Game Art Design and Animation Week 5:Skeleton

When beginning to start the Skeleton input process whilst i wait on the reply from Matt about my texture problem i found this an easy task to accomplish as it just needs me to correctly place joints in the positions of movement which seemed straight forward enough and although it took a while to get the positioning right and do the whole of the model it was a straight forward and simple process.

Game Art Design and Animation Week 5:UV Texture and a Pronlem

 I started doing my UV texturing in Adobe Photoshop having the UV snapshot overlaying the painted texture and found that the overall image had come out very well showing the characters body tone and features through the shading of the clothing.

 Here is a black and white perspective of my UV texture which will be used as a base for my model to be bump mapped and i may not know if i will be using it but having this view helps for any needs in the future.

I had a problem occur when placing my texture onto my model and hadn't a clue why this was happening and i looked at guides, tutorials and tried to find a solution through all sources of information but couldn't find one and so e-mailed Matt to see if i had done anything wrong and so whislt waiting for his reply i did not want to leave the time i had wasted so i began putting a skeleton in my model.

Game Art Design and Animation Week 5:UV Mapping

 I have nearly completed the UV mapping process and have really found that highlighting the faces of the model that i want to map is much more of a smoother process for me.

 As i wrote previously that i had to auto map the hand and feet of the model and this was because it is more of a visible map to using a spherical or planar mapping and with using the auto mapping i am able to join the UV's to make it much easier to line up the map.

 Now that i have finished the main aspect of the UV mapping for the model i will now have to UV map the individuals in the air containers and the wires.

 When trying to UV map the wires i would have to use the auto mapping as it shows the models UV map clearer and givees me more of a perspective to work with as the other UV mapping processes had been overlapped when seeing if they would be better to be used.











I have now completed UV mapping and this process of highlighting the faces was a much more better way UV mapping then previous ones that i have tried and i am now ready to paint my textures.

Here is an image showing that i have not separated the actual model and that when highlighting the model i get the UV mapped model with no anomalies.

Digital Film Production and VFX Week 12 Music Video:Filmed for Edit

Myself and Mark have finished filming today and found that we had filmed enough footage to work with and match up with the music and the melting footage from the wax monsters which will be used for the background.

With help from Danny Beckett, Dave Harris and Steven Elmes during the filming of our live footage, helping setting up lights, green screen and other equipment we were able to get the most out of our time and equipment.

Using Robbie King as our actor was a good choice because of his self-weirdness and what i mean by that is he knows how he expected to play this part, in total randomness.Robbie was able to add facial expressions to his acting which we hadn't asked him to but hadn't realised it till after viewing the footage filmed. The video which has been uploaded is one of many of the clips which were filmed for the behind the scenes, by Steven Elmes. Having Steven Elmes film behind the scenes was a good decision that Steven had come down when we had been filming as he covered alotof how we set the equipment up and what everybody does whilst filming goes on. Steven Elmes will later upload the footage that he has editted to be speeded up and show a behind the scenes video to go with our final film.

Digital Film Production and VFX Week 12 Music Video:Melting Wax Monster Footage Re-Shoot

Due to the first wax footage shoot being out of focus we had brought in a more experienced cameraman in Matt Taylor and having him film the footage brought out a more greater outcome in film because along with a better focus reshooting the melting process of the wax monsters made different movements, allowing us to plan a few of the melt processes.

Below are a few of the images Matt had taken to get his focus and perspective right with his camera:

Digital Film Production and VFX Week 11 Music Video:Melting Wax Monster Footage

Here is a test footage of melting wax and we found that this would suit our project for the background monsters, to have them as creatures in another world which would be fighting our gorilla suited actor.

Here is one of the many clips we had shot of the melting wax monsters and had found that the camera we had used was not in focus and due to this we had to reshoot our footage. The footage that was shot, in terms of what is going on is really good from the wax monster sliding side to side but due to the focus of the camera we weren't happy with the overall outcome.

Digital Film Production and VFX Week 11 Music Video:Similar Style

Due to filming next week i had nothing to blog about and so started to research into similar styles of music video to what we are wanting to achieve and found these couple of videos:

I started to look at some 60s music videos and how they were presented. They're presentation came across as a psychedelic type video because of the colour filter over the video, tryin to use the video effects that were available at that time gives us a chance to not have our video as perfect as 2010 musc videos are.

