Digital Painting Test

Digital Painting tests today!
Here's my first attempt at a still life, using my Intuos Pro graphics tablet,  oil pastel Loish Brushes http://blog.loish.net/image/95581043273, and 3 values...

Critical Review - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button...

2 hours 45 minutes. A case of an edit that could easily have been half the time and told the same story.
Interestingly, I had no compassion whatsoever for the main characters and thought their relationship was particularly empty.
Personally I thought the idea behind the story was weak and felt that the emphasis on Benjamin Buttion naturally becoming more self centred, as he progressed through teenage years could have had some mileage and created some good heated moments, between him and his teenage daughter and wife.
However, the main emphasis of the film seemed to centre around CG imagery and the unique idea of someone becoming physically and mentally younger as the film progressed....

No matter how impressive the visual effects are, I believe if the foundation idea and story is shaky, then that will prevail and can never be disguised....

Dundee Design Festival - Reflective Practice - 'Hands of X'

Hands of X "If amputees could each specify their own prosthetic hand as bespoke digital fabrications..." A participatory workshop with Andrew Cook and Graham Pullin http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/staff/grahampullin/

I attended the Pecha Kucha Volume 15 http://creativedundee.com/2016/04/pecha-kucha-volume-15/, at the West Ward Works in Dundee last night. noticed this exhibit, as part of the Dundee Design Festival exhibition.

It was during the break and there was some very uplifting piano music playing above the sound of chatter..

This piece was full of hope and compassion. Members of the public had completed the sheets 'Hands of X' either on behalf of someone else of their own personal preferences.

This one was completed by a man for his wife. I remember seeing Graham Pullin present a lecture about computer generated voices (Stephen Hawking) and how the choice of voice is currently very limited....and would people desire a choice in the voice they had?

These bespoke prosthetic hands reminded me of this idea....and that despite experiencing amputation, or loss, people could have the opportunity of creating something unique and special as a result....

This is the essence of the theme of my current project THAW.....

A need for transformation and hope....

Critical Review - The Jungle Book

Date night this week...a 'surprise' trip to the cinema. I didn't know what we were going to see, until the classification screen came up....'The Jungle Book'...

I had not seen any reviews. WOW!

Here's the 'making of' official trailer and the director sums it up, both from a technical viewpoint and a storytelling viewpoint..."What makes it possible to make this movie 'now' is the technology to make photo realistic animals animated.......Films have to be an emotional experience for the audience. You have to tell a good story. I wanted to hold that standard. If I am engaged emotionally with the characters, all the spectacle was worth it."

The technical expertise was incredible and the shot sequences were amazing. The opening sequence sees Mogli being chased by wolves....there is one particular shot where Mogli shoots along a tree branch away from the audience...instead of powering behind Mogli, the camera pulls with full force in the opposite direction, drawing us as the audience backwards with G force speed...the result is that Mogli seems to run even faster.

I was struck by how the animals were not only realistic in their appearance and movement, but that their inherent character wasn't diluted, made frothy or made simple in anyway.
I was completely convinced by the acting of all animals and their interaction with Mogli.
Other than a couple of shots, namely the Panther (Bagheera) running up a cliff, or slumping onto a tree branch) I couldn't tell at all what was CG and what wasn't.

I would love to be on a crew that created such a masterpiece. What a joy to experience.

TOY SCANDAL 'Hunny Bunny Stole My Money': 3D CG Animation

TOY SCANDAL 'Hunny Bunny Stole My Money': Going Live group project with Axis Animation, Glasgow. May 2016

   

TOY SCANDAL - Going Live Vimeo -Axis Animation from Andrea McSwan on Vimeo.

Going Live - TOY SCANDAL Report: Axis Animation.

In addition to screening our final film 'TOY SCANDAL - Hunny Bunny Stole My Money' to Axis Animation, we presented a report of our own individual contribution, within the project.

