Ooooops...

Well I know I haven't been keeping up to date with the blog but I thought of a few ideas over the break.

Idea 1:

Firstly I was going to have a monster-like figure chasing after a boy. We find out in the end that the monster is just a well-silhouetted shadow of his mother. The boy is running away because he doesn't want to take his medicine for his bad cough.

Idea 2:

We see a figure running away (first impressions are of it being a boy) and we know from the start that there's a monster-like creature chasing him. So we see it clearly. Then as the chase scene's placed out, we see that it isn't a boy the monster is chasing but a smaller version of themself. So throwing in a parent/guardian figure into the story first followed by a minor.

Idea 3:

A boy running away from someone. At first the figure looks like a zombie - pale, groaning, out of breath, exhausted/tired/angry and covered in cuts, bruises and blood... But we find out at the end that it isn't blood at all but it is medicine spilt all over the figure. We find the figure to be parent/guardian-like and tries to feed the boy his medicine.

So I've been putting together a storyboard for the last idea as I think it's one I'd like to go for. I've been studying a few films to help me with getting camera shots/angles and theatrical make-up for the zombie-figure. Films watched/need to watch:

Zombieland
Shaun of the Dead
I Am Legend
28 Days/Weeks/Months Later
Boy Eats Girl
Resident Evil (1-3)
Romeo and Juliet vs. The Living Dead (Only saw the trailer... tooooo stupid to watch XD)

And a couple of games...

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune
Call Of Duty 5: World At War
Left 4 Dead (1+2)
The House of the Dead (Woo for arcade games! ^_^)
Resident Evil

Etc. Etc. Etc.

So it's basically time to knuckle down to Zombie/Horror elements! I need to figure out what's so special about Zombie films which differentiates them from other films such as Romance, Comedy, etc.

Developing story.

Well just had a tutorial with GC, he's given me a few more ideas I could use to push my story along.

Thank God! Ha.
So the books to look at:

1) Animation Writing and Development
2) Inspired 3D Short Film Production
3) Prepare to Baord!

Already nabbed the second one from the library, and have been looking at it for the past few days. Starting to get the idea... I think.. I hope!

Shot Ideas...

Yet another boring post, just some ideas for camera shots/angles.

I looked at photographs I'd taken of layout to get an idea of them in Max.

Bits of Inspiration

Nothing too exciting for you all, just a page of inspiration regarding colour and angles/shots.

Artists:
J.M.W. Turner
Victor Hugo
Jacob van Ruisdael

For today I've been trying to construct a basic town for my characters to be in... It's pretty hard if I'm honest so I'm about to go home now and do some digital speed drawings and see how they go. Hopefully I'll nail down the landscape/backgrounds soon... :D

COUGH

So, major project is upon us all (well all of us in the second year, most definitely!) and we've all had the choice of going down three different routes: Directing, Animating and/or Artist strand.

I found myself looking at the Animation strand. They said if you want to be an animator just take the animation strand for 2 years and you're close to getting a job. But convinced thoroughly by my 2D Anim. third years (no names mentioned as they know who they are :P) I took the plunge and headed straight for the Directing strand.

PHEW! Sorted out what I'm going to do for the next few months. Excellent!

The only problem was I needed an idea.
So on went the thinking cap (normally known as my original hats that I wear constantly) and I began the engross myself in deeeeeeep deeeeeeep thought.

I'd say by either Wednesday or Thursday I nailed a pretty strong idea.
So I don't give too much away, the story is based on a young boy who is reluctant to take his medicine. Sounds pretty... thrilling, yes? ;)

Currently I'm collaborating with my housemate Mat, who's assisting me on character design work as well as a few backgrounds (but I may learn to speed paint and get a few quick ideas).

For the rest of this week I'm hoping to get LAVs on the way and sort out a few thumbnails. Then I'll chop out the best parts of my LAVs to create a "LAVs-matic". :)

Frank Beathooven Can't Re-Write His Music!

So here's the final film, it's not 100% perfect but I don't think I did such a bad job at my first animation.

I really enjoyed it actually, It was nice to finally create something of my own.

Frank Beathooven - Final from Danie G.P. on Vimeo.

Still a little problem with IK to FK but it doesn't look... toooooo bad...

Minor Project Blocking

S'been a while since I posted, thought I'd put up some older avi file on my blocking.

Blocking from Danie G.P. on Vimeo.

It's obviously not perfect in anyway, but this was my initial idea for the dialogue. It was pretty much over the top once I added curves to it, but for the past week i've been slaving over max to produce a subtle-er video.

Can't re-write what's Perfect...!

Minor project has begun, atleast I can do some animation! :D

It's of the same scenario as 11secondclub, except for copyright reasons it's now known for us as 10secondclub. ;)

Dialogue: "It's unbelievable. The director's actually torn up a huge section of my music. But it's perfect... I can't... Re-write what's perfect!"

Using ToonBoom Studio 4 (because I'm hard core!) I've just put together the main keys (with an extra inbetweener here and there).

More Lighting scenes...

Not a massive fan of this one, it was my finale rendered image and I felt a little rushed with it. (Not sure how considering rendering photometric lights takes forever!).



Just another evening shot, same lighting just a different camera angle.



Super dark night time image of a guitar. Was merely an experiment with different camera shots.



And I save my favourite till last. It took me a while to get the light to emit off the screen and reflect/refract off the table... but after many hours I finally sorted it out, and I'm pretty pleased with the outcome!

The Joys of Rendering.

So it's the final week of Advance Tech and it's the lighting project.

Lets just say at the beginning I was really enjoying it. Now... The rendering allows me to go through a mind numbing experience. On top of that I'm also going through Lady's Flu (AKA Common Cold).

Any who, here are a few render shots from my room. Enjoy!

Bugs

Bug project, first time modeling in 3dsmax. I kind of enjoyed it, rigging was much more fun than constructing! :D

RagKat development

So trying to improve on my RagKat design. I'm trying to sort out the body but I think I've got a head concept sorted. :D

Ragkat

Just thought I'd post a bit about my Summer (fail) project.

I'd like to introduce, RAGKAT!



He's mainly influenced by LittleBigPlanet and Coraline but I wanted his attitude to be a little smug and flirty. Maybe think back to Danny from Grease. More images below!





And my fail walk sequence! It's not the official walk as there's not really any of his character in it.

First Entry.

Hello!

I'm currently a Glamorgan University Computer Animation student and I'd thought It'd be a neat idea to share my own ideas and animations with the world.

So cheers to the first of (hopefully) many! :)