicate confidently and effectively

•  Demonstrate full and innovative use and understanding of new 3D Computer Modelling and Animation technologies and techniques

•  Take measured risks, and recognise and respond to opportunities as they present themselves

•  Conduct industry relevant in-depth research on new technologies, with a view to adapting to modern innovations

Critically analyse and evaluate.

This course was attractive and appealed to me as a description because I felt it met my abilities and personality for example my ability of working in a team and the focus on 3D is something I would enjoy because its been what I’ve been doing most of lately.

The entry requirements of this course were an average of 60% at a foundation level which is something I’m close to but not sure of weather I’m going to achieve it just yet and 4 GCSE’s at A-C which I have.  So I’m fairly confident this is a course I could get onto if I wanted to and I liked the sound of it so I added it to my preliminary short list.

I did look at the other 3 year courses that they had to offer but the entry requirements were higher than I believe I’m going to achieve.

Brighton University

I looked at Brighton University next again because I had heard good things and because something on the south coast was appealing to me location wise. Brighton University didn’t offer an animation course but they did offer other art and design based courses such as illustration and graphic design. Illustration is something I’ve enjoyed doing so I decided to have a closer look, after a closer look I found the entry requirements for this course again were very high and the course itself seemed very theory based and this is something I’m not so keen on doing. In the way of top up courses they did no have anything that was in the areas I wanted to go in so I carried on my search.

Newcastle College

It’s still an option to stay where I am. I could do my top up at Newcastle College where I am currently studying; the obvious positives are that I’m familiar with the city, places to live and the college itself. Knowing people at the college I was able to ask some questions and find out about the third year and it sounds very different form what I’m used doing here. The top up year would be mostly written and theory based which is not something that appeals to me and staying at the same institution would feel like I’m on the same course but doing work I no longer enjoy. The appeal really though is the work would just be for one year and I would get my degree and that’s the whole point of the third year so I kept Newcastle college as an undecided possibility.

Northumbria University

I Looked at Northumbria university because its close to where I am at the moment so the benefit of knowing the city is good but after a closer look at what they have to offer its only 3 year courses that center around animation but a closer look at the course showed me the first 2 years would be very similar to the first 2 years of this course and repeating myself is not something I want to do.

After looking at universities that weren’t very close to home I decided to look at places that were in driving distance so I could stay at home whilst studying.

Hertfordshire University

The university closest to me is Hertfordshire so I decided to look at what they had to offer. No animation of 3D courses were available and this is they key area I want to look into and no top ups were available either so I decided that looking at other courses that didn’t meet my needs would be a waste of time just for the luxury of location.

University of the Arts London

The university of the arts London offered what was the most appealing course so far, it was a top up for a and fda that required a merit level. A merit is something I think I’m going to achieve and after reading more about the course I found it would quite suit my broad style. The institution is obviously in London, which is close to home, so this again made it very desirable.  The year would be based around a dissertation or equivalent though and this amount of writing is something that at the moment I’m not confident in doing and it doesn’t appeal to me as I think it would slow down my workflow. This course though after all my looking was, if I decided to do a third year, going to be my first choice.

After my university research and talking to tutors and other people for guidance and talking about what I wanted to do with my future I found myself wanting the experience of work. When looing at all the courses I was looking for the ones that could give industry experience, guidance or a module that mimicked the industry and I just thought to myself that I may as well go out in to the industry and see what its really like. University is not something I’m writing off by any means, I’m still going to keep the option open for next year or any time in the future because a degree is desirable for employers and also myself. 

Evaluation of ident

After the worlds created by Leo and myself were put together and the characters and assets created by Ingrid, Terry, Leon and Dan had been placed within them we had to render out 3 idents from the world we had created. To do this we decided to render out 3 10-second camera moves with the intention of chopping them up and editing them together to create our 3 idents. I think we executed this really well and the idea was a good one because it allowed us to get them rendered out quickly and worry about the final look of them afterwards. It also meant that we had 3 idents that were really in keeping with each other because essentially they were all a mix of each other.

In terms of these idents being the final product of our whole project I was surprised at how far we had come and how differnet the final render was to how I had imagined it in my head 5 weeks ago but I was pleasantly surprised because I think developing our work and our skills as we went along we were really able to get the best results. When initially combining lots of peoples styles and ability’s I was skeptical at weather the outcome would look too thrown together but it really blended together well especially with people trying to suit each others style and sticking to a colour scheme.