The next video i had found was of a soviet music video filled with people dressed in animal costumes which is similar to what we are trying to achieve with our film, in creating a comedy video which has no rules or limits to produce. As shown in this video the use of animal costumed people didnt have to be an idea to use, but using this makes it much more comedic as you watch grown men and women dancing wearing animal costumes.

Again the animal costume use works best in this video, to what we are wanting to do because the randomness of what the animal people are doing doesnt fit with the music and with the animal costumed people doing things that would seem ordinary, e.g. playin basketball looks funny with the costumes on which makes it a good video, by bringing a comedic sense to the visuals as the music plays on.

Digital Film Production and VFX Week 11 Music Video:Cover Art By Chris Rhodes

Well, the pieces of this music video project are coming together as Mark and myself had asked Chris Rhodes to do a cover art for our dvd cover and he had come back with this image.

This comes across as the basic solid colours, which are bright and stand out which is good to grab the attention of viewers and the image used for it connects the title and what to expect from the music video.

A basic cover comes across as being easy enough to understand what is going on and because this is a great cover art we will be using the cover art for the packet of crisp in the music video.

Contextual and Theoretical Studies Level 5 Week 7:Comunication Theory1

The lecture this week was revolved around communication theory and we found that there are seven different types of communication theories and these are either Transmissional or Constitutive theories and we looked at the Transmissional Theory of Cybernetic or Information Theory of Communication. This was developed as a solution on the suffestion that greater communications wins wars during WW2 and the usage of transmitters and receivers at that time was a useful system in being able to distinguish the message and evolved into the seven traditions of communication theroy which deploy into two groups the Transmissional (Cybernetic) and Constitutive.

Transmissional theory is the technical side of sending and receiving messages and the unknowing of getting the messages wrong.

Constituitive theory is how messages are seen and how the message is similar to the sender as well as the receiver. Receiving a message from someone with a different cultured background which is viewed in a different perpsective.
Cybernetic theory is the steps of the transmission process into detailed steps and there are three sets of problems:

1. Technical is the coding of the transmission in terms of codes and the systems usage.
2. Semantics is the language of the message and how they it would be a problem if part of the message was lost
3. Effectiveness is the message giving the right mood through the messages wording

The Constitutive theory breaks into sub-categories that are part of the traditions

1. Semiotics-language being precise to become a clear message
2. Phenomenological Tradition-the repetitive use of a message through the understanding of physical life experiences
3. Classical Phenomonology-the viewers subjective analysis is not considered
4. Phenomonology of Perception-our knowledge is through our choices from views

Semiotics are a form of analyis typically images, texts and products but much towards the images from the advertising industry which add to the understanding of perception of the images by the general public. To which the image is shown and ceating a reaction from publc by catching their eye, in terms of the designer being able to make the images appeal to certain audiences and how the images make the audiences view them and how the audiences interpret the image or text in terms of the message rather than the text explanations.

Game Art Design and Animation Week 4:UV Mapping

 As i began the UV mapping portion of the process i found once i highlighted my model the UV mapping in the texture editor had been something which needed to be fixed.

 From the previous way i had done the UV textureing where i had separated parts of the model to then unfold that model but with redoing my model i wanted to try a different way of UV tmapping.

I had tried to do a planar mapping of the whole model to which i would then separate the UV of certain areas to be eventually unfolded but foun that this process didn't suit me as i felt it would take much longer would be difficult for me to take apart certaina areas as i could see a full perspective of the UV map to work with, from my model.










And so i had selected the certain areas of my model and highlighted them through their faces and then UV mapped them and worked from then on by unfolding the UV map.

 This process of UV mapping suited me much better as i was able to select the faces of the area i want to UV map in 3D space of the model and once that has been done i would use spherical or circular mapping fro most of my UV mapping.

I had a problem when it came to UV mapping the hand and feets of the model i couldn't see how any of the UV mapping options which suite best to view the UV map of that area and so i used the automatic UV mapping the reason for this is because i found that i could make my own UV mapping of hands and feet and would b able to tell what i am painting onto.

