AKDK 2113 Creative Agency

http://www.akdk2113.com

''We are happy to announce that your work the e-Creative Directory 2010/2011- guide on the best art and design graduates in the UK. was spotted by our talent scouts at the degree show and selected to be featured in
e-Creative will be launched in partnership with the London Design Festival and London Fashion week this September. "e-Creative" is an invitation-only project developed to provide professional industry, press & general public with the ultimate guide to London's best emerging creative talents across 10 disciplines. Your work will be featured amongst only 35-50 finalists selected from over 5000 graduated this year.''

This is a section of an email i received this email today.. all seems fantastic although there is a £65 registration fee which goes towards ''production, distribution and marketing costs.''

I was really pleased to open the email until i read the fee's section and so I'm not sure what to do now.. do i pay or do i let this one go?

To be quite honest i would love to be a part of this but i don't want to be ripped off.... advice please?

www.inspiredproductions.co.uk

www.inspiredproductions.co.uk

Only just up and running but i will be adding my best work to the website and treating it as more of a gallery, using my blog as the descriptive, and creative journey; This way you have the choice of either full fat or skimmed with regards to text and preliminary work.

There is still a lot to change with regards to design but please feel free to check it out if you're interested.

Im also in the midst of creating a new blog which i will fill with my new work from now on whcih will be the sister to my Inspired Productions website.

• Also... More character design work is beginning to simmer and rest assured within the week some fresh work will officially begin that I will be able to post and report to the world.

• Advocate art ... have now seen my JPEG's and want me to look through the paper work and then want to start trying to set up freelance work for me as soon as possible. There was mention of possibly having an interview of some kind to meet the people in charge of their freelance ''department'' but like everything else I will post in due course.

I must say to read the words, 'we love it' from a company that have just seen 12 jpegs of Burt, and who also have no obligation to be nice to me felt more than fantastic!

Burt

His debut....

Initial silent edit of "BURT"

This is the silent version and very first edit of the final animation. You will notice a few alterations from the original pre vis, mainly the absence of Burt's wife.



It currently has no sound to allow me to see how i've cut the new aniamtion together, then i can lift my pre recorded sounds and lay them in their new places. There is a possibility that i will need to record some new sounds however, i have time allocated for this



There is a slight problem with one of the scenes, something that i managed to not notice until now, and that is the STALK scene, where Burt appears from the end of his desk before climbing on top of it. For some reason its flashing, which means a definite re render as its regarding the final gather in mental ray, but as its only 300 frames i should be able to get that done in the next couple of hours, annoying but not a massive problem.





(Once again uni PCs wont let me paste anything into blogger so you will have to follow this link )

I would also like to add that the colour quality is not correct in the youtube version. It appears much darker and low res following the link below, that the 'real thing.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW3AozQWxLI

Rendering completed

...well almost.

The final 100 frames are rendering now, they may have even finished, and i have composited all of the after effects scenes so they are now ''ready to go''.

I've pretty much got the order of my animation in, following closely what i had laid out in my pre vis, but i still need to add the final few frames.

I was going to post where i was this evening but when i worked on it all at uni today i was in CS5 and i have CS3 at home so it wont let me open what have, which is annoying. However, once Ive collected the final pieces tomorrow, i will definitely be able to post a silent version of my entire animation PRE-EDIT before 1pm tomorrow, then at least i know what to spend my weekend working on.

Some renders

Some initial cockpit renders. Just a simple mental ray batch render, no passes.

(Please consider that these clips go in between other clips so on their own they are totally out of context.)

New end imgination sequence

The dreaded end imagination sequence, cue evil theme tune...

I have been experimenting with several ways to attack this, and much to my annoyance have been animating and scrapping work for the past few days but as it stands what i am working with at the moment is visible on the link below. Once again blogger wont let me embed so you will have to watch via the link. The animation parts still need work but before i go any further with it and waste even more time i thought I'd post the progress.
There is one point i need to add about this, that i have only noticed since uploading it onto YouTube, and that is the two outside plane shots at the end of the sequence see the planes flying to the left of the screen and then Burt running to the right, so i will need to change the direction of the planes in order to make more visual sense out of this.

There will be smoke added (please see previous blog entry) over the final scene to blend out of this and into Burt on the RAF background in a way that allows you to see he's come out of his imagination.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wOuvvs09oQ

DVD case and disk covers

I want to add my personal 'branding' to the DVD case but at present i still haven't come up with anything i really like. As soon as i do i will re post the new design, bu otherwise another job is done.

