HeapMau5

WIP 3D head after using 'scrumple' script

The next few weeks I'm going to be working on a section of the new Deadmau5 and Imogen Heap video for Telemiscommunications.  The video is going to be comprised of 20 sections by different animators, and I was chosen to contribute, which is awesome. This is a great oppurtunity and I'm really excited to be apart of such a big project. It will be cool to see how the whole thing is going to fit together.

I've started work on a some concepts.  I want to go in quite an experimental direction with it, similar-ish to my uni innovations project.  I want the movement to feel almost stop-motion like, animated at 12fps and not smooth and finessed.  This fits the brief for the project of a lonely businessman in an airport.  I have also written a python script that adds imperfection to 3D models, giving a kind of 2D hand-drawn feel to the piece (see above image).  It goes through each object selected and offsets each vertex a tiny bit for whatever time frame you choose. Obviously it's only really useful for low-poly models (or Maya will likely crash out), but the animation can be cycled so its not too heavy for non-smoothed meshes. You can do cool things with it, like increasing the offset to create a kind of scrunched up paper look. I am quite happy with the result, and when I pimp it out with nice GUI I'll stick it online to download.

I'll upload more progress as it happens. Peace out.

animation test

gifs

Jolly Garden walk cycle

Colin the Sponge

thangs

updated animation reel

and a gif for good measure:

airport concept

Scribbles

Some scribbles:

Here are some character design for a short 2D film I'm working on. The premise is that one of the characters is trying to get on with his everyday life, but is trapped in a children's television show. More to come!

Here's a few photos from Interfilm Berlin Festival (13th-18th November). I'd never been to Berlin before, it's a beautiful city. 'Merfolk' was played at the opening ceremony, and twice as part of the 'Confrontations' programme. It was a great experience having my work shown on the big screen, amongst such amazing films.

Festivals and Jobbies

I thought I should update on what I've been doing since I got back from my travels (I should probably post more often).

Firstly, my film Merfolk won best animation at Purbeck Film Festival, which is awesome. Unfortunately I didn't get to go, but it seems like a really cool little festival, and I am very grateful! 

It also got accepted in Interfilm Internation Short Film Festival in Berlin. I'm going there tomorrow to see it and plenty of other awesome looking films, so I will keep you posted. It's in competition too so wish me luck!

Also, for two weeks in October/November I was lucky enough to work as a runner on a short stop-motion animation for Sesame Street! It was a Blink production directed by Sumo Science (who did the Nokia ads 'Gulp' and 'Dot') and was great to get experience on a professional stop-motion shoot, having worked primarily, so far, in CG.  I met some awesome people who had worked on Chicken Run, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Frankenweenie and had a sick time.

At the mo I am working on a couple of different projects that I will share soooooon, applying to festivals and continuing my quest for some kind of employment! I'll stick my showreel here for you to have a looksie.


Any way, I've got to pack for Berlin. Cheerio x

hundreds and hundreds of stuff

I haven't done a blog in a bazillion years. I've spent the last 3 months in America. More about that later, but first here's some stuff:

I got a first in my degree what I did! Very happy with that, feels like all the hard work paid off. Woooo Yeahhh etc.

Also I started sending my major project off to some film festivals, and it has been selected to be shown in competition at interfilm Internation Short Film Festival, Berlin. It's from 13th-15th November, so if you're in Deutschland check it out. You can see it here on vimeo or on the NCCA's youtube here.

Any way, as I was saying I spent the summer in the USA. I spent the first two months working as Arts and Crafts Specialist at Camp Seneca Lake, NY.  This was my second year working there and I love it. It's a great environment, the people are amazing and I basically get paid to muck around and make stuff, which is great!

