Dragon Bait and Animate

After our presentations last Wednesday, I got a lot of feedback about how my project was going to look, something I have been trying to build on for months. I've finally decided that I want to take the project into Unity to be able to use real time rendering and add that as something I can do. However, as for the actual look of the project, it needs revisited. Initially, I had planned to do everything in shades of grey, with a few colour exceptions here and there but after some feedback, it's obvious that just using grey makes the project look unfinished and as if it has just been pulled straight out of Maya. TRON was mentioned during the feedback so I looked into how both the original and modern TRON rendered a computer world.     I particularly like how the accents of light and the layers of the costumes are build around the form of the actor. As such I'd like to try and take this idea into my character, using the topology of the model as ...

Yesterday we were talking about our projects again and Ryan reminded me of a game I saw at E3 a couple of years ago: Bound. Bound has a really cool low poly style which is particularly effective in the environments. I love the movement and how the environment pulls itself together and shifts as the character moves. I'm not sure how much I'd be able to incorporate into my final project but I think this is quite important in terms of inspiration.

I've always said that music is a massive influence in my work and for the longest time I wanted to create a simplified music video for my final Master's Project. However as time goes on, I've realised that I actually want to focus more on story telling and developing a character which the audience can sympathise with and relate to. As such, I no longer feel like the original music I was wanting to use is appropriate for the new world I'm building in this short film. So I went looking for new music and stumbled across it when I decide to re-listen to an album I had found a couple of years ago. Low Roar by Low Roar, in particular the song Patience: The song has a bleak feeling from the beginning and matches the general tone of the short film I'd like to create. There are also several other songs that have inspired the feel of the film that I've pulled together in a Spotify playlist here.   I'm sure I'll find more music as this progresses but s...

The last week has been spent on trying to further solidify my idea in my mind. I spoke with my sister about the rough outline of my idea and as we were talking about a post-apocalyptic environment she suggested that I root the environment in home. For example, when was the last time we saw a nuclear holocaust in Dundee? So I looked into Dundee landmarks and picked out a few I liked: The Discovery Ship The McManus Gallery Law Hill The New Waterfront I think it would be particularly interesting to take one of these locations and create a run down, overgrown version where my character could be seen exploring. I also looked up different concept arts that have used the overgrown, post-apocalyptic setting before: The Last of Us Fallout 3 Fallout 4 Horizon: Zero Dawn Metro 2033 As well as thinking about the environment for my short film, I decided to take a step back and return to the roots of the story. After today's class we discussed the use...

Today we were asked to bring in images, videos, anything that inspired what we wanted to achieve for our final project. So I spent the weekend going through some of my Pinterest boards as well as adding heavily to them. We've also been tasked with creating a character in 2D to then be created in 3D and it seems that this would be a good opportunity to create the character to be in my final project. After days of ideas swirling through my head I kept coming back to a post-apocalyptic, nuclear wasteland setting with a sole Wanderer making her way though the land. I wanted to focus on a theme of isolation and nature reclaiming the land. I found loads of images related to my ideas and I'll share a few below as well as link to my Pinterest boards for Post-Apocalypse and Inspiration . I've already mentioned before that music is a massive inspiration to me and there are a few tracks that come to mind when I think of post-apocalypse and luckily enough, I have a very...

I was thinking today about what inspires me most and I will always come back to music as being my main inspiration wherever I go. Music's fantastic, if you hear a song from your childhood again I guarantee it'll bring back memories of when you first heard it, or where you were when it came on the radio. I want my work to reflect that, I want the animations I create to have a strong relationship to the music that inspired them. One of my favourite music artists is Lindsey Stirling, she's a self described "Dub-Step Violinist" and her music is just awesome! In particular this piece of music has been with me for years since I first heard it. Every time it plays I have to stop because I have a whole scene in my head that plays to this music. Speaking of a scene playing to music, I recently saw Baby Driver which is an entire film set to music. I absolutely loved it, the pacing, the music, the characters, it all worked for me. Granted, there's always going t...