15.06.10 - Things I have learned

The project is just about done, it has been an interesting and stressfull experience, but at least, as in any good tale, I have learned something :

*If you want something done, you'll have to do it yourself. Even if someone else is contracted to do it

*I personally need a supervisor

*You never have enough time and things will get messes up (actually I knew that, but it's nice to be reminded)

*I need to master Adobe Premiere

16.06.10 - Cutting scenes

Because of the time issue, I have had to change and cut my scene several times. In the end I've had to cut the whole shot where Edgar originally were going to pull the trolley and try to get it trough the door. Though removing the shot doesn't really detract from the scene, I think it would add some anticipation if I have had the time to make it.

16.06.10 - Cloth

What started as a fantastic wounderous journey into the world of the 3D studio max cloth modifier, slowly turned into a nightmare. I had some quite weird thngs happen, suddently the colth wouldn't simulate. Sometime it was enough to restart Max, sometimes I had to re import the outfitt and sometimes and sometime that didn't even work. I managed to work around it mostly. Do you notie something strange concerning the cloth in this scene ? I had no time to render it again, since I was already way behind. I showed the clip to some people and no one noticed it before I pointed it out.

Link to video

Answer : The apron is falling down and trough the floor

16.06.10 - Sketch book-updated

I created this for my Teeside interview, it is an online sketchbook featuring much more of my work then what is featured on this site. It contains work from 2004 to now. Contrary to this site that contains what I think is my best works, this sketchbook contains just about everything that I saw fit to publish on the internett since I was 16 years old. It shows my progress through the years.

Link to Sketchbook

16.06.10 - Revisting the design thing

As I have previously mentioned, I disagree with some of the character design choices and I thought I'd revisit my statements.

The hands : I still don't care for hands wit four fingers, but I guess it didn't mather so much in this film

Noses : As I said Edgar's nose was handeled just fine, my real problem is with Ava. I am sorry, but is it just me , or does she remind you about a fish ?

15.06.10 - Concerning Post Production

I have done practically no part of the post production. This is mostly due to the fact that I have had no time since I have had so much last time animation and rendering to do. However, even though I helped a little bit with the post production of my scene, I can not deny my lack of skill when it comes to editing and using Adobe premiere. If I can get my hand on the programme I will try to master it during the summer.

15.06.10 - Audio

I wish I had known that we would choose separate background music for each scene. I picked the instrumental peace called "Intro" by the alternative metal band Korn. I like the peace because with every beat it grows more and more intense, like the flames in the scene. My only regret is that I didn't know about the separate background music, if I did I could have tried to make the animation fitt the rythem of the music even better

15.06.10 - I need a supervisor

I have realised that I need a supervisor and I'm not embarrast to admit it, some people might have the need to have controll over everything, I really just want someone to tell he what they expect me to do and let me get on with my work. This project have been a little differcult considering no one has stepped up to the task. By all means the responsibility lies as much with me as with anyone else, and for some reason we just never got to select a group leader.

14,06.10 - Okay, Now I'm pissed

Due to the lack of comunication, no one has told me that we changed the resolution of our film from 1920 x 1080 to 1280 x 720. This has of course resulted in me having a much longer rendering time than what I needed to, and I already have a freaking long rendering time due to the HD material of my fire efects. I am at the time quite stressed and agitated.

14.06.10 - Funny how things happen

Remember I said that I wouldn't use the fabulous latex material for the maid outfitt ? Well, as it turnes out, I will use the latex material, mostly because I didn't bother with making a new one, and the other people in the group tought it was funny anyaway.

14.06.10 - Fire

I have been really stressed by this. We were originally going to have the work contracted to Aleander Fusdal, but unfortunately after the contract was made, he found that due to some problems with the files, he coulden't do it. The assignment then fell to me, so I had to spend alot of the time intended for animation, figuring out the particle system. Concidering that I have no experience in particle effects, the fire doesn't exactly look amazing, but it's the best I can do at the time

Link to shot with fire

Well at least one good thing came out of the whole experience ; Now I know something about particle systems

14.06.10 - Group Attendance

The people in my group have heard me rant about this many times: People never show up at school and this really frustrates me. The comunication in this group has been close to none excistent. I admit I can't blame this completely on people not showing, we could have comunicated over MSN, Skype or any other chat programme (though this is hard when someone decides to sleep in the day and work at night) . My main issue with this whole thing is that it is so damn de-motivating when people don't show, in this whole time while working on the project, I have never really felt that we were a group.

Now, this is my sollution to what the school can do about this problem : Buy some really damn good computers ! The main excuse I have heard for people not showing up is that their home computers are just so much better than what we have here. I know good computers cost a lot of money, but so does attending this school.

05.05.10 - Cloth

I tried some different methods to animate the skirt and I figured that the Cloth modifyer did work best.

Link to skirt-test

It still need some minor tweeking, but I'll deal with that after the animation is done. No I will not use the latex material.

28.04.10 - Hotel room

This is the stage of my scene. All the textures are drawn in Photoshop by me, it took more time than prociduals maps, but in my oppinion it's more than worth it to get a unique texture for my scene. I might add that I am pretty fond of the pictures on the walls.

