Day of the Days

Everyone is saying that Friday the 13th is a unlucky day,
I say it is not.

I got a extension of 3 days (plus weekend) because of my
exhibition I had for the Kinetic Fair art and for the Digital Stage festival.

Now I have enough time to finish my animation and Hugh can relaxed also
finish the sound for it because he is done with his double project.

I will upload later a preview.

6days left

I'm back from Germany,
And now I have 6 days left.

The sound is going well, I hope I will get it soon.
I'm now doing the last cuts with Final Cut and After Effects.

In the same time I'm writing my Artefact and portfolio and the evaluation of process and performance.

I hope in the next days I will upload some new videos so you can have a look on it.

Small over view

So, what Have I done so far in the last view month.

I started first with watching the tutorial collation about Paint Effects.
This took me around 3 Weeks of watching and learning how Paint Effects at maya
Works. After this I started to produce my first own Paint Brushes.

In this time I learnt new view and possibility's how to work with Maya.

I had then to set up my Storyboard so I can stared with the shoots.
At the beginning I had a lot of shots because I wanted to make the whole building.
But in the time of working and spending time on details, I realized that there is
not enough time. So I had to decide between making everything or going into detail.

I decided that going into detail is more important then setting up all rooms of the building. The reason is that my abstract artefact is about the nature reclaiming the man building. And nature is a beauty and this beauty needs to be shown. So that's why I have to go into detail and it is not important to produce all rooms of the building.

The sound is the second important part of the Animation. Because of the abstract and the hidden story behind it, is it important to have the right sound.
After a talk with Hugh, we got the solution that we need a folie sound but not a music-track. The sounds of growing plaints and moving brunches will give the Animation the feeling of reality and true happening.

Just a taste

Finally,
I managed to render this sequence after my Laptop crashed more then once. I have copied all my files, 37GB, and project to my Desk-computer and tried to render everything there. and it worked. It was important for me to render it once in a high quality, so I can see how it look like and see the mistakes (like the window part there is some small stuff to be finxed, or the light).






This is still not done, need still some hours of work. I still need to render 5 layers what needs to be added on the flower, flying in the air, ceiling and Light. But it is going well.

So Far

Hello everyone,

I thought would be interesting to upload my first drawings for the storyboard just to have it commented.

Well

The rendering of the Layers is mostly done. I have already 37GB of frames. I hope it will not get higher then 40gb or I have to start deleting stuff from my laptop.

If everything work well today I will finish my next sequence and upload it.

This sequence is one of the hardest because it is made right now with 37 different renders layers and it is still not finished. I'm trying to give it a good deap into thats why I'm using all those layers.

so see you soon.

First Sound

Well first I will talk about what today I got.
Hugh got me the first edit of the sound, and I really, really like it.
We had then a talk about it.
We will not use a sound track or any music track as background, there will be only the sounds and voices of the growing plants, movements and there "communication".

There is the first edit:





How you can see, the sound is a bit longer then the animation, I need to ask Hugh why this is but some how like this it will be sound :)


After the meeting with Hugh, I met my supervisor Ray. And went over my project. There where a deep talking about Universe and light and non-seen sound. what was really helpful.

Because I'm flying tomorrow to Germany for 6 days, I was using the last days just
for rendering different layers. Those layers will be used with after effects to make
the final edit.

I have now to stop writing because I need some sleep before my fly. I will finish my writing after arriving.

No coventgarden

So,
I actually didn't like the idea of changing all my project to putting place in Covent Garden because the idea behind my concept will be damaged. How ever, this doesn't mean that the Media production group are not allowed to use my designs.

My supervisor want me to take pictures of my storyboard-wall what I have in my room because this will be interesting to see how it is in process. So I will do this tomorrow when I'm back from Uni or on Friday.


I have changed the window shot and have now stars at the background.

but now I am really tired and can't see the keyboard any more, I will post tomorrow then some new stuff... good night.

