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....