showreel creation

so right now ive just been creating my showreel , i thought about because im doing this with an interactive menu i would split my show reel clips into two parts : dynamics and animation
i dont have much on modeling so i felt that i should leave that out for no but made me realise that during the summer i would have to work more on my modeling skills to come up with better stuff for my show reel.
as well as my clips i creating a lighting renders section to show the lighting ive done on various projects that i didnt have time to make clips on as well as a section on just some of my traditional art work which i thought was always a good idea cos one of my strong suits is my drawings and paintings and use of traditional methods to create art work. although it felt like i should learn how to do digital painting to show a broader range of methods i can work in so its another thing i believe that i will be working on in the summer these two projects has shown me quite well what im lacking in and where i need to practice and get myself stronger in such as modeling , animation ( can never have enough practice with animating ) and digital painting. i will of cos be improving my lighting skills but ill be focusing more on those 3 categories before hand.



dynamics



animation

realisation

it was after sending it and onto a couple more days that i thought about how i had done the rain and the single petal and wondered that if i had added a turbulence and vortex field on to the ncloth petal would i of had gotten the most accurate way of making the petal fall as if it was a feather however i had already sent the file to deon and we didnt have enough time for me to try and make this happen and send it back to be rendered out and com posited so ive decided that ill do this in my own time just to satisfy my own curiosity and if anything is ever needed similar to this in the future i will know for sure how to do this i felt i had done a good job at it for it being my first time using ncloth and learning how to do dynamics , i found the whole thing quite interesting cos i had to take in all factors that affect something and decide which should or should not have more effect onto the chosen cloth or geometry. this is something im going to learn more on in the summer cos i found it interesting and fun to do.

Overall looking back on the project i felt we all worked well together however there were times where we spend too long on finalising an idea firstly for the project to commence so for the next year im glad that we have to suggest our ideas early and then from there they are chosen before the actual year even starts ^_^

playing with it all together

so now that all the things i needed to do was done i thought i would just play around with it and put them all together and see what i got and i thought some of these renders looked quite good ^_____ ^

Single petal

i then after making 3 petals fall made a single petal fall on its own with out the rose or anything else in the scenery i had to make it loop down as if it was a feather however was not sure onto how i should do that there was no tutorials how feathers falling so i had to play around on how to figure it out this is what i came up with .



i had made it so that the gravity made it go down at an angle whislt changing the windspeed and direction to go the opposite way making it low enough the attributes so both concepts effected it equally i felt this gave the effect to which we wanted.

Ncloth - petals practice

okie so niko had finished creating the different versions of the rose and i had to make petals that would fall off of it luckily dom have given me a tutorial on how to create n cloth petals and how to give them the look of falling the tutorial would give me this end result



right so i learnt quite a bit from the ncloth tutorial such as how to set it to collide with any selected object i chose and how i could make the petals fall similar to that of how real petals fall changing attribuites such as wind direction , speed and gravity along with changing the ncloth attributes them seleves being lift meaning how much effect wind had on the ncloth so if the wind speed normal but i made the lift too high the ncloth would just quickly blow away so changing the attributes of lift, drag and rigidity which made sure it still looked more like a petal rather then a piece of cloth i started to understand the princaples of ncloth.



this clip was fine but i didnt like how due to the collision i had placed on the stem of the rose it caused some of the rose petals not to fall down so i took the collision off and tweaked more with the attributes of the Ncloth petals



this is what i got as a result which deon and i believed to be fine.

sunflare

so now that the skylight was done i started working on a sun flare im mainly working on the second clip because the first clip does not have much complex lighting in it so wont be long however the second one due to the amount of detail that we are putting into it that one will need to be put more hours into and more work. so right now im just making a sun flare for it which was quite easy just using a point light and then an optical fx on to it and then changing the attributes in the time scale for it ^_^




i came up with a few tests of it during the first try i was told that i had to make the screen white out more due to the sun flare.

sunlights trials and improvement!

soooo now begins the mission of making it match to how deon wants to see it , its a tough mission but im up for the challenge.....i think...i hope........oh god ... . . .
annnywho so i made it brighter and a bit more orange and got this sorta thing going for it.