The skills I learnt in this project have been incredibly helpful with the production of the final render and also with my general capabilities within programs. I feel as if I learnt more technical skills in this project than any other before and I’ve been inspired to create work for my own pleasure out of the skills I’ve learnt. I think my past projects using cinema 4D have really helped me in this one as I can now problem solve within the program and I surprised myself with some of my determination and stubbornness to give in when I became stuck in the program where before I have simply given up because I couldn’t get my head around things. I also found myself being one of the members of the group that was being asked how to do things or left to do things in the program and this really gave me some confidence that I had progressed from the beginning of the year and even the beginning of this project.

Overall a great project in terms of experimenting, learning new skills and becoming confident in software. 

Im encountering a real problem with render times for my first time. My mountain is so complicated then when i try to use it in a video or combine it with other peoples work from the group it takes what id estimate to be days to render, which we dont have. So I'm going to have to simplify it, wether it be by taking render effects of or by making the materials simpler I'm yet to decide but this is a task i think will help me realise what can be done for certain clients in the future and that sometimes simple is better.

After watching a tutorial about sound effectors on grey scale gorilla i decided to try my own. After learning how to use the effector i'm confident i could use it again in different ways.

After a chat from our tutor about our future and how important a cv and an identity is i've started looking at creating a simple logo for myself as well as writing a basic outline for a cv. The design is meant to represent JL (jon lewis), i wanted something simplistic that when shrunk down will be readable and memorable. I created it quite quickly using cinema 4d to get the shapes exact and i coloured it on there too and just using photoshop gave it that finish that i think is reminiscent of old playstation games.

Trying things out

I tried out other colours and different or no use of effects such as global illumination, depth of field and ambient inclusion to come up with these.

Building a mountain

basic shape 

For our group project i was given the task of making a fire mountain and it developed so quickly starting with a basic pixel art inspired shape....

how it looks now 

i then added so many different effects and a wide range of materials using set selection to create what i think is a very abstract impression of a fire mountain/volcano

learning some new lighting techniques today as well as cloners have given me some new ideas to go into our group project

we've also been getting on with our group compositing project this last week or so and i'm really happy with how its going and i'm happy with my individual work that i've done so far and have many ideas with how i can go further with it, due to a broken hard drive i don't have pictures of what i'm doing just yet but ill be uploading them as soon as i sort it out.

my finished ident attempt which i really like although it could have some work done to the timing and camera angles.

today we started looking at how to create idents like the currant channel 4 ones that use a simple masking technique, we learnt how to do this in cinema 4d and now i feel conifdent i could do it again, its also a style i like becasue it looks professional and can be changed to make lots of different ideas work. ive also included a few screenshots of my making of the ident.

looking at indents

For the new project were going to be creating idents so I've been looking at idents to try and find styles and techniques i like. The first one i found was an MTV live ident that was composited so its relevant to the module and it was a really glossy finish which i really like.



The second one i found that i liked was a DMAX ident, i liked the simplicity and bloc colours of it, nothing too complicated to look at but had an obvious style that was cartoony.

Another ident i really liked and I've seen on TV recently is the more4 ident with what looks like paper books flicking through in the wind, i like the idea and the originality more than anything in this ident because without doing anything too daring its just interesting to watch and keeps your attention.

compositing

this morning i learnt to do simple compositing which i didn't find so simple to start with but once i got my head round it i felt a little more confident that i could use it on other pictures. i also learnt how to use masks in a composite as shown in the picture. so far I'm not overly impressed with compositing, i feel its a lot of effort to do something i don't like the final result of but ill stick at it and try to improve and my opinion might change. 

Evaluating the boards

After much development of my character I’m very happy with how he turned out in terms of personality and simplicity. My character actually progressed through the module in terms of back-story and posture as well as colour schemes and features so I’m very happy with my development work because I feel it shows a real commitment to this character and a desire to make it work. In terms of my computer-based work I do feel that I could have done more in relation to making the character look more 3 dimensional. This could have been achieved by a more complicated colouring up style and more time span on Photoshop making the board really stand out. Despite this fact I am overall happy with my boards because I feel I’ve used the research to aid me in the creation of my boards and this is evident when I’ve used side profile expression that I liked when I found them in my research task. I was never unsure of my ability’s in this module as I felt my skills on the programs I was using were good and I was happy with any computer based work I was producing. Overall I’m really happy with the time I’ve spent getting these character boards to where they are now and I think as a module I’ve progressed in terms of my art and ideas for a final animation. 

Final Boards

really happy with these, i think they show how my character developed through the weeks and how his personality influences his appearance. 1 problem was they didnt print quite as nice as they look on screen but all in all i'm pleased. 

Ready for the board

Heres Winston all ready for the character boards, if i still get the time i do want to give the character some depth by shading but all in all im happy with my designs.

Undecided

Even though my colour scheme was settled on i still had to colour up one of my action poses to see what it looked like in other colours but i wasn't keen on the green with the blue slobber.