Bremen

Oh, dear - I'm back in Bremen...

At the moment I am a bit lost in space and not doing a lot of creative stuff. But I found a job as a bike courier. Very exciting and sportive - even if it's cold and rainy outside, I still have lots of fun!

the youtube link

just in case the movie here dosn't work, here is the youtube link.
But Youtube did something strange during encoding... It added a black bar on the right side but not on the left or on both of them. Really strange!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Qk1I2rFQY

THE FINAL MOVIE and blablabla...

Ok, it's done finaly I uploaded the movie here and on youtube (oh, I forgott to upload it to aniboom)!! I hope some people will see it and comment on it.

I have mixed feelings about the movie. One one side it was the first movie project in 3dsMax, so I am already quite happy that there are some textures and it moves but on the other side was my script so much deeper and involved so much more that could have helped to understand what's going on.
I am quite ashame that I had to cut out nearly all of the live footage Jon and me shot in my flat, but the movie would have been far to long with it.
But I am still happy we did the shooting because it was fun and an also a piece of the project. It involved storyboarding, planning and getting the equipment, building up the set with the lights and the props and finaly the shooting.

Nevertheless I am somehow happy with what I achieved. At least it has a quality high enough that I don't have to be afraid to add it to my portfolio and to show it to people I wan't to work with.

...after all I had a great time here in Nottingham. I learnd a lot about me, some other people and got alot of inspiration through the teachers. Maybe not so much through the actuall teaching but through little discussions, some hints and recommedations for books and artists I could possibly look at. (Great thanks for showing me Edward Gorey and Jhonen Vasquez!!! They will definitifly stay in my life for longer and influence my style)

The library was always a great inspiration... My Nottingham life is very easy to describe. If I wasn't working at my Laptop on the project I was in WAV 105 working on the project. If I wasn't working on my project at all I was possibly in a lecture or a tutorial learning stuff usefull for the project so I tried the learned to apply to my works. But sometimes I was just straying around in the arts department of the library to do myself a favour and have glimpses to this or that book. (I also found three or four I took home and read) And there where also times I bought a lot of booze and switched my brain off for one or two days while laying half naked (its only the half of the truth ;-) ) in front on my laptop and watch tons of cartoons.
Hm...maybe I shouldn't write this in my final feedback paper for both of the universities... I will see... HAHAHA

RESTLESS LEG MANIAC

Damn, I still haven't uploaded my finished movie. But acctually I am not in a big hurry to do so as I told myself to step back for some days and don't sit in front of the screen for to long ;-)

I draw a new cartoon (by hand) and colored it on PC... OK once again screen, but coloring works quite fast. The work whith PC involved took less than an hour.

It's one of those cartoons for this medical magazin I work for so the topic is an illness called "the restless leg syndrom".
My initial ideas were also not this bad, but during my birthday party with a lot of beer and wine involved I came up with this idea.

I really like the character I created for this one - he looks like freaks shoould look somewho ;-) My first attempt was with an english tagline that was "YEAH, YEAH... MOVE YOUR LEGS!!!" but I think the people who read the magazine would prefer a german line so I changed it to "TRETEN, TRETEN...JA...JAHHH!!!" what basically means the same. (literally:"Step, step... yes...yesss!!!")

Oh it was so fun to draw it!

Tomorrow

Finally I am at the stage were I can say: "OK, tomorrow on the same time the movie will be uploaded somewhere and a link will be here in the Blog".

Its still not perfect but (nearly) the best I could do in the time given ;-)

I really like word plays... so here is one I found lately.

I've never red the books of Marquis de Sade because they are a bit too violent and sex orientated. (Only three or four pages of reading was enough) but I like the idea of connecting him with salade and a nice french dressing ;-)

scene 7 shot 01 - preview

I am not in the mood to write too much...

Nearly all scenes have benefited now from a 2nd animation pass where I animated the morph targets and custom attributes a bit. I am really happy to have spent very long in building the rig. Doing the animation is quite easy and fun but nevertheless it takes hours and hours - so my back and the eyes hurt a bit.