Paper mache snowman

Cartooning

Triptych

Hidden UV paint

I also ran a cartooning hobby group where a bunch of kids would make comics and learn how to animate.  It was really fun, they would each come up with a character that they would design and voice, and then we would all come up with the story. They have some crazy imaginations, and it was pretty impressive what they could produce in such a short space of time (about eight or nine two-hour periods). Check it out:

August 2011




July 2012




August 2012



After camp I went on a road trip from New York to LA which was incredible. Saw amazing cities of New Orleans, Vegas and San Francisco, and natural wonders like Monument Valley, Grand Canyon and Zion NP. It's an incredible country with so many different breath-talking landscapes. I'll post more stuff about it at a later date as I'll probably do some work based on what I saw. So inspiring. I arrived back a couple days ago, and now my priority is getting a showreel put together. I am also starting work on a VFX shot, with some nice matchmoving in there so watch out for that. Sorry this post has been a bit of a shambles but so much stuff going on!

merfolk - done

final major project:

After weeks of slaving away, it is done.  I feel like I have learned a huge deal throughout production, especially being involved in all aspects of the project, from conception right to the end.  After all the modelling, rigging and animating of multiple characters, compositing and background painting and editing, I feel my skills, both technical and creative, have certainly improved.  I am pretty happy with how it turned out, and feel it has definitely given me the confidence to make another (better) film, and keep working on developing narratives and telling stories. 

I would like to thank everyone who helped, gave advice etc. etc. anyways, have a looksie.

enjoy

x

jawlensky

I really need to update this more. Anyway, today I got bored of revision so I rejigged my passport photo to fit the proportions of this Alexej von Jawlensky portrait.  He was a member of the expressionist group der Blaue Reiter with Kandinsky and that lot and probably one of my favourite artists ever.  The colours he uses are amazing

In other news, I have pretty much finished my film and it should be online soon hopefully! Workworkworkworkwrkrwkrworwokrwkw

merfolk WIP

 Not long until deadline now. I have been working flat out on the animation for 'merfolk' recently and should have it all completed by the end of the week, leaving time for compositing and matte painting.

Here's a small example of what to expect:

Our heroes with Colin the sponge

Cheeky bit of police brutality

Satire ohohohoho

Flock The System

Programming assignment complete.

I haven't blogged for a while.  Along with the ongoing major project progress, I have been working on this:

Flocking system for maya, created as a group programming project with Jeremy Booth and Nathan Hayles. The system itself is an openGL application written in C++, using Jon Macey's NGL (NCCA Graphics Library). The maya GUI uses Maya Python API, and launches the executable from within maya to provide an efficient workflow.

My individual responsibilities were the python GUI, the curve/obstacle importers/exporters (file write in/out) allowing for real time updating, goal following (allowing sub-flocks with multiple curves), and some work on the final interface and xml exporter.

The aim was to create a flocking system to be used with maya to provide a fast efficient workflow, allowing lots of user control over the behaviour of the flock, and look of the final piece.  When the python script is run, the user will be asked to create/select a project directory where exported files will be written to and read from, allowing the exporting to work seamlessly in the background as changes are made.  Initial values for number of boids, time taken for flock to follow curves and frame-rate can be set in maya using the GUI.

The user can create curves in maya to be used as paths for the flock to follow.  The flock is split into sub-flocks depending on the number of paths to follow.  These can be edited/created/deleted and updated as the program is still running.  Spheres and cylinders can be created as proxy geometry to act as obstacles that the boids avoid.  There is also a predator mode, that can be toggled on and off, where the flock disperses to avoid a predator that is chasing them.

There are many attributes that can be modified using the GUI such as seperation, cohesion and alignment; max speed, max force, mass and scale of boids/predator; and influences of obstacle avoidance, predator avoidance and goal following.  Boids can be added and deleted on the fly, and there are animation controls to pause and reset positions of flock and goals.  When the flock is behaving as the user wishes, it can be recorded.  This writes out the position and rotation data for each boid each frame as an xml file.

The xml file is then read into maya and the flock is created as locators.  A user defined mesh can be duplicated across the locators using the 'post-flock' section of the GUI.

The video demonstrates a quick example of what it can do.  I will create a more polished example, including renders to show the full potential, but over all I am pretty happy with the outcome.

Innovations - Done

Watch HD fullscreen and tilt your head yo


If you don't wanna fuss about with funky aspect ratios/want to see comp layers. Also you can laugh at how I sound like a drunk toad.

Innovations WIP - slap comp

glitchy glitchy yah yah

innovations progress...

