Pigeon: Impossible

Okay, a little bit of fun after project 1. This is a blog/podcast about the process behind this short film. It's done in a fairly humorous style, and has some great tips. The tips are more a generic 3D program, for the most part and have some really useful advice.

The Podcast:

So I was hoping to do a short story about 4 minutes long. It is a little ambitious but I think its possible.

I am working on a story board but can give the narrative,
The setting is dusk on a suburban street, raining enough to allow a specular glimmer on the sidewalk from the street lamps. The first introduction to my only character is a close up as he drives up. He sits in his car listening to Tchaikovsky's Autumn song on an AM channel and drops his head in kind of a lonely manner before he gets out and goes inside. He is an older man and was a top dancer in his prime.

I plan to have him modeled similar to the chess player in Pixars earlier short. He enters the house and puts his coat away, in passing he looks at some hallway photos of his past dance career. He puts on his record of that same Tchaikovsky ballad and listens shortly with a grin of fond memories. He starts to sway in his haggard old man movement, there is a transition into a performance stage environment, but very much still his home. He dances better and better through the completion of the song. He then slowly bends and holds his back as he walks into study and the environment darkens to the previous lighting. He sits, short of breath, in his chair with the same grin as earlier and closes his eyes.

I am hoping to import most of the character animation from the moCap and motionBuilder export. My wife and I have choreographed my characters old and haggard movement and a dance piece to help show that it is his imagination that is wandering and not his old body becoming more able. I am going to use my Condo I created in Maya 1 and have a outside block also completed. I will be needing to model a car, character+rigging, and modifying my current environment from snow to rain.


This video inspired my idea:
Baginski - Fallen Art



This is my Condo from Maya 1 and will need some modifications.



Here is the song that will be playing in AM radio quality to Vinyl



Here are some images of the look and feel of the characters and modeling style.

Pic of old man for character

















image on wall that old man reminisces to


another dancer photo


car possibility

initial final project idea - chaz evans

I want to complete a short film; featuring avatars modeled after the performers of my group, parker. I want there to be multiple characters represented by original models and to have them deliver voice recorded dialogue/monologue. The artistic decisions of how to animate the virtual performers will be guided performers will be guided on how best to interpret an original text written by one of my co-artists in the group. That is to say, animation choices will be an exercise in finding out how the digital actor/performer moves best, what gestures are effective for a digital body, which are not etc. Similarly the way it is shot will entirely be determined by how to best serve the text, but the primary artistic goal is investigating gesture. That said, the aesthetic that I am for will be very specifically not shooting for any kind of realism. I want the aesthetic of the characters to be transparently polygonal, noticeable geometric edges, and probably the use of solid shaders to give it a somewhat toony feel. This is not to say the look will be at all sloppy, but keeping tightly with the style of video game sprites from the mid to late 90's. I want to explore the aesthetic of outdated technology and graphical style, which I believe will also work well with the text. Their vocabulary of movement will also be somewhat in accordance with an aesthetic of old game sprites, but hopefully much more interesting. Basically, what I'm shooting for is the look of early Machinima rather than the high gloss of Pixar or recent work of Robert Zemeckis. In early Machinima the characters have the physical connotations and vocabularies of simple puppets like marionettes or Jim Henson style. This kind of puppetry utilizes simple gesture for defined emotive purpose. I plan on having the environment that the characters perform in be very minimal, as the emphasis is on the characters and their language of gesture. The specific content will be more clear once the text is developed.

In a way I want to synthesize the movement aesthetic of machima:



with a high art short film:

Final

My idea of now is to use my old scene as the environment for my final. The story behind my final project is an individual is out in the middle of nowhere is walking to a train station. In the train station he waits as he bids farewell to a loved one. Within the scene there will be a transition from day to night, indicating the duration of time. More importantly, the piece I hope to create is a bit melancholic and I hope to achieve this by using facial expressions on characters. There will not be any complex movements other than walking and normal movements in hand. Though, one complex thing that I might need to touch upon is crashing, though I am in the process of thinking through the scene it might not really be necessary. All in all in terms of animation is nothing too out of the way in terms of body movement, but I definitely want to achieve emotions through facial expressions.

The style I guess in which I'm trying to capture is one that is similar to Makoto Shinkai. He has away of rendering scenery and his narrative are always pretty melancholic, but good nonetheless. My final project is will probably follow pretty close to his style.

Here are some images of Shinkai's work.







My flythrough of my space.


A 2nd take


I'm open for collaboration.

-David M.

Sarah Hegmann - Final Project

Final Project:

"Sticks and Stones"

Setup:
Opens on a darkened room, cluttered. Archaeological tools, books, boxes, maybe a few artifacts (vase, spear, etc.) lay on the shelves and desk. Overflowing books and papers (if they can be modeled convincingly) lay stacked in corners and on the chair. A few bones are on a slightly cleared area of the desk. The light flicks on, someone moves in front of the camera (just a dark blur, passing too close) carrying something. There is a thump, the person moves across again and leaves without turning off the light. (door noises, open and shut) Camera pans over to look at the boxes that were left behind. "Bones" is written across one.

Scene:
The lighting is a warm, indoor lighting (not florescent) provided mainly by the overhead light (for fill) and a desk lamp(s). While it is an office with windows, the blinds are drawn, so the outside environment cannot be seen. The materials have a worn look, with slightly dirty textures, indicating a well-used room. The desk is wooden, the lamp is an older brass/metal lamp, the shelves are cluttered with books, older calendars on the wall, etc. The style I will be trying out is the "non-photorealistic" rendering technique. So, still there will still be attention given to details, but the scene will not attempt to reach "photo-realism."

Plot:
So, at this point, the box begins to move and the real action begins. The bones come out of the box and come to life in order to try and reassemble. The hand will have to crawl up the desk leg to reach the bones on the desk. They need to determine if they belong on that skeleton or not. The spine twines up a coat-rack near the door to keep watch through the blinds. The skull is missing, and the mostly formed skeleton has to go stumbling around for it (in a drawer? closet? box?). Footsteps sound, the skeleton freezes, then drops to the ground, disassembled. The office is a wreck, as the skeleton may have broken things as it moved around, like the vase. Boxes are pulled out, books have fallen. "What in the world...?" A hand twitch, skull slowly grin, or something similar will end it.

Possible shots/ideas:
- moving in front of the camera
- box jumping, trying to dislodge the box on top of it
- bones peeking up from box
- hand crawling out of the box, across the floor, and then up the desk to check out the bones up there
- spine slithering across the floor to slide up a pole (?, coat rack?) and keep watch
- other hand beginning to assemble the bones
- mostly assembled skeleton stepping in the now empty box and having to shake it off the foot
- some of the bones on the desk don't fit, causing the skeleton to be lopsided
- broken artifacts, like a vase, statue, or paperweight
- searching for the missing skull
- skull could be on a high shelf, not found after all. At the end, zoom in on it, have it do an exaggerated grin (wink sounds too cheesy...)


And here are some images that I thought captured some of the look that I am trying for:










The well done "non-realistic" rendering style I will be trying for.



















Another example.




















Proof that tons of books can be achieved with only 8 different geometry sets, and 12 different textures. Very nice.














Books.















Examples of paper clutter.

- Sarah