Week Nine - 'The Round-Up'

On Monday I took Caspars scenes and finished them up to get them in the blockout and finally got to se the film altogether for the first time and it’s looking very nice. I’m very proud.
The rest of the week has been assesments and sorting presentations, essays and submissions. Which are all going a little too smoothly. But come Friday in the words of Noddy Holder ‘IT’SSSS CHRISTMASSSS’.Enjoi

Block-O-Matic Fantastique

Ok, This is the big one. Just cut the blockout together using after effects. It's at version 5 already and i'm sure there's still some bugs in it but you wanted it so here it is.

enjoi,

OCTO-WEEK

Just finished cutting all the blockout together expect to be up in the next few days. Yep I’m a very happy bunny this week I’m ahead of schedule with over 50 shots in the can as they say, well for the blockout at least. Had some fun modelling the bridge and the army guys, but the best bit had to be making the octopus and getting him in some crazy positions I’m finally sure now that he will work. Along with Sci Guy I may excersise my directors right and animate him in the film, he’s so bendy.After sorting out some setting issues in Maya I got all the playblasts done Sunday and edited the all together in After Effects. It’s nice having room to breathe before deadlines.

Week Seven (insert witty name)

I’m working through the blockout to my schedule aiming towards 6 or 7 shots a day which should have it all finished in time. Caspar: you know you really don’t need that many robots in the blockout. Adam: it will be fine, they’re so low poly. FIVE MINUTES LATER Adam: Erm… Caspar the robots killed the blockout. Caspar: Rolls eyes. OK so I put to many robots in the scene and it slowed down and yes I deleted a couple… of hundred but its working now and that’s all that matters. I also managed to contact a Sound guy this week who seems pretty cool and is going to work on a score for the film. We’re going to try and do a layered composition with each character signified by their own sound hopefully working up to a cool crescendo of it all mixed together in the end. Hopefully.Finished the week around half way through the blockout.

Week Six, Over Half Way

First few days of this week were spent cleaning up files and making final character models for the blockout with new simplified textures and generally getting everything ready to go.Then we went, I started doing the outside shots with Sci Guy, he’s my favourite. Don’t know what I was afraid of blockout is quite fun. Minor setback when I realised the first few shots had the wrong type of camera in so needed to be redone to frame properly but all in all a good start.

It's a bit overcast in Wunderland...

My main task for the past couple of weeks has been to get the blockout up and running which in gereal doesn't make for hugely exciting blogging. But as i've made a lot of head way on the main environment I've ecided to put up a few pics. the layout for the road is financial at the top with some skyscrapers, then it moves towards hotels and motels until you're finally along the tourist front.

enjoi.

What's a pencil...

So it wasn't quite that bad but it did take me a while to get back in the swing of drawing things again. These were done about a week ago, just the best of the bunch in my opinion. Concept for vehicles and the style i'd like. enough blabbering here's the pretty pictures.

Week Five, BLOCKOUT IS GO! Formatives Are Slow.

Really motoring towards the blockout now, as the week began planning out the city and the route the action follows. I’m now most of the way through modelling it all and I’m pretty happy with it.
My Workflow: research buildings, draw up rough reference, work out scale, fit to city, model rough guide, then repeat. This involves lots of scale stuff which was all worked out in the early part of the week and I’m just getting used to it.I also got some of the assets designed as well as working on an asset list, and finalised the rigging method for the characters which I’m calling Adam’s double joint method, nice.

Week Four, Who Stopped The Clocks?

Too many distractions this week, really seems like things aren’t moving forward as I would like. James got back with the prettified storyboards which were cool, check his blog for those.Late in the week I finished the Robot Leader again-again but he should stay done now and I found a few pretty cool modelling tricks that’s cut the modelling time way down.

Am i on Graphics again...

This past week or so my illustrator skills have been called upon to create a couple of logos for some of the other films in the class. I think these guys saw me making the robot texture and liked the look.

Firstly there was kyles logo for his film which is now called Rusty Petal, he'd drawn the basic logo on paper and scanned it in but wanted a clean version from illustrator. I obviously said yes as kyle doesn't ask just anyone for help. After i set to work it became clear that he type wouldn't work as it was drawn the main problem being the mix of UPPER and lower case. Or possibly i just enjoi playing with type a little too much so following his theme which is organic meets mechanic, i found a soft type face that looked similar to the way it was drawn. Next i added some of the nicer curves by deconstructing the lines and building them up. At this point I'd reached kyles look but thought i could take it further to echo the themes of the film so i started breaking things apart again and adding sharp edges too. Then i traced kyles logo using a mixture of the pen and pencil tool. the finished piece is on the right.

Once I'd finished Kyle's Ash approached me as he was having trouble coming up with a logo for the coffee shop/name of his film Cafe de Beignet. i looked at what he was going for and quickly drew a design he liked, he took it to the group and they liked it too. So i set to work again this time felling a little freer to experiment. we ended up simplifying the original design to just half a doughnut with the Cafe name and some crumbs, and i had another satisfied customer.

Now hopefully I'll get back to the blockout on my film.

