all work and no blog make adam a dull boy.

Things have been quite crazy this month and i haven't updated as much as i think i should have so here's June and July in retrospect.
The film got done after a lot of hard work and sleepless nights for hand-in on the Friday the 13th of July, i was so wrapped up in it all i completely missed tickets to see Less Than Jake that very day.
All the constituent parts of the film were there however it had some editing floors, rather than spend the weeks between hand-in and the degree show re-animating and re-rendering i chose to concentrate on editing the film a bit nicer getting a better intro and generally tidying up what we had if something needed an extra occlusion pass it got it but was pretty happy with what we had so it went to the degree show on the 10th and 11th of July.
*i just had to go back and change everything to say July as i thought it was still June it's been a mighty busy period*
As well as adding the finishing touches to the film i also had the task of putting together this years degree show website, i ended up using templates made by a friend to make all the individual pages and even uploaded the site and made it live, something I'd never done before but was actually quite easy. The site is available here www.raftas2008.co.uk and There's a War in Wunderland and the rest of this years BA films can be watched over there.
The grad shows at the RSA went of well and graduation was a fun day for all the family and now my attentions turn to trying to find a job, please if there's anyone reading that likes what they see don't be afraid to get in touch.
here's a direct link to the film:
http://www.raftas2008.co.uk/films/wunderland/film_01.php
enjoi. and watch this space!

ROA...DOA?

Hi, I haven't had much time to blog lately due to the fact that myself and the whole team have been working tirelessly to get the first cut of the film ready for the Rave On Air extravaganza at college. I should be able to say that i saw the film for the first time today but apparently it seems as if there was some jealousy of the coverage Wunderland was getting and when the film was supposed to show all we got was a black screen. For anyone that was dissapointed The film will now get it's premiere at the RSA on the 10th of July and will be show until 4pm the next day as part of the BA animation Degree Show.

Since my last post I've been modelling, texturing, mapping, rendering and aftereffects-ing like a madman to make pretty pictures like the one above. we're nearly there now just a few more weeks and we should be ready to rock and roll.
Oh, and in the middle there i got a year older too, where does the time go...

Not long now...

Environmental Action!

Ok, finally I’m back blogging again it’s been a while I know but things have made the jump to hyperspeed lately and I’ve had to concentrate on getting things done for the film and it’s been easier to write the journal than make it onto here. Anyway It would have been pretty boring to update every week any way basically I’ve been modelling building, mapping buildings and texturing… you guessed it buildings. So rather than seeing 57 variations of sash window you get the pictures of the whole finished thing, I finished the buildings now although the backplates and the road still need to be done but I’m quite proud of them even tho you can’t see the detail very well I hope they’ll be shown better in the film. Anyway I hope you like the pictures you may even be in danger of getting some of the obscure references.

Aswell as all the texturing, and there has been a lot, I’ve been directing the first scenes of animation and trying to drive the project towards our deadline for Rave On Air, Next Friday AHHH! We’ve decided to cut the submission to ROA by a fair amount in an attempt make sure we can give them a good piece of work. We’ve also had the opportunity to enter a competition to use the characters from the film in Idents for Nickelodeon which would be pretty cool Robots and explosions were definitely something I thought was cool when I was watching Nickelodeon back in the old days. This very day today I’ve also finished two expesssion sheets for Assassin and Science guy which have whizzed off to Caspar to set up the facial manipulators.

What’s Next: finishing off the texturing of the environment, Animating the science guy scenes, scene set up and direction for everyone else’s scenes as well as lighting and rendering tests to get things looking great.

Back into the chaos.

We went live and came back in one piece...

It's been a while since the last post so there's quite a lot to catch up on. In week nine dissertations were all handed in and i continued directing the animation cycles we were receiving. I've also accepted the job of heading the design team for the exhibition after the end of term, I've drawn up a few layouts so far for the brochure and just need to send them out. In the last week i drew up a new schedule for the rest of the production and things are getting increasingly tight especially with the deadline for ROA getting closer and closer.


We also started fundraising for the degree show having the first Rock at Rave guitar Hero tournaments which were won by Gemma Mariotti and fellow organiser Rob Evans, although i was quite happy to get into both finals. My producer role on the film was well in gear as i decided to press forward and finally get to work on the live action intro for the film. I had to organise booking the room and the equipment, but tracking down lights proved to be the most difficult part as apparently health and safety says animators aren't qualified to switch them on, hence why I've been sitting in the dark for 3 weeks making it difficult to post any new work.

