Dallas Buyers Club

Date night this week....

Movie night..... Dallas Buyers Club.

This had some of the best film editing I have ever seen. It reminded me of some of our storytelling lectures, where we were encouraged to look at how 'film' storytelling can time jump.

Unlike in a theatrical play, a character climbing stairs, doesn't need to step on every single tread. We can cut from a character climbing a couple of stairs and then cut immediately to them arriving at the top - and the viewer still knows and believes that they have ascended the entire flight of stairs..

Well the lead protagonist in this film manages to get to and from Europe and do business deals in 10 seconds....

Brilliant acting - in fact I googled whether or not the actors were really HIV positive - they were so convincing...

Photogrammetry and Zbrush !!

Wow!
Well I'm set to rock and roll - fun Friday night planned, getting to grips with new software (free trial) of ZBrush - very excited about this!
I'll update my progress, with how I am getting along, modeling a Troll Doll!

As a group today, we made the most of the 3D Make lab, and Rob gave us a group tutorial on Photogrammetry and how to photograph our model, ready for upload onto Autodesk 123D capture....

 Ebay No 1 Dad Troll Doll!

Troll Doll on the potters wheel. The black and white pattern that the troll is stood on, is irregular, so when viewed from any angle it will look different. This avoids confusion for the software that knits all the images together, 

The process being explained...He_Man looking a tad uncomfortable in the background.

Now to see if our uploaded photos will create a good working .obj file.....

Reflective practice and critical review

For the critical review element of reflective practice, I've begun to research other animations that deal with the subject of loss and transformation...to gain a deeper understanding of what I am trying to achieve with my final project for Masters.

This animation is for the British Heart Foundation...

Whilst it's fairly striking in it's visual simplicity, I found the duration of 8m.29s too long. I would argue that the narration was overpowering and there wasn't much time (surprisingly given the length) for any silent reflection.
The simplicity of the actual artwork, I found to be repetitive and not very engaging after a very short while.
I appreciate the sentiment within the idea, and that this is directed specifically at children.
It's been good to review it, as it's firmed up form me, that I am aiming at a wider audience, and also to take a poetic look at loss, rather than specifically bereavement....

I suppose in summary, that this was the opposite to the very open ended 'Drawn into Tomorrow' digital animations that I saw recently at the DCA; where the viewer was given ample time to reflect and review their own subjective journey...

Other films seem to focus on a 'call to action' helpline, dealing with suicide, death and bereavement.
This has been a good starting point for research - in that I have been able to realise what I don't want to do - which in turn forces me to examine what it is that I do want to do!

Previs references and old school 1/4" scale models!

So this week we are researching good examples of Previs (a rough shot set up, using 3D models and preliminary camera sets ups) as inspiration for our own Previs for our Going Live project.
The aim of the Previs is to begin to really get some shape into the tempo of our animatic and to see how our camera angles work. This is going to be a great fast tool, especially with shot set ups.

This will be the first time I have utilised 3D 'virtual' models to establish shot set ups - but I can see that my film set training of using technical drawings and foam board to create model sets! (as below) is the precursor to this method...

At Film School we were trained to make models using our technical drawings of the set - any walls in the life size set that were to 'float' (be removed so that the actual camera could be situated) were pinned in place and removed, so that we could run through the camera positions with the Director...


Previs examples

1/4 scale (Imperial measurements for Film and TV in the UK) 1/4" = 1 Foot

Foam and card models, showing floating walls, windows and ceilings. This model was for a hallway, that matched an actual location exterior. 

My first ever concept visual at film school - using Quink Ink and Bleach - a staircase in perspective! Wow - now that was tricky!

Maya modeling and Photogrammetry

So we've begun the production modeling for the Going Live project and it's back into Maya for me!

This time round it's been much easier to get to grips with the 3D model - and, although, still slow, I am definitely getting faster with the modeling...

We had a great success yesterday with Photogrammetry in the 3D make lab.
This is my first encounter with Photogrammetry and I googled what exactly it is!
It's the science of making measurements from photographs - the output of which is typically a map, drawing or in our case a 3D model of He-Man's head!

One of our team, Aimi, is super fast in modelling and has already created the model head for our He-Man toy.

However, using a real He-Man toy and Photogrammetry provides us with is a great tool, to ensure that we create a toy which is as close to the real thing as possible...

My ebay Trolls are on their way, so we can use this Photogrammetry method to capture the Troll head information, which is proving to be very challenging already!

He-Man head, captured by Photogrammetry.

My Ebay Trolls have been dispatched - so we'll try scanning the Trolls and seeing

Robot Model Sheet

Clockwork Robot -

Character model sheet for Going Live...

Drawn in AutoCAD!

The Revenant

So date night this week was spent at the cinema - watching The Revenant...
There was one particular shot that was incredible - starting with the lead character on the ground, moving through a forest and then jumping onto a horse...the camera tracked alongside the whole way - including galloping across a field

I think the horse was an articulated - one shot showed a close up of the horse, as Leonardo DiCaprio put a saddle on it. There was fighting and yelling everywhere - the horse didn't move a hair or even twitch...

Amazing cinematography - glad we got to see it on the big screen