MSC ANIMATION & VFX

Monday 24th November  Sourced some Blender tutorials for me to try (watched on 2x speed so I've actually vetted how useful they will be to me). A mix of basic blender controls/interface and some beginner isometric room models (since I want to use it for drawovers in future for environments). Been updating content for assessment video because I know from previous years it takes a while. No new work to show Sean tomorrow unfortunately Tuesday 25th November  Considering whether it's worth cutting H3LPR entirely? I don't want to cos it's my favourite character and cuts some more of the emotional narrative, but theoretically the Inventor could see his house machine arms working in living room and get idea that way and then find the evolved Machine himself? Where does the remorse come in? I like the dynamic. Alternatively, could H3LPR be deliberately upgraded to H3LPR-2.0 to become the Machine? Meeting with Sean. Said I'm making good progress, in first semester it's o...

Easiest to put all my progress for the project here instead of scattered through the weeks. The aim is to take a character through the entire 3D pipelines, from modelling to texturing. And hopefully even rigging and animation next semester. Fairly simple character I love, so it stays enjoyable. Planning to model the detective outfit too as a little extra challenge with cloth physics (and that design doesn’t have a 3D model yet) First step was fixing the holes in his ears. Phil helped. Mask the problem area, delete it, fill the bigger holes and dynamesh to make it squares instead of triangles. So I can continue modelling on top. Still dunno how they appeared, it was a problem when I converted the zspheres  Then realised with new 3D references I’d modelled the tails in the wrong place. Duplicated the model and split the body, shoes and tails into three separate models so that I can easily access each part to model (might split the gloves too). Having the tails separate means it’s eas...

I'd like to learn how to use Blender as knowing 3D skills is a competitive advantage. 3D would be useful to learn for drawovers for concept art and backgrounds, and since Blender is free open source software it is most likely to be what I use in future. Absolute basic Blender interface introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peSv5IT5Ve4   More Blender controls and very basics of modelling, texturing and rendering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci3Has4L5W4&list=TLPQMTgxMTIwMjXGMKyLWEowPQ&index=2 Simple low-poly bedroom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCHT23A6aJA&list=TLPQMjQxMTIwMjV3ckGjnYJRvg&index=4 More advanced/in-depth bedroom, could be interesting comparison. More realistic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puX1RVwHUz4&list=TLPQMjQxMTIwMjV3ckGjnYJRvg&index=6   If I only have time for one room tutorial, this three-part living room tutorial has fairly simple shapes but is still quite in depth, a decent compromise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

ACT 1: In an award-winning tourist town of unique houses, a jealous inventor sits on a quiet solitary hill. He can’t stand the lack of attention on him and his own award-worthy inventions. He decides that the best way to get this attention is to have his own beautiful unique house; however, he’s not good at designing architecture! In the middle of brainstorming, H3LPR, an early robot model the Inventor created to be an assistant, grabs his attention to fix yet another malfunction. While watching H3LPR bustle about, the Inventor is struck by a brilliant idea; why not use his mechanical knowledge to build a machine to construct a house for him! With the assistance of H3LPR, the two of them create this new machine in the workshop. Once it has woken, The Inventor just gives it one simple prompt: “build me a house better than the others in town”. While the Inventor relaxes, The Machine wanders into town While in town, The Machine has to start tackling this task. Step 1: analyse what makes e...

Monday 17th November I am still SCARILY far behind. Storyboarding will likely now be pushed back to December, as I still have a long way to go with script and character designs. Panicking for the presentation on Tuesday and feeling bad about my lack of progress Managed to get a (more or less) full plot outline complete! I still have a little bit to figure out (mostly just the specifics of the climactic showdown) but its a good start for concept and boarding and I have some major progress to share tomorrow Had a interesting idea of making The Machine look like The Inventor; literally face-to-face with his own ego, and feeds into the idea of AI replacing human talent. I have very rough concepts for the two of them so far: I also grabbed a lump of plasticine and started to sculpt out very rough designs to get me used to thinking of making a design to be modelled in a 3D space. It a very fun method of idea generation Tuesday 18th November Huge feedback session today. Have quite a bit to fi...

Been doing a lot of scriptwriting research over the week (see the separate blog post). I'm going to have to redo my script from the ground up. I'm putting too much pressure on myself to make this a perfect script and I don't have the time to do that  Picked up a lot of poster designing tips during the Wednesday morning class. There's a review session the week before submission, I should really aim to get the poster complete by then Thursday 13th November Learned about Texturing today, it was actually quite fun. Even though Substance Painter is SO slow at saving; every time I made one change and saved it would take at least two minutes. Model is by Phil. Tried to stick to a confectionary theme with frosting and chocolate and found the closest thing to a sprinkle brush I could. Friday 14th November Scotland Loves Anime event at ECA. Picked up some good visdev tips from Henry Wong Attended the Scotland Loves Anime event at ECA. Talks included: Character Design: Behind the ...

How to Write for Animation - Jeffery Scott  A premise is a simple telling of the story. It lays out the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and not much else. Make your premise as short as possible, but long enough to tell the story. Less is more. Every word should count, don’t be redundant or use unnecessary adjectives or flowery prose.  Then it is time to flesh out your premise into an outline. An outline is a complete story, in written prose form, layout out every scene that will be in the final script. Scenes are often called beats, and beats can be anywhere from five seconds long to three or four minutes. Typically in a half hour episode you would have fifteen to twenty-five story beats.  Then comes the script, which lays out every scene in the story by means of: description of environment and action, dialogue, and any necessary transitions or camera angles/movements.  Start with the A-story, which is the main action plot, and figure out the beginning middl...

Monday 3rd November I see Yujia has put out an invite to the whole school to join an AI in Creativity guest lecture. I’m partially tempted to go for research (and to absolutely grill the guest speaker again) but then that gives the class engagement. I did end up getting into a few discussions with Yujia last year during my dissertation classes, she’s very aware of my anti-Ai stance Tried to get a little work done but got distracted Tuesday 4th November Sean really likes my little coffin stop motion test. It's practical research, building confidence and an understanding of the workflow and what works. The plan is to continue testing stop motion; fabrication, movement, software etc, little experiments. Keep using the free software for now, and will hopefully be getting one of the iMacs with Dragonframe Sean thinks he might be able to find me a solo filming space in Semester 3 when it's only the Masters students left in the school; in the meantime for Semester 2 I will likely be ...