OUAN406 - Designing a City

When it came to designing the city for the animation piece, it was unclear to me at first how I would approach the task. I had many different ways that it could be done, all through different means and would take varying amounts of time. At first I thought I would build it out of 3D, however, as doable as this would I would have to make it very simplified to the point where the city would lose it's character when I shot it, and I didn't have the time to create a full 3D city by myself. At this point it occurred to me that I'm putting too much emphasis on the design, when I need to make time to shoot the actual animation, so balancing the time here between design and production became something I needed to address. I needed something simpler.

Another idea that I came up with is creating the landscape in Maya. I feel I lacked the experience and ruled this out straight away from my list of options, as I would need to access facilities that were unavailable to me during certain parts of the Easter break such as when I go home, and the hardware I own isn't powerful enough to run software like Maya to the extent where I feel I can be productive. A software I am capable of using away from University however is Adobe After Effects CC. Which I also feel I am fairly competent at using despite the possible need for some assistance from the web when I hit a brick wall, for example. Nothing too complicated. My idea to keep with the overall aesthetic of the animation is to produce the buildings the same way as the interior environment and cut my designs of them using the CNC router and the laser cutter. The idea here is consistency. Even if I can't create a full 3D model of a city (which does sound ambitious now I've said that) I can try to emulate it - even to a lesser degree, by manufacturing 2D cut-outs of buildings and layering them up in After Effects before having a camera pass through them. This would give the illusion to the audience that they are moving through the city, and I feel like if I do it right, then I should have no problem using this technique.



I've started to manufacture various buildings, looking closely at the Gothic architecture from my mood board on decorative windows etc. I've tried to include cathedrals, towers, bridges etc. that I can layer over the top of one another and hopefully portray the fantasy of a city alive. Touches of steam, whether and lighting should help to create this fantasy city. Here's what I've got so far;

OUAN406 - AutoCAD

After being given a half day tutorial on AutoCAD I felt comfortable enough to go away and start producing the design of my set using the software. With certain aspects that I wanted to create it did take a little more experimentation with the program with the help of some online tutorials in order to achieve what I had in mind, such as detailed windows and how to produce accurate arches etc. Below is a series of screenshots showing the types of things I've been producing. There is a combination of buildings, windows, walls and some furniture such as the book case and the staircase. One of the hardest aspects of creating various parts of an environment in this way is imagining it as you're designing it and making sure everything is at the correct scale in order to fit and work as one final piece once everything has been cut.



Once these designs and ideas were transferred onto AutoCAD like shown above. They next had to be converted to DXF files in order to work with the software Ethos which prepared the CAD images for laser cutting. In order to do this, I selected certain objects from the document on AutoCAD and placed them onto a new document. Once the design was positioned on the corner of the page, I saved it as a DXF file, and continued this process until all of the different designs I wanted to laser cut were separated onto appropriate documents. I also had to make sure that the amount of designs I put on a single document didn't amount to more than around 90cm high, as this is just under the limit for the size of material the laser cutter can fit under the lid, on the work area.

The DXF files invert the colours of the drawing, and look like this;

OUAN406 - Learning AutoCAD

After speaking for the second time with Roger, this time with an actual design and some ideas for what I wanted to produce and to what scale. He thought that this was an appropriate project to use the CNC router and the laser cutter in order to save myself from cutting pieces of wood and cardboard by hand. It would also be more accurate and a lot quicker. In order to use these pieces of machinery however, I needed to learn how to use a piece of software called AutoCAD, which seeing how I'd never used before, Roger very kindly offered to give me a morning tutorial on it in the form of an induction.

The induction proved to be incredibly useful. I learnt how versatile AutoCAD could be as a piece of software and quickly adapted to using the keyboard in combination with the mouse to achieve certain actions such as changing settings. The first thing we covered was simple layout features such as where certain functions were located and what are the most important tools in general use. This also included turning off the grid as it wasn't necessary and changing units to mm from meters, as it is more accurate to work in a smaller unit. Finally, it was also noted that using the Esc key is something that comes in useful when deselecting certain functions.