Starting with Edit

Well it is not done, there will be some changes (well in the time of uploading I have changed alot of light setups) but just for demonstrate how it will look like.

This is one of the shots (the secound shot after showing the building)




How some of you have relzed in the background is the coven garden. This is because I'm helping a group from the Media production module. They want to transfer coven garden in to a "alien"-forest and will be used my plants :)

Walls and Windows

So, well There are the render shots of my window detail and a short view of the wall staff, Is going better and better.

Tomorrow I think I will start to make my first editing.

This is a detail shot from the Window, I will use as background a star-sky.
maybe I will render it again because there are some bits growing just like this in the air and not from the wall.


The next one will be used to cover the walls.

So far

I started editing the first stuff together and this is how it look like so far.
I needed some hours until I found a way how to combine light with painteffects. It is a bit tricky but it works :) now I need to make some better light setups, because the turning on and off is not smooth.




it still looks empty but no more long :)

Sound and Folie

So,
The meeting with my supervisor today was really helpful.
We managed to get my soundtrack and folie be done by someone else.
That mean I can more focus on my Animation and, the important part,
The lighting and Atmosphere. Also we talked about how I will present
my work with my other skills and got new ideas how to make my shots.

Before this I had a talk with a teacher how had a look on my work, and
she had brilliant ideas for me how to make the shots in a way to give
a good feeling of everything.

Till next week I have to be done my storyboard and also done some renderings
of it, that means I have long nights and a "one day"-weekend.

Storyboard Changes

Well,
After I have done my test renders and trying around how to make the lighting this good as possible, I have realized that there is not really time to make the animation how I would like to have it. At the beginning I was talking about Nature reclaiming a Building. But if one plant-shot needs around 25-50sec. there is no way to make the reclaiming of all flours. This Wednesday I will have a Meeting with my Supervisor and talk about couple of subjects. First obviously about the storyboard. But then I have also to start now to think about the Folie and the Music. Because I need to know if
I will produce it or if I a friend, how is making his BA in Sound, can produce it for me.

This Weekend I will hopeful scan my first Storyboard and publish it for you.
------------------forgot to Publish----------------

Render Tests

I started now to take a look what difrence are making the rendering of Maya Software and Mental Ray.

Also I have just done some tests about Paint effects and polygons.
Basically after finishing setting up the animation of the Paint effect I transferred it to poly.
Then I have animated it once as Poly and once as Painteffect. to see the difference.

This one is rendered with Mental-ray.




This one is rendered with Mayasoftware,at the end the right one is a Painteffect and the left one is a Poly object.



For now on I think there is not really big difference what I will use but because there is no light in the scene, I am sure that there will be changes after this.
So I started now to make some tests with light and will again render once in mental ray and once and mayasoftware and decide what will be better.

The New World

So far, Is long time I didn't tell you what I have done, but I hope  you understand
if I say I had some problems with my teeth and had to operate my teeth root.

But anyway now is everything fine and in this time I have done a lot of stuff.

I started with creating my own brushes and starting with animating tests to see
how they look like.

I have done so far two preview render:

number one:



number two:





It was not this easy to give them the right shape, still now I'm thinking to make
small changes like for example give them something like bioluminescence and
hearth so to give them more the taste of being alive and real.

There are some frame renders of some designs.

Year Break

Hello everyone.

I hope you had a nice join into the New Year. I flied to Germany and have a good time.

Also I went there to take a look at the building again and make some shoots and scenes there for the montage of my first scene. But unluckily the weather is not playing in a right way with me, so I have to wait until the snow is gone and have a good day for filming. If not so I will use just pictures from past time what I had made.

After I have modelt the flower I had the problem with the animation of growing with polygons.

A good friend of my, told me to use Paint effects or just take a look on paint effects. So I did and I have seen that there is a lot of possibility what could help me. I get some learning DVD’s about Paint effects in Autodesk Maya and started watching them and making the tutorials and yesterday I finally finished all DVD’s. I think I’m now ready to start with the painting.