Layer

Good that I worked with layers right from the beginning on. Because now, while testing the character animation, I can hide with some clicks all the stuff other then tha main character and just do a quick rendering of it...

Haha... sometimes organisation really seems to pay off.
First I thought I am a kind of nerdy guy who just wants to be "cool" so he places all things on different layers, but now I see that my subconscious must have hade the feeling that it might become usefull - as it actually did ;-)

ohhh... the story

after a review of all scenes together (some without real animation but the right length) I have to admit that maybe nobody will get the point what the story is about.

Once again I seem to fail to translate the narrative Idea to the animation. Also I am not very happy with the timing of the whole stuff. I really tried hard and will keep going on but at the moment I am a bit down.

I am very curious how this is going to end. After all my approach was and still is a challenge to me and I should be happy about how much I allready did but somehow I wont become happy right now %-(

Maybe will Monday cheer my up a bit when I get some feedback...

P.S. The fish will not will - not this time!

AMAZING!

Something really amazing happened few minutes ago in 3dMax.

I needed a smaller version of Silly Billy and thought about scaling the mesh, Bones, controllers and all this stuff knowing it wouldn't work - but why not try at least...

And the wonder happened! It all works normaly and perfect - even the morphtargets and the textures are OK... WOW... I must have built a really good rig ;-)

my workspace during home animation

I felt like posting an picture of my workspace at home so everybody can imagine how it's going on. Normally I tend to get lost as soon as projects get more complex and I loose my track but NOT this time!

This time I am well organised. At the beginning of the project I felt a bit silly in spending this much effort in documentation and writing down a lot of stuff. But right now I am really happy I've done it because it helps me a lot...

Scene 4 - Preview

So, here it is, the first preview of an animated scene. Its not finished at all and there are quite a lot of mistakes in it but at least its a beginning ;-)

The sound is just a very rough placement without setting it to the right levels...

June

Damn... Now it's already june. Time passes sooooooo quickly.

In one week I planned to hand in my short movie - that means on the 9th of june.
I can't say that I have done nothing but I definitifely can say that I need to do much more.
Sometimes I wish I am a kind of 20 japanese workoholic mangaka & animators but even with a slightly split personality I never managed to become more than one physical person.

Here's a nice Screenshot ;-)

BLA BLA BLA...ish... ahh my brain hurts like a bread filled with chillies!

BUUURRRPPHHHHH...AHHHHHH... yeah it's over.

Neoangin

remember... evolution is easy with your shoes on!

THE BARRIER IN THE BRAIN

Ohhhh look! Nice, cool it moves like water...

Ok - maybe fast water but I wanted only to export 15f for testing reasons. I like the effect - it's booked for the film ;)

scene02/shot01 - update

It's a bit later and I am a bit more tired but also wiser...

Now I am nearly happy with the Background... I hope I dont need to pan around because the shot is built up in layers and is not a real 3d space but only textured spheres, some rough geometry in the background and some good geometry on the rock in the foreground ;-)

Sleepytime...

First BG Shot ever - scene02/shot01

Yupphhhhhiiiiii - here is the first shot for a background. Its atually the establishing shot at the beginning of the film where the camera enters the head and ends in the brain.

The cat is gonna jump in to the frame soon but not here 'cause its only an Image and not a film... hahaha...

But seriously - there are still a few problems with this shot.
1. Glow with Vpost does work on planes with alphamaps on it BUT if there is something behind the plain it also gets the glow (;-) ...get the glow in the flow, man... shut up... strange voice in my head! I have to work!)

2. In the left side of the frame are some overlapping planes also with alpha channels on them. First they rendered well but then in my infinite curiosity I did something and now the most forward plane is the brighest while the planes more in the back are darker.

3. The edge of the rock in the forground is very sharp 3d programm sharp - that's bad

... there are still more problems but at the moment ai cunnot rimemberrrr itshhh tooo baddd ahir quwallity in 105...

BUZZCAT - textured

Here is the cat...

I think I should add some more "features" to the texture to make the cat look more interesting as it is now.

At least the tail tip, the paws and the inner ear needs some more work from me... but NOT tomorrow!

