Charlie Whiffing, BA(Hons) Computer animation arts, UCA Rochester

The first project of the course was tough as there was a lot of tasks to do. I had trouble with time keeping as I didn't do as much work in the first week as I could off.Thee is also the problem that I am not that fast at digital painting so they took much longer then they should have. Otherwise I had trouble with perspective as it is a new concept for me that I am not familiar with and therfore only did one point perspective. The rest of the tasks for the project I didn't have any trouble with. Time keeping skills can definitely be improved. I could also attempt to use more forms of perspective such as two or three point.

Invisible Citys Final Prese... by Charlie on Scribd

The Making Of by Charlie on Scribd

These are GIFs made in Photoshop showing the process of making of each final piece. They start by going through the black and white layers to the colored ones.

Here are the final pieces of concept art for the invisible city's project, I chose Fedora as my city of choice. The final pieces com in the form of an exterior establishing shot, a low angle exterior establishing shot and finally an interior establishing shot. The two exterior shots show the main museum that is the main focus of this city and the interior shows the inside of the museum.

These are videos made in after effects using the animations for the lego vehicles we have been making in Maya. They have had some blur and color correction applied to them but otherwise are the same.

This is the Exterior establishing shot I am working on for the invisible city's project. For this shot I chose to use a different angle of the museum that is the center piece of the city. It still requires color but otherwise is done.

This is the Exterior low angle establishing shot I am working on for the invisible city's project. For this shot I chose to use the perspective of a street to emphasize the size of the buildings based of brutalist architecture. It still requires color but otherwise is done.

This is the Interior shot I am working on for the invisible city's project. For this shot I chose to use the inside of the museum as that is probably the most interesting Interior. It still requires colour but otherwise is done.

Le Belle la bete Le Belle la beast or beauty and the beast is possibly the strangest film I have seen so far in the space oddities program. Thanks in no small part to the special effects used at the time and the bizarre ending. The beauty and the beast wasn’t the Disney version of the fairy tail but the 1946 version by Jean Coteau based of the same fairy tail. Being from this time it is in black and white with voiced dialogue but is in a different language which required subtitles. Something that becomes very clear from the start is that this version of the classic fairy tail is very surreal and bizarre when compared for the Disney version. I am mainly going to talk about the set design and special effects as that what stood out to me the most in this film as well as a little about the costume design. If you have seen the Disney version, then the stories are fairly similar as they are both based of the same fairy tail. The film revolves around Belle that comes from a ...

These are the influence maps I made for the invisible city's project using pictures from the internet. Two of them are specifically for the exterior and interior establishing shots. The third one was for brutalist buildings as I had trouble coming up with different kinds of buildings.

Bill Plympton and Richard W... by Charlie on Scribd

This weeks Photoshop lesson mainly consisted of just continuing with our final pieces for the invisible city's project. Other wise we where shown where we can download a large selection of brushes to use for making the final pieces which leads to this image I created using some of the brushes while I was figuring out what the brushes do. This entire image only took me 10 minutes to make because they are all made with specific brushes. For example the trees where made using a brush that created trees, the grass was made with a brush that just made grass etc. Probably the best take away from this is a brush that makes instant snow as there is one for rain as well which I will actually use on my final pieces

Continuing from last weeks drawing session, the subject was male instead which has completely different proportions. Most of the exercises where just to draw the subject with varying amount of time, the main differences was that the poses where more complicated and there was props as well. The last exercise was to draw the face in as much detail as possible. While there is improvement in drawing, the proportions are still off. The legs are too small, the torso is stretched out and the heads are to small. All things to take into account next time.

This weeks task was to take the bouncing ball we made last week and convert it into three different character with a moving part. The blue one has two small ears, the orange one was meant to be a fox but I think it looks more like a gold fish and finally the red one has legs. These are not perfect however, the blue ones ears don't move enough for example. The Orange ones tail sticks up a lot at the end of its animation.

Animation Research by Charlie on Scribd

James Clyne by Charlie on Scribd

Invisible Citys Research by Charlie on Scribd

The actual animation part of the lesson was short as there is only so much you can do with a lego car at this stage. To make the car move, keynotes where used on a time line similarly to using keynotes in after effects. The only real difference is that every movement in Maya has its own curve that determines its movement speed which needs to be checked on at each stage. Most of the lesson was spent on making sure the car animation renders with as good quality as possible beginning with changing the ground plane to a wooden table using a picture ow wood which was provided. The background was changed to a HDR using a sky dome and another picture that was provided. It is the HDR providing the light for this picture. A separate camera was created to render from as it allows me to make adjustments to the car without changing the perspective. The main problem with the original render was that there was a lot of noise in the picture, making parts of the car at a lower quality so a large amo...