I'll keep you posted

Animation Test

Here's a little video to give a taster of what the animation of the characters should look like in the end. A big thankyou goes out to Ash for getting the animation done so quickly, its just a shame its taken me so long to get it on here.

enjoi

The Robot evolution

Thought it might be nice to put up a few of the yellow robot development stages as he's almost finished now.
From left to right we have the first of the box models created for my showreel: boxy hands, no legs, texture straight from BrickBoy models.
Middle is the mock rig to test animation with legs and bendy arms, and also has the subdivided hands, Texture is still pretty much as found with some adaptations for the new pieces.
On the right is the new and improved Yellow Robot Leader with a whole new Illustrator texture created by me and modelled again from scratch using my 'who needs to UV map technique', in my opinion he's looking pretty nice with good proportions an hopefully enabling some cool animation.

**There were also two other stages but i couldn't fit them in the pic, i may have to put up my original with bevelled edges just to see how i started out on the wrong track. And Yellow 'mob Boss' Robot may appear at some time too**

Days Flying By

OK i realise i haven't posted anything in a little while, this does not mean that nothing's been going on in fact it's quite the opposite. We're now in week three of the production with thumbnails in the bag as well as an animation test (Video coming soon) and a reworked texture, model and rig.
However most of my time these first few weeks has been taken up with getting the production side of things up to speed. I've been doing schedules, writing contracts, talking through the narrative and generally convincing people that i know what I'm doing.
Also i hate to say it but I've started keeping a detailed Journal for the year so this blog is coming in second, but surely you just want the fun stuff right? not whining about render times and people not meeting deadlines, you just want videos and pictures and Witty comments. If that's what you want this is the place to be.
Hopefully new video and images of work from other projects going up in the next few days, and blockout will be appearing shortly.
Watch this space not myspace!

Week Three, It's a magic week

Ash came back with the animation tests which were so good I put them straight up on here. All give a hand for Ash.
Lots of getting the schedule well and truly in place this week. Things got a little off track as I spent a couple of days working on textures for Caspar to take into Flash for 2D tests. But I now have the finished texture and model for the robot leader so it was all productive anyway.Had some very positive feedback about the story, I guess our tutors really like the use of a giant octopus in modern film.

Week Two In Review. The Poetry’s for free

Everything’s kicked off well this week I’ve assembled my crew of James Lawrance (Handling Concept and 2D animation) and the man of many talents Caspar TT to be my econd in command should anything bad happen to me over the course of the year, I’m I’m officially the Writer/ Director/ Producer/ Art Director/ Cinematographer/ Technical Assistant… Them gonna be some boring credits.
This week I finished up the script and story after learning how to use CelTX to keep things organised. My thumbnails are now all done too ready to progress. I also managed to re-rig the robot character from last year to give Ash for animation tests.Producer role kicked in as I wrote up contracts and put our first schedule together for the whole year, lets just say we’re gonna be busy.

Style is a killer...

Thought it was about time i put up some pics to show the characters, as much as i'd like to remake Sin City this way this was just for the exhibition at the end of last term, but it shows the characters posed quite nicely. I modified the two robot textures to fit the monochrome style of the Sin City film.

This is the first fully realised character from the film. He's called Science Guy or SciGuy, as you can probably see he has more points of articulation, which will hopefully mean the characters are more animatable. He's my favourite character from the Less Than Jake universe.

06/07 Showreel

This is my second year showreel, it has elements from an Urban Environments project, 1 Week Vehicle Modelling, aswell as some higher polygon characters and some of the early stages of development for There's a war in Wunderland. Great music from Guitar Hero 2 aswell!!
Just a test to see how this posting videos works, already had a tussle with Google video hopefully this will be better.
enjoi,

Adam

There's a War in Wunderland Outline Story

Here's a quick run down of the story i pitched to the group:

- Start with the opening scene in a dimly lit room which has an open box on the floor with light shining out of it
- We meet the main character at work in an office, at the moment I generally refer to him as Red Monkey.
- It becomes obvious that robots are also a part of society in this land as we meet them working alongside Red in the same office.
- Red Monkey recieves a mysterious message to meet someone outside and to go alone.

- He does so and is given a mission to do. After seeing what’s being asked of him he appears to be unsure.
- The next thing we see is Red riding up the street in a tank.
- And then we see why as the robots are massing in the streets behind a leader.
- Red fires a missile into the robots and they appear to retreat. This is kind of the shot that will make or break the film as the robots begin to run they’ll unfold and appear to float away in the air.

- But this is only to mass into the form of one Mega-Robot.
- All appears over until the Wunderland army come to back up Red.
- They drive the robot back towards a bay, where he climbs onto a bridge and begins to fight back by throwing cars. Based on San Francisco.
- We then meet the Navy who turn up to finish off the giant robot . . . essentially the Navy is a Giant Octopus in a helmet, which drags Mega-Robot to the murky depths.

New Look

Ok I've manage to put a little more of my own stamp on the blog now, looking a little nicer. hopefully it will be a good blank canvas to show my work on. I'm sure as the year goes on it will get more colourful as things start to come together.

Right now lets learn how to get some video on this thing . . .
Show reel up soon
enjoi

The Week That Was Week One

The first week of term and already so much going on as you can tell. Pitched my film on Tuesday and by Friday we’re in production. It was great after working on this idea for so long already to have people be interested in it. Along with nearly getting my letter read out at the Less Than Jake gig in the summer this has been the best part of the project so far.

The Beginning ...

OK, after waiting all summer i finally get to set up the blog that I've been waiting for. Now that There's a war in Wunderland has been picked its full steam ahead.