Sculpting my Environment

After a few designs which failed, i decided to restart my lair. My lair is designed as an underground secret base, which entrance is hidden within a small hut / house. Having designed the environment already i am currently working on the hut which i will then combine with the environment designs and underground lair designs which are currently on other 3d s max file saves.

Here is a JPEG snapshot of the hut i have designed without mapping or texture added to it.

The entrance to the underground lair will be hidden within the hut as a staircase, i still have to add windows some furniture and other details to the hut which represent my villain.

Research For My Pathway

For my pathway i think i am deciding on 3D environments,
This is because I can see my self in games design as a career choice and this pathway suits that career the most out of the 3 to choose from.
Though i am also interested in flash and web design, its a shame we cannot explore that subject further next year too and since i have to choose between the two i opt 3D environments as my pathway.

For research for my pathway i have looked at several magazines as well as buying my own copy of computer arts. I have had a look into 3D Design magazine and other 3D visualisation and designing mags which focus on the subject. Though i found when i looked in some of them they seem to be using a different software for design called Cinema 4D which is not appropriate since we use 3D studio max for designing therefore i cant create most tutorials shown in certain magazines though the work and designs were still interesting.

The issue of computer arts magazine that i bought, focused on the design issue "Handmade vs Digital". This meant handmade and digital in terms of design techniques and preference for designers, where they have used examples of current practitioners and interviewed them to ask there opinion on whether handmade techniques or digital techniques are "better" in there opinion and practises.

The magazine also provided a tutorial on how to make your sketches and cartoons into 3D figures but the tutorial also used the software cinema 4D which meant i couldnt follow it up.

Possible in the future that i will most probably find my self a copy of Cinema 4D software since many of my mags are showing tutorials which i cant follow up !

Sorry for not posting in a while been caught up with trying to get the grips of 3D studio Max.

Finished Interactive Narrative

For some reason its not working on Deviant Art.

But i'm going to leave the embed code here just incase it starts miraculously working.

deviant art ... you are a let down.

Doodle Gym MMA by ~MrMultimediaDesigner on deviantART

Interactive Narrative Doodle Gym MMA illustrations

Having planned my idea i have began development by drawing out concepts for the characters i am going to use in my interactive narrative.

I have began processing some illustrations on photoshop but have not entirely finished. Here are a few of my illustrations, my interactive flash should be up shortly since i am close to finishing though i heard people are having trouble with deviant art and uploaded flash files have not been correctly working.

Interactive Narrative Doodle MMA

Though in a rushing situation at the minute, I have been developing my interactive narrative. Changing the title from Fight Science to Doodle MMA, I have decided to develop my idea based on mixed martial arts fighting and martial art techniques using an illustrative style rather than a computer based image look.

To further plan my ideas I have been creating skeleton maps, to plan out how many slides I need and what they would contain as well as how many decisions were included in one frame.

Since I have also been doing my essay and this project scheduling has been difficult and I was unable to update my blog as

regularly as intended.

But here is a few maps and plans that I have drawn out for my development.

Food Fight Narrative

I've come back to edit this blog post since I forgot to write about the narrative. The narrative of my stop motion is based on what inspired me through my research this included stop motions such as MORPH and Wallace and Gromit as well as other stop motions I managed to stumble upon but not log down on my blog, majority of them where quite humorous and targeted children audiences with a small amount of violence. This is what i've tried to capture in my own version of my stop motion animation.

My Animation is about Blue-man who complains of being hungry and therefore asks for food from Orange-man, Orange-man declines looking down on Blue-man for his begging behaviour, only to find that when he turns away from his food Blue-man attempts to steal his meal, resulting in a violent response from Orange-man which turns into a hardcore bar brawl over Blue-mans selfish behaviour leading to him being killed as he attempts to kill Orange-man for defending his meal, hence the name I have given the animation as "Food - Fight".

My Own Stop Motion Animation

As well as creating a group stop motion / pixelation, I decided I would create my own, though it took longer than i expected to created it was worth the time though now I have a lot of the other work that has to be done more hastily, such as my essay and interactive narrative.