The perspective exercises showing point perspective in different pictures. From what I gathered from my research, point perspective is done by finding and establishing vanishing points in a picture which is where several straight horizontal lines converge on a point which is the vanishing point. The points are on a horizon line which is found on the point where the land meets the sky or the horizon. The one point pictures only have one vanishing point which I have shown with red lines which show how large a object should be from that distance. Two point is more or less the same except there are two vanishing points on both the left and right with there own sets of lines as shown by the computer tower. Finally three point is the same as the last one except there is a extra vanishing point that is either above or below the object as shown by the computer tower again. The more points of perspective there are the more space is in the image.

For the last master study I chose to do one of Turners painting which is called Italian landscape with bridge and tower. The idea of these is to try and recreate the colors used in the painting, this was the hardest one to make out of them as recreating the colors for the foliage was difficult. The yellow parts to be specifically such as in the closest tree. Th actual sky and background where probably the closest parts to the original. the background behind the tree was also the fastest part to do as they required little detail but still resemble something being there which shows the further back something is in the picture the less detail needs to be put into it as you wouldn't be able to really see that detail anyway.

The live drawing started with some small exercises such as drawing with continuous lines, using only 10 lines, drawing in the shadows using just rectangles and another of our choice. This lead to the main part where we did two drawings for 15 minutes, ending with the last one where we had to fill in the differences in tone. There is improvement from last week as I can know constantly draw bigger and the proportions are slowly but surely evening out though I think I am a long way off from drawing a perfectly proportioned picture. New problems that I now need to improve on is drawing the head facing the right way as well as drawing the hands and feet properly. Easily my favorite exercise today and the one that produced the best results was the tonal drawing with the graphite stick.

Continuing from the last master study I chose to try something a bit different that could potentially be more oriental. As of such I chose to do one of Hokusai's famous prints the great wave. The idea of these is to try and recreate the colors used as accurately as possible. Lookin at this now I think the colors for the water and boats are pretty close to the original The sky on the other hand looks to saturated when compared to the original that is more pale.

Todays lesson was about applying time and spacing from last lesson along withe some cartoon physics. The GIF shows a ball bouncing across the screen as well as a bowling ball, tennis ball and a pingpong ball being dropped. As the balls reach the height of there bounce the spacing between the frames get smaller until the decent where they get closer together again. This leads up to the timing part of the bounce where they make contact with the floor.

As we are moving on from the initial thumb-nailing stage we where taught more about color and composition in this lesson. This is for the final set of thumbnails and the final pieces themselves. I briefly know about color theory but have nether been taught it so this was useful for me, composition on the other hand has never been shown to me so I found that part quite enlightening. After wards we had to do a color study on a landscape artists where the goal is to recreate the colors of a landscape painting as accurately as possible. Which brings us to the a both image where I was truing to recreate the colors for the painting Nocturne: blue and silver-Chelsea by James Abbott Mcneill Whistler. I picked this one because I like how the reflection of the buildings could be seen in the water. This exercise was more about finding the right colors than accuracy which is why I wasn't too concerned with the proportions. For the most part I think the colors are pretty close to the original...

This is the same Lego van from before except I have made some changes to the design as well as rigid it for animation. Probably the most obvious change to the design is the color, I changed it from green to red which makes it look like a mail van. I moved the windows up two blacks and put 4x1 in front where the class used to be as I felt the glass looked out of place in the original version. As mentioned before this van has been rigid so that when the vehicles is moved forward, the wheels turn as well based on how fast the van is moving. This was done by putting in a circle around the van to act as a controller as well as using code.

While last time we where drawing a large sculpture in the middle of the room, this time we where drawing an actual person. The drawing exercises we where doing where also different as we started by looking at the person for 30 seconds before just looking at the paper while drawing what we remember. This was followed by doing the opposite. The whole point of this is that what are brains think something looks like is usually very different from what it actually looks like, these exercises where meant to bridge the gap so what are brain sees and what we actually see are the same thing.

Links to Film reviews and CG artist toolkits: https://charliewucablog.blogspot.com/search/label/Maya https://charliewucablog.blogspot.com/search/label/photoshop%20tutorial https://charliewucablog.blogspot.com/search/label/Film%20review https://charliewucablog.blogspot.com/search/label/Toolkit%20workshop

King Kong (1933) Breaking the trend of watching silent black and white movies for the space oddities project we instead watched a non silent film that is still in black and white. The original king Kong is still considered a classic and was arguably the first blockbuster film ever made at no where near the budget of current block busters. King Kong was made in 1933, directed by Merian C. cooper as well as being produced by Ernest B. Shoedsack using what was considered the best special effects they had at the time. This is an adventure film that took the audience to a new world during a time when they probably needed it. In this review I will start with a short synopsis followed by how it relates to some of the films key themes being adventure and the unknown as well as the special effects used to make this movie happen. King Kong revolves around a director from America that want to travel to an un explored island to film a movie about the rumored monster that lives on...