My ''book'' is now finished, just waiting on a few images i am rendering today and then that is all complete too, just leaving me with my main last few jobs.

These are:

1. RENDER
2. COMPOSIT & EDIT
3. SHOW REEL & BRANDING

As my show reel will mainly be my Final Burt animation as discussed with Alan, i will still need to create about 20 seconds of extra animation to open and end it, but i can work on this while i am rendering rather than do nothing. It also enables me to focus entirely on the 20 seconds and have at least a solid week of animating should i need it.

Smoke test

For the end scene of my project there needed to be more of a 'bigger' emphasis on the explosion of the fly's plane before cutting to to Burt on the RAF background. As you already know I've decided against dynamics in Maya for aesthetic reasons and also time consumption so instead I've tried out a few effects in Adobe After Effects that i could composit with the final animation clips. At the moment the clip is on a black background to better show the effects of the smoke for the blog. I will continue to work on it, and may add a few other layers to get the texture slightly more correct, with slightly varying shades of grey, and by using the toggle transparency i can easily overlay the smoke with no adverse effect on any clips that are beneath it.


For some reason Blogger would not let me embed the clip so instead i've typed the link below...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvwtHI71QgGk

Book

These are some final images I've just rendered to incorporate into my ''book'' for the hand in date. Where Ive been slightly concerned for my actual animation, rather than try and work on it with unsure direction i turned my attention to something i knew i could work on productively. I still have to add a few more images to the book, spell check and write a small piece and it is done :) At least that's another thing i can almost check off of my to do list!

Twenty Two days left....

I feel as though Ive reached a few problems within this project. There are three main things draining my energy and worrying me about the hand in date.

Problem no. 1: I am not happy with ending. I feel that after the pull back from Burt with the logo background to Burt back in the room it should cut soon after as the reference to his wife at the end makes it confusing to the audience what the animation has actually been about.

A few people have questioned as to whether they should feel sad, and it is exactly the opposite. I do still feel i should reference her at the beginning as he falls asleep, but to be honest i think that's all you need to see of her.

Problem no. 2: The transition from ''real world'' to imagination right at the end section isn't clear and I'm still having trouble with how best to portray this.

Problem no 3: My animation is now approximately 3 minutes long and i need to get rid of at least 30 seconds. Preferably id like it to be 2 minutes and it has been commented that i could easily do this, the thing is i would like to know what to cut previous to rendering it all out, as that seems such a massive waste of time.

There are a few other fears that i have regarding this project but the above three are the ones to the front of my mind, and personally most terrifying.

I have been working on refining the animation , making sure objects in the room are also moving in reaction to Burt; For instance items on his desk such as paper need to slide under his feet, the paintbrushes need to move when the glass is moved, the cushion on his seat needs to squash and then grow when he rises from it. Most of these thing have now been put in and i have been cleaning up the animation of Burt himself, correcting some of his poses where i had forgotten how gravity would effect the rest of his body when stood or sat in a certain way. For example in the chair i had him sitting down but not in a rested position, it was all pretty generic and so i have been correcting all of these things.

Pre Vis with in sync sound

Another photo for the mantle piece

Plane Fire

Dynamics in Maya is similar to a filter in Photoshop; they can often improve a scene but also be very generic and obvious. This was an issue regarding my aeroplane fire as i needed it to be almost constant but still fit in with the world that i have created. Dynamics in my scene, probably would have made as much sense as a red letterbox in the middle of the dessert, so i decided to try out other methods.

Eventually i decided to use simple Nurbs to create the 'shape' of the fire and texture them with a ramp shader to give the effect of simple red, orange, yellow fire (simplicity is not the same as being generic, especial if it fits within my world.) I also gave them a glow and upped the transparency so that they no longer looked like shapes, animating them to become visible and extend, then back to invisible and small. Doing this allowed it to look as if they were firing away from the plane and towards enemy's - it also fits in aesthetically.

Some inspiration for this was the 'lilo and stitch' aesthetic, where they have constant fire however, with the help of Disney, are able to turn what should be something quite threatening into something almost harmless. Obviously i didn't want to go to the full Disney extent for this project as it still needed to be slightly dangerous as we are watching through Burt's imagination but if you look at a short lilo and stitch snapshot (taken from a youtube clip) I'm sure you will understand my thinking...

