Week 9 (17th-21st November)

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 fix with the script. I have to figure out what the difference is between The Machine and H3LPR, The Machine is obviously the metaphor for GenAI so then what does H3LPR represent? Received a few suggestions for The Inventor's motivations. Also need to figure out a set moral of the story I want to convey

Getting worried about the lack of time before the assessment. Justyna's video was so professional and packed full of content. I have things I'm going to do, like research trip to House of Automata, Aardman Academy Foundations course, and an animatic. Just not before the deadline. We'll see how much happens because I'm already overwhelmed by the amount of slides and work I have to put into this video; NEED to start compiling stuff this week


Wednesday 19th November

Analysing previous poster examples and doodled their layouts to compare what previous submissions have done. Working on the text content of my poster, I'm procrastinating on the contextual research. I'm struggling to figure out what to include, because there shouldn't be too much writing but I have a lot of background context to summarise. There's a feedback session in two weeks, I'm hoping to have my poster more or less complete by then so I can also get it out of the way. It also provides me more motivation to continue getting concept art complete so that I can include visuals from the film itself

Attended drag life drawing tonight, hosted by CAPSoc. Had a lot of fun with different costumes and body types

 


Thursday 20th November

Some more texturing work. Ran into problems baking because I forgot to select the specific object so everything was baking and merging. Next two weeks are help sessions, plan to make the most of them for my Tails model. I’m glad the 3D stuff is only really assessed on the fact that I’m learning/self development rather than the quality of the final outcomes 

Back in the afternoon to fix my Tails model, found a couple more angles of his 3D model to get a more accurate idea. Phil helped me fix the hole in his ear, biggest problem. Now it’s mostly a case of remodelling. Phil suggested I make the detective cape and hat in Maya (hat could maybe be a separate object in ZBrush), but the cape may impact the arms if it is rigged. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We’re doing animation and rigging next semester, I wonder if I could animate him too…this is more of a personal project to prove I’m learning new skills rather than directly related to my project work


Realised tails are modelled in the wrong place. Decided it was easier to split the body and tails into separate models, for modelling/rigging purposes





Weekend

Updating the blog and starting to put together my assessment video and figuring out what else I want to get done in time

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 4 (13th-17th October)

Image
Tuesday 14th October Didn't manage to get anything done the past few days, was at my two jobs. Mental health day, was struggling and needed a break. I might have to call it on the MAKE Fund application, realistically I won't be able to get all of my pre-production complete in only a few weeks. Ah well, maybe another opportunity will come along Wednesday 15th October I've decided to focus on the anti-AI theme as my research proposal rather than the idea of integrating a 2D workflow. The hybrid 2D workflow is a very interesting research direction that I will plan to explore in future, but I feel it's too ambitious and too far removed from what I originally wanted to do with my film which was to express my frustrations with the rise of AI.  I have also decided to focus my R&D in Practice module research on AI instead of stop motion, as I am REALLY struggling to find any academic articles on stop motion and it ties directly into the themes of the film. If I were to disp...
Read more

Week 15 (9th-13th February)

Image
Monday 9th More concepts. Mostly exploring the H3LPR 2.0 concept, where H3LPR is just in different iterations representing the different iterations of AI Started exploring a bit of environment design as well with the underground workshop and the furnace power source. I want dramatic and dangerous red lighting with this furnace Interesting ideas from feedback to explore. Susan suggested making The Inventor claymation because he's the only organic thing there, whereas everything else is crafted/scultped. I do really like implementing the animation medium AS a storytelling method, that's why I'm doing stop motion in the first place, so I'm VERY tempted to explore this! I know from previous experience that I struggled to not smush elements like clothes, so I might see about having only his head and hands be clay and the rest of his clothes still be textiles? I need to do a test comparing sculpted facial animation vs claymation facial animation. Perhaps it would be good to d...
Read more

Feedback and Next Steps

Feedback from Semester 1: Detailed thematic direction for the project and strong visual imagination with engaging sketches. Clearer articulation of design choices would strengthen the conceptual foundation Deeper research of AI and clearer integration into the narrative world. Exploring strengths and limitations of current AI systems could offer meaningful narrative opportunities The final designs do not fully reflect the concepts you described (btw the designs are not finished or final). Reducing human likeness and instead emphasising unnerving, function driven or uncanny qualities may create a stronger contrast between the two robots and better support the narrative Further investigation of industry standard production pipelines would be beneficial. Understand what is technically feasible to help refine workflow and strengthen the practical realisation  Potential narrative elements to explore: Strengths and limitations of current and older AI systems - outputs that initially appe...
Read more