How to present your work...trying to understand rendering and mental ray

Yesterday I was working on rigs for Without a soul...in the meantime  I tried to render some images from The Keeper. I'm trying to understand all the issues connected with rendering: final gather, ambient occlusion etc.

Here you can find some tests. It is a brilliant way of spotting mistakes in modelling:

Week 9 - production diary

• Monday - Modelling. UV mapping. Crash Flash 
• Tuesday - UV mapping. Repairing modelling mistakes. Blog updates. Individual tutorials:

Meeting with Sharon was mainly focused on our presentation and conceptual research connected with my specialisms. Points discussed:

Modelling and Rigging:

• Concentrate more on magical mood of the movie and bring that it into the modelling
• Understand theme and back story of the film how that reflects modelling
• Story of environment
• Making sure that creative decision making is well documented
• Meeting with Caroline Wilkinson
• Looking at the forensic department VLE facial anatomy videos
• Life drawing, self portraits examples, more primary reaserch and personal aproach working with my own body, imagination, internla visyalisation  movemnt workshops with Tricia
• Bringing experience of physical sculpture into digital realm
• Working on armature
• Speaking to fine art and sculpting
• Without a soul - trying to project sad, moody, strangely sentimental mood, again understanding the story
• Stop motion armature: less is more, knowlege who is the first person to rig etc 
• Watching special features
• More conceptual research

• Wednesday - UV mapping, modelling, cleaning the scene
• Thursday - life drawing, UV mapping, The Keeper workshop enviroment signed off, watching rigging tutorials (DT introduction to rigging in Maya)
• Friday - Watching DT rigging tutorials , evening work
• Weekend  - work at the pub, technical disaster -my laptop died

And here are some screen shoots from  The Keeper environment modelling process:

Production diary. 4th year so far ...

Summer:

Meeting with Slava. Discussing workload. Deciding about production roles. Working on The Keeper modelling. Learning Illustrator

 Week 1 

Week 1 A crazy, crazy week.  Changes to the brief meant a lot of time was wasted while people reorganised their schedules and decide about projects.

• Monday - Mostly taken up with the welcome day. Dancing Nina schedule is done. Contacting dancers both in Poland and Scotland. Thank you letters Ireland. 
• Tuesday - More housekeeping. preparing for a group crit.
• Wednesday - the group crit all day event. I met Jin our new tutor.  Dancing Nina crit had surprising outcome. Jin thought that idea is great and 3d will kill it. I'm shattered.  Animation Night Out in the evening. Discussing changes with Sharon. Sleepless night.
• Thursday - Life Drawing. Decision is made. Nina is not happening any more.
• Friday - Group meeting with the team. Introducing the news.  First Design and the Market module day, but no tutor. Allocation of Supervisors & Maya Questions in the afternoon. 
• Weekend - usual working in the pub.Trying to figure out what I will be doing this year. trying to answer myself a question what I want to do in general.

Week 2

• Monday - Program of Study meeting. Lots of disruptions.  2D Production Support with Andy Eracleous for The keeper.  Modelling bits and pieces for the Keeper.
• Tuesday - Modelling. Started organising Degree show.
• Wednesday - Design and the Market Meeting with Mike Press cancelled
• Thursday - Life Drawing followed by modelling
• Friday - Design and the Market
• Weekend  - work at the pub

Week 3  

• Monday - Design and the Market Meeting with Mike Press. Modelling. Degree show stuff.
• Tuesday - Modelling. London on the line. We have a venue for our degree show! :)
• Wednesday - Modelling. Work in the evening .
• Thursday - Life Drawing followed by modelling. Overnight bus to London
• Friday - EurogamerExpo. Overnight bus back to Dundee.
• Weekend  - work at the pub 

Week 4

• Monday -Bob Last workshop. 2 meetings. Modelling.
• Tuesday - Modelling.
• Wednesday - Peer review. Introducing my personal project.
• Thursday - Life Drawing.
• Friday - Design and the market
• Weekend  - work at the pub.