sadly it was again...not the right way it needed to be intensly bright however still keep its detail in.. now this was hard because i found through my various tries that if i increased the brightness too much it would flood out the detail so i needed to make it so the brightness and colour matched whilst still retaining the detail that was within it... lets have a look at the trials that came lol





this one was left blue was because i was trying with the original that i hadnt changed the colour to , to see if i could perhaps if i made it brighter and kept the grain darker would it still retain the detail in a sense it did but not enough when changed to a different colour as seen below.



it seemed to be with this orange color a lot harder to see the visible contrasts in parts of the sky and was unsure on how to go about this..

sunlights

so i started working on some lighting for the scene of the second clip and mentioned to deon about HDRI lighting where i would use a HD image that would be a sphere around the scene and would automatically create lights for it based on the colours in the picture , he thought this was a good idea and told me to try and find a desert sky picture to match the way we wanted the second clip to look cos the enviiroment would be very desolate and a hot wasteland so i got a picture and this was it.



so with that picture i then went into mental ray settings and created the image based lighting and got this as the result



so showing it to deon we realised it needed to be alot more brighter and alot more oranger perhaps lol...so off i go

rain redone

okie so i just found another tutorial and tried it out now it does look a bit more realistic but still doesnt seem to match the style in which we want but i wanted to see if i could improve on the last rain scene.

rain

so one of the things i began working on was rain for the second clip now i looked on the internet for tutorials on how to create rai and i did found one and it was helpful i started learning how to create rain using particles and changing the shape of it so it looked like it was streaking down and was able to make it hit the ground plane and splatter out what i found to be one of the most complex things about it was changing the attributes to make it look more randomised the rain dropping. that was done by creating turbulence to it and changing the attributes however the overall thing was a very basic rain which i didn't feel looked so realistic.



because it didnt match the style for the second clip we felt its just best to not put this into it which i would agree i decided ill try and keep looking on the internet to see if i can find more tutorials on creating a more realistic style of rain. although i did enjoy doing this tutorial because it helped me to find out how to make particals get effected through gravity, turbulence and vortex fields so with know that i could perhaps make tornados using turbulence and vortex fields. ^_^

schedule

okie so with the story boards all completed we were given our roles and a schedule to obey to that Deon created and i must say it was quite helpful it made sure i knew what i was doing so for the things that i could do on my own without having to wait for things from others in the group i could start straight away. XD







the schedule was done very well and was interactive so that when we finished a assignment we could change it on the schedule and it would show to everyone what was completed. this was quite efficient. ^_^

the storyboards

so Dom and Deon created the story boards and the script whilst we were with them for when making the script adding comments in and also giving ideas on some of the shots for the storyboard so this is what they guys came up with. that we all were satisfied with.

so this is for clip 1













and this is for clip 2

The ideas

lol so we have all come up with a few ideas some better then others , i will admit mine was pretty much foolish lol i thought on having a bunch of tribal flowers at night doing a dance around a sun idol and the sun somewhere up in the night or a heaven type plane contemplating wether to go down ? lol we also thought that perhaps that for the contrast of one clip being very happy and optimistic and then a second one being quiet sad and pessimistic.

whilst brainstorming ideas dom came up with two real good ideas that i felt were quiet good.

Dominique Koomoshan
I have another idea, kind of similar to Wall-E where the world is pretty much a waste land. The sun has no job of providing anything because there's no living thing. Suddenly you see a flower (or flowers) but they've already started dying. The sun tries to shine on the flowers, but nothing. Eventually the sun tries to shine brighter and brighter, and accidentally causes the flower(s) to set alight and burn.

Dominique Koomoshan
My idea was, opposite to Niko's. I'm still undecided, but maybe a small flower or a child (not using flower completely literally) and they happily grow under the sun into a fully grown flower or a fully grown adult. However, the sun sets and it's night time, causing the flower/person to slump in sadness. Then quickly, the sun reappears, and the flower/person grows further in rejoice, but soon the cycle between night and day switches rapidly to the point that the flower/person no longer reacts with joy, but continues to slump and wilt. The person instead aging. This showing the short cycle of a flower's life and how reliant they are on the sun.

so we took our ideas to our tutor and through some deliberation we decided on the two ideas but with some slight changes
the first clip would be of a sunflower growing in the sun and it would be styled out as very happy and with bright colors whilst the second clip would be very realistic in contrast to the first clip and would have a rose that was in a desolate wasteland and the sun would shine bright and brighter on it and thus make the rose whither and die.

so now the ideas are set we just have to create the script and the story boards with a proper idea on the style we will choose for them.