28.04.10 - Character design

As said on my previous post, I didn't get to make a character, perhaps it is for the best, I have my objections to some of the choices that the group made about general character design, my pet peeves if you will, such as :

Four fingers : Yes I know the tradition of having only four fingers (including the thumb) are there because it saves animation time, but personally I don't think it's worth it. To me it always looks strange and there is certain hand gestures you can't do with only four fingers.

No nose : Yes, for some reason it seems like peope (including but not limited to the peope in my group)have decided that noses are so ugl y that they should not even be illustrated or moddled in animation. Though this might work in some instances in 2D animation, it rarely looks good in 3D. I guess it could have been alot worse with the Edgar moddel, and I still have some strong doubts concerning what I have seen of the Ava character.

26.04.10 -Costume design

I musst admit I'm down right a bit bitter since I didn't have the chance to design a character for the film. In the start we were suppose to have more characters but unfotunately the characters I designed was cut. Though I completely agree with the dicitions made, I really wish I could do what I like best in the last project.

Anyway at leat I got to do a costume design for my scene. I am going use the cloth modifyer for the skirt and apron and then we'll see for the rest of the costume

06.04.10- I'm back baby

I suppose I can't keep holding out on fixing this site, lots of image paths was broke when I downloaded the site from my web hotel after the comouter was formated, strange that. Anyway with that said the site should be up and running though some images might show up as broken.

In other news I'm currently working on an animation project, together with Otto, Gunnar and Kim. I like this project. The credit for the idea goes to Otto.

28.01.10- Story Ideas

Idea One :

Interview with the bouncing ball
The scene is a standard talk show set, the host enters and tells the audience that they will meet a very special guest. She tells them how this guest has been very important and a great inspiration to the animation industry trough time. The bouncing ball enters; it takes its place in a chair and starts speaking with the host, they speak about his “career” and some clips of the bouncing ball are shown, they are made in different programs (flash, hand drawn, computer drawn etc.)  and the ball tells the audience something about each clip

I haven't worked out everything, I don't have a punch line or the dialouge written, but it's all work in progress

Eulogy

The film features characters from a typical role-playing game like Dungeons and dragons based in “medieval” times.  Three characters are grieving the third character who died, the film starts out at a grave in the woods where he is buried.  We see clips of each character remembering his or hers time with the deceased.  The soundtrack of the film is Eulogy by Patrick Wolf

The "demon" character is the character who died, he is of a race called tieflings, they're not really demons, but I'm afraid people who don't play D&D won't get it, I picked the race because they have tails so that I could pull the joke above

I am a bit worried that I have too many characters, there is four main characters including the dead guy and three secondary characters, there is four different locations and max four characters in a shot at any time. I also need someone who knows how to work effects in 3D max. I do believe we'll be able to achieve it though.

26.11.09 - Lipsync in detail

This is the lipsync without facial expressions or other animation, it was the first part of animation I did fot the assignment. I'm not too happy with the "M"morph-target, but again it was hard to fix due to the way I moddeled the lips.

25.11.09 - Lipsync with body animation

My amimation assignment, I created and rigged the character myself, I'm not done skinning it, but it worked well enough for the assignment. I also created the morph targets, the mouth was tricky because I moddeled it too big and the lips too small I think. If I had more time I'd work a bit more on the arms and fingers, I'd also bend the spine a little to the sides to get more movement. When it comes to my rig, I used the Biped from 3D Studio max, to save time, however there is a problem with the horselink, when it is on the biped you no longer have the ability to bend the knee using the rotate tool, you have to lift the foot to bend the knee, this of course makes animating a lit harder then it should have to be.

25.11.09 - Lifting heavy object 2

My second attempt at a lift animation, I think it's a bit better then the first one, however if I had more time I'd work a lot more on the fingers

29.10.09 - Yeah, I should have delivered this monday....

My character design assignment, we were supposed to pick a text from before 1960 that had "gangs" in it and create a character from the mentioned "gang". I chose the text "Masque of the red death" by one of my favourite poets Edgar Allan Poe, the character I designed is a noble lady from prince Prosperos' costume party . At first I drew a more classy 1800's costume, just a fine dress and a masque, however reading the story again made me remember that the guests of prince Prospero was more eccentric and flamboyant so I decided to add the nine tails and pull the clevage down. The assignment also required us to moddel three objects owned by the character one of them had to be a shoe, I chose to moddel the masque because it's pretty much what defyes the character, a whine glass even though it probably doesn't belong to the character herself it's an item she would be using in the story, the shoes i tried to make as believable as possible however I found little referance of womans shoes from the time periode.

19.10.09 - Extreme poses

Todays' assignment was creating two extreme poses of opposite emotions or physical states, I picked fear and bravery or determination I'm not quite sure what to call the emotion I was going for. The animation to the left shows the first poses I did, the one to the left is the poses I did after some constructive critisism, I worked more with the flowlines and I'm pretty happy with the result.

12.10.09 -Finally !

Months ago I started a project, to create a 3D visualisation of a steampunk/magic inspired bathroom, but my trial time for 3D studio max 2010 ran out and I feared I would never have the chance to finish it, however we got the 2010 version installed at school so all is well.

18.09.09 -Fantasia

Watched the 1940 Fantacia by Walt Disney today while trying to edit this web site, needless to say I forgot all about the web site and just watched the animation. I really like the part with the pegasuses because of the way they was animated, you could clearly see that they were meant to resemle birds in stead of mamals.