Although the software itself is quite simple, it's amazing how much you can achieve when using it. I went over several things that I wanted to incorporate into my designs, including windows and archways because of the type of architecture, this was all easily achievable. Because a lot of my designs included straight lines, for walls and edges I used the line tool a huge amount, along with the circle tool. I think something that I found myself using frequently is the measuring tool, so that you know for sure that lines are of the correct length or circles have the radius you want for example. Another thing that became apparent quite quickly was the need to use lines no only as parts of the design, but as construction lines, so that you can build accurate designs that are made up of careful measurements. Furthermore, the software has function where you can snap lines to align with the end point of other lines when you create a line and touch the end point of another. This makes it easy to make accurate perpendicular joins quickly, and saves time overall. Another tool I was shown how to use was the trim tool, this proved to be especially useful when drawing complicated objects that needed more complex shapes than just lines and other shapes, objects that had almost a pattern to them. The trim tool allowed for certain lines to be removed, I expect this will be very useful when creating patterned windows for example. Finally, another tool I was introduced to was the offset tool. For the purpose of creating Gothic architecture this tool will be vital in enabling this, as it allows for a line or shape to be emulated a certain distance from itself. I found this comes most useful when creating layered arches over an arched door, doorway or a window frame for example.

The screenshots below show; the functions for drawing lines and shapes, and the functions for turning the grid off as well as the object snap tool and the polar tracking tool. Below that there are screenshots demonstrating drawing a measured line, the line snap function, using a point as a starting point for a shape and the measure tool showing the length of the line drawn.

OUAN4606 - The Model - Sculpting as a Craft

In terms of pre-production, sculpting or modelling physical objects can be an extremely useful design tool when communicating ideas for 3D objects or characters. It allows for an idea to come to life and be communicated through various people on different roles in an extremely literal way. As well as this, models can provide details to a set or be the moving objects in a stop motion animation. The number of uses they have is huge and varied. However, as well as them being extremely useful, they are also works of art in their own right. They are the coming to life of an idea and require an immense amount of skill to produce.

I've been looking at some of the models used in industry and some videos about how they're made. There is an enormous amount of skill required to produce characters for example made of certain reworkable materials, especially when adding small details to them that really give them their individual characteristics and define them. I've also been looking closely into maquettes. A maquette is a small scale model that is often created in the design stages of a project and is essentially a rough draft of an unfinished sculpture. The purpose of the maquette is used to visualise a physical object and test shapes, form and ideas without having to go through the labour and expense of creating a full scale model straight away. In terms of commissioned sculptures, an example would be for a monumental public sculpture, a maquette is usually and can be be used to show the client how the finished work will look and how it will fit in the proposed site or set. The term may also refer to a prototype for a video game, film, or any other type of media. Here is a quick overview of maquettes being crafted.

OUAN406 - The Model - The Importance of Character Design

Currently, I'm lacking heavily in my ability to design characters in various ways. Looking at them, they lack a dynamic appearance in both posture and personality. My visual skills aren't up to where they should be and I often create very flat, unrealistic characters because of my lack of experience working digitally for example. Character design is an incredibly important aspect of not only animation but any story based entertainment, whether it's a film or video game, it is also a long and careful process. Characters that have held their own throughout the history of entertainment appear simple and seamless on the outside, but in actual fact a huge amount of work and man hours has gone into their production and creation. The better the characters are, the more successful the product is. There is a range of principles to consider when looking at character design, that encourages a successful idea, as well as a certain level of imagination and creativity that you need as a starting point.

Firstly, it's important to remember the audience when designing not just characters but anything that is going to be featured in a piece of entertainment. This is so the aesthetic and general style of the character fits well into the context of the piece that is being produced. As well as this, I think something that I personally need to work on and is very important when designing characters is the use of colour and using an appropriate colour scheme. The reason I think this is so important is because aside from the actual design and form of a character, I feel like the next biggest contributor to their overall aesthetic is the colour, because in itself it can help to communicate a characters personality. An example of this is dark colours representing malevolence whereas light colours represent purity. Finally I think adding accessories and a more personal touch to the overall design of a character can help bring it to life dramatically. This is a key to a characters personality, but gives them a sense of realism and authenticity that otherwise perhaps wouldn't be present. I also think that accessories can also be more literal extensions of your character and add interesting details to them.

