aruyear2

[aruyear2]

Animation practice: Audio project, Weeks 1-6

As the first project of the term of this project has come to a close, I wanted to discuss how it went. I feel like overall it was a definitely stressful project and trying to keep up with the workload, while also tackling other projects was very difficult. In addition, working with a partner, while also we both struggled with personal issues on both our ends was very hard as well. I will remind myself weto Improve planning around that in my next group project; if I do have one.

Going into research, we were told to work on specific portraits when going into the Fitzwilliam museums portraits exhibits. I ended up working with a partner to get this project going, we initially had the idea of going with a portrait piece called "The Blood collages". "The Blood Collages" were apart of a book of portrait piece by John Bingley between 1850-1860. We looked into the emotional context behind the book, religion symbolisms and colour meanings behind the specific piece we'd chosen. We also took little sections of the painting and drawn in different mediums, this was to get a better feel for how the painting was made and the intentions for why these parts were specifically used.

After that, we went into visual research for what our characters were going to be like and which parts would be reflected on in the final product. I specifically started to look at the different types of flowers were in the piece and worked from them to make my characters skirt and based my character from a lady in the corner.

During this time as well, we also made a start on the concept designs for our animations. I ended up making a black and white space due to time constraints but it was going to be a nice lush green would with a cream stone dilapidated church in the mid ground. It was to give a sense of warmth, while also giving a sense that this abandoned church hadn't been touched in some time. I made some visual research of parts of old churches and their windows as well so I could get a greater understanding of what I would be working with.

Going back to the animation, this was when we started to struggle. We came to the animatic and started to struggle, it started from our storyboard due to them both not being the same size, however it was an old easy fix. Then we had an issue where a transfer file between accounts got corrupted, so we had to restart all the animatic work and sound design from scratch which set us back a couple weeks. The reason why it had set us back was the development of backgrounds. We had planned at the start, that we wanted to reflect the idea of the portrait that we studied using illustrative and scrapbooking techniques.

After making a start on the collages, I also made a start on animating my side of the project, attempting to make it high quality and connect to my storyboard. However, during the beginning of me starting the animating and my friend working on backgrounds some things happened outside of uni; either mental health issues or personal issues that started to put things on a halt.

By the time we got to the end of the project, I was able to get 3/4 of my animating done and did all of my backgrounds digitally due to time issues. I also ended up doing the editing and sound design portions, even though I'm not proud of the end result of the final. The end of the project felt rushed as I had other projects I had to focus on; I didn't think we're submittable at the stages they were in.

I definitely feel like I have learnt a lot on how to work better in a pair from this project, how it's crucial to plan things together and see how much the other can handle. This is important especially when personal hardship is involved. I will take this to when I collaborate with others after university, and in future uni projects.

[aruyear2]

Animation Practice: Life drawing, Weeks 4-8

For one part of our trimester, we were assigned to do some life drawing, both in our own time frame and in our four allocated time slots over four weeks. For our life drawing sessions, we mixed drawing nude and clothed with drawing in motion and still life. My primary mediums that I had chosen were charcoal, pencils and inks with my paintbrushes.

For the first lesson, we had a fully-clothed model in I did a variety of black, white and coloured studies using the specified mediums above. This lesson was also based of motion and gravity in clothes so we had to keep in mind how the clothes folded around the body. I struggled the most with the turnaround that we did, I wasn't used to doing full body in the time period of 5 minutes, so I was very nervous and doubted my own ability in the circuit. I feel like I also made some really good work in my 10 and 20 minute durations as well.

Going into my second lesson, we went into our first nude male model, during this session have a greater focus on chalk pastels and charcoal to work with the shadow and texture but also had worked with some quick sketches and my turn around in pencil as well. The one piece that I had liked the most out of the session was my 30 minute circuit at the end of class; I really enjoyed how I depicted light and shadow with my charcoal and all the creases in his clothes. The worst I feel like would probably one of my 5 minute circuits, I feel like I hadn't fully fleshed it out as best as I could before the time was up and that was more to not managing time.

In our third session, we went back to our model from the first week but we were drawing her in motion of her in dance uniform. It was really nice to see the movements of dance again after not dancing myself in 5 years due to COVID so it was exciting to see the different positions. With this session I ended up going back to my original setup of using inks, charcoal and pencils. I definitely could see some improvement from the first session to my current session with how fast I worked but it still could be improved. My favourite part was drawing the different stages of a plié and I felt like that was one of my better

Finally, we ended up having a session of drawing each other. Sadly, our model hadn't arrived in this session, but it was a fun way to draw our peers and teacher. Working off each other was a good way to work with different media. I branched away a little with my pencils using markers and watercolour pens, which I also enjoyed. I feel like my best work from that session was my drawing of one of my close friends using a grey marker for the silhouette and a pencil for the line art. I still feel like I could work on my time management and not work on specific areas for too long, but I thought I had improved by the end of the sessions.

[aruyear2]

CGI: Character model Project, Weeks 7-12

After last term's work on the setting project I had hopes of this project being a lot of fun, I had not prior knowledge to have character modelling worked in Maya so I just took it lesson by lesson.

