Friday 22 October 2010

Performance

Well what can i say....i'm now officially gonna be labeled as the lady boy lol. But what can i say, was absolutely brilliant working with my team mates. The other productions had some really interesting styles and iit was good to see the variety of ideas that went into making each production. Credit in my group has to go to Mark for making some brilliant props and of course to Arianne, who made me tea :) Great fun, hopefully the next one we do will be a little more well planned.

Thursday 21 October 2010

Disneyesque Lecture

Just a few notes from todays lecture for anyone and everyone:

So todays lecture was all about music and animation working together. I am planning on doing the 'Disneyesque' essay so todays lecture was essential for me as it actually gave me an insight look as what is meant by the term Disneyesque. I saw the obvious similarities throughout the Disney workings such as the extensive use of Anthropermorphitism and realism. The characters and animals are very cutesy and it is obvious that the main audience of Disney are children. However, i did find it interesting how there are many subtle adult themes throughout. An example of this is in 'The Old Mill' which shows an animation where an old windmill withstands a storm. This could be related to the second world war which was taking place around the same time this animation was produced. It could possibly symbolise that 'America' is the windmill and although it will suffer damage, it will still be standing afterwards.

'The Old Mill' also showed the use of a multi layered camera to add depth to the animation. This allowed the viewer to feel like they were moving through things that were being animated e.g a spiderweb. Disney animation shows a high level of charm and happiness throughout its animation, but i think that this adds to the magic of there production and also links to the idea of escapism. That everyone needs to escape from there own lives and delve deep into Disney's world of fantasy and magic. To keep this idea of realistic magic, Disney animations have very little surrealistic elements in them, its a lot more naturalistic. Disney reinforced this by giving excuses for the surrealism whenever it did appear in one of the films. For instance, in 'Dumbo' he used they used the idea that Dumbo was drunk and having a hallucination to incorporate the very surreal 'Pink elephants on parade' scene.

Disney's characters were all lovable and personified in such a way that people could relate to them easily. Some productions that were not Disney seem to have copied this use of anthropermorphic techniques including Sir Paul McCartney who helped produce many musical animations.

There is a huge connection with music and Disney throughout many of the animation. Most Disney Features can be considered as musicals as there are many songs that lead the narrative of the stories. Many other animators used music in a more blunt way to create animations. Oskar Fischinger is an example of this as he did not like Disney's idea of realism so he used surrealism in his animations. These were created using all sorts of techniques including scratching directly on the film. The animation then morphs and moves across the screen in harmony to the music accompanying it. I didn't perticuarly enjoy this kind of animation as it seems to erratic and didnt seem to flow very well, and quite often i found myself wondering what was actually going on. But i gather from this that the animation wasn't designed to be watched like a cartoon, and that it was designed more as a piece of art for people to see and have their own opinions about it.

well thats all for now...more soon

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Box Modelling Test

Spaceship!!!! woooo. so as i've already been using 3d modelling suites like 3ds max and Carrara i was pretty used to using the extrude tool. all good fun. just kept playing and moulding mine until it formed into something that resembled something from power rangers. oooooo yea

Thursday 14 October 2010

1st Attempt

Soooo....1st attempt...meh not bad. Enjoyed the character modelling. Various mistakes but nothing a luittle tweaking won't sort out. let me know your thoughts.

Wednesday 13 October 2010

GameArt Work









Hey guys and gals, as its the start of a fresh new year i thought i would give you a brief insight into some of the work i did last year, so have a gander and leave me some comments :)

Character experiment



Ok so after several hours of playing with the greek temples ruins, i decided to get out 'Maya 8 at a glance' and have ago at their character modelling tutorial. i recommend the book to all as it has an easy step by step tutorial to each element of maya. Ok so its just a head so far, but the body is soon to come. More soon from your friendly neighbourhood Scottman

Greek Temple 3

So the first Maya 3D project has fallen upon me....Thank God!! Couldn't wait to get stuck in to the new Maya 2011 software and have a good old fiddle. Compared to Max i couldn't believe how easy the software was to absorb. For my first attempt i did a quick geometric Temple that looked very basic. After submitting this to Steve and getting some feedback it was time to really experiment. After playing around for a good few hours i was able to create a more detailed version of a ruined temple that resembled something out of 'Jason and the Argonaughts'.

Greek Temple 2











Monday 11 October 2010

Confusion...

If Goofy and Pluto are both dogs....why is it that Goofy wears clothes and Pluto doesn't?