it's a marshall blog: April 2011

Tuesday 19 April 2011

Kirin Short Film Competition

http://www.kirinfirstcut.co.uk/competition-info.html

Thought this might be worth looking at if there's anyone out there that's got something to enter by the 30th June 2011 then get in there!
Oh yeah, what ever you enter has to be based on the theme "First Press".

1st Prize £3000! I'd be quite happy with 4th prize, a years supply of Kirin beer.

This Way Up...

Having discovered this animation by Smith & Foulkes I can see an example of how my own 3D character might well end up looking! I have been in two minds about whether the whole thing should be in black and white or simply dis-coloured/de-saturated perhaps in the same way as this animation. The texturing of the faces would work well with my own character.

Monday 11 April 2011

AD108 Plan for the week...

First week back after the Pictoplasma conference in Berlin for which I will update my impressions and the way it will influence me will be tackled shortly..

Back to reality and full of inspiration I've just sat down to evaluate what I'll need to work on for my character and story to be complete. Things that need to be tackled are:

• Facial expressions - build the inside of the mouth and set up all the morph tags, these will be important as the character will be talking to a camera.

• Hand movements - set up the morph tags, these are not so important for the story but some movement is necessary

• Eye movements - set up the eye controllers and eyelids

• Hair - Although I have built 'solid' hair, there is still an opportunity to mess around with the hair effects available in C4D.

• Cloak - I've gathered reference to Ming the Merciless I just need to build his evil garment

• Scenery - There are two important scenes:

1. Inside the shed, this involves creating a planet earth globe, laser cannon, stars and a couple of buttons.

2. Shed exterior, this would be a simple side on cut out drawn environment silhouetted at night

Then there are two supporting scenes of the characters broadcast on large screens around the world, such as Piccadilly Circus and Time Square. These would be manipulated using cut out photography in a distorted manner that will look like a different style again.

This week then....

MON

I would like to have the hand movements set up and maybe the eyes

TUES

Build the mouth interior and set up expressions and mouth movements

WED

The facial expressions may take a couple of days, I want to be working on the alternative hair by now.

THUR

Complete the hair

FRI

Start working on the cloak

SAT/SUN

Having the cloak completed by this weekend will mean my character will be ready to start animating. I also want to re-write/update my script and storyboard so I am clear of what I am going to be doing and what elements are needed for the scenery. Pictoplasma has actually inspired me to create a fictitious foreign language for my character which will then need subtitles.

Friday 1 April 2011

Hyungkoo Lee - Disney Skeleton Sculptures

While we are in the middle of rigging our characters for the current module and essentially adding the bones to them I thought it was a good time to post reference to the South Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee. I stumbled across this fantastic set of sculptures completely by chance a few weeks ago. I think it's great that the artist has seriously considered how a series of fictitious cartoon character's bone structure would look like in order for the characters to move around, (forgetting for a minute that the character's movements and antics generally involve a serious lack of bones). Bugs Bunny is great, big teeth and no ears, and the poses are set to mimic the actions of the characters rather than simply being motionless.