Different artists have different process when approaching the designing of characters. I often watch video tutorials on people's processes when designing characters for example, or look into step by step demonstrations of various different ways of working. This has given me lots of different insight when approaching either a brief or something I'm doing in my own time, based on the purpose and needs of the piece. Some of the ways of working I have adapted from watching the way professionals work is always to include and use references when designing not just characters but anything. However, when designing characters there is certain aspects such as anatomy that play a large part in the design so using references here is essential to create an accurate and realistic design. As well as this, I have seen a few different processes being used when the actual drawing of the character is taking place. These include, doing a line drawing, or a rough sketch of the character either digitally or traditionally before taking it into a piece of software such as Photoshop before finishing it. I have also seen artists produce rough silhouettes of a form before working into it further, so getting a good idea for the proportions of a character is another approach to the designing of a character. Another design technique I have tried to incorporate into my own design work is the use of thumbnail sketches before deciding on compositions or design routes to pursue. Sketching out several different, small character designs for one character can lead to certain design choices being realised instead of just going straight into the designing of a character and only going down one possible route when there is in fact and unlimited amount of different forms just one character idea can take.

OUAN406 - The Model

For the model making task we were asked to design a humanoid bipedal character that we could then take and model during the workshop induction. Of course the character had to be completely original so I played around with the shape of the body a bit before deciding to do something rounded and a little over the top to make an overweight character. When thinking about the proportions and body shape of the character, I did him bent backwards slightly as if he was trying to counterbalance the weight of his stomach. I drew some simple items of clothing on him to get an idea for his character and mannerisms, these consisted of a long coat with a shirt underneath, trousers, and boots. I also gave him some steampunk-esque goggles to generate a certain theme or aesthetic within the characters demeanor. Overall I'm quite pleased with how the character turned out on paper, but thought I had perhaps included too much detail or made it too complex considering I had never made a model like this before.

The first thing we did upon starting the workshop induction is draw our character out again, but simplified and in the T position. Meaning, the characters stance is one where their legs are straight and their arms are pointed outwards perpendicular to their body. This was so we could get an idea of their proportions and a general idea of the height and width of our characters. In order to make the initial armature or frame work for our models we were given some connectors and some wire. I didn't have enough conductors to produce the width of the character that I wanted as well as the shoulders so I decided to sacrifice on on the shoulders and create five across the waist and three across the neck, or shoulders. This gave us the general idea of how the proportions of the character would be. The wire part of the armatures was created using a two meter length piece of wire and folding it in half before using a drill to twist it together, the drill produced a very evenly twisted wire, perfect for what we needed. Then came making the arms, legs, head and body of the model. This part was difficult and quite intricate, it also required tools such as pliers to cut any excess wire. The final part of the first stage was adding a material called milliput. Milliput is a putty where once you combine the two components that make it up and model around something, it goes hard over the course of a few hours. We placed the milliput on the limbs of our models, the forearms and legs etc until it was a much sturdier model, that was able to stand up by itself. The armature at this point was ready for the next stage which is adding the plasticine to model the body.

The second session of the model workshop consisted of modelling the bodies of our characters using plasticine and various tools to help us sculpt the material. First however, to make sure the plasticine would stay on the model we covered them in elastoplast which are the plasters that are used to cover up small cuts. The purpose of this was to not only allow the plasticine to stick to the model, but to make sure the milliput and the plasticine didn't mix together, and remained separate. We then began modelling our characters. Due to the size and shape of the character I was trying to sculpt I had to use quite a lot of materials. To save the character from being too heavy however, I used newsprint and moulded that around his body to get the shapes of his stomach and back. Once the general shape of the body features had been established I used the plasticine to create a covering, making sure arms and legs for example were proportionate to his body. I tried to be accurate when it came to the anatomy of my model but I unfortunately made the legs too short, hopefully when I add clothes to the final model that problem will be eradicated. The final stage of the sculpting process included me making sure he had hair and facial features. A lot of this part was done by cutting other pieces of plasticine and adding them to the model that way, rather than just moulding the material that was already there. The hardest part of the sculpting process was his nose, but it turned out okay in the end, if I had more time I would have added more detail to his face and made his overall body more accurate and proportionate.