Game Art Design and Animation Week 4:Redo Modelling

 I got the over look of the model once it was mirrored and fond it being much more cleaner in terms of the faces and edges and it looked much more like the image plane with it being symmetrical.

But once i saw the overlook of the model once mirrored i saw how i missed adding the air containers and the wires and because this model had been done more cleaner and not leaving and anomalies free i was able to free up more faces allowing more faces to be used for the air containers and wires polygons to be more like the image planes.

I was again ready to mirror the geometry to the other side and because of that allows me to get a symmetrical model and not have to worry about different sized proportions.

After mirroring i saw how the model had many vertices and that  maybe there might be some that i could get rid of because i may have missed them when cleaning up the model.

Getting off of the vertices i looked at the edges to see if there were any anomalies and if the edges had carried on around the model.

But the main problem was that there were vertices that were disconnected and so i had to go around the model and clean up and merge vertices together where the model had been mirrored.

Game Art Design and Animation Week 4:Redo Modelling

Here is my model with the UV texture as the model has not been combined the reason was to have the areas of the model to for example work with the boot in the UV texture editor to unfold to eventually paint the textures on to the model.

 But once i had the UV textures done and exported the UV snapshot i wanted to combine all the pieces of the model back together so that i can see how the texture looks on the model during the process of painting but once i combine the model back together the UV texture editor show how the UV's that took me a while to do get messed up which leads to another reason why i had to remodel.

 So i began remodelling the character and took my time and watched where i added edges so that all the model is not messed up as it was previously and again working on the left side and seeing how the model looks from the right of the image plane allows me to get a full overview of the character.

Again i constantly viewed the other views to find any anomalies but working on the front view mainly i found that once i started to work on the side perspective of the model i went back to look at the other views to smooth out anything that didn't look right.

 When i finished the models upper half i got a rough aspect of the design in modelling that i wanted to carry on by having the front of the model exact to the image plane but when it came to the side view i left it much open by working more away from the side image plane because there were certain aspects of it that didn't fit the positioning and length.

 Here is the view of the model once i completed the models lower region and felt that overall the aspect of the model works much better than it was previously as this time the edges have been much more visible and connect around the model rather than the edges being cut off half way round the model.

Now i am ready to mirror my model to the right side as i believe it is ready with all the proportions right and feel that once i get the full model done i can see much more clearly what i need to do more to the model.

Digital Film Production and VFX Week 10 Music Video:Schedule and Props List Created by Mark G.

Here is a schedule and props list created by Mark G. and thought that it was best to have this in my blog to keep track of what needs to be done and what will be happening:

Schedule:

Saturday 27th Procure Blue Monkey suit, plastic monsters.
Monday 29th, ceramics department create moulds and make monsters, quick test shots.
Thursday 2nd Dec, Shoot 'melting monster' footage (or possibly 6th)
Saturday 4th Procure rest of props.
Monday 6th Shoot live action Blue Gorilla suit footage in Studio Theatre.

Editing/effects from 9th December onwards

Props list:
Blue Gorilla Suit (Steve Elmes)
Childrens plastic toy figures (Chris and myself )
Hair dryer (Ifraz)
Shower head (me)
Plastic Sword (me)
Golf club?
Pack of Gorilla foot Crisps= Chris
Monster moulds Plaster (via help from ceramics department)
2kg of tallow, plus coloured dyes(wax crayons) ceramics department
Hot plate + heat resistant green paint?
Paint stripper gun, ceramics dept.

Digital Film Production and VFX Week 10 Music Video:Final Storyboard

Here are the pages of the storybard that Mark the director had sketched up planning the shots and scenes of our music video and we basically set out on creating an achievable music video and one which wouldn't exceed our limitations and came up with this idea.

We start off with the person eating some kind of monster shaped crisps to which he is thentransported into a world and upon arriving he is transformed into this gorilla, whilst the actor is actually wearing a gorilla suit, equipped with random objects which are later used as weapons, will come into play when the interaction between a wax monster mould, which were planned to be either chocolate or plastic something which would be easy to melt.

So melting these monsters will give us footage of the gorilla suited person fighting and descinegrating the monsters and would then end with the monsters melted forms used in reverse melt shot and cover the gorilla suited person.