My laptop was sent away for a week while we got on with the shoot. Caspar and I took it on ourselves to get things done having attended a tutorial earlier in the term Caspar handled the camera whilst i took control of set design and lighting although we did chop and change. The whole process was quite fun making the set and dealing with real lights we had 3 days to get it all done and it was amazing how it all came together without the need for modelling and texturing, it's definitely something I'd like to experiment with in the future even though we didn't get to animate much more than the camera. Here's some pics from the shoot.

building the floor plane for the set, made with Wickes cement and volvic, only the best.
Hey that hairy freak is touching my toys!

The set for the intro altogether and below lit with a spot, ambient bounce, and 3rd bouncing to light inside of box.

After that I've been concentrating on finishing up all the models, UV mapping them and getting the textures done for the office scenes in the film, it should be complete in the next few days and I'll put up some screen grabs of the finished thing. I've also been finishing up Red's facial expressions in Illustrator and Caspar's making a Set driven Key to animate them when the time comes, as well as thinking about the effects shots in the film.

As well as that after my laptop was away for the first week of Easter holidays, while we were shooting, it came back having had nothing done to it. Within 3 days it was up to is old tricks again and is seriously jeopardising our schedule to be ready for ROA. After much complaining its been taken away again now to hopefully be fixed, luckily i have a great girlfriend who has lent me her laptop to get through the next week and get some stuff done. Anyways lots more textures to do and hopefully putting up some of the animation soonly,

Can't think of a good sign off...

WEEK EIGHT, Sorry it’s late, It had to wait, I was in a state…

Finally completed the waiter model for Ash’s film this week modelling for Monday, Tuesday and mapped him twice after Maya went crazy and got rid of all of the work I did on Wednesday. Here’s a pic of how the final model looked.

Then at the end of the week I had fun making the general monkey model and texture in Illustrator as usual although I did map the hat and work from a UV set for the first time on this film, I sold out and took the easy route. I think he looks cool tho let me know what you think.

A few of the stages his eyes went thru, getting more and more aged although I am fond of the Neanderthal, look in the first one.

I keep getting stupid comments about anti-virus software so it would be nice to get some feedback from whoever is looking at this stuff, as I get very disappointed when it’s just junk. I have loads of hassle putting the text in with the pictures as well so sorry if the formatting is a bit off at times it drives me mad.

We’ve received a lot of animation cycles this week as well, so many in fact I think I’m going to save uploading them until I have more time to spare, they are really coming along well, thanks to all those guys for helping out! And also thanks to Sjors who drew me up some expression sketches at stupidly short notice, he rocks!

For anyone that cares I finished my dissertation earlier today as well so once it’s given in there’s nothing but film work until deadline… and PPD, dammit.

Bah, RAM. You (suck)

My laptop has been under the weather seriously this week and has hampered my output big time. I’ve now discovered that the problem is that my top RAM slot is faulty and whenever there’s memory in the top slot the laptop will not switch on. So for the moment I’m running my laptop at half speed, until we finish for easter when it will go back and have a new motherboard put in.

Despite that i have managed to get my dissertation finished this week along with all the technical jibber-jabber of of acknowledgments and the bibliography and other bits and bobs. just in the process of collecting images and deciding on the final presentation and it will be done.

After the horror week I managed to get to work on the waiter model I’m making for Café de Beignet. I’ve managed to make his hair as well as polish up his facial topography and in the first part of next week I’ll have his body finalised.

I am however lacking a new character for this week but with only General Monkey and ‘The Navy’ to complete now the end is in sight. Lets hope things go smoothly until Easter.

Above: first stages using duplicated curves to block out shape.
Above: Curves are lofted and manipulated to make the basic form of the hair
Below: Waiter model as it stands with fairly clean topography and combined into one mesh.

Term 2 Week Six, that’s not catchy…

A slightly later reflection than usual after switching my sights onto getting y dissertation finished over the weekend. But here’s the week that was week six in review.

Animation went out to our contributing animators this week to play with the rigs and get some generic walk and run cycles for the big group scenes so I’ve been giving lots of feedback guiding the artistes towards what we’re looking for. I had a few technical issues early on in the week but they were quickly eradicated, and I’ve been getting good feedback from those working with the rig. I’ll be posting some new animation soon just don’t want to overload the blog which is very tempting.

Lots of producer director work to do this weeks also what with keeping in contact and prepping the project folders, sorting out naming conventions and guidelines that goes with coordinating the number of artists we have animating. We’ve also been on the hunt for boxes and other materials to make the live action intro possible we’ve ‘sourced’ some wood for the ground plane which Caspar should go to work on making concrete pretty soon. I’ve been in contact with both Vinnie and Sjors this week (who has linked to us from his site which is great) asking for some MvsR style tape for the boxes, and after I attempted to draw the expressions for the characters myself I’ve asked Sjors to sketch some reference for me, collaboration is fun. Here’s what I have so far with expressions.