After 544 photographs (if i remember correctly) and 3 long days I managed to finish my stop motion, after researching a variety of clay animation styles i decided I would recreate my own version of the animation technique. It started off ok though later on I was to experience quite a lot of complications such as the photographs on my memory stick not actually erasing even though I erased them on my Mac, meaning i had to re-format the memory card every time I needed to take more photos. Also experienced complications such as the battery running out in my camera meaning i had to take the camera from its fixed area to re-charge the battery and had to try and re-create the position I fixed the camera to the best I could before I began to take photos again. You will also see the effects of my camera position changing throughout the process of the animation, though some of it is deliberate, most of it is mistake due to having no proper stand for my camera and having to makeshift using a self made blu tack stand ! when you haven't got equipment you just have to be creative !!!

Other than that it went averagely well, though I also had a few complications on the software side where I had to remember what methods I had to go through to modify the photographs in order for them to be ready to be transferred to Premiere. Premiere also presented me a few complications since i forgot how to create fades as well ass adding text although with a little advice from friends the methods came back to me ...

Here is my finished Claymation ! Hope you enjoy my work ..

Interactive Narrative Research ...

We were shown examples at our seminar of flash technology and interactive narratives such as the "dont shoot the puppy" flash game which was quite simple and looked like it was quite easily made, but i decided it would be best to do some extra research into existing flash interfaces and narrative games.

It seems that in modern day most small gaming websites use flash created games as forms of small entertainment like arcade websites, I know when I was in school we used to go onto gaming websites such as,

www.miniclip.com - and play games when we weren't supposed to which used flash such as small driving games and platform shooters.

www.newgrounds.com - which has a large collection of flash games and animation which is generally quite famous amongst teenage gaming culture, newgrounds gaming developers have also started professional game development such as the game castle crashers, alien hominid and behemoth which are available to purchase for gaming consoles such as the xbox 360 arcade where mini games can be purchased using microsoft points. This gives inspiration to flash users and game designers which shows you can become game developers if you start off small and work your way up.

As well as gaming websites, I found with my research that flash is also used a lot in professional website design for corporate websites and for design companies.

This also applies to design websites for the creative community, it seems a lot of the creativeness has branched out into web design and general digital design as a form of art.

One flash website i found intriguing and well designed is,

www.djnr.com

It is a website that the designer himself has made as a web based portfolio for him self as a designer for web and other creative projects to show off his skill sets to his clients. I feel it is very professionally designed and showcases his versitile talents as a designer, i hope to one day create my own website to showcase my work as an online portfolio to the same standard as he has done.

On his website the background cctv like video also shows him working throughout the day as the clock is like a timer on the bottom and fills from left to upper right of the screen, showing himself working throughout the day at his work desk in a professional manner, possibly to show to the client his typical day at work and that he is a hard worker and worth investing in.

Its a really good website and I advice you check it out for some inspiration, also take a look at some of his work ... very nice !!!

Starting Flash Interactive Narrative and Research

Last week we were given our Flash interactive narrative project briefs, we have been asked to create a Interactive flash narrative using the Adobe flash that includes choices that must be made and involves a narrative which can be changed depending on the choices the user chooses. The interactive narrative must have a minimum of 10 slides, action script 3 must be used as well as it being saved for CS3 as an SWF file.

In our first seminar for Interactive media we had a look at several examples as well as being guided briefly through action script 3 on flash and how it works, we also had a look at the definitions of narrative and the difference between narrative and plot and also the structure of stories including characters such as the protagonist and antagonist. Still slightly confused about how or what i am going to do for this project, we were given time to think of a narrative which would be good to use for our interactive flash.

UFC / Cage Fighting Themed Interactive Narrative ?

FIGHT-SCIENCE ?

For the short time we was given the idea i generated consisted of the theme of fighting professionally (for instance UFC cage fighting), where my interactive narrative would also play out like a game, where the choices you make create a fighter depending on what you choose. Carrying on developing this idea i found that there were far to many combinations of what you could choose and become, so continuing with the theme of my narrative i decided to scrap the idea of choosing 2 types of martial art out of 4 to combine to create a unique combination for yourself, totalising at 6 slides for the 2nd decision i found that it would be a waste of time to create since most slides would render useless and i only have 2 weeks to complete this so i have to keep realistic goals.