Week 5 

• Monday - Modelling. Moving to uv mapping and OMG I forgot how to uv map. digital Turors session.
• Tuesday - UV mapping. Repairing modelling mistakes
• Wednesday - Illusionist screening, question and answers. Tutorials in the afteroon.
• Thursday - Life Drawing.more UV mapping
• Friday - Design and the Market
• Weekend  - work at the pub 

Week 6 reading week

• Monday - Modelling. UV mapping
• Tuesday - Meeting with Jeanette Paul, Chris Rowland and Sharon Campbell regarding course concerns. UV mapping. Repairing modelling mistakes
• Wednesday - UV mapping. Repairing modelling mistakes
• Thursday - UV mapping. Repairing modelling mistakes
• Friday - Design and the Market; trip to Edinburgh, Scotland Loves Animation: Education Day 19th October
• Weekend  - work at the pub

Week 7

• Monday - Modelling. UV mapping
• Tuesday - UV mapping. Repairing modelling mistakes
• Wednesday - Production meetings  for 3 projects. The keeper, Without a soul and personal project. Introducing my personal project to Andy. Why I'm not animating?  
• Thursday - Life drawing
• Friday -Modelling, uv mapping and more of life drawing.
• Weekend  - work at the pub 

Week 8

• Monday - Modelling. UV mapping
• Tuesday - UV mapping. Repairing modelling mistakes
• Wednesday - UV mapping, Artist’s Talk by Anke Feuchtenberger, chaired by Dr. Christopher Murray
  
• Thursday - UV mapping, work in the evening
• Friday - by body refuse to work.  Dying in my bed.
• Weekend  - work at the pub, some observational drawing to keep me happy

Dancing Nina ....life and death of a project.

In the beginning of the 4th year we have been introduced to a new/old brief. I will not go in too much detail about what changed and what not. I will just say that as a result of changes and new requirements I decided not to go ahead with Dancing Nina project. It was a bit painful for me to depart with something that was so close to me, but it was an invaluable lesson how to give away your own ideas.  I had a chance to work as: idea originator, script writer, concept artist, storyboard artist, character designer, production coordinator and director.

Here you can find some work from this project:

 

 

 

A day in London: Eurogamer Expo

Thanks to Laura I had decided to go to London for a day. It was amazing! In one day I manage to see  an impressive Edward Munch exhibition at the Tate Modern, take part in Eurogamer Expo and see a   Sasha Waltz & Guests show at The Sadler's Wells.

Eurogamer Expo

Was so inspiring! I got to talk with industry professionals. The Creative Assembly team was particularly helpful. Kevin McDowell and Pawel Wojs gave me such constructive and in depth feedback. Chatting with Kevin McDowell  was the most valuable part for me, full of very insightful advice.

 I attended lectures as well.

• Careers in Games - Being an Indie 
• Games Education - Get in the Game
• Careers in Games - 
  Funding and How to Get It 

Carla, Laura and myself also booked a meeting at the BAFTA Career Surgeries at Virgin Media stand, this wasn't as useful as the woman we got to talk to was from another area of game design, but it was still useful insight into another aspect of the overall process.

Summer trips...

Over the summer I was mainly modelling for Nuria's Valdeon film The Keeper.  In between working in the pub, modelling and trying to enjoy Scottish summer I went to Edinburgh to take part in an event  organised by  Screen Academy Scotland in partnership with BECTU, BAFTA in Scotland and Scottish Drama Training Network. The day  included The marketplace and  Specialist Panel Discussions. Very informative was a panel discussion titled  'Design & VFX: Working together in new territory - Clash or Collaboration'. Industry speakers: Anna Skrein ( Art Dept Coordinator, Skyfal), Mark Leese (Production Designer) and Scott Taylor (VFX Supervisor) discussed the current expansion of VFX in low to mid-budget films and in television. Another interesting talk was delivered by Jamie King (Vodo.net) and Peter Gerard (Distrify.com) and it covered on-line film distribution and exhibition. 


Another event I went to was the Dare Indie Fest - a series of talks and presentations. Both Indie Fest and Dare ProtoPlay competition was held on 10-12 August 2012 at Caird Hall in Dundee.  All of the talks were very interesting. But some of them really made me think about future of games. One of my favourite talks  were delivered by Chris Wright from Game Analytic and Movingtargets. Both presentations covered the problem of audience engagement.

In early September I went to Dublin!!!!!

I visited two amazing animation studios JamMedia and BoulderMedia.

Summer update...Veggie pirates

I must admit I'm pretty rubbish with keeping this blog up to date. In text few posts you will try to draw a picture of what I've been up to over past few moths..

I will start with some spring/summer work on a student degree film Veggie Pirates. For a Veggie Pirates I did some inbetweening, colouring and a tiny bit of key frame animation.

You can find Veggie Pirates production at http://veggiepirates.blogspot.co.uk/

But to the point:

Some inbetweening of mine:

Scene 45...a little scene, but what a pain ;)

 

And Scene 43

Finally some key frames....scene 28.