Keeping the trend moving forward I’ve also managed to make the ‘SjorBot’ based on his original designs from brickboy.com and is our new character for the week. My plan for next week is to get my dissertation finished as well as finally giving over the waiter model to Team Doughnut, watch this space.

Memory just in I also made the weapons for the army grunts this week and followed some tutorials to work out how to get illustrator files into Maya to create the intro logo, dear me I have been busy.

Your Weekly dose of Wunderland

Just a quick update this week only one new character to show off somewhat of a remake of a classic, welcome the tuned up Monkey Assassin. Seeing as he’s more of an agent in the film I’m thinking it’s a bit inappropriate to keep calling him assassin, new names on a postcard I’m thinking agent A. lots of rigging and settin up character sets this week as well as doing lots of dissertation work no point putting up boring pictures about that.

New things for this week, Outlaw Animation is an amazing book that I read in a day this week, read it to regain faith in the idea that creativity will always reign through. Avenue Q rocked on Saturday, I love Muppets and always have I’ll try and add a pic just to keep things interesting.
The internet is for...blogs?
P.S. Having loaded that it's pretty easy to see where my interest in these types of characters grew from. i'll probably get in trouble for calling them muppets as well. it rocked i don't care!

IV the George

After a short bust of dissertation early on in the week it was crunch time for the model I’m making for The Stamp Collector. After a long slog into the weekend I finally had George finished off. I think he’s quite a nice model although he is covered in triangles – the book told me it was ok, I wouldn’t normally leave them.

In review it’s been largely a modelling week nurbs and polys. The hair was a pain as Maya lost one nights work on it. I enjoyed making his specs possibly more than I should have. The UV mapping was a bit of a drag but I did my best and got the whole character done in a day which can’t be bad.

The week also ended with another new character for Wunderland, everyone welcome SteamBot, an older model than we’ve seen so far he’s powered by coal, yes he is. They’re supposed to be made of paper so I can have them powered by whatever I want!

enjoi

Meet the new guys!

Things got rolling again this week and we’ve got two new characters to show off, meet WorkerBot and the Army Grunt. I’m especially pleased with my army guy as he took a whole day to create start to finish, I started drawing him in the morning and by the wee hours of the next day I was putting the finishing touches on his rig.

We also learned a lot this week children as we’ve been discussing Character sets and the Trax Editor with Jamie Perrin as well as looking into shooting part of the film in live action, watch this space for tests as we try to get our heads round it all. Monday was also a good day as we had our pitch for ROA 2008 and it seems like we’ll be a part of the festivities on one of the channels.

Until next week that’s all folks!

Week Two, Run Through…

My role as producer ran its way through this week again catching up with all the projects I’m involved in. George model has been moving forward after the slight delay of losing a days modelling work. Dissertation Researched sapped a lot of the week and I lost a couple more days to it than I would have liked.
I’ve started work on the texture for the character we’re calling WorkerBot firstly drawing the ideas on paper then drafting them up in illustrator. Me and Caspar also looked at some Sci-fi movie posters that we could parody somewhere down the line for ROA and the end of year exhibition space.

Something Term Two This Way Comes…

OK Term two underway, lots of catch-ups this week with my contributors as well as producer type things getting schedules together, shot lists and a huuuuge list of models, props and environments to model and texture. An especially interesting chat with the guys from sound left me really intrigued with how things are going to end up from that end it’s all sounding rather good, with sound.
I’ve also continued to model George in my spare time, adapting him to have proper clothing and getting ready to model his head. Not much exciting this week in the way of images so I’ll just leave the excel spreadsheets to your own imagination.

Merry...New Ye... Oh we're back?!

Well Merry Christmas to all who pay attention, writing this in January it's clear i got a little behind with my blogging. In the first weeks off i managed to complete Red's new texture with ecspecially good ID badge and creases in his shirt In my opinion.
I've also spent a large amount of time working on the other project that i agreeed to be part of I'm particularly happy with the body model for George from Becca Chandlers The Stamp Collector and i've also made good progress with the waiter for Cafe De Beignet. I'll let the pictures do the talking theyre both still in progress but i'm pretty happy with the way they both look at the mo.
One last thing is that over the break i managed to get the commissioning doument together for ROA 2008 and it seems to have been pretty well recieved, just a case to wait and see now wether or not we get the pleasure of pitching the film again. Let the year of Wunderland commence.