Starting with my research, I wanted a lower-poly design for this project. Something that would be simpler, so I could tackle, knowing that I had a lot on my plate with other projects, so I ended up looking on Pinterest for fantasy low poly designs for videogames and started from there. I also had a look at mages from D&D and from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, more specifically, Eskarina Smith as a suggestion from a friend of mine.

Next, going into the development stage, my initial design for my character was going to be a very flowy design with an oversized hood, flowy back of the cloak and oversized sleeves going to the hands, however I found out that this would be very have to work with when coming into the modelling stage. Another reason why I didn't decide to change my final idea was that it didn't fit with the low-poly designs that I was looking into through Pinterest, if I were able to add accessories rather than going all flowy and oversized, to give some individuality to the silhouette. I ended up creating the design below:

After that, going into the modelling stage, this was the hardest thing in the entire project, and I struggled with it for some time; initially, I was going way too high poly for the design, then I was constantly working with the legs for a week or so. I needed advice and guidance from one of my friends because I was so stuck and short on time, but I was eventually able to get the base model prepared, and after a week of non-stop work, I was able to get the clothes set up on the model and the mask cloned (after a couple tutorials), and for the mesh I ended up using a hardened edge to give the low poly idea pop out.

Sadly, due to struggling so much, I wasn't able to set up textures in Maya or Substance Painter in the way that I thought would be fitting to my character, but I wish I could've. From what I've tried with Substance Painter so far, it seems pretty fun. I was, however, able to set up a simple lighting setup with a warm light in the front of my character to represent sunlight and a white, cold light to show the contrast of all the shadows, which I feel would've gone very well with the final additions of texture.

Overall, I enjoyed this project. However, I need to practice my 3D modelling skills over the summer,so I can be prepared if I want to add anything for my final that could be reflective of myself or making a new character and learning more for myself, so I'm able to work the functions of Maya through muscle memory.

[aruyear2]

Animation Practice: Benton End House, Weeks 7-12

After last year's work with 9 Tress, I was very excited to work with another client, and this year was a nice group project with the people at Benton End house. This project was planned for a group of 5-6 people (ended up with our group being 7). We started working separately to create our own pitches. We had to specify what we were working on in our groups, and our choice for our team was the workshop spaces.

My idea was that people would be doing different things for their specified workshops, like botanical drawing and healthy cooking, while also seeing a moth go through the areas with us. My work didn't get picked however, it was another one of the members of my team and I was excited to go through the production of their work with the entire team; their idea felt straight to the point rather than being vague and I felt like that was something I could've improved upon in my pitch.

My job in the production stage was mainly sound design and editing. I found this really fun and exciting: talking with my team about what they envisioned for the background sound and voicelines, and using my initiative to find what would be best for the final product. Even though we didn't end up using music, it also gave me a chance to conjure up possible soundtrack ideas. However, we didn't need them, which would've drowned out the spot FX. We also had the opportunity to record dialogue in our university's recording booth. It was the first time I had used Adobe Audition, and it was a good introduction, and I'll probably use it again for year three. I also learnt a lot about sound editing from my teachers and how to use Premiere Pro efficiently. I will use this again as well, maybe in my personal work.

In addition to my sound design and editing, I had also worked on some colouring as well for our first scene for our character, Mothra, near the end of the project and helped manage how much left we had to do with our producer, Harper. I feel like, as a group, we all flowed well together and communicated efficiently in person, there were times online that we did struggle to speak to each other however due to not everyone having the same forms of social media but we were able to get the messages across to other apps if we needed to. This was a good way to start working in a bigger group setting and preparing for the future in the industry.

[aruyear2]

CGI: Gif Project, Week 1-6

The GIF project was definitely exciting to get into. The first week of doing a still life to turn it into a GIF was an innovative way of creating a GIF, even if I wouldn't pursue it in the future. Looking through the variety of children's books, I found it interesting to look specifically into The Little Red Riding Hood; it was a very simplistic concept to begin with, however, going further into my research, I found its history and iterations going from 1800's and probably further than that all the way to modern day.

The idea I wanted to go down for my final product was The Little Red Hood by Marjolaine Leray. The story gave a more modern approach and a straightforward idea to the traditional story, and itgot straight to the point. I first started with a little character design for my Little Red. I thought it would be an interesting idea to go with something that had more of a bunny's features, the very round chunks for hair to resemble ears, and a small mouth. I wanted this to be the case as gives a sense of innocence to her design but the twist of her personality being very brave.

Going into the style of my animation, I had initially wanted to go down the plan of it being coloured like a forest, and her standing out with her red cloak. I also put it in different art styles, such as being lineless and more modern in theming, but during while setting up my animation I ended up going more with a style the was still sketchy in its line art for the characters but lineless for the background which felt like it gave more focus to the characters in the story.

The animation wasn't too hard, but it couldn't be finalised due to time management and focusing on bigger projects. However, I really liked animating and colouring the animations I did. I didn't want to have too complex an animation, but I still wanted the movements to have impact.

Overall, I really enjoyed doing this project. I learned how to implement different styles into a final product and was able to learn different walk cycles for animals, and for when you don't see a person's legs. Even though I feel like I could've been better with my time, I also feel like I could've improved upon my consistency between each animation.