Week 13 (26th-30th January)

 Monday 26th January 

I was really busy with work last week so I didn't have much time to make progress before my meeting with Sean unfortunately. Sorting the story is my priority but I have a few ideas to try out. 

Even if I prioritise trailer shots I still have to film the entire shot before it gets edited down. I would rather get a percentage of the film done to a high quality (percentage workflow similar to undergrad) than speading myself thin attempting to get a full film done. Until I finish writing and get an animatic done I won't be able to plan around the full length and scope of the project. Sean recommended I start looking at trailer styles (eg a silent film is very different from modern feature films), what tone and genre and editing style do I want?

Good news is there's a room available for me from June, Crawford 127 (ground floor of level 1, Live Room 1). Malcolm said he'll get the room code for me and Sean but I'm very excited to see inside it. Since it's a lockable door DEL would let me leave equipment in there, and apparently tutors can do long term booking for equipment (in my case a DSLR camera and lighting). Need to look at getting furniture like tables as well. And try to keep the sets limited, using greenscreens and drawing the backgrounds in 2D myself

We were assigned groups for the live brief now, I'm on Maggie's team "Catch Of The Day". I signed up for visual development (I really want to do more colour scripts for my portfolio) and 2d backgrounds so I'm not sure which role I got, because I'm stronger at backgrounds and there's a lot of interest in visdev

I just spent an hour straight writing three pages of plot ideas so that's my achievement for today. I can feel the story coming together. The problem is it's getting quite long and is starting to feature a lot of npc background characters like crowds so I'll have to find creative workarounds


Tuesday 27th January

Launched the ident project today. I'll be focusing on visual development (because I really want another colour script in my portfolio), but will also try matte paintings so we can integrate 2D with 3D backgrounds. The original vision was to make practical sets which would have been very fun and I don't think would have taken too long, but for the team skillset and the fact this is supposed to be a smaller project then it makes sense to just keep this 2D/3D. I plan to do some initial colour tests before our next meeting next Tuesday, Maggie (showrunner) has a very clear vision for visuals which is really helpful, blue with orange accents


Wednesday 28th January 

I made some more progress on writing. On Monday I'd written out a very rough second version full of notes and stream-of-consciousness idea generation so today I was trying to rewrite it into a more refined script. Act 1 is done. At the moment it's looking more like a short story than a script but that's easier, write a story first and then convert it to a script

Tried to look at the Luca art book for inspiration for the ident but there is a disappointing lack of boat concepts


Thursday 29th January 

3D workshop this morning, working on a 3D walk cycle. I was tempted by the Gru model I'm going to be honest, but I decided to stick with the easier Bony model just so I can understand the basics and then work my way up to a more complex rig. For two hours it turned out fine, easier than in second year anyway 

In the afternoon I returned to continue my Tails the Fox model from last semester. I still intend to carry him through the entire pipeline, potentially including rigging and animation. I really want to learn 3D skills but since I don't plan to use 3D in my main project it's just easier to have a separate side project. Was working on retopology today, I managed to complete the tails and shoes


Friday 30th January

Had life drawing again this morning, just getting back into it. I was able to be quite loose with pastels but didn't really bring big enough or textured enough paper so was a bit of a challenge in the longer poses



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