Saturday, June 30, 2012

Advanced Body Mechanics - Class 3

This class was very fun. It started off with a blast animating to some dance music which turned out pretty good.
My mentor was John Nguyen who has worked on Transformers 2 & 3, The Mummy 3, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Tron Legacy, X Men... just to name a few.


Thursday, June 28, 2012

Short Film Animatic

I have 2 versions of the story board/animatic. The difference is in the acting choices for Rokk Mann. The first one I just had him struggling but it had no real climax. So on the second one he's reaching towards the sun in some sort of symbolic way.
Also, you'll notice that towards the end it looks like he drops and then trips over. The reason for this drop is that the rock he is emerging from is thick mud or soft clay to him, so as he puts his weight onto his foot to lift his body, then the mud/clay gives way and he drops.



Short Film Music V2

Update on the music. I asked him to strip it back to the bare bones bass and drums so we can build it from there. It's pretty close to what I'm after already, I think it needs more of a build up to the middle of the piece and then a sustained high, then a sudden drop off...


Rokk Mann Texture example

During my expedition to the location earlier this year I photographed some examples of the rocks on Mt Maroon summit. Using Crazy Bump, it can produce some really nice looking textures.



The night before the actual shoot I plan to acquire more textures using a more accurate method for normal maps. It's called Normal Map Photography. The name and method was created by Ryan Clark on his website - http://zarria.net/nrmphoto/nrmphoto.html
Basically, the method is to photograph the subject 4 times from one angle in complete darkness. In each of the 4 photos a light source is positioned at the top, bottom, left and right, respectively.
In Photoshop these images are changed to represent a normal map. It can also be used with crazy bump as the author is the same person.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Short film music

I have commissioned my brother to write the music. I'm looking for something epic and orchestral.

My brother came up with this in about an hour and a half....

So, I'm not sure if this is exactly what I"m looking for. I think the pulsating violin is reminding me of a circus. But I'm looking for more of a long drawn out sound from the violins.
I've asked him to just send me a stripped back version of the piece, just with the drums and bass and we'll work from there.

Character Development

Since the main character is suppose to be an ambiguous figure, finding a character online was going to be relatively simple. I went straight to my favorite site for fully rigged characters - www.animationbuffet.com.

I looked for a generic human male figure. I found this some what scary looking androgynous character - http://animationbuffet.blogspot.com.au/2008/07/rudy.html

The starting base for the Rokk Mann character
 I'm not sure who created it, so I can't credit the person. But the original file can be found here.

So Rokk Mann will look like a rock - rough and jagged... not an androgynous figure with human skin. He will also look a little more asymmetrical, having distorted limbs and head. I will also add some seams as observed with the rocks around the shoot location.
Rocks around the shoot location showing seams through the rocks. This would have been formed from the volcanic activity in this region a while back.
Also, some elements will have to be added to help with the small story plots that progress over the 30sec film. For example, a limb, or at most 2, will be dismembered during the short. I am inspired by renaissance sculptures especially Michelangelo's, and how their limbs are never finished, mostly cut off below the shoulder, or legs buried in the marble (unfinished).

Unfinished sculpture by Michelangelo. It look like it's emerging from the rock.
Venus de Milo. It looks like it suppose to be armless considering the cleanliness of the stump, but it's assembly was never found and complete.
Torso Belvedere by Apollonios son of Nestor. One of my favorite sculptures. "Legend has it that Pope Julius II requested that Michelangelo complete the statue fragment with arms, legs and a face. He respectfully declined, stating that it was too beautiful to be altered, and instead used it as the inspiration for the majority of the figures in the Sistine Chapel..." wikipedia.
 Inspired by the great sculptures of the past, Rokk Mann will emerge from the rock and, from the brittle rock, sustain a severed limb, which will be his demise.

Within the thirty seconds of footage I will try and weave a small narrative through the movements of Rokk Man. There will be 2 main phrases, firstly the birth and rise of the young, impatient Rokk Mann. Youth, impatience and his fierce attempts to exit the rock will be his down fall. He will sustain a severed limb while attempting to stand.
With the injury, we move into the second phrase, which will coincide with the afternoon and setting sun. Rokk Mann cannot stand any longer and as the sunsets so he does back to the rock from where he came.

Rough sketches of how the rock and seams will look.

A more refined sketch, but looks a little like fabric rather then rock.

Visualization of how the rock texture will look.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Time Lapse

So first of all I decided that I need to learn how to do time lapse photography. The concept is quite simpe - take a series of photos and then string them together to make a film. Well there is a lot involved as usual and I was quickly coming to the conclusion that I would need extra devices to control the camera.

I don't know if you've ever thought about this before, but when you're on top of a remote mountain there isn't many power outlets for camera's and computers and phones etc. I was thinking I would have to lug a generator up the mountain or buy a huge amount of batteries for phones and camera's and a laptop. I was thinking that I could control the camera with my smart phone using some sort of DSLR remote controller that would give me time lapse functionality - an intervalometer (interval-o-meter).

After doing some research I discovered that there are people out there that are as disappointed in canons DSLR software as much as I am. But they actually did something about it. It's called MAGIC LANTERN, and it's a life saver. It has built in intervalometer and HDR, and you can ever combine the 2 at once and have a HDR time lapse. But I'll get into HDR in another post.

I recommend it for all canon uses to have. It will open a whole new world of opportunity for canon DSLR photographers.

Favorite shot of the day.


So here is what magic lantern allowed me to do.....


A morning time lapse test run for a Uni project I'm working on. I plan to hike up a mountain and shoot the entire day in one go. I'm testing the settings on this shoot.
Filmed in Brisbane, Rochedale South on Baroona street, 22 June 2012.
Equipment - Canon 550D, EF-S 18-55mm, 1/200, f-4.5, ISO 100, Circular Polarizing lens, x-rite color checker.
Canon firmware enhanced with Magic Lantern.

Music: Window #3 by Two Bicycles (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Two_Bicycles/Beko_Crash_Symbols_1/07_Window_3)

University Assignment

So after so many years I have made it back to uni to finish off my degree. Yes, I have left it till the last moment. I started it back in 2002 and now it's 2012. There is a limit to finishing a degree and that limit is 10 years, so as you can see it's the 11th hour.

As always I have chosen the hardest thing to do. I have a keen interest in VFX shots and how they are assembled. So for this project I wanted to create some animation that fit nicely into live action footage using VFX. I've been studying techniques on how to do this for the last few years in my spare time, so we'll see how much I've learned.

The premise is composite a 3d character into a time lapse. Mountain tops make great settings for time lapse so all I needed now was a character. And Rokk Mann was born - an ambiguous figure that is formed out of rock and then after much struggle collapses back to the rock. The short film will go no longer then 30 seconds and will comprise of a time lapse from a mountain top of sunrise to sunset.