Though my concept is still in development, after thinking about it further i decided that my narrative/game would still give you a choice to choose what profession/style of martial art you would like to train in but with set choices rather than time consuming combination choices and then the style you choose would have its own skill sets, such as its own strengths and weaknesses.

The strengths and weaknesses will be displayed and explained to the user of the interactive narrative and then the correct decisions for him/her would determine how far they would get against opponents they fight, since making a wrong decision would cause them too be damaged since correct decisions are based on the strengths of your skill set determined by your martial art style.

To display the opponent you fight for the "1st fight of your career" i will use an illustration of the character along with paragraph to explain himself and his fighting style along with his strength and weaknesses, along with his win / loss statistics. After reading this and looking at his strength and weaknesses along with his particular fighting style, you must choose the correct decision based on what happens during the slide - for instance he may attack you, and you will be given a choice whether to counter attack, take down or avoid - the correct decision will be based on the weakness of the opponent and if you choose the wrong decision your health will diminish, as you take a powerful blow, only 2/3 blows can be taken until you get KO'd therefore choosing the right decisions are vital to defeat the opponent and also tests your knowledge of your martial art styles strengths and weaknesses.

After reflecting on my idea i feel it is highly likely i will continue to develop this concept, though i have a feeling it may take a while ... especially with contextual and another pixelation to be completed !

Group Meetings and Creating our FInal Stop Motion ..

Throughout the One Shot weeks, our group met up several times to discuss possible ways in which we would film our movie and decide what would and would not work.

On the day of filming unfortunately the weather was poor and there was a lot of rain and because of this we decided to scrap our idea of filming within a graveyard since looking at the future weather forecasts didn't seem promising.

This meant we had to sit as a group to discuss on a new narrative for our one shot movie. After discussing we decided it would be best if we filmed inside where we was currently situated since moving somewhere else and risk getting the camera equipment wet would not be a good idea since one of us would end up having to pay for the damages.

After gathering ideas from each of our group we came up with an idea where we could use the one shot footage to act like a camera which has been set up to capture an event. We decided on the idea of catching thief / thieves, discussing together we created a narrative where a character attempts to capture a thief by setting up a camera and drawing him in using left valuables, with a comedic twist to our film, the character trying to capture the thief would end up with no valuables left as well as the camera also being taken failing miserably at his task.

When we started filming we did some initial test runs and taking a director type role i helped with altering parts of the script in our one shot to make our film more effective in projecting our narrative.

I also played as the main thief within the play, the character in which the protagonist played by Boris is trying to capture.

Here is the embed to our finished uploaded one shot film.

Initial Development For Our One Shot Film ..

For the development of our one shot, we all looked at examples and gathered as a group to discuss possible themes and narratives for our final piece.

As a group we come up with several ideas but most of them were terminated due to having to keep to the one shot rules and keeping the camera steady using a tripod.

This included my initial idea which was based on a first person view one shot film of a boxer engaged in boxing against an opponent. The idea of my one shot was to show the viewer what it is like to actual be in the ring and experience the feeling of being the fighter instead of being a spectator from the outside in which is the case for most people who watch the sport. My idea was too include effects of punching such as being punched, moving around the ring, dodging with the head and blurring of the vision using editing to maximise the experience of the first person view as a boxer. Unfortunately my idea was unable to be filmed due to the camera rules even though it was discussed as a strong idea when it was pitched.

Having discussed after a while we came up with an idea to create a horror themed one shot film which was to be filmed within the dark, featuring two members of our team acting as the victims walking through the graveyard where we were going to film. Another actor from our group was then meant to play as the ghost/paranormal character whilst we would film at night using night vision mode on the camera to create a more eerie effect.

BUSY MOVES ....

These past week and maybe a bit more has been a busy week for me, since in terms of my work we have been busy meeting up and filming as well as editing and every other time consuming task involved with creating our one shot film.

As well as this i have been busy with personal time since i have moved student accommodations to the city centre Sandby Halls since i believed it would be easier for my self with getting where i needed to be on time and with everything in close proximity i thought it was a good choice though it took a while to rearrange my life in my new home.

So for this i apologise since i have not been able to post many updates on what i have been doing in terms of my project work but i will be catching up with posts through out the coming weeks to explain more of what i / we have been doing.