I've been mucking around with the character, now the plan is churn out lots of render layers and see what I can stick together. Hopefully I'll end up with some sort of interesting moving portrait, inspired by the work of Egon Schiele, but utilizing the medium of experimental CG. Fantastic.

new textures applied to ramp shader for painterly effect

another ramp shader applied for shadowy outline

contour rendering for wireframe

playing around with deformers in maya

screenshot of cool glitch whilst editing image using f-spot

more glitches

glitches ain't shit

lecture notes 2

Schiele goes out with her mate Stella

Now that the Master Class project is complete, I have started making some decent progress on my Innovations. After a couple meetings with my tutor, I have decided to go down a more experimental route. Using the work of Egon Schiele as a starting point, my plan is to imagine how he would utilize today's technology. 

For hundreds of years painting was a medium used to try and accurately depict real life. It wasn't really until the invention of the camera that more expressionist artists appeared, who distorted the real world for emotional effect. I intend to draw parallels between painting and CG, a relatively young medium, which has I feel has not been exploited for all its potential as a platform for expressionism. It seems as if there has become a standard aesthetic that the majority of work tends to adhere to, imitating the Pixar style of clean, perfect animation. Using contemporary artists such as David O'Reillyand Mark Napier as inspiration, I want to play with the idea of things you are and aren't supposed to do, and break the rules. Intersecting meshes, low poly models, tangled vertices, faces deleted here and there. A show reel of beautiful chaos. HOWEVER, first I want to do it 'properly' and show the process of destruction, a kind of before and after, and argue which is more interesting as a piece of art.

 I thought about the features which I feel identifies Sheile's work as his own, in particular his portraiture. The subject is always distorted in some way, stretched and twisted, with limbs body parts bent and buckled, often depicted with harsh edges, and dark outlines. Sometimes entire parts are neglected, either not drawn or left uncoloured. This 'unfinished' look is something I plan to experiment with, maybe leaving patched of wireframe visible underneath the surface of the mesh.

So far, as a starting point, I have modeled a head based on Schiele's portrait of the artist Karl Zakovsek. I've slapped a couple ramp shaders on and used contour rendering for the lines. My next step is to texture it and basically muck around in ZBrush, maybe make some more models, see what happens and kind of play it by ear until it looks how I want it too. Might even animate it if I have time. Fun improvising!

clone tool ♥

Blue Zoo Animation Masterclass

I haven't done a blog in ageeeeessss. Any ways, for the last two weeks or so I have been working solidly on the master class project. The brief, which was set by Mike Wyatt from Blue Zoo, was to create four animations. The first was a 30 second 2D ident for the NCCA, which had to involve a character interacting with a ball that transformed into various objects of different weights. The other three were 10 second scenarios involving a character being revealed something the viewer can't see, and reacting to it.

For my 2D animation I wanted to go a kind of Peppa Pig-ish vibe, (except a bit more violent). I had this idea of a strange guy throwing animals around and thought it was funny enough to go with. I really enjoyed working in this cut-out style, and being in 2D I feel it really made me focus on getting the basic movements correct. I was also able to use a python script I wrote last year for Spies, the russian doll film, which helped swap between textures for the eyes and mouth.

For the 3D animations, I wanted the character to change emotional states by what was revealed in the box. In the first animation he goes from happy to distraught/shocked; the third one from sneaky to happy; and the third from happy to angry. This contrast helped to emphasize the exaggerated poses.

I feel I have learned so much from this project, especially being able to get feedback halfway through. Looking back at my original blocking I can see a huge improvement, both in timing and staging, particularly thinking about silhouettes. At first I was focusing too much on individual poses, rather than the shot as a whole. I feel this meant me timing was off, usually too fast-paced, and also not varied enough. A good example is the happy reaction, which initially had a big jump before the fist pump at the end. I spent a while getting the jump right, but realised it just didn't fit the scene. I deleted it, freeing up the action to slow down a bit in that section, and it suddenly read a lot better! Although it's not perfect, overall I am happy with the resulting work, and feel the knowledge gathered will be incredibly useful as I start properly animating my on my major project.

(It's also the first thing I've rendered in HD so full screen it, why the hell not?)

lecture notes