In Bruges - reflective practice

Whilst watching 'In Bruges' this week, I was struck by the opening title sequence, and the lighting on the buildings. The background was pitch black and only the architecture had minimal lighting.

I was putting together some early lighting tests in Maya at the time, to show ice figures being lit by light, and the images were very similar...

My final film THAW has a theme of transformation and hope, so the lighting will actually be dramatic sunlight pouring through back lit ice....and not dark...but interesting to see the effects, none the less...

Inspirational images - rim and fill lights

I noticed this wallpaper image on Li's laptop, whilst we were in the edit suite today. I was struck by the rim light coming through the cherry blossom on the tree.

It gave me an idea for my film 'THAW'. The final shots of the film show a flower growing from a crack in the pavement. I am thinking that I could include a tree like this in the opening shots,,,backlit and showing a subtle reference, early on in the film, towards growth and flowering....

I think I am currently obsessed with rim and fill lighting too!

Ice Tests in Maya

So here we go...creating ice effects in Maya for my film project 'THAW'
I am going to create some tests involving imported models and a Youtube tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VqvNRCWKbg on how to create ice in Maya.

Here's a screen grab of progress so far....
So far I've applied a Blinn material to the figure and have been adjusting the transparency, ray trace and shadow settings and have imported a couple of spot and point lights...
Next step is to start applying noise to the ice.

Final edit of 'Toy Scandal'

Our final day of editing and putting the audio onto our film 'Toy Scandal'!

Monday is our presentation day....this project has been so much fun and what a massive learning curve. Absolutely brilliant...Team Scandal!

Establishing shot - lighting and scene setting

Presentation to Axis Animation in Glasgow, this coming Monday.

Great fun creating the establishing shot today and yesterday....putting all of the furniture, and set dressing into the scene and then creating the lighting...

On reflection, I think we should have created this scene first, and then all of the subsequent scenes thereafter..., so that we had lots of dressing in the shot....

Li and I put furniture, lamps and shelves into this scene, but I decided that the following shots, particularly shot_04 would look very bare, and the jump from a cluttered scene would be too much...

So this is the paired down version, which I think works well. I used the 'bare' wall (left hand side of the frame) as an opportunity to create some strong sunlight. I particularly like how the lights shines through the window of the dollshouse. This area also lends itself well for the DJCAD logo, at the start of the film.

Two more shots to import into Premiere tomorrow and then I think we are there!

What a great project to work on! 

Whilst lighting, I kept in mind, the concept visual below, that I created early on in the pipeline....I can see that it would have been useful to put a lot more content into the visual below. Experience to take forward onto the next film....

First comp shots in Premiere

A quick peek at the first comp shots, that have been put into Premiere.
Some of the shots are still in for render, so the storyline jumps in parts - however, it's given us a chance to double check lighting levels and lip sync at this point...

Light 'Linking' and 'parenting' in Maya

More fun today creating the lighting for shots_00 and 08!

For the opening scene (shot_00) we see a pile of toys.

I cheated the direction light outside the windows and brought it closer and and lowered it down to create the sunlight on the wall. For the sunlight spilling across the floor I used a golden coloured point light and spot lights to create  colour pools of 'bounce' light.

The bounce light is so much fun to create...I selected an orange spotlight to create the 'bounce' from the orange wooden disc close to He-Man's arm, and a blue spotlight to create a blue highlight near the robot's ear, and some cool blue 'daylight' to wash across the rabbit at the top of the cardboard box...

Creating these pools of light has brought back some great childhood memories. I used to help my Gran make jelly. The glass bowl we used caught the sunlight that spilled through the window, and I was fascinated by the 'glass' looking jelly cubes, as they changed shape and dissolved into the steaming water, turning it bright orange....

Maya Interface for shot_08, showing a small 'tear off' copy panel of the camera view, plus another panel showing the rendered image.

Rendered frames of shot_08. One of the starting frame and another at the end. The robot moves across the screen in this shot, and I wanted to make sure that the accent lights that hit the robot's head and shoulders, didn't spill out onto the set.