I like the matt felty look of the violett skin right now. If it would be ultramarine blue I would say the cat is a new Ives Klein work - hahaha! But it needs to be violett as it is a colour representing somehow creativity to me...

... and then I spent some time playing around to achieve the transparent look I wanted. But yeah, it reaches to 90% what I had in my imagination - thats Ok, I can live with it.

Cats that sit in a glass houses shouldn't throw stones... but cats that are a kind of glass house... ähm ohm... what the hell do I know what they should do? I don't live in my brain!

I definitively can say, that I prefer Rigging to texturing. Texturing is stupid, boring and not very sadisfying...

SILLY BILLY - Textured

Ufffffhhhhh... its done!

Silly Billy has all the textures on it and I even got his eyes glowing as I wanted and without rendere intensiv attenuated lights in his eyballs but symply the 3dMax VideoPost function (thx Andy)

...oh, but I see right now that I forgot the lantern tip... bah... Tomorrow is unfortunately Background Day - so I don't work on the characters...

doesn't work...

hm... basically my plan was to upload a lot of pictures from my weekends work on the Backgrounds but somehoe it doesn't work...

I'll try it again later

Environement - concept scetches

It's better to think first then to go directly in to 3dMax and start to model an environement...

As I get lost in very time consuming work while sitting in front of the Computer I thought it might really be better to take my beloved fineliners and scetch a bit around to save a lot of work and time afterwards.

The rough idea of how the setting should look was already in my head but the challenge was to translate it in to a quite small 3d environement that can be used for the shooting with the character models.

Backgrounds ;-)

Today I looked after a long time again at the script.

The character development and all the technical stuff that comes with it in 3dMax to make them work is finished, so I can design the backgrounds for the characters to act in.


Basically they are already a kind of designed. When I wrote the script I had some sceneries in front of my inner eye. But now is the time to get hold of them in a more realistic way what means I draw a bunch of pictures along the storyline, a kind of storyboard. I drew the hole day till now and only one scene is missing... so I'll draw it tomorrow because the quality of the images gets worse with every hour that passes and every pint more in my belly... hahaha... and I destroied one of my fineliners while drawing so I switched to a wet medium for the backgrounds just to find out that it is much faster and gives much more depth to the image... Gee! Just great...

I'll post some of the stuff (or maybe all of it?) when I am back in Weaverly Building and have a scanner ;-)

Isamu Noguchi

After posting its much about 3d and my project its time to write about something more personal.

This week I saw a photo of the sculpture "the rape of the sabine woman" from Giambologna on Andies desk as I was bothering him again with my questions *g* So the idea arose in my mind to post something about one of my favored sculptors.

Some of you may know that my history is not very easy to explain... one of its parts include a stay in southern France where I studied/worked in an artists atelier tht was next to a potters workshop. So what I basically did there was painting, scultping clay and drinking wine with the people in this backyard with the workshop.

I refuse to become a 100% PC Nerd. I need both worlds, the CGI and the physical one. I wouln't be able to learn Max as fast as I do without my knowlege in painting (OK, I draw better then I paint...) and sculpting. Maybe it's a once again a yin & yang thing... keep the balance and it will be good and I will be happy. But anyways...

I wanted to say something about ISAMU NOGUCHI. He was an america/japanese sculptur and a friend of the great furniture designer charles Eamus and Buckminster Fuller aka Bucky. I like his minimalistic stile, his reduction and the work on the surface. Sometimes a stone gets through the work on it several different textures what is really great and enriches the perception of it. What I also like a lot on his approach is that he often takes his inspiration out of natural, round forms (his art was called by some people as Biomorphism). For example he made one sculture that looks to me like a piece of a cut branch with all his sidebranches cut away. He reached this effect by making the mayor part of the cylindrical stone piece quite rough and sculpted in some very polished oval shapes in. - just great.

The sculptur I choose as picture is called Heimar and ia located in Jerusalem's jewish museum. Its one of his later (1968) very abstract works so I don't want to look for any resemblance to existing shapes in the nature or the human creations. Once again, I just like the texture and the volume of his work!