Stop Motion Self Made Music Video

I was just browsing through Youtube for research, when i found this video, i saw that they had created there own video, since being an independent music artist meant marketing themselves of Youtube.

So as well as producing there song they had also made the music video alongside the music, which is why i decided to link it to my blog since i found the use of "Stop Motion" for there video that they composed themselves quite interesting and inspiring since the artist being naturally creative in music was also capable of creating a his own stop motion video alongside the music he has produced.

Pinhole Camera Photo

Even though its well late, i thought i would put it up anyway since i only found out how to get hold of it from the scan we did at university, at least it saved me time by not having to scan it my self, although to do it i had to download everybody else's images which wasn't very convenient for my time.

For my pinhole camera photo, i decided to get a few classmates i was with at the time to stand underneath a bridge in the park near the university, i placed my camera on a bin and faced it towards the direction of the bridge. After i exposed the film inside the can for the 7/8 seconds, i covered the hole back up as told too. I was happy with what i captured and felt that my pinhole image went well, since it captured the whole view as well as capturing the person standing within the centre of the bridge as i intended for my photo, giving my photo a sense of twisted eeriness, as the photo also curves on the left and right side as the light hit the photographic paper.

Introduction To One Shot Project

Having recently started my one shot project, i decided to have a look at examples of one shot parts within films or examples of films which have been totally shot using one shot filming. At our first seminar we were shown examples of one shot films by our tutor, most of which were old B&W films since one shot filming is rarely used in modern day to produce movies.

Having looked at one shot examples i did a bit of research and found a modern example of one shot being used within a martial arts film called "Ong Bak" which features a part during a large fight scene which the camera follows the leading actor Tony Jaa up long set of spiralling staircases within a enemy building.

The one shot camera follows the main actor Tony Jaa whilst keeping distance so the viewer can see the martial arts with ease and often zooms up and back out to capture the action if it departs from the area in which he is filming.

Here is a the one shot clip from Youtube.

Ong Bak features stunts and Muay Thai martial arts performed by Thai boxer and actor Tony Jaa and is set in Thailand and Australia, for those who are interested, the film is really good and features stunts and fighting displays that would even shock those of you who like voilence !

Ong Bak 2 has also recently been released though i have not watched it yet, i may try to get hold of it too see whether it also includes a One Shot scene.

Group Pixelation / Stop Motion Finalised

After having trouble, i finally was able to upload my video onto youtube.

When saving my files on Premiere on Mac it automatically saved as an .mov file on Export. When uploading my file onto Youtube as .mov an error occured and it played the audio but kept a black screen. I then re-saved the premiere file as a .flv file and uploaded it again and was happy to see it working.

For my pixelation project, we firstly started in a group, taking photographs in the park near the university to experiment with possible outcomes and what effects we could achieve using stop motion techniques. We then began taking photos of our group lined up to make it seem as if we were hopping / floating to a destination in the park. Since i found that it was quite a eerie footage, i edited my photos on photoshop to make it seem as the location of the video was in a strange place by altering the hues and saturation of each of the photos on in my pixelation to make the colours in each photo seem alien and different as if it were a different world. To add to the effect i created a shadow border for more eeriness to suit the footage editing. I also added audio and tried to find a song to match the video, i chose "Hung Up" cover by "The Enemy" originally by Madonna because i thought it was relevant to the video since i find it a strange song and unusual cover for the song, i also found the lyrics "Time goes by so slowly" repeated in a bizarre rhythm suits the video and jittering style of my pixelation film.

Modern Uses Of Stop Motion Clay Animation

As well as Aardman Animation using stop motion clay animation techniques (also simply known as "Clay Animation") other examples of modern uses of clay animation include children cartoon programmes which practise the techniques such as the cartoon called "The Ooglies" on CBBC.

The cartoon is comprised of a series of short animations and uses everyday household objects along with fruits and vegetables and brings them to life using plastic google eyes and gobledy-gook voice sound effects similar to that of Morphs voice to express emotion and communication. Occasionally they will use plasticine instead of real objects. The shorts are generally humorous and often end up with a squashed fruit of vegetable, i find that the voicing of the individual objects gives off a lot of character as well as the variety of plastic googly eyes used, which express a lot of emotion.

