Dragon Bait and Animate

Today we had some great feedback from Beano Studios on our animatics for Going Live. We still have around a month to finish the project and so we're starting on animating now. Our plan is to do most of the animation in Adobe After Effects using the puppet tool and I've found what looks to be a good tutorial here: And then in more complicated scenes we'll break down the animation more and do some frame by frame animation. I think we're sticking to the Adobe Suite but we'll see how it all comes together in a couple of weeks. In other news, I was working on adding a toon shader to the basic kitchen scene I had set up in Maya. Luckily, it worked (after a couple of attempts) and my plan now is to rebuild the kitchen so it matches the animatic and use renders from Maya as our backgrounds in the final animation. We can also do some basic camera animation in Maya and then import it into After Effects so that seems like a good time saver! Here's a test render wi...

I started sculpting Elara the mermaid almost a month ago! But Going Live and my Research Presentation kind of got in the way and I didn't have time to finish her. So I sat down at the weekend and today and finished her up. Based on a piece by Nikhil Shinde More on my ArtStation! This was the first time I sculpted in pose and based on someone else's concept art. It was loads of fun and I'm looking forward to doing some characters based on classmates work for upcoming projects. 

The focus for my research topic has shifted this semester and it's something I find very interesting and I think effects a large portion of the audience that might see my film. I'm looking into Mental Health in film; how it is portrayed and how it is received by audiences. For this I conducted an interview with a profession in psychology with an interest in mental health in film. I already had my own opinions about how mental health is portrayed in films but listening to her helped broaden my understanding and knowledge of what we see as mental health and what films are showing it. Yes, there are lots of films that show mental health in a negative light, but there are so many more that I hadn't even thought about that show the even though people may suffer from mental health, they are still people: They still have their own goals and personalities. They are not defined by their illness. This topic is massive and I have barely scratched the surface but by creating my pres...

Since I can't really talk about our Going Live project I want to talk about a game I finished some time last month: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. It follows the story of Senua, a celt who suffers from psychosis. This changes the way the game plays and it has some fantastic sound design that was influenced by research they conducted with people who suffer from various forms of psychosis. The whole game is very dark and the darkness inside Senua seems to be swallowing her as she travels deeper into Hel. But at the same time, her lover, Dillion, appears to her and gives her a sense of hope. At the end game we see how dark the world can be and how much people try to put other down, particularly Senua but there is a sense of hope, a feeling of accomplishment and I want to get this same feeling through my short film.

I went to see Imagine Dragons perform at the SSE Hyrdo on Sunday and it was an amazing gig! But the front man, Dan Reynolds, came forward about half way through the performance and spoke about depression. He spoke about how he had been diagnosed and how we have to end the stigma related with it. He mentioned that he had a therapist and that it shouldn't be a swear word, it should be something we talk about. The whole thing got me thinking about my own project and how it relates to mental health, in particular depression. I need to focus myself more in my research and Jeannette has suggested that I reach out to DUSA and speak to them about how they approach and handle mental health. I agree with Dan Reynolds, in that we should end the stigma but I also understand the fear and anxiety that many suffers have. I'm thinking now about adjusting my story, and giving it an ending that those people can relate to, that they can understand and empathize with my character, hopefully t...