#unitba1b

[ba1bmysteryboxanim]

I managed to get an extension on my submission deadline and so felt a lot less pressured and also manged to reach out for help.

I had already managed to finish the motion when my peer stepped in to help and initially we couldn’t get any of the lighting to work for some reason but we managed to get the directional light to finally work. Luckily this scene only took about 2 hours to render and then I managed to composite the video on my own at home using Adobe media encoder. Overall this is definitely a case of ‘finished not perfect and at this point I was just more focused on getting this animation finished and ready for submission. 

I’m not happy with the finished product and I know it’s about 2 seconds too short but at this point it’s better than not having anything to submit for this project. Getting some help really, really made this so much easier to tackle though and I feel like I would have been much worse off without my peer who so graciously helped me out. 

[stopmotionintro]

I decided to look into studio Laika a bit for some personal research and I found that I really like what the company stands for. They’re been a key force in revitalizing the stop motion industry and I feel like that is a major feat considering the reputation that stop motion animation had pre-Laika.

The studio is very open about their working process and so there is a lot of easily accessible information online which gives valuable insight into their working process. Laika blends traditional puppet making techniques with innovative modern technology such as 3D printing that I feel has really acted to make the process of stop motion films a lot more approachable.

[fantasticcreaturedesignproj-blog]

Second attempt  at making my maquette. 

Honestly, I’m not impressed with the way this turned out. I know that I could have done a lot better, especially with regards to the legs. I don’t know if I like the overall design all that much and going forward I’ll definitely be considering editing the design a bit.

But I’ve fallen behind in other areas so much that I decided this project was going have to be the kind that was simply finished and not perfect. Not feeling too great about the outcome of this project overall at the moment.

[unitba1b]

February 10th - After Effects morph

I attempted to take a second attempt at doing my after effects animation and sort of gave up halfway through. I didn’t really like my choice in film but I couldn’t come up with any other ideas I felt comfortable with. I think this could have been avoided if I put more time into the initial exploration part of the creative process. I feel like my inexperience shines through really brightly in this part of the unit and that I should have reached out for more guidance with it.

I don’t feel like I took very well to initial lessons too and I think that really set the negative tone of the overall project. I found that I was getting lost even when we were covering the basics. I really should have put more time into familiarizing myself with the program.

 Overall, it just really didn’t go very well.

[stopmotionintro]

I forgot to post these earlier but these are the stories for the walking with expression change and the picking up the box animation we did. 

Both these animations were definitely changed but the introduction of a partner into the project and I’m not complaining. It’s pretty cool that your ideas can develop in new directions so quickly once you have a partner involved in working on a project. 

I felt pretty lost while story boarding these two scenes and i think I’m starting to find that I really struggle to think in a 3D sense. 

[stopmotionintro]

So this project ran into quite a few problems. For this animation I was paired with Ella and we ran into issues setting up our camera as well as maintaining our lighting. I feel like overall we also struggled to communicate our intended movements and something about the overall animation just kind of doesn’t work. 

I enjoyed working with Ella and I feel like we work well together but I feel like we were both pretty uncomfortable with stop motion animation and unsure of how to execute our intended motion. I feel like our discomfort comes through in the form of stiffness in this animation. 

[stopmotionintro]

Ruth and I finished our standard ball bounce a bit early and started working on a ball bounce with secondary action a bit but sadly couldn't finish it because we had to wrap up and had a class after. It was off to a pretty good start though.

[stopmotionintro]

I actually really enjoyed working with the Plasticine for this animation and I was paired up with Ruth. Overall I’d say we did a pretty good job even though the Plasticine was pretty tough. 

The only major issue that we kept running into was catching our hands in the shots while we were working. I feel like that’s just something that comes as a result of working with someone you’re not entirely familiar with though and overtime happens less when you get used to your working partners. It definitely made me question how effective of a communicator I am in a group setting though.

It was pretty cool to get a chance to use the proper stop motion set ups in the filming booths of the media lab (I don’t actually remember what they’re called, oops). And I wish I had put more time into experimenting with stop motion.