I achieved this by 'light linking' and 'parenting'.

The light linking option is found in the Relationship Editor, under 'Light Linking'. Chosing the light-centric option I can then select the light on the left hand panel, and the object in the adjacent right panel and highlight them.

I recall lighting cameramen on set, using 'flags' (black fabric rectangles clamped to lighting stands) to block light from spilling everywhere.

I used the 'parenting' option on the Robot to make sure that the lights that hit his shoulders move with him, so that he doesn't suddenly go into shadow as he moves across the shot.

Maya Lighting, Ambient Occlusion and Depth Passes

More fun creating lighting for Shot_07.

I have tried to replicate the window frame shadow, which is cast on the wall, across He-Man's shield.

I love how the light and shadows pick out the detail of the geometry on the shield.

Ambient Occlusion Render Pass (AO)

Depth Pass (Mental Ray)...with a pregnant looking He-Man haha

Lighting in Maya

So, these are my first ever lighting set ups in Maya...

Alwin. H, Kuchler http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0473696/ known for Divergent (2014), Sunshine (2007) and Hanna (2011) was the lighting cameraman on my set design graduation film 'The Shaman'...

I have a funny memory of him on set, calling out to his assistant, in a very strong German accent

"Can I have an Inky-Dinky please and a quarter two see bee"

This translated was a small light with a light coloured blue transparency gel to fit over the bulb...lol

Lighting in Maya has been one of the best parts of creating a virtual world.

So much fun!

Here's some shots of He-Man with GuessWho in the background. 

I've basically chosen lights that give He-Man a blue daylight wash, plus some bounce light in red, to indicate sunshine hitting the GuessWho plastic.

I've included some screen grabs below to show the Maya interface and the creation and position of the lights...

Shot_05

Shot_09

Shot_18

I suggested we put some books on the window cill, so it looks as if the house is lived in. This set dressing should be 'invisible'...just putting a couple of touches of set dressing here and there (I learnt that on Pie in the Sky, when I was the on set art director) really helps to make the set look more convincing...

a bare window cill would stand out.

I'm very happy with the wallpaper, as it is a non-descript pattern and colour, and again makes the house look more convincing.

I chose a generic street scene as the background plate, in keeping with the modern style of house that we have created.

All of these shots have rendered out really well over the weekend.

As there are four of us lighting different shots, I suggested we put our rendered 25% images into and Premiere so we can get a quick look at the colour script...this sequence is fairly warm...

That way if any shots particularly stand out and look different from the rest, we have a heads up, before the compositing team get started.

I also suggested that where we have similar camera angles (such as the ones shown here) so that whoever did the lighting for that view, does the lighting for the other similar shots too; simply exporting the lights as a selection from the previous shot, and importing and tweaking where necessary..

Shot_28

Shot_29

Next step this week is compositing, where these rendered frames will be imported into Nuke, where we can add dust, focus pull, grain and of course....God Rays!!!! haha

Maya interface for Shot_31 which I am currently working on. 

Ringed in yellow are the red warm light, and blue daylight for the GuessWho board. I set the small daylight blue lamp (an Inky Dinky with a 1/4 2CB lol) to the side of the game and fairly low. This is so the daylight will skip and bounce through the flaps as they move.

I love how the light really picks up on the material finish (shiny plastic) of the game. Stathis made an excellent job of creating the model in Maya and Elena's drawn GuessWho faces are brilliant.

Lighting for He-Man

Overhead, set fairly high and low intensity. Blue and Gold. Each of his shoulders has it's own light. One blue, one red, set at a higher intensity.

Maya interface, showing the render fly out panel, and the option of just rendering a region (red rectangle, ringed in yellow). This gives the option of a very quick render, rather than waiting for the entire shot to load.

He-Man red overhead light, shown highlighted green (ringed in yellow) in the Perspective view, the 

attributes panel (ringed in yellow on the right) where I can adjust the intensity, colour, conical size, and the render panel which gives me a snap shot of how it will look.