Rendering…

At the beginning of the course, I had never thought of knowing how to render a scene properly as a difficult task. Right now, I’m definitely learning it the hard way. There are so many options and properties that you need to consider if you want your scene to be rendered in the most aesthetic way. The thing about all that right now is the waiting time to see the end product.

One of my instructors had once mentioned that in every class he has ever taught, he has been able to find one student who fully understands and utilizes the tools to render well. This is one of those ignorant things, where I thought that all you had to do was press a single button.

In a render, the most basic things to consider are lighting, textures, shadows and specular highlights. All those things can be broken down into layers. Once they have been sliced up, they can each be manipulated to suit your needs in the end product.

I realize that with the proper lighting effects in place, you can make any scene look beautiful and portray realistic properties to the human eye.

Ideas!

I’m kinda glad that my creative juices are flowing this week. A more solid idea for my demo real seems to be taking shape. Somehow though, I feel that it lacks the extra finesse that could make or break my reel. There’s still enough time for me to come up with new ideas and tweak my current one. I’m pretty confident that by the time we have to draft up our storyboards, I can gather enough advice and feedback from my instructors and classmates to come up with something tangible.

Over the week, I was actually able to catch the CG animated film, Horton Hears A Who. Some of the technical aspects seemed to meet my expectations, yet somehow there were a few aspects that just didn’t flow well with me.

The things that I liked about the film, were art direction, character design, the character models, textures, and environment designs. The things that compelled me to watch the film were, the animation and story. In these areas, I was a little disappointed.

From what I saw in the trailers, I thought that the animation was pretty good. However, I guess because the trailers contained such short segments, there wasn’t enough information to depict how they were directing the animation. The character development and dialog seemed to limit the main character to a certain style of animation. I felt that the posing was well done. However, I felt that the animation was too frantic and over-acted.

I suppose though, with the main character being played by Jim Carrey, the animators felt that they had to match the actor’s personality to the animation. There are probably a lot people who agree that Jim Carrey is tends to be someone who over-emphasizes his characters.

As I go through the course, I guess I have to find the line between exaggeration and subtle nuances to portray my characters’ “acting” in my animation. Examples of animation that seem to balance animation technique quite well, are sequences that you can find in most Pixar films.

Until it was pointed out to me, I didn’t know how much a subtle action can do for a scene. You always hear about animation needing exaggeration, but I guess it depends on the emotional content of the sequence you’re watching.

I’m pretty confident in where my reference research is taking me, but being able to apply all the knowledge that I’ve acquired so far is going to be pretty crucial.

Brainstorm!

Gotta just keep on truckin’…gather more ideas, write and sketch more concepts.

All the ideas that I’ve been coming up with and coming across need to go into a notebook. Otherwise I’m just going to forget them by the time we have to start our previz and storyboarding. So far, I probably have enough right now to fill half a book. I know that isn’t enough.

Throughout my blogs, I’ve been talking about focusing my reel around animation. In order to get a thorough sense of the whole animation process, I believe that I should familiarize myself with rigging. So far, what I know about it is that it requires a technical mind. A lot of different functions and properties to remember. I’m not really that much of a techie, but I’m definitely try my best to find out as much as I can about rigging.

The important thing about rigging is making whatever object or character you’re animating, is making all the movements and poses look natural.  I actualy find it quite fascinating what difference a good rig can do for a character. For example, there are intuitive and intricate rigs out there that can mimic amazing facial expressions like that of a human.

On top of having great animation, I know that I’m going to have to increase the production “polish” on my reel, along with the composition of my camera shots. While at BCIT, the instructors have made a clear  point of making sure we understand that bad composition can make or break a demo.

Ever since I’ve known about the whole composition issue, I’ve been trying to pay close attention to the kinds of camera work that they’ve been doing in animated films, and live-action films alike. Quite simply put, it’s the art of drawing the viewer’s eye to the subject of the shot. The most simple of the 12 rule of composition seems to be the “rule of thirds”. I haven’t really seen a film yet, that doesn’t apply that rule. On the other hand, the other day I did see a bad “hook-up” shot.

Basically, I was watching a soap-opera and the camera framed two characters. There was a cut to the opposite side of the room and the two characters had switched between the left and right sides. This would indicate a “bad hook-up”. As soon as I recognized what was going on, I laughed out loud and couldn’t believe that they actually did something like that on television.

So, throughout the term I’m going to make sure that I keep good composition in mind as I progress forward toward my demo reel.

Gung Ho

I was right. I’m feeling 100% better about my creativity and motivation at school. I’m glad that it actually didn’t take long for me to get back into the swing of things.

One of the challenges that I’m facing right now is trying to come up with a decent story for my demo reel. As I plan to focus on animation, having a reel with a good story would probably make it a lot more memorable.

While going through different animated shorts and demo reels from other students, solid themes and unique storytelling definitely make a difference. Now that I have a better idea about where my progress is headed, I feel that I should start forming the foundation for my reel.

