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 ...

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...

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...

After talking through our inspirations and ideas yesterday, I went away and tried to research some styles and techniques that I could use in my final project and I think I know what sort of direction I want to go in. I love the low poly style of 3D modelling and animation but I don't want my film to look like a badly animated video game. I know a lot of good low poly work relies of keeping a sense of realism in the animation and not losing the character through a lack of definition. It also occurred to me that lighting in extremely important as that can change the entire mood of a scene but I have no idea where to look for lighting ideas in a low poly stylised animation. Until I stumbled upon an artist called Jona Dinges . Jona's low poly work is absolutely stunning and maintains a sense of self and personality across his designs. In particular he has some wonderfully lit mini scenes and even a small cloth simulation. This piece below was modelled in Blender be...

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...