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As a part of our research we had a number of guest speakers from the animation industry come and give some enlightening talks. One of my favourite of these talks was from Ed Hooks, an actor who talked about acting in animation and how it is a different form of storytelling. I found the talk inspiring and have some notes on his talk above. I was also fascinated by the talks by Samy Fecih, a previz and animation supervisor with insight in human movement and psychology and Laura Tofarides, a stop-motion animator. I find stop-motion one of the most fascinating forms of animation.

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Developing my ‘King’s Treasure’ scene further I added texture and shaders to all the materials. I textured the walls and floors with stone tiling, added velvet coverings to the chair, gave a wooden texture to the table, chair and Jewellery box and gave it a Cover. I also gave a patterned texture to the table-tops, added a persian-style rug and gave textures to all the remaining untextured jewellery items. Afterwards I added candle lamps to all the tables and turned them into point lights to light my scene, adding a skylight outside the room to create more ambiance. Once everything was textured and lit I began to render the scenes. I found the Lighting most challenging in this project as it was difficult to understand how the light would affect the scene before rendering it and the lights would always seem too dim or too powerful. I learned a lot about using Maya and the CG process and I will use this in any future CG work.

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Following Unwrapping my chair and phone CG models I decided to add texture to give the illusion of tangible materials. For the chair i used my UV unwrapping to apply a velvet texture to the seat and back and wood for the remainder of the chair. I then added a directional light above it and rendered it for a more realistic perspective. This was quite satisfying as I liked the segmented wood and clean design though I could probably have added more complex textures and details and wrapped the wood area more accurately. For the Phone I decided to create my own material shaders and assigned them individually to the sections of the phone. After this I added two directional lights one bright white one and another dimmer red one to add some additional contrast and then rendered. I am quite pleased with how this turned out although I was unable to create a very metallic shader for the phone holder and could probably have modeled better to make the model seem more smooth.

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Finalizing the Walk Cycle for my character I attempted to make a more complex looping background. I tried a number of different methods including a much longer loop with a repeating pattern on the floor. The first version would not loop and the jolt back to the starting position took away from the illusion of movement. The repeating pattern on the other hand, looped, but was too distracting so I created a final version with a more simple ground that looped based on a tighter texture and drawn pebbles. This was a very long and difficult process but I am quite pleased with the end result. If I could change anything, in the future I might start with the background.

[joe-xotta-animation]

To help understand the aspects of a coherent and emotive walk cycle I analyzed with annotation the movement of three different women and their dogs from the movie 101 Dalmatians by Disney. The walk cycles created very different personalities for the characters and it was very interesting to analyze how this was done. I could perhaps have done more research into the denotation of body language before doing this but I found it as a whole a fairly successful and fun exercise. I will use this analysis to inform the movement in my own walk cycle.

[joe-xotta-animation]

After having chosen the Flour sack and cat storyline for my ‘Mystery’ Project I did some research into books on animation to help inform my work and better understand how to create a more believable and entertaining animation. I learned a lot about weight and motion as well as how to convey my character’s motivations through emotive reactions based around stimuli. I found this task very informative and learned a lot about how to enrich my animations. 

[joe-xotta-animation]

As part of our Animation Industry Research we were tasked to look into a particular aspect of the industry in groups and create a 10-minute presentation on the chosen subject. Our group chose to Investigate the Oscar-winning Passion Animation Studios in London. We researched their works and techniques, their role in the industry and interviews and reviews of their works. We all made our own separate slides to create our presentation and I focused on their contribution to the Netflix short film series, ‘Love, Death and Robots’, titled: ‘Zima Blue’. I researched how it was created and were the inspiration for the designs came from. I also looked into their celebrated animated Gorillaz music videos, which helped bring to life the characters in the virtual band. Our presentation went well and we were in the time limit I feel that I gained some confidence with presenting in front of audiences and will use this to improve any similar work in the future.

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Another Maya project we were tasked with was titled: ‘The King’s Treasure’. We were given a template of kings treasure hoard in his throne room and had to reorganize it and design one more object in the room as a part of his treasure. I decided to design a small jewelry box on the table filled with precious gemstones. I am quite pleased with how this turned out. We must then add light and render the items in the throne room to create a realistic throne room for the king. 

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Continuing with the Maya models we were tasked with texturing them and then rendering them with light and shading. In order to do that we had to first unwrap them by separating the models into their different parts and unfolding them into flat versions like boxes. The textures will then be applied to these flat surfaces. I found this very challenging. In the future I could try to find the right path to unwrap them in order to make texturing easier as my approach made it more difficult to apply texture uniformly.

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In our next 3D modeling lesson in Maya we were tasked to create an old-fashioned phone, similarly as to how we created the chair. This model being much more cylindrical rather than cubical added an additional element of challenge though i am quite pleased with the end result. I once again had some trouble following along with the lectures so I will keep trying to improve this going forward with Maya.

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Following the lessons in Maya basics we were tasked with creating a specific item according to schematics in the form of the chair plan above. We were talked through it by our lecturer and by manipulating and extruding shapes we slowly built up a 3-Dimensional model of a chair. We learned to smooth it’s edges and place it on a base so that we could create an animated spinning view of it termed a Playblast. I found this quite challenging though was pleased with the outcome. Another time I would have tried to follow the demonstrations more intently to create a more coherent model. 

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As part of the course we were tasked with writing a Research Essay on Film language and how it is used to effect in two film sequences of our choosing. I chose to write about the Korean Neo-Noir/ Thriller Oldboy and the Psychological Thriller/ Horror, A Cure for Wellness. Having watched both films I began to do research on both in terms of mise-en-scene and cinematography and looked up the directors and their previous works. I looked up the film’s genres and explored their characteristics and looked in more detail at colour and light in film, my chosen aspects of film language. I researched colour psychology, colour relationships and types of lighting and their effects. I used research articles, websites, books and analysis videos to do my research. I wrote notes as I did this and produced a bibliography to cite every source I used in my research. I found research very interesting and note taking let me create a better understanding of the movies. I then produced an essay plan to map out the main structure and points in my essay based on guidelines given to me. Afterwards I wrote a first draft that I was pleased with though found it a little challenging to stick to the word count and wrote a little over it. I did an edit of the essay and fixed the word count and added some images with captions to illustrate my points. I was pleased with the result of the essay though could have probably done more planning of the essay beforehand to write more smoothly. I will used what I’ve learned about properly formatted essay writing in the future in other written pieces.

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Finalizing the Flour sack animation I tweaked the timings to make the jumping and reactions more realistic and smooth and then began adding colour and setting. I removed the wiring and guides and created a rug for the cat to sit on, used the floor guide to create perspective tiles and then created a wooden motif for the walls inspired by the structure of Barns, which I used for reference. Once the setting and animation were mostly complete and coloured I polished up the animation by replacing the rough shading texture on the back of the flour sack with creases, relaying the strain on the flour sack. I am pleased with the outcome of the animation and feel it appears coherent. I could perhaps have made the rolling, laughing animation more complex. I have learned some great understanding of weight and timing and will use this in my future work.

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Taking the Flour sack animation further, I added more in-betweens to the sneak animation and slowed it down, to create more suspense and make it seem more cautious and measured. I then added all the in-betweens on the cat, adding breathing to him sleeping, an anticipated shocked pose before jumping, a short animated section after jumping where he is in shock and shaking and finally more snarling to when he is angry. I was very pleased with the outcome and felt the features of the cat helped a sense of humor and expression to the animation. I could have perhaps tried to make the shape of the cat more uniform throughout the animation. 

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As part of our second 2D animation ‘Mystery’ brief, we were tasked to create a short animation based on the exploits of a flour sack which sneaks up to something and expresses an emotive action. We began by storyboarding three possible ideas for our scene, beginning with the sneaking action, then a climax, and ending with some kind of resolution. I chose a flour sack reluctantly sneaking up to a frog only to be frightened when it ribbits, another where a flour sack sneaks up to and scares a sleeping cat and a final scenario where the flour sack walks unknowingly walks onto a trapdoor and falls through. I also created a Mystery project Script detailing the narratives of the three possible scenes. Then chose the second option of the frightened cat and began by mapping out the key scenes and following the lecturers instruction to create a sneaking animation. The cat is first sleeping, then jumps in fright and then scowls at the flour sack. I was quite pleased with the narrative as, although simple, I feel shows emotion well and is expressive.  I found the sneak animation initially challenging but glad at how it turned out. I will make the animation smoother and more coherent.

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Through a number of workshop sessions with Character Designer Dan Kelby I did some practice on various aspects of figure drawing and character work. In one lesson we were shown how to add light and shadow to a character in Photoshop to create a sense of depth. This was very enlightening and taught me about how both shadows and light are influenced by colour. In another session we worked on posing and I chose to work on a Cowboy as my figure. Using his line of action and blocking out I did a study focusing his pose. I found this a little challenging as i was not able to add much exaggeration to the study but it was very enjoyable to create my own representation of the character. In another session that focused on drawing materials we were taught the various ways clothing and fabrics can fold and how to draw them. Following this I did a study on an image of a model focusing on his clothing and how it folded based on his posing and how the material reacted to it’s positioning. I found this interesting and was pleased with how the study turned out and feel I learned alot about the properties of fabric and how to draw them.

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In finalizing my walk cycle, I layered the detail over the colour layer and added details to the face and tattoos, with my character detailed and coloured he finally fit with my initial character designs and this was very rewarding to see. To make the walk cycle seem more realistic I decided to try adding a background to have the character move against something. I feel this setting helped create a more realistic walk cycle. I had some trouble in having the ground loop into a continuous feed to avoid the jolt of the restart. I will improve this in the future.