From here it was time to make the mould for casting the model in the final session. So we laid out our models onto a thick piece of clay and built walls around it so that when we pour the plaster over the model it doesn't leak out and creates half the mould we'll need for the final casting session. The most important part of the process here apart from making sure the walls were solid was to make sure that the clay surrounding the model was pushed up to it, so that non of the liquid plaster got underneath or to where it wasn't supposed to. We then poured the plaster around the model and left it for around 30 minutes so it hardened. Once this process was complete we could remove the walls and half of the mould was complete.

The fourth session we had was very similar to the previous one only that we were casting the opposite side of the model with plaster so that we had, after this process, both halves of a mould that we could use to make replicas of the model we had sculpted. After this we placed the model face down rather than face up on the base of the mould, and again constructed walls around it to hold in the plaster once it was poured in. Repeating the process from the previous session and letting the plaster set for 30 minutes, we then had two halves to a complete mould ready for casting in the final session.

During the final session, I was able to create two foam models using the process that Don showed us. The first step to do this was opening up our moulds and adding a layer of wax to the plaster mould and the areas around the mould that would need to be separated after the process was complete. This was called the separating agent, and was made up in this case of solid wax and Turpentine, a white spirit. The two piece of the mould are then put together and a tight piece of elastic placed around the outside to hold the mould together. The pouring mixture when would become the foam model then had to be mixed. The mixture had to parts which had to be mixed in the ratio of 2:1, anything less or more than thing produced the wrong consistency. The weights of the two liquid of my character relative to its size were 80g of one and 40g of the other. Once the two substances had been put together, you had to stir very rigorously for about 10 seconds because it activated quite quickly, before pouring into the mould. Once it had been poured in it took around 20 minutes to set properly before we could start to remove the mould. The model itself turned out quite well, however some of the facial details were lost because of the foam process but it worked quite well overall, there was just some excess foam that had to be removed.

OUAN406 - Maya Animation Skills

Turntable

The turntable was an incredible easy process to do on Maya. There are two main ways I'm aware of that make a turnaround animation for a modelled object. The first, is to create a circular curve around the object and create a camera. Then you join the two and create a motion path for the camera to follow, giving a 360 degree view of the object. Depending on the amount of frames used also determines the speed the camera moves around the object. I found around 200 frames is a good amount of time for the camera to move around the object. The second way is using the turntable object which is under the animate tab. All you need to do is go animate>turntable and it create the turn around animation for you. Overall this was a straight forward task but incredibly useful when showing off 3D objects from all angles.

Pendulum

The pendulum was the first animation we created using Maya, and it was easier to create the movement than I thought. Again, it used the principles of keyframes which at this point I was quite familiar with because having used them quite a lot. The main purpose of this task was to apply the principles of animation to the pendulum through the software. Furthermore, this task also taught me how to use motion graphs in order to modify the movement within the swing of the pendulum.

Overlapping Action

The method used to demonstrate overlapping action was to animate a segmented pendulum. Using what we learnt making the normal pendulum, this time after the basic motion of the pendulum was made you could go and modify the smaller aspects to create the overlapping action. The graph editor came in very useful when changing the movement of various sections of the segmented pendulum.

Bouncy Balls

The last task was quite free and experimental in contrast to the other tasks we had attempted. It involved creating the movement for balls bouncing up and down. It was important to make use of the keyframes and the axis to move the balls along it. The final detail we added was a squash effect for one of the bouncy balls to give it a sense of realism and applying the principles of animation.

Anticipation

The anticipation task was another really easy process. It involved creating an objects and then creating a curved path. When you link the object to the curve under the option 'create motion path' the object follows the shape of the curve. It's important here to make sure the curve is an elegant shape so the movement is smooth and consistent.