[fantasticcreaturedesignproj-blog]

I started out the design process by examining the forms found in chickens, cats and the peacock plant. I was also toying with the idea of possibly integrating a bat for the wings but quickly abandoned that idea.

Overall I really liked the idea of a sort of rain forest dwelling creature that was for the most part friendly and domesticated. Though I’d wanted them to be treated more like cats than chickens as I don’t think they’d make very good food! 

I found that the sleek form of the Abyssinian cat made it easier to break down the forms found in a cat but I really liked the way that the fur of rag doll cats fell on their body. I planned to combine the two somehow.

[fantasticcreaturedesignproj-blog]

I decide for the fantastic creature design project I would call back onto a design I made from the sketchbook project in unit ba1b part 1. 

I didn’t really put much thought into the logistics of the creature or really look at any anatomical references initially because I was just feeling out the idea but I thought it would be fun to expand on the creature a bit more.

[stopmotionintro]

This was the first stop motion exercise we did and I was partnered up with Tan. The goal was to have a character walk on screen and change from two expressions.

We wanted to portray the emotions of someone who was sneaking around cautiously but realized the threat they were facing was not that serious in the first place and being a bit annoyed while walking away. 

We struggled with moving the armature around a bit and halfway through one of the legs really came loose but overall I think we managed to capture our intended emotion pretty well. 

If I could change one thing about this thought I would have made the pause when the character looks back a bit longer and have the drop their arms a bit to indicate that they relaxed a bit more and didn’t feel under as much of a threat.

[ba1bmysteryboxanim]

NOT OFF TO A GOOD START...

I did a quick playblast while messing around in Maya and trying to cover some of the things that I had missed in the lessons but just felt very disheartened by this end result. I think it perfectly reflects how much of a hot mess i was with regards to using the software properly. I especially started to panic as the deadline drew closer and closer. 

[ba1bmysteryboxanim]

Summary - February 18th - March 21st

At this point. I definitely am not feeling to strongly about my mystery box animation or ability to use 3D animating software in general. That overall panic has fed into a wave of procrastination the likes of which I’ve never experienced in my life. I have been doing every part of the the process except actually animating the mystery box animation and I can feel the increasing pressure of the approaching deadline looming over my head. 

The more that I fall behind the harder it is to catch up and the harder it is to ask for help as I feel like I really had no excuse to let this happen. I really let myself be dominated by my feelings of inexperience and I never want to let that happen again because I ended up making the process unnecessarily extra difficult. 

I feel as though no matter what I do I can’t get my animation in Maya to be anything but horribly stiff and as such just feel generally very discouraged about the whole process. I feel especially stupid because I know that the staff is there to help and they expect us to all be inexperienced but there’s something about asking for help at this stage when I’ve already fallen so far behind that just makes me so anxious. 

[ba1bmysteryboxanim]

EXPLORING POSING BASED ON REFERENCE FOOTAGE

I had a lot of fun analyzing my reference footage to try and pull out key-frames to use in my mystery box. In general I’ve found that one of the most fun part so of the course is breaking down a motion in order to understand how to convincingly replicate it in an animation. I feel like after doing this I realized that I need to be a lot more open with my posture when acting out reference footage so that my overall silhouette gets broken up a lot more and it’s a lot easier to tell what’s going on in a scene. 

[ba1bmysteryboxanim]

ONE OF MY MANY FAILED ATTEMPTS TO FAKE A FALL

I’m sure there’s a much more effective way to do this but I tried and failed many, many time at faking a fall. In the future I’ll probably use some sort of cushioning or have someone push me to get a more realistic result. I feel as though I’m too stiff to convey things like this believably. 

[ba1bmysteryboxanim]

FILMING MORE REFERENCES 

I’m definitely going to stick to filming references alone when I can. I’m not comfortable having to perform in front of others and even when alone I fell like I still manage to be pretty stiff. Overall I feel as though this reference footage was a lot more useful than the first round of reference footage that I shot.

I also feel as though it was kinda hard to effectively remove my more feminine features when considering the movement of the max model in maya seeing as his figure is more masculine and lanky. It wasn’t a huge issue but it was definitely something that made me stop and think.