Lilo & Stitch
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIg_otb9yY8)

Nurbs shapes
(without effects)

Rendered snap shot
(nothing smoothed, ignore dash lights)

Retaliation fire

Burts wife

Burt's wife in her early stages of development, please ignore her solid outline, this is going to change. I must admit that i did waste a little time by trying to get an effective sepia toned image but then i realised, although Burts wife is elderly the time the photo would have been taken would been at a time when colour photography was first which was a little annoying, however, i still have to age the photo, and de saturate and all the other things that happen to even a colour photograph with time. I just wanted to post her in her early stages - constructive comments welcome!

FAO Phil... obviously not all the sound just the voice over stuff and some tracks

Constructive criticism everyone please..... :)

A Delayed update

As i have been into uni over the last few weeks i have forgotten to update my blog as Ive been discussing it first hand with Alan and Phil but as everything stands i have:

Completed pre-vis allowing me to identify camera developments needed and more advanced montage cutting theme with Phil.

Worked on more mature lighting for my scene with Alan, updated all my textures with the gamma node to cut future render time as i will be using mental ray and discussed using the physical sun light and Mia_portal light node when needing to light inner space.

Burt is fully rigged and textured and very basically animated, leaving me to refine the animation, It is one thing to make Burt move but i want him to come alive and this is the most important task of this project.

My frame count at present is 3090, but i estimate this to increase by at absolute maximum 1,000 further frames. A single frame at the moment is taking approximately 6 mins to render on the base room PCs, which means 4,000 frames will take 16.6 days to render on one PC, divided between four PCs it will take 4.2 days to render my entire animation. I will start rendering in bulk on the weekend of week 13 and then continue into week 14 of this project, leaving me time to start editing during the end of week 14 and week 15. The editing process shouldn't take too long as i am constantly updating my previs with newer shots to enable a simple switch of play blast to rendered frames as soon as they're ready.

Sound is my next big task as i have only complied a small amount so over this week and next, as i continue to work on the animation i will be also gathering my sounds.

This is a very simple shot from the opening sequence of my animation...

Creating the blend shapes and controls for Burts face

Colour palattes

Update

Burt continued work

Face/head model
Body model
Textures
Rig

Home scene
Continued work
Lighting development
Furniture and room accessories

(lighting test)

(Indoors lighting test)

(Props - desk area)

Cockpit scene development

I had already decided that i wanted a less realistic feel to my animation as the story and acting was key not how real everything looked so i started to play around with some toon shader textures.

Even though i want this 'cartoony' feel i don't really want everything to look 2D so as you can see in the third image down Ive come to a happy middle ground. I would like to apply this to the rest of my animation however i have hardly experimented with the toon shaders before and so I'm not sure if at this point in my final major project, it would be a simple enough venture to undergo. An Alan question definitely i think. I also created a simple spherical background sky textured with a ramp shader. Obviously you would see Burt's hands holding the controls but you would be observing through Burt's POV. Another Alan question i have lined up is that the planes will be firing at each other and i would prefere it to be solid colour bursts, and not realistic looking fire.

Maya continued process

Modelling Burt's head
Downsize of geometry, correction of edge flow and addition of facial 'props'

Modelling planes
Same type - F4F wildcat simplified design
Layout textures and design three separate texture maps, still to be re-worked slightly but basic design is down.

Modelling cockpit
Inside plane view of dogfight from Burt's P.O.V
Preliminary development, requires textures and inner lights to be added

Modelling room scene
Few textures still needed and hedge needed to be built around outside of Burt's wooden fence, also a tee is to be built in garden.

Additional research

I also have planes in this final animation, which i have decided will be F4F Wildcat fighter planes, they come from the 1940's WW2 and fit with Bert's life's timescale. They are quite simple planes and one i have laid the uvs out i will be able to simply assign different shaders for the enemy, Bert and the Fly. I have already located Orthographic images for the plane.

I am still sticking to my overall style so everything is a lot simpler than real life, there will be just two sets of dials, an over sized sight fixed to the front of the plane, and simple textures all over. The orthographs above with colour was me just playing around with some colour to see the effect. I was considering maybe some sort of artwork similar to the first photo at the top of this blog with a twist, for instance something that you would associate with an elderly man and then something you may associate with a fly, but these are just thoughts at the moment.

I am going to begin modelling Bert's head this evening and work on that as well as perfecting the storyboard and plane design this week.