OUAN406 - Maya Modelling Skills

Keep On Truckin'

This task was to introduce us as a class to the basics of working in the 3D software package, Maya. This was my first time using the software and at first it looked daunting due to the amount of features and functions it had packed into it. However, after following the step by step guide that was given to us in order to create the simple truck, I feel much more confident. The guide showed us how to produce basic shapes and move them around the work area along the x, y and z axis. One of the more difficult parts about the software I found was maneuvering around the software and changing the direction and view that the camera had, which is one of the most straight forward aspects to the software. It was quite satisfying however seeing the object we were trying to create come together in front of you despite its simplicity. I was starting to understand the way the software worked and realised how versatile it was. There were some functions that made the process easier, like the ability to duplicate objects so you don't have to produce the same shape over and over for example. My favourite part of the tutorial was rendering the image with lighting, it was incredibly gratifying seeing a full rendered composition of the objects I had made including the realistic daylight mode that we rendered in. I tried my best to produce some dramatic and interesting compositions before rendering out the objects, below are the final results.



Do it Yourself

For this task we had to use what we learn in Maya on the first task and apply it again in order to model a new object of our choice. I thought I would do something fairly simple since I didn't feel overly confident with Maya at this stage. The object I decided to model was a pencil. The process was quite straight forward and using a reference I was able to get the proportions of the different pencil sections fairly accurate. The main tool I used was the 'extrude' tool, used to extend the different sections and also shape the tip of the pencil for example. Overall I'm quite happy with how the object turned out, and I tried a range of different angles and positions before I rendered the final images.

OUAN406 - Interim Crit - Feedback

During the interim critique for the applied animation module I was given some insight into the types of projects people are working on and their process so far. Whilst seeing how other people were handling the briefs we'd been set I felt quite inspired as to the thought that people had put into the work they were doing and felt quite motivated afterwards.

I found the feedback and response to my presentation very helpful. My presentation included the book I had chosen to work on and the work I had done in terms of research so far; this included aspects such as mood boards, initial artwork, storyboards, and reference material. Which in this case predominantly included title sequences. After my presentation certain points were raised about my project. Firstly, the use of sound. I was asked what I was considering in terms of sound. At this point I had thought about music that could fit and contribute to the dramatic shots that I want to feature in the animation such as harsh or visceral orchestral music featuring cellos and violins as I thought this 'Sherlock Holme-esque' style of audio would work best given the world the story is set in. Aside from this, I hadn't really though much about sound effects but if I were to include them they would be bustling city sounds as well as the sounds of steam and other industrial noises given the context of the surroundings.

Another point raised was the positioning or use of credits within the animation. I feel there are two ways in which this can be done at least that I have seen so far, and that is to place the credits over the top of the title sequence using the sequence as a background. The other is to incorporate the titles into objects in the animation to make the placement of the credits seem much more seamless and natural rather than placing them over the top which is an the idea that is appealing to me at the moment out of the two.

Next, someone mentioned sourcing materials for the sets. Which was already something I really needed to think about. It was mentioned that there is a miniature fair in Birmingham which often displays miniatures at 1/12th scale in terms of size. This is something at this point I need to start looking into because I need to make the most of my time. I also had a quick look online to see if I could find anything. There is an abundance of miniature furnishings and sets online but the only problem is the price, so I should probably keep looking in order to find something more affordable within the constraints and limitations of the project.

Finally, Mat mentioned I should reconsider my idea for building the set for the city in the same way I plan to build the set for the lab. There is a few ways I could do this, firstly a compromise on the making idea, and build layers of a city rather than a full 3D model. Another way the city set could be achieved is to make it using 3D software in order to emulate the 3D city. Finally, still using 3D software I could draw the layers of the city and layer them to create a space for the camera to move through. The only problem with some of these ideas is making it so the transition between different scenes or sets is seamless and isn't too much of a jump in style. I thought that perhaps making it in 3D and then transitioning this to the stop motion set may be too different. So I will talk to Roger in the metal and wood workshop in order to get another opinion of what is possible given the time I have allocated myself to this section of the project which is around four to six weeks.