MORPH

Morph is another stop motion cartoon created by Aardman Animations. As well as being a the name of the cartoon, Morph is the name of the famous plasticine man made famous by the BBC starting in 1977 on several UK tv programmes such as Take Hart and Hartbeat along with presenter Tony Hart.

Morph was a character capable of "morphing" into different shapes and and objects. The cartoon was shown in 1 minute short animations.

Later on developments of the animation shows Morph accompanied by Chas, a cream coloured version of Morph, his character was a lot more badly behaved but he did not have the ability to morph.

Their most modern tv appearance was earlier in 2009 where they were a guest appearance in the BBC drama "Ashes to Ashes"

I found it was important to research into aardman animations and their cartoons such as morph and wallace & gromit since they show interesting and unique ways in using the stop motion technique in modern day use, and are one of the most famous companies that use stop motion technique for there animations.

It also inspires me to attempt to recreate my own plasticine stop motion animation after looking at what can be created by professional companies.

Here is a clip of 1 of Morph's short stop motion animations shown on television.

Aardman Animations

After my tutorial session i found that Aardman Animations who created the cartoon "A Crazy Town Called Panic", are also the company which create the famous cartoon "Wallace & Gromit". A now famous british animation studio, Aardman animations is now a academy award winning studio based in Bristol Unitited Kingdom.
They are famous for their stop motion / clay animation productions such as famous movies like "Chicken Run", Uk Television programme "Creature Comforts", most recently created "Flushed Away" and obviously the Wallace and Gromit series including the movies such as "Curse of the Were-rabbit".

All of these their style of animations are created through stop motion and reflects and explores the possibilities of creating stop motion animations.

I also found that today is the 20th anniversary for Wallace & Gromit, through the change of googles logo on there main search page !!!

Introduction Whiteboard Animations

I thought i would also include the whiteboard animations video that we produced as an introduction task on my blogg since most people have done so.
It also fits into my pathway at the minute of stop motion animation, as its a form of pixelation / stop motion.
This task also gave me an insight of what stop motion animation was, since although i knew what the style of the animation was, i did not know how to produce the animations my self and this task helped me understand more.



Our group whiteboard animation, is the one which includes a man sitting on the edge of a lake fishing a huge fish ... i am proud to say it was my idea, although what followed from that idea was completely randomness.

Blu and David Ellis 2009

Although we looked at whiteboard stop motion animation, the work of Blu and David Ellis exceeds boundaries with stop motion animations, and manipulates actual environments to create there pixelations using painted artwork on walls and physical objects to create a huge stop motion project.

A Town called Panic Movie 2009

Although "A Town Called Panic" began in 2003 as a series cartoon, they have just finished creating there debut movie for 2009. Which was supposed to be released this year May though i have not heard much about it.

Here is the trailer i managed to find, along with english subtitles.

A Town called Panic

After looking at Wieden and Kennedy's style of animation in their advertisement campaign for Cravendale. I found an stop motion animation cartoon based on the same style as the Cravendale adverts, perhaps Wieden and Kennedy used this as their inspiration for the Cravendale adds ?

The name of this cartoon is called "A Town Called Panic" and is a stop motion animation series distributed by a company called Aardman Animations. Starting in Belgium its creator Vincent Patar and Stephane Aubier distributed the cartoon worldwide from France to the U.S and the UK where it was played on Nickelodeon cartoon channel.

There are probably better examples of the cartoon if you look around on youtube, but this was the only one i was able to embedd

Cravendale Advertisements

Here is a modern example of stop motion animation being used in the industry.

Here Cravendale Milk has hired Wieden and Kennedy London advertisement company to create an advertisement campaign for television, with the objective to play on the "filtered for purity" slogan associated with cravendale mik, they have created a series of stop motion animation advertisements using toy characters and funny scripts based around the milk.

Here is an example of the adverts.

My Definition of Stop Motion / Pixelation Animation

Pixelation animation also known as stop motion animation / stop-action or frame by frame. Is an animation technique which can make a physically manipulated object look as if it is moved on its own. It is created by taking photographs frame by frame of a changing situation and when played back in order creates an animation. Altering the frames per second in which the photographs are played can create a different affect, decreasing will slow down the animation where as increasing it will speed the animation up.