Maya shot list folders

Creation of shot files in Maya...

Note to self: Create these from and within Maya; so that each shot folder has the Maya sub-folders for scenes, source images, movies, sounds etc....

do not create these in windows!

Bedrich Smetana; John William Waterhouse and animated theatrical gauzes!

                     

Time to create my Previs....accompanied by the soundtrack from Bedrich Smetana's "From My Life" ( a composer who became deaf....and continued to write and compose) ...

I discovered this album whilst on my Theatre Design degree at Wimbledon....as we were given the brief to design a contemporary ballet using the music 'From My Life'; depicting Smetana's relationship with his wife.

To portray the onset of his deafness and his internal journey and acceptance around this, I designed a series of Art Nouveau costumes inspired by John William Waterhouse's 'The Lady of Shalott' (incredible creation of 'daylight' with oil paint) and a set which was jet black, apart from illuminated gauzes, each showing an Art Nouveau rose in a varying state of decay....

Each gauze was sequentially lit, using foreground dimmers and backlights...thus making the gauzes magically dissolve, revealing another stage of decay.....real time animation!

Interesting that Thaw also has similar themes, including symbolic flowers...and that I have selected this piece of music to work to today...

                                   

                                                   

Andy Warhol: Photoshop effects layers

In preparation for an Andy Warhol screen printing class at the DCA in Dundee tomorrow, I've been playing in Photoshop...the simplest result was creating two effects layers....one for vibrance and saturation (cranked up) and the other for posterise...

Oneplus 3T 1080p Timelapse and Slo Mo footage

So, with my new fantastic Oneplus 3T, I've recorded this timelapse footage....
Shot in the standard factory setting (non-adjustable as far as I am aware) 1080p HD...
There is the option of 4K for stills...

                      

I imported the timelapse footage into Premier Pro CC and used this time-mapping tutorial,
https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/3-approaches-for-time-remapping-in-adobe-premiere-pro/
to increase the speed by 800%

Use Time Remapping

1. Right-click on your clip and select ‘Show Clip Keyframes>Time Remapping>Speed’

2. Increase your speed

Simply drag the ‘Rubber Band’ on your clip up and down to increase/decrease the clip duration. You can Command+Click on a Mac or Control+Click on Windows to set keyframes. There are actually a lot of really cool ways to manipulate clip speed using this feature. The video tutorial below outlines a few helpful ways to use the Time Remapping Tool.

The slo motion sunset (and lucky bird) is as per the default settings within the Oneplus 3T; which, by the way, you could also make phone calls with, if you have the time....

PhD mind mapping and No Knead Bread; Jim Lahey

Found this great link, as a helpful online tool, to help me get my thoughts and ideas into a structure, in preparation for an industry facing, arts practice PhD application

No need to panic Mr Mannering....

https://sketchboard.io/

No knead bread...for some food based creativity
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

Good Bacterial Raincoats!

Great lecture by Prof. Nicola Stanley-Wall, as part of the Discovery Days 2017 series at Dundee University...https://www.dundee.ac.uk/revealingresearch/newsandevents/discoverydays/
I was particularly struck by the notion of 'good bacterial raincoats'...
The image below, that resembles a leaf/doily/jellyfish is, in fact, a microscopic protective film (good bacterial raincoat) caused by bacteria. The film is so waterproof, that water (as shown here by way of microscopic beads of water, dyed with food colouring) cannot be absorbed at all; hence the reason the droplets stay completely spherical.

It reminded me of the instinctual process I went through when creating the water droplet for Thaw...
and knowing 'for some reason' that a water droplet, on a leaf, is deformed....I didn't realise that this was because some of the water is absorbed by the leaf....

Initial water droplet that I created in Maya - simply using a polygon sphere with a mia_material_x water shader

Sphere deformed by a lattice; to show water blobs influenced by water

Ice Shader in Maya, using Blinn, Noise and Bump maps

Experiments with ice-shader techniques in Maya...following this tutorial link 

and then further experimentation and adjustment of settings....

Test heads using the mia_material_x presets

 Blinn material with the transparency turned down

 Assorted tests adjusting the transparency settings, Raytrace options, refraction and glow intensity

 The Raytrace settings at '4' give a fiery look, which could be a good effect when the ice men are about to melt

 Using a ramp shader and a bump map with a noise node in hypershade...the bump map depth is set to 0.005 to give some texture...
Next step is to continue adding lights so that the features begin to stand out