Let's Take A Look

Big Buck Bunny:

Professional Project Review

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Today I'm going to talk about something I didn't make: a wonderfully made short film by the folks who developed the software Blender. Big Buck Bunny (2008) was made to showcase the capacity their free product could create with.

Big Buck Bunny tells the story of a large, gentle bunny that is endlessly tormented by squirrels. One day he decides to rebel and strike back against the squirrels with crafty traps. The short film is well put together, with a 3D modeled environment and characters that are accented with the excellent lighting. While most of the camera shots are close, the people at Blender still manage to establish a deceptively calm, pretty meow setting to contrast the actions of the squirrels. The short film sets up many similar contrasts such as:

-The bunny is oddly large and relatively masculine, but still acts dainty at the beginning

-The squirrels appear small and cute at the beginning, but slowly are revealed to be menaces

-The setting is serene and there are beautiful butterflies, but they are crushed by squirrels

If I were to take something away from this piece to apply to my own work, it would be creative use of camera angles and lighting. Since there is no dialogue, they communicated the story through gestures, faces, and angles. I am quite a ways away from that level of camera angle usage. One thing I saw that I can do, however, is the lighting. While I by no means can accomplish the lighting they have, I can identify possible ways they accomplished theirs. 

The only thing I could bring myself to critique is the grass texture, which at times seemed off, but even that wasn't detrimental to the film as a whole.

If I were given the task of improving it, I would probably look into developing the squirrels motives a teeny bit, but that'd be it. 

All in all, This short film is a funny, well-timed work that is definitely worth giving a watch if you like humorous story lines and comedic characters.

Summer Design Doodles

It's Been A While;

Here's a small update for you all

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So, between camps and trudging through summer assignments, I have put some work into my designing skills. Specifically: creature design (One of my passions). For this, I just drew away at an empty canvas until it was full to the brim with ideas. (Some old, some new) I have found this kind of exercise to be both helpful to my skills and my peace of mind. Doodling with nothing in mind helps me to calm down or relax. And to be honest, I think I had some real gems come out of this sheet (More or less that grassy snake and SNAKEOPOTTAMUS).

Beyond that large project, I also put some time into minor world building and Sci-Fi designs. (science fiction being one of my favorite story settings) In particular, however, I focused on alien technology and biology (Both of which I find absolutely fun to create).

The struggle with this particular robot to the left was the way in which I wanted to get my concept across. I knew I wanted it to have two specific modes, but I didn't want the long, tedious work of coloring both ideas in, or making sure that they looked similar enough to be the same machine. With some tweaking, I was able to use the same sketch layer for both robots, allowing me to maintain proportions and size throughout the designing process.

In terms of coloring, you can see I clearly took a few shortcuts, taking the  most common color and slathering it behind the lines messily, yet effectively. (There is a certain art to making something look sloppy in just the right way and I by no means have gotten that one down) 

And as a bonus, here are some more creature designs from earlier in the year:

E.T. - Extra Technological

THE HOME STRETCH:

Robot Meets Life Meets Cumulative Final Project

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Meet Robo: A rising star in the student movie clip industry. While he may not appear to be much, it was our task to give him his premier debut.

Well, maybe that wasn't exactly the outline of the project, but it's pretty close. Our real assignment was to apply all that we have learned into a group project. These new skills we aimed to apply were skills like 3D modeling, lighting, using a green screen, and special effects. My team: Jessica Love, Jessie Blom, and myself. With our combined powers, we got down to business.

To start off, we dove into the essence of the plot: the storyboard. Since storyboarding is something I particularly like to do, I took charge and scribbled our cheesy ideas down. (Now, I know my art can be better than this, but we didn't want to spend so much time on this) We came up with the idea of parodying that one scene from E.T., but with a robot on another planet. Robots: what could possibly go wrong? (Maya, that's what, but more about that later)

We went though a few hardcore rounds of 'nose-goes' and Jessica came out as our actor. So, while my comrades trekked down to the green screen studio, I stayed behind as our resident "Maya Master". For those unfamiliar, Autodesk Maya is a  3D modeling program, and the one we happened to have in the classroom. It's not a bad program, but it does have it's quirks. Some of those quirks, I've found, can be rather, or more accurately, extremely frustrating. But we'll get to that story.

Looks OK now, but...

I had an absolute blast modeling our resident star in Maya. Being a robot, he was easily composed of inorganic shapes which are much easier to make in maya than say, a hand. The special touch I added this time was parenting. 

Parenting, beyond the maternal and paternal varieties, is the act of taking one shape, and sticking it to another shape. This means that, if I move the parent shape, all child shapes below it will move, but not any shapes that the parent is parented. it's like a big tree, branches of children extending from the one, mighty parent at the bottom. If that shape moves, all the rest follow. This was crucial to having our robot move since who would want a robot whose elbow didn't move with it's shoulder? or its torso? No one, that's who. I put my heart and soul into perfecting our co-star.

Look at this absolute mess

The final trial on the modeling before animation was the wrists. (You can see they don't move in the final product) 

This was a rather blunt showcase of one of maya's specialties: Screwing up the simple stuff. I mean, just look at what it did to poor Pasted_cylinder_RWrist. 

Complete disaster. 

But, nevertheless, I persevered and came out with our amazing robot: Robo. A few shiny textures later and we were on the fast track.

ROBO in his completed glory

On the flip side of our team, we'd gathered our green screen shots together to key them out. By 'key out', I mean remove that bright green color from the background and replace with with something cool.

After compiling our efforts, we added the nifty sounds of Celldweller's The Wings of Icarus and Viola, we had our project. (It's a cool track, I'd listen to the whole thing if the clip interests you, it's interesting music for sure)

This project, overall, has taught me some of the more in depth abilities of Maya. I learned how to apply my knowledge of shapes, Booleans, parenting, and even aligning to make the robot reach it's highest degree of excellence. Outside of my new-found technical prowess, We, as a team, also gained more experience in team synergy and division of labor. (This is something I need more practice in for sure)

For future projects, I feel that I'd like to keep with the group dynamic we had for this one, but with more communication. I felt it may have been smart to check each other more often so that we are all and the same track. I also feel that, as we all improve in our chosen tracks, that we'll find even more smooth and easy teamwork styles to use. I await being able to work with the people I have seen in the future. And without further ado: our project:

FOOD-IMALS

Package Design:

Can we take it to the next level?

(of course we can)

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The Task:

Take a toy, any toy, and redesign it's package to not lonely look snazzy, but to have a hidden purpose behind carrying the goods. The first question on this matter, we found (We being Me and my accomplice), was A: "What toy" and B: "What will make this box really snazzy and cool". After going through ideas involving A gentleman bear, a car garage, and multiple other sketches of dollhouses, we sat down and realized how hungry we were.

And then, inspiration struck us with the full force of our stomachs:

And so, FOOD-IMALS WAS BORN.

The Process:

The first (and most challenging) task before us was to create the MYSTERY FRIDGE. We wanted to make a flat template that could be folded in such a way as to make a two-story fridge that could hold two little plush Food-imals with a working door. This was a little harder than it sounds (Unless it sounds moderately tricky to you, then you, my friend, are on point).

After a day or so of wrestling, experimentation, and cheese snacks, we'd finally come up with this template:

We designed the middle sections to fold inwards to make the middle shelf, causing the rest of the box to squish back together into a rectangular prism. The end result of the folded box looks like this:

In terms of designs and color, we went with primary almost-pastel colors for a childlike feel. Then, we played around with the different foods we could make this little cat orb into:

IN THE END: He became a cherry

With this cute little fellow in tow, we made the logo appear as a magnet for the completed fridge look.

The Challenges:

First of all: making the template was a huge block. But as we already discussed that one, I'll talk about the second challenge: the deadline. Now, this project may not seem too tough, but when you only have a week (and an average of less than an hour per day) to work on it, things can get a little tricky. This was only compounded by my partner being out for the count for the first few days.

Despite this, however, we managed to be one of the very few to submit our template in time for print, and of that we are proud.

The Collaboration:

As I mentioned, this was a team project and the division of work between us was the key to our success. My usual hate of group projects was overlooked by our past friendship.

The Result:

Our package has not been printed yet, and when it is, I'll be sure to share the picture with you all!

One Screen Two Screen, Red Screen Blue Screen! (Don't Forget Green Screen)

Throughout the history of film, many artists have discovered different ways to "key out" or make a matte in their films:

Today, with the common use of the green screen, it it always a little interesting to 

see where the technique originated from.

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The Magician's Medium:

Q: What was the magician's medium and how did it work?

We can all thank this Melies guy for going through
this process in the name of ART.
(And illusions. Mostly illusions)

A: The magician's medium was one of the first matting techniques used in film, 

allowing the filmmakers to expose certain parts of the film at a time and 

expose each to a new image separately upon re-filming. This was achieved 

with the use of black paint on each separate square of film. Other methods 
using painting included the tactic of painting over a pane of glass in front 
of the camera to create the fake scenery. While long and monotonous, this 
process was one of the first steps towards the fancy green

screen technologies we all know today in our weather forecasts and movies.

(Or even movies about weather forecasts, if that strikes your fancy)

Q: If they couldn't use green screens in black and white films, what did they use?

A: Black screens! Since the black and white films didn't have to worry

 about colors and the subtle contrasts involved with those, they could rely

 solely on lightness contrast to key out their subjects. The dark black of

 the screen would easily contrast with any lighter colors on there parson or

 object involved  making for a much more efficient method than 

painting over frames one by one!

Q: Did they only use black screens in Back and white films?

A: No, in fact, they began using the blue screen, or Dunning Process, in 

black and white films around the time when the mighty King Kong arrived on

 the big screens. Similar to the black screen, the blue screen helped create 

contrast in the subject, but instead of simply laying out black and white 

contrast, they brought out the differences between blue and yellow. However,

this technique would not be transferable to color film since to gain the correct 

contrast, the actors were lit in a bright yellow light.

Q: What did they do when they switched to color?

A: Well, this was not the case for any company but Disney, but the 

Yellow screen (Developed by Vlahos in the 50's) came into use in the films 

The Parent Trap, Marry Poppins, and more. With similar techniques to that of 

the previous screens, the Yellow screen was keyed out with a special 

prism camera. 

(Owned exclusively by Disney, of course)

This method was used by Disney for 40 years.

Q: What about everyone else? 

A: They used the Blue screen to chroma key their subjects out!

As shown by the graphic above, it took a lot of keying to get the subject 

out from a blue screen, but without the use of Disney's exclusive yellow 

screen and prism camera, they had to make do.

Q: So, if they had that, why do we only hear about green screens today?

A: Well, green screens came into use due to their cheaper nature, greater

obscurity in most outfits, and they've even made cameras that are more

sensitive to the green light. That doesn't mean the other colors have 

fallen into oblivion, however. The blues and yellows are still used today for

various needs and purposes.

(Information gathered from here)

GRO-XTL Fake Supplement Project

It may not be a real thing,

But that doesn't mean it's not cool beans

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GRO-XTL: 

Though such a scientific feat has yet to become a reality, it was still fun to design a box for it. The task: design a fake supplement/pill and give it a snazzy container. To meet this task, I created GRO-XTL Limb regeneration formula.

To start off this project, as I do for most projects, I sketched some logos out. Luckily, the first sketch I came up with turned out to be a big hit and I went with that one right away. The logo is a mixture of a caduceus and an Axotl (the brilliant amphibian who we're studying at this moment to advance regeneration technologies). I gave the color scene plenty to cool, scientific colors. Green for the natural aspect, and blue for the technological aspect. I also adjusted the typeface to seems confident and professional.

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Giving the container a generally peaceful feel, I put it to the test and printed it out for a 3D test run. The DNA patterns on the sides didn't quite match up, but that was okay. I was extremely satisfied with the turnout. I felt it completed it's task of marketing itself as reliable and a valid medication.

As a bonus, I made a medicine bottle to go with it:

e-MAGINE the Festivities

Greetings readers!

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That's me on the left there. My friend Katelyn is on the right.

As you may or may not be aware, my high school Olathe northwest, hosts an annual digital media festival so gallantly named e-MAGINE.

Schools all across the Kansas-Missouri area converge on my home turf to display their digital proficiencies in animation, graphics design, video, and web design! With categories spreading from advertisements to 3D organic modeling, there was a place for everyone to show off their skills! To see what I mean, you can check out all of the entries here.

My Personal Entry:

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Of course, there's no way that I wouldn't have submitted something to this event (especially given that I was required to attend regardless of participation), and I took a week of my like to animate one of the most bizarre character designs I have in my arsenal: Jeffely. (Whom you can search to see more of at my Deviant Art)

Now, Jeffely may not make any sense physically, but I can assure you that he's a full-fledged character with a fleshed-out personality (even if you can't see it from this simple loop animation) and I adore drawing him doing all sorts of things.

This perfect loop may have been seamless and well put together, but I only got into the top 5, and did not formally place, for I had not given the image any of his personality or story. But since I had not tried for any, I was not surprised. (At least I got on the slideshow this year)

Here's My Entry:

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NEXT YEAR I plan to enter something amazing, something that contains sweat, blood, and passion poured into it over an extended time. I will strive to make a STORY. (And maybe even beat McCall)

So anticipate the best when it comes time to enter again! Wish me luck!