Assemblies

Assemblies are useful for creating combinations of geometry and light objects that act as lighting fixtures.

You use them to represent the housing of a lamp and its light source or sources. You can use assemblies to represent lighting fixtures such as simple desk lamps, lighting strips, track systems, wall sconces with fluorescent or incandescent lights, chandelier systems, line voltage cable systems, and so on.

When you create light assemblies, first you create your objects and build a hierarchy, then set joint parameters and assign inverse kinematics (IK) . As a final step, you assemble the object hierarchy. The lights you use in the assembly have light-multiplier and filter color controls. You wire the Dimmer and Filter Color parameters of the Luminaire helper object to the parameters of the light sources that are members of the light assembly.

In order to wire the Luminaire controls to the light parameters, you must first open the assembly. Then, after wiring, you close it.

tunnel scene - a test

I spent the whole day making tests for the pursiut of the two characters in the tunnel... but obviously too much motion blur... The textures are also not the final ones. I just took the texture from the synapses and copied it to the tunnel...

Synapses - a render time test

Modeling:
Very basic, bacause its a background item. So Its a hexagon extruded along a spline. The top polies are extruded and scaled manually to get the supper shape.

First I had some problems with smooting because its so low poly modelling. I tried the smooth modifier but somehow it didn't work for me so I found in the poly sub selection group of the object also the smoothing group panel and was able to assign them propperly.
But I found something even better! In the Subdivision Surface Panel in the top- or polyoutroll there is "Use NURMS Subdivision" I set the render iterations to "2" and left the display iterations at "0" for faster display.

To test if the nurms don't take to long to render (as turbosmooth would do) I just made 1000ish copies of the synapse modell, threw a middle complex texture on it (standart OrenNayarBlinn, with falloff to 40 and Index of refraction at 1.3 in the ext. Parameters rollout - all other numbers stay as they are...) and hit the render button.
And it took only 16sec!

HELP! Did I change to a NERD allready or is it normal to think about things like this?

UVW - pelt it off the fish

Here is the unwrapped fish.

As so often the fish was much easier. I should have started with him.

For the end of the lantern I used a circular projected map the rest is again all pelt mapped. It was somehow the easyest to do.

I tried to paint it in the computer room but lately the maschine I'm working on has the tendency to not work propperly after 2pm... I basically wasted nearly two hours by restarting and breaking down again - but hey - I finally finished that SODUKU (or how they are called) it the piece of newspaper that lies in the pile of paper next to my computer...

UVW - pelt it off the cat

After several atempts with unsatisfying results the UVW Unwrapping for the Buzzcat works.

I did most of the parts with the pelt function in the unwrap UVW Modifier, some pieces with planar mapping out of the same modifier.

The unwrapping now works because I changed the seams of the body and cutted it in to smaller pieces. This would of cours not work if the character had a more complex body texture with strippes or so... But for me it will work and time is going on.

SILLY BILLY - he swims!!

OK, it took a bit of time but the computer was so merciefull to render out my desired jpegs so I could gather them together in AfterEffects. I am quite happy...there are still some problems but you don't see them in this rendering in this movements ;-)

First I wanted to render it with a skylight, because it looks so nice but then I decided to add Omnis without shadows and a Arealight with a 4096 shadowmap to make the shadow on the floor. It looks still petty good... and is fast (8sec per frame)

stupid Computers

Why do they crash when I want to render?
Is it allready to warm for them or do they not like my animation tests?

I don't know...

But if all goes as I want it to(HAHAHA... stopp dreaming, join reality! This will never happen) then I can upload a animated swimming Silly Billy on Youtube this evening. Of course I'm gonna create a link from here to the youtube Video.

It renders now... so I am just bored and to lazy to get up, thats why I write this post. It must be at least 30C in WAV105... but no sun to tain!

There's a robot beneath the fluff

I found a blog with very cool Images of toy robots.
Ot shows the toys in a whole in one picture and the undeneath robot structure in an other picture. Some of the toys look really sceary without their fluffy Skin...

http://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.mattkirkland.com/ursum.html

ILLUSTRATION - WHAT WRE YOU WAITING FOR

Once