The brief

so now that we had all decided on finding a client to do the project on we created a facebook page for it and started our search, Jarrod gave us some examples on how we could do this being the best way is looking for competitions online that would allow us to create a film for it.

so we all started looking for things like this , i suddenly thought on the virgin short stories for some reason maybe because i heard of it a while ago and had a look on it the website about it i liked the thought of it cos we could choose what we wanted to do for it and the only things they wanted is that it should be:

Duration
Up to 2 minutes 20 seconds (140 seconds), including top and end credits.

Language
Your film must be in English or subtitled in English.

one of the other requirements they wanted however was something that the group seemed to have a big problem with the requirement being that the film should be U/PG rated this was quite a problem so we decided to still look at other competitions however keep this in mind because it was still free reining in a sense leaving the topic of the film to us to decide on.

so yeah we also looked at the E4 competition and other competitions on the animation world network so we all had a look and found a few competitions from a company called Quietman and the competition said this:

"Does the sun miss the flower as much as the flower misses the sun?"

Using the above line of poetry, you animate a :15-:30 short inspired by what you see/hear/feel. Upload your video to the Poems In Motion page here on Vimeo, and let the crowd-sourced inspired judging begin.

The video with the most Likes on Vimeo wins an iPad 2.


so we presented all these competitions to Jarrod and he felt that we should do the Poem competition but do two clips for them because we are quite a big group so there would be enough work for the 5 of us.

SO now begins the making a storyboard and then being animating for it.

The project

so we got our industry exercise 3 brief , the brief is quite free reining.

The aims of the brief is



To enable students to initiate, plan, and complete complex team projects.

To enable students to work to broadcast standards of quality.

To provide experience of establishing and developing team project schedules and tracking progress towards project completion.

To enable students to demonstrate and promote the range and quality of their animation skills through the production of a show-reel.

so really this brief is more purpose so that we build up on our broadcasting skills making sure that we reach a state that allows us to be more professional so that our work will be able to be shown on a more technical setting. ie rave live , tv and so forth.

Now the three things that we have to submit are

an individual blog that reflects the work that we have done

an interactive showreel on DVD

and a group film that is fit to be broadcasted

so the brief gave a description on these 3 things


Journal
This should focus on your plans for this project, your brief, your project schedule, and your performance as a team member. These can be supplemented by a group journal to help communication with team members, but the primary concern is your individual reflective account. These should be hosted on Blogspot, or Wordpress and the URLs submitted to your tutor.

Showreel
Your showreel will take the form of a menu driven interactive DVD where users will be able to select which of your work they view. You will be expected to assemble a reel that demonstrates the breadth of your capability, and the diversity of your style as an animator. As such, you may use work from any point in your studies, or from outside your time at college. You may also consider generating new work this term to supplement perceived gaps in your portfolio. The main drivers for assessment here are NOT the quality of the individual pieces of work, but the way in which you choose to present them and to promote yourself…

Movie
This is where the majority of your effort will be directed for this project. You will have to choose a team first of all, ideally a small one of two or three individuals. Then you will have to negotiate a brief for your project. There are three main ways that you can fulfill this part of the brief, but all will depend upon you having a real client, and it is up to YOU to get information from your client to define your brief. This information should include a list of deliverable items, and a set of deadlines.

so there are 3 options that we can go about accomplishing our project

the first being helping the 3rd years with their final film , working towards rave live and the third way would be finding a client out of the uni and negotiating a brief with them

so im working with Deon , Dom , Gerome and Niko

we all decided that because we want some more freedom with what we want to create for this project that we would choose the 3rd way , being finding a client in which to negotiate a brief with whilst keeping within the broadcasting spercifics.

so now we just gotta find one and hopefully it should all be bliss. WISH US LUCK!!