Category: Uncategorized

Here are a few snaps from the Leeds Graffiti Jam, apologies for the poor quality photos.

I really like the idea of artists producing their renditions in conjunction with a DJ set. Whether the visual outcome was a direct response to the music and atmosphere I am not sure. Needless to say it was a very interesting experience, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere created.

Nightclub scene filmed on camera then put through and animation filter to give a live, visual feedback loop where the filter can be altered by hue, contrast or speed (if the filter is animated/ film footage). I have knocked up this visual to show what the live feedback loop might look like on screen:

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT:: To take a waterproof camera swimming and see how many different ways I can photograph the light refracting through ripples and figure out a way of filming it in a format that can overlay a live camera feed.

Recent experiment with firefly lights, made using flash. I wanted to show how light can be used in the simplest way possible to give an interesting effect. By doing this I am exploring the elementary fundamentals of the moving image and projections. This extremely simplistic loop also will not dictate the atmosphere of where it is being projected too much, providing a background aura, which is I feel is the path I want to take as a VJ. Having said this, I also hope to develop some more complex and engaging renditions of geometric and also organic design. I want to compile a good range of styles and themes, with the aim of being able to perform with many different types of musicians and artists of different styles and genres.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT:: Colours, using the full spectrum in coordination to give a more exciting ambience. Also, playing with the shape of the circles to give an amoebic appearence to the cells. Perhaps also some strobing effects Note: Research health regulations for those who suffer epilepsy.

Waterfall with flash, I discovered this effect during my foundation year, not expecting the photo to come out at all I was astounded by the resemblance to a galaxy. It is part of the reason that I have become fascinated by water and it’s visually astounding and relaxing motion of flow.

As part of my VJing portfolio I want to dedicate an entire section to water and attempt to animate it’s fluidity as a liquid, but also it’s colosal presence in the skies. Also I would like to explore deeper into what happens when light and liquid meet and the various reflections, refractions and evaporation this causes. Incase I am becoming slightly too scientific about the whole thing I am also currently drawing up some illustrations for a story about raindrops and their everyday lives on cloud cumulus. Hopefully this will lead me to develop a whole world of magical creatures and characters that can be used as part of an animated story; possibly not for the reception of a dancing crowd but more as a personal addition to the content I am creating.

DEVELOPMENT:: To go out and film a waterfall under directive light.

CYMATICS

This still is taken from an eductational film about the phenomenon of cymatics. When subjected to sound waves of certain frequencies, water forms different patterns and shapes, which is extremely mesmerising when viewed in slow motion. I refered to this effect earlier in my blog, during the soundscape project, when I noticed these patterns forming simply by vibrating the surface the water was sitting on.

Effectively what we are seeing is waves of energy passing through water instead of air. It is obvious that the form of these waves is completely different and it is the surface vibrations causing these patterns not the air itself.

DEVELOPMENT:: Bubble speaker….

It is the last week of the project and things are starting to come together. Having finished the interiors, I fused together the outer chasis of the train (Ceri’s vector art) with my interior (watercolour) for the opening shot of the people leaving the train. I am extremely pleased with the result (below), having being slightly concerned that the two styles would conflict.

I think the clean exterior and the slightly stained interior reflect the actuality of a train’s construction quite effectively. The animation of the crowd leaving the train is also proving to be quite a challenge, but with the use of a Fast radial blur, I think it will look nice and colourful once finished.

I have also completed a test on the cartoon style (exaggerated) throbbing of the main character’s hand after it has been crushed by the “oblivious man”. At the moment it is inbetween looking conmpletely ridiculous and quite realistic. i.e. it is believable enough to be real but not exaggerated so much that it is meant to be a joke, which has resulted in an extremely stomach turning display, especially with the addition of purple veins. In addition to this I will have to animate the hand being crushed and the oblivious man’s position in the background.

Moving through the train has not presented a problem so far but I imagine a simple zoom combined with a walking rock (in addition to the train shaking) will give a convincing outcome. Ralph has also informed us of a method of recording what the mouse is doing (live) whilst the animation is playing. This will obviously save us alot of time, not having to animate each and everymovement, and will undoubtedly be more realistic.

We are coming into the last week of the project now and most of the elements we need have been created. The character design (below) is being vectorised by Ceri, as most of the main characters have been, to make them stand out more. The rest of the crowd, including the people coming off the train, is currently being drawn up by myself using watercolour. I intend to keep the detail of these characters to a minimum in order to create a vibrant atmosphere and not detract from the main characters.

This character is only to be used in the opening shot, when the train is coming to a halt. After which the camera will be in first person.

As inspiration for the interior of the train I looked at the work of Studio Ghibli, having remembered a scene in the film “Spirited Away” in which there is a fascinating scene, where the characters are returned to some kind of normaility of a train journey.

Apart from this influence I have abstrained from using any other sources of inspiration directly in an attempt to illustrate my own interpretation of trains that I have taken in throughout my life. I feel that by drawing purely from this melting pot of things I have noticed I can depict what is both a personal and encompassing viewpoint of the atmosphere you get on a train. This is definitely an advantage of drawing purely from memory, but can sometimes be hard to pull out or make realistic (if that is what you are aiming for).

The inside of the train is also close to completeion. I was slightly concerned about the perspectives between the view down the carriage and the facing door inside the train, but when they are in motion this distortion is not that recognisable. I intend to disguise this even more by using a motion blur.

The only thing that remains is the adverts that line the isles which I intend to design myself, to give a little attention to detail. Hopefully I can think up some quite satirical renditions of modern day adverts and culture.

The result of my first attempt at scripting in Mel (Maya’s Programming language). I was fascinated by the logic of programming, but found the inflexibility of the commands extremely difficult to adhere to and quite frustrating. I realised that there are many different mathematical routes to achieve the same result, but they are more often than not the simplest routes, depending on the what you want to achieve and what the programmer wanted to create the language for in the first place. Having created a three-dimensional grid our next task is to randomly fill a 2D grid then somehow apply the rules of “The Game of Life” to make intricate patterns that move across the grid:

promptDialog
-title "my dialog box"
-message "Enter x"
-button "OK" ;
int $v1 = `promptDialog -query -text` ;

promptDialog
-title "my second dialog box"
-message "Enter y"
-button "OK" ;
int $v2 = `promptDialog -query -text` ;

promptDialog
-title "my second dialog box"
-message "Enter z"
-button "OK" ;
int $v3 = `promptDialog -query -text` ;

for( $i=0; $i<$v1; ++$i )
{
for( $j=0; $j<$v1; ++$j )
{
for( $k=0; $k<$v1; ++$k )
{
sphere ;
xform -translation (2*$i) (2*$j) (2*$k);
}
}
}

Here is a breakdown of the process of creating the Game of Life.

If I am honest, as I said I would try to be with my blog, I was very disappointed when I heard we would be making animations for the BBC. I realise that it is an excellent opportunity for people to see the work we are doing, and in collaboration with an obviously very high standard of writing and sound engineering (from the samples we recieved). However, I feel that the areas that I wanted to develop in have been completely hijacked by the BBC, as has my personal progression as an aspiring artist. I had many ideas that I wanted to develop, all of which are at the other end of the scale to story-telling and cartoon style animations. Despite my gripe with this brief, I felt it necessary to bite the bullet and I take comfort in the fact that I could be creative with the style of the script that I chose, which was the underground/tube instruction animation. I am very pleased to be working with Nat and Ceri, both of whom I appreciate as artists and hope that our individual styles will work well together.

Initially I had a few good ideas about the kind of style I wanted to push forward for the project. A general consensus appeared to have the interior of the train and backgrounds as clean and simple as possible, in the style of an emergency instruction manual. E.g. Below.

In contrast to this I thought that a line-drawn, sketchy kind of depiction of the characters would look really nice. If you can imagine a similar style to that of Erica Russell’s, but with a little more detail. As an idea, I don’t think the other two bought into this so much, especially as line-drawn animations are notoriously difficult and laborious to achieve. Instead we agreed on simplistic cut-out style characters which we would split between us. I was asked to create the main character, who would only appear for the opening scene, after which the camera would go into first person. Aswell as this I was asked to design the interior of the train, taking into account the camera movements and seperate angles. In terms of colour I imagined very high hues, giving a feeling of intense lighting and low saturation for a blandish kind of look.

In addition to this I had an idea to animate the hand cursor (being a mock interactive interface) with certain expressions to fit in with the story. I hoped this might give a point of interest to the interactive side of things and also to make something a little more alternative to your average cartoon style animation.

I think that it might be easy enough to act out the movements/expressions with my own hand, then simply pixelate it, to appear like the white glove you see on computer interfaces.

Here is my rendition of the song “I’m Only Sleeping” by The Beatles from the Revolver album. I tried to choose a song that I could interpret in an interesting way, not too literal, so that I could use abit of imagination with it and allow room for some abstraction.

I knew immediately after being briefed on the project that I wanted to design and animate my own character. I felt using a pre-made model in Maya would be challenging but would not give me any scope to be creative. I was glad of some guidelines, in that the character needed to be “humanoid” in appearance. When hearing the actual dialogue, “Maybe I should go back to making noodles” i felt this would confine the possibilities too much, in having to be somehow connected to noodles.

I began to develop ideas around this framework, one possibility, as obvious as it may seem now, was to have an extravagant gourmet chef, trying his hand at something different, then having something disastrous happen to him in the kitchen. It was then I realised the necessity of having an anterior action of the character to set him up for the line.

Another idea was to have a rather pompous judge figure, complete with wig, to be taken down a peg in the courtroom. I imagined his hammer breaking or having him fall off of his seat. Unfortunately I don’t think this character would fit into the context of the quote, nor match up with the sound of Jack Black’s voice in the Kung-Fu Panda. Above is a montage of the sketches I have made so far. I have tried to concentrate on the faces of the characters, as I think this gives an immediate depiction of their background and some personality.