Looking back at what initially inspired me to go into animation, it’s always been the animated shorts from my childhood that sparked my interest. What made those pieces more memorable than their stories though, were the visual gags. In order to ensure that my reel doesn’t come across as boring, I have to make sure that if I do use gags, I have to make them innovative and intuitive.

One other thing I feel that makes a good sequence of animation, is the aesthetic value. During my experience in the Digital Animation program, I’ve learned that over-stylizing something can often out single out the appeal of your reel to only a specific crowd. The trend in the film and gaming industry seems to be that companies are trying to adapt their themes to a wider audience. By doing this, they can get more and more people to enjoy their productions.

 Ultimately, my demo is going to revolve primarily around the animation aspect. Along the way, I will try to incorporate an artistic approach into my work but if the animation doesn’t come out well, it’s not going to help my goal at all.

Picking up on the things that my instructors mention and the trends that I see in feature films, in order to create a certain level of appeal in animation, you have to make sure that the audience can identify with what you’re trying to portray. In order to do this, I’m going to have to research heavily on reference from real life.

So, for the time being, I know what direction my work is headed, but I don’t know what the core content is going to be. Having just started my second term in the program, I’m aiming to have a solid concept within the next couple months.

Crunch

It’s almost as if I’m experiencing something similar to writer’s block. On the other hand, it’s not exactly a block because I’ve been able to carry on through the week consistently with my projects. Rather, some frustrations I’m experiencing seem to be affecting my creativity. I know that it will fade quickly, though.

I suppose part of it could be that I have this great expectation on myself that I need to come up with a wondrous and fantastic jaw-dropping demo reel seems to be overwhelming me. I have so many great ideas for my demo, yet in comparison with my current skill set, I don’t know how to gauge what concepts would be achievable by the time my demo needs to be produced.

Often times I feel the work I’ve done has been invested with so much effort but yielded such a significant contrast in results. On the other hand, I know that I’m still in the learning process and need to practice a lot more,

In order to counter this obstacle, I’ve been trying to re-calibrate my perspective by reminding myself what inspired me to be in this program in the first place. I’ve been spending more time with my friends, and I’ve been searching for material related to the program that stirs inspiration in me.

So far, I’m becoming more and more fond of the previews I’ve been watching for the upcoming animated film, Horton Hears A Who. One of the reasons why I’m attracted to the film, is because I’ve been a fan of Dr. Seuss since I was a child; not only are the stories, and characters interesting and quirky, but what I like best about them is how they were illustrated. The models they’ve created for the film are amazingly true to the original designs. What caught my attention the most about the movie was the fact that the characters have great poses and animation.

Some of the instructors have mentioned that snappy animation is a good thing to have. When I first started this program, I didn’t really quite understand what was so appealing about “snappiness”. As I’ve been researching some of the current animation in production, I’m beginning to see what the instructors were talking about. A character’s pose is ideal to what it’s trying to portray when it’s being animated. Therefore, as the poses are being transitioned from one to the other, the viewer should be able to read each one clearly especially if the character is trying to express an emotion.

As for the upcoming week, I hope to pick up a lot more inspiration as time progresses.

http://www.hortonmovie.com/

Not The Same Old Thing (posted Feb.25/08)

So far, I’m really excited about term 2. There’s a lot of material to go through, and I’m kind of starting to get the hang of all the tools that we use in program. Right now the trick is to stick to my plans for time management. As we start heading into the 2nd week of the term, I’ve actually been able to juggle my time more or less accordingly to the necessities of my life and the work that I need to put into my projects.

On the weekend, while I was at a friend’s house, I was introduced to a game called Drake’s Fortune for the Playstation 3. Although I didn’t really get to play much of it, from a Digital Animation student’s viewpoint, I was intrigued and inspired. Much like the extra and behind-the-scenes footage that they include with feature films on DVD, I was watching tech footage for this video-game.

Most of the behind-the-scenes footage that you watch on DVD’s don’t tend to get very technical, but I was glad to be watching the technological segments and being able to understand what they were talking about. Just like what all our instructors in the program consistently tell us to do for our own projects, the company that made Drake’s Fortune had to collect a lot of reference throughout the production to make it believable and appealing.

Compared to the video-games that they made when 3D graphics were first introduced, the technology that industry uses today has jumped by leaps and bounds. With new boundaries and limitations that have evolved this much, people are definitely expecting companies to fill gaps and go beyond their expectations. Therefore, I thought that it was an excellent idea to have a video-game that displays the level of work that goes into these productions.

Often, there is a misconception about work related to state-of-the-art technology that it is accomplished with just the push of a button. Being in the program for the past few months has absolutely taught me otherwise. If any production is to be done in the industry that looks good and works well, a lot of work has to be put into it.

With that being said, I look forward to moving full-steam ahead. As the challenges progress, I can’t wait to get whatever industry related material and reference I can get my hands on. I don’t yet have any of the most recent “next-gen” consoles, but I definitely am inspired now to get one. Time management, on the other hand, must come first!

Naughty Dog Inc.’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

http://www.naughtydog.com/comingsoon/index.html