Happy_Endings_30/10/13

Today I have finally gotten into the groove of UV mapping.

I have managed to so far, UV map 7 models, some which have proved kind of difficult to map.
I have started trying new ways to map. Such as layering faces of the UV map that are going to be textured the same which saves space and time.

I have also done a quick texture test to make sure this would work and it turned out really good.

Here are a few more of the UV maps I have succesfully produced today:


Bookshelf:

Crayons and Box:

Lamp:

I have also had a lot of discussion with Jitesh on UV mapping and texturing the flowers I modelled which seem to be coming along nicely. Jica is touching up our storyboard which is great, Marc is modelling the little girl (Katie) and Zak is modelling the hospital room which I am currently UV mapping. With all the models in the hospital room (and there are a few) I will probably be stuck doing this for at least a couple more weeks. Which is fine by me because I am growing more and more comfortable with UV mapping every day.

Happy_Endings_28/10/13

Today is the start of week 3 and the start of production.
We have finished Pre-production but still have a couple things to touch up on. We have made a schedule that will help us keep track of who is doing what over the next 6 weeks.

I also finished the turn-around, the thumbnails and the colour key for the flower which turned out really well.

These are the different designs for the flowers, of which only some will be chosen and have been modelled for our scene.

 

 

This is the flower i used for a turn around model sheet so i also chose it to use to colour key and to see what it would look like coloured in completely different colours.

I have also been left in charge to UV map and texture all of the real world scene which i feel is a big responsibility. Definately going to have to step up my game.

Happy_Endings_24/10/13

Today has been a very productive day in terms of finalising our designs.

I have started UV Mapping certain objects such as drawers that are going to be in one of our scenes.

I managed to succesfully divide all the faces of the drawers and make a very tidy UV map that will make texturing much easier.


On top of all this, we also received feedback from the tutors about our storyboard and we have decided to go with a hospital room in our final scene instead of the little girls bedroom where she will finally pass away. We had already started modelling the bedroom so we had to redesign the bed and a few other objects to turn the bedroom into a legitimate hospital room.

 

I searched for a few references on hospital beds before attempting to model it and it turned out really well.

 

We also spent most of the day redesigning trees and various objects that will appear in her imaginary world. We didn't have a cohesive style that would reflect our story and the little girl in it so we drew up many concepts of different trees, going through the stage of eliminating the worst ones, adding colour to ones we like, then 3D modelling them to get a fair idea of what they will look like and how they would feel in comparison to the rest of our scene. We finally settled on a really unique design that reflects the little girls imagination and how she might envision such trees.

 

On top of all this, Jitesh and I have also started working on animating the flowers and objects to make them appear out of nowhere in our scene. This involved getting a lot of feedback from one of the tutors on how to use deformers and blinn shapes to get our desired animation without stretching the textures and creating a very natural look to the animation.

 

Busybusy.

Happy_Endings_21/10/13

In the last couple of days, our group has started to really come together with our idea.
We presented our storyboard as an animatic today which was met with some really helpful reviews from our tutors.

 These are just a couple of shots from our storyboard. Some of the feedback we received from tutors we have already started taking into consideration trying to implement their ideas and suggestions. We are currently trying to find a way to make objects appear without just scaling them to size because that would be too easy. So we are trying various methods such as growth, Objects dropping in, objects fading in and out.

Happy_Endings_17/10/13

Today we had a group meeting to finalise our story. We wrote down a quick brief of what was going to happen in what order.

I also textured the building blocks we are going to use in our scene and added basic textures to some of the scenery in our story.

 

I also modelled a large tree with a tyre which is going to be crucial to part of the final story.

 

I feel like our group is making some great progress. These are just rough models to give an idea as to what our scene is going to look like and how the layout will be.

 

Happy_Endings_16/10/13

For our first group project, my group has decided to produce a short animation about a little girl who creates her own world full of wonder and amazement to escape from her real life where she is in a coma and dying.

We thought this could be somewhat an original concept titled "Happy Endings" with the full intention of drawing in the audience to believe that our story is initially one of happiness, only to be cut down with the twist of an ending where she passes away.

The animation will play out somewhat like this:

Opening scene consists of a little girl in her pjs lying down in a white blank void.

She sits up with her notepad in her hands and begins to draw.

As she draws different pictures, they come alive around her, popping up and filling the white void with creations from her own imagination.

She creates flowers, trees, lollies, bridges, butterflies, (sugar, spice and everything nice kinda thing.)

As her world starts filling up, she starts coughing and getting sick.

My thoughts of this was that maybe when she got sick and coughed, each cough would cause the world to tremble and shake around her, as if her coughs were a manifestation of her sickness and the real world trying to break up her imaginary one.

Another idea for this that we have all agreed on is that she coughs blood onto her notepad and things in her world start turning red.

She starts to get more sick, coughing and spluttering a lot more until she can't take it and is in obvious pain.

The scene would then fade out to her real life, zooming out of a close-up shot of her in her bed to show her in a coma in her bedroom with an IV and a heart monitor machine hooked up to her beeping away.

During this scene you can see her pictures on the walls and toys/wall hangings/stuff in her room that all appeared in her imaginated world to explain how she thought of them all and that they were actually references from her room.

The heart monitor starts beeping more and then stops to just one long beep indicating that she has passed away.

Not so much a happy ending after all.

This is the idea my group has agreed to go with.

So far I have already come up with some basic 3D concepts of assets and props that will be littered throughout our animation that the little girl creates such as trees, a rainbow, flowers and building blocks.

This wasn't my original idea though. I came up with an entirely different story that I have storyboarded and concepted that gives me a good grasp of camera angles and how a storyboard should look.

My idea was of a dude who cooks the universe into existence.

It would start with a close-up of the earth with insane theatrical music (DUN DUN DUN)

The camera would zoom out to reveal the earth was actually in an oven at this time and in the process of "cooking" An egg timer goes off indicating that the earth is ready.

A normal looking guy (average joe) comes along, opens the oven and takes out the earth with both his hands. (Probably wearing oven mits.)

He holds the earth up to his face, observing it close-up with fascination and amazement.

The scene cuts to a new shot of a dark black room. A door opens and light pours in.

The dude walks into the room holding the earth held high.

He walks from one end of the room to the other.

He gets to a certain spot and holds the earth up in a certain place.

Satisfied, he takes away his hands and the earth stays, hovering in place.

He stands back checking out his work, then remembers something.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a little moon.

He places it just above the earth and it hovers in place.

With a satisfying grin on his face, He goes to walk out of the giant room.

just before he walks out, he flicks a switch to reveal the entire room in all its glory.

all you see is the earth at first, then it zooms out to reveal the entire solar system, stars, planets, constellations and the whole of space, embodied in this room.

Turns out he is like a god who creates the universe. Oven style.

 

 

I hope to finish a rough storyboard like this of our collected idea by the end of the week so that everyone knows and is comfortable with the idea and what exactly is going to happen.

Atm it feels a little confusing as people are away and everyone seems to be very conscious of stepping on each others toes, making it hard to come up with a proper story we can all agree on that is concrete and set in stone. I have no doubt though that as the weeks go by, we will all come together to create an animation we can all be satisfied with.