lhbabcollabwork-blog

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This is some brief animation tests for the gaint robot which I manually made in After Effects since building rigs doesn’t seem to be working or doesn’t suit this model concept.

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This Youtube channel series of ‘Movies with Mikey’ is an in depth film analysis/celebration video looking at good films and giving them the credit they deserve in a smart and comedic manner, Mikey is also a writer for 2K Games who make the popular ‘Borderlands’ games, anyways in this video he discuss’ the film John Wick, with the recent release of the second film I feel it will be useuful to mention this work. So the film may seem like a generic action film and in a way it can be seen as that but it’s so much more, I won’t repeat much from this video because Mikey does it so much better than I ever could. The film essentially is about a former elite hitman whose past comes back to haunt him, after losing his wife her final girt to him was a new puppy but not soon after a hitman squad led by the son of a former client comes and attacks him and kills the dog, John Wick goes on a murderous rampage to kill all who were involved going from essentially a former villain to an anti-villain who the audience now root for on a moral level because well they killed his dog after his wife died. The action itself is brutal and filmed extremely well as noted in this video at the age of around 50 the actor himself spent 5 months training in multiple martial arts and practising his own stunts involving driving and military runs with real equipment, which is why the action is so ‘real’ in regards to the movement and way the action happens as he knows from first hand what the loadouts of weaponary feel like. It goes back to the relation of Western actors having stunt doubles or the use of camera and editing to allow the real actors to not actually fight or do any kind of choreography. As mentioned in a Jackie Chan how to do action comedy video Eastern cinema combat feels more authentic because it’s acted properly with rehearsels and actual training and it really shows within this film.

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This is a music video by the artist known as ‘Woodkid’ the piece is one of those products that has a narrative to the video, a trending concept that I feel is becoming more popular over the last few years including: Fallout Boy, Mystery Skulls etc. I show this one as example as it’s shot for the most part on a 2D plain cutting in some close ups and wide shots. The music itself is very powerful and really goes with this theme of this boy escaping whilst essentially charging with this fantasy army, much like the first music video ‘iron’.

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RWBY ‘Coffee’ is a fight I constantly discuss as it is one of my favourite scenes from the series and the biggest influence on the ‘metal’ genre within the music mix. Basically it comes down to ‘Fox’ the character on the left sgemenrt as he hastily spins and punches to the fast pace ‘Caffiene’ soundtrack, not much else to dicuss on this one that I haven’t said already.

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Caravan Palace is an electro swing band that was recommended to me and has been a big influence on the film as a whole, this film in particular in which a city is ‘attacked’ with spheres by UFOs shows a giant robot is there only hope until one of the musicians leaves an instrument amongst the construction causing it to dance to the music whilst taking out the invaders, that’s while I love this film.

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I’ve been showing off muisc/fight clips to Ben recently as inspiration or ideas, I feel I need to also link them on here as to note I still am doing research for this. This episode of RVB about 7 minutes in contains a small stylised fight sequence in which it cuts between the two main characters and several dancers seperate to the action. Though this scene is interesting because the way the match on action works with the dances moves and the characters fighting, as well as working amongst the music and certain impacts within the combat.

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Feedback Session 2

Today we had our second feedback session with Helen, she liked the deisgns and the work we’ve done so far, the comments are essentiallty what to do next.

First off I need to make an animatic, I’ve been struggling because the concept is kind of complex to draw simply but I will attempt it anyways. Secondly Ben brought in some quick animation work as well as a pppet he’s building for the main character, Helen suggested that he makes some tests and figure how out the character dances as the design is box like and should it have more wavy limbs or need additional parts? As for Connor he will be making the music next Monday so hopefully we should be able to begin proper production in roughly 2-3 weeks.

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This is a video I’ve referenced before on my influence of design but I feel the need to discuss it again, so the theme of this video analysis is the costume design of the xmen in the first several live action films. The comment essentially is that from both the comics and the animated series the costumes of the characters are individual, follow a colour pallet and unique to the individual’s personality an example would be the opposite colours of Wolverine and Cyclops as they have different opinions and views on general things. The view of the live action costumes is that they don’t follow this rule and go for black leather outfits which make them look like I guess a military unit but it’s not fun. Now of course they don’t have to be, a lot of super hero films try to be more serious like Nolan’s Batman series but most fall flat, as with most of the Xmen films they were never major success’ in terms of the larger scale of things. In fact a lot of the critical view was the outfits not representing the characters, as well as being dull and in fact within filming unpractical. Noted in this video the actors didn’t enjoy the suits as they were hard to move in, so there’s nothing like having your acrobatic super human characters restricted to movement for the sake of a directors vision over practicality.

When I was thinking of my film it was initially going to be much more ‘realisitc’ or more blunt with things, but I found the more I researched fights in films I found my favourites were the more colourful and varied so I looked at comics such as Xmen and Marvel for colour design and such.

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Ben who is animating the majority of this film sent me this link to an old Newgrounds animator who makes fun and bloody fights in what I assume is oldschool Flash. It’s very ‘Newgrounds’ as I told him, the style is very minimul and the story and aactual fighting is just insane random but the actual movement and focus on the violence makes it entertaining, it the first couple I’ve watched follow the rule of not moving the camera so you can’t lose sight of who the main character is and your focusis never drawn away from the violence going on. Me and Ben discussed on the degree of violence with the film we’re making and he asked should he add blood? I’m not against a gore filled fight scene but that’s not what this film is about in my opinion it’s more having fun with a random concept, which is why all the villains are robots because the violence can be more over the top without the death of any ‘human’ characters keeping the tone from being so serious, as I continue watching these shorts the animation only gets more advanced with camera work, animation and the degree of violence very entertaining to watch.

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This is the current temp track for the film, these tracks are from various genres and are for the sake of estimating the length of each fight aspect.

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Weekly Update 3

We’ve had a week of independant study and I’ve been trying to get multiple concepts going at once to try and get people up to speed with their work.

So I’ve made the main four character design sheets on a slightly basic level for now for the sake of not going into too much work before feedback Monday, I’ve also composited a rough temp track for the animatic which is still in progress as sketching out a fight in a few frames has been proven more difficult than I thought. Also I’ve been researching general works as usual such as background, music and fights for reference.

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The third Despicable film trailer released recently and somehow the villain is exactly what the main hero of my film ‘Maxwell’ was pretty much based off. a purple style outfit, a nighties music related theme and dance fighting. It’s interesting to see it a more child friendly concept and odd that the villain has a theme of nostalgia when I feel a lot of kids who are the prime audience won’t know the references. This feels more added for the adults who will see the film as well but interesting regardless.

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These are the four final character sheets for now, I added a name, Tpose and some fun details about them. Since the fight isn’t focused on the story as such I didn’t feel the need to write a lot about each of them, if feedback requires to add more I will.

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This is a quick style frame I made using all the current assets we have to see how the film looks, so far I’d say pretty good, the background isn’t mine  and I’m still not sure on the main heroes colours. The problem I’m having is that each design I like slightly conflicts with the highway road so we need to either add colour or texture with a more emphasis on the ‘sci-fi’ or just see how it looks in compositing and edit where needed. Other than that I like the villains looks, the use of blue has this clean look to it and has the idea of a corporation going for a friendly look although by being ironically the more aggresive of the two sides.

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This is a screenshot from the game Megaman Zero 3, when we were discussing the concept of making this like a 2D brawler game styled film this came to mind with the giant robot. This game introduces it’s first ‘boss’ with this giant robot with an oversized sword which in a previous cutscene defeated two far more experienced characters. Megaman’s later products had this way of making you feel threatened as this thing is the first big fight after a smaller level introducing you to the game whereas other products would have this thing as a later fight (in which this character returns about 3 times but more powerful). It just made me think how to make the giant mech robot fight aspect at the end and how to go about it, even giving both characters health bars and having them get low to have a small point of drama amongst the comedy feel. When we were designing the agent character I messaged Ben asking him to make some better designs that what I could think off because they were bland from my own view, he sent back some interesting and varied concepts and he told me that he came up with the ideas by thinking of the costumes as video game unlocks, and that’s what I think of with this end fight. This game makes sure that this large boss ‘Omega’ has only 3 attacks, adding more each time he appears much like other returning bosses in narrative they come back stronger to compete with the hero who hasn’t died but it more skilled over time. This game is a big influence to what the end of the film is going to be and I figured it would be interesting to be discussed.

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Opinions on Design

Ok so character designs, I asked a bunch of people and so far...

Small Robot: 12 seems to be the most voted, then after that was 6. I think 12 looks more 'evil' but 6 has this more innocent robot charm to it in my opinion and this film is being directed seriously but it’s meant to be fun, so it depends on how I want to make the villains look essentially.

Large Robot: 1 is the most voted so I'm happy to go ahead with that one. No major comment on this one I personally like the star eye because I think it’s fun but again depends on the tone.

Hero: Not one style was voted twice, I'm still leaning towards certain designs over others so at the end of the day I feel I’m going to go with my instinct since everyone’s opinion has been varied, I have about 14 votes so far and not one was repeated.

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For this production we’ve got 3 forms of transport for each villain character, the bikes for the agents, a flying transport for the smaller robots and the truck which will transform into the larger robot. This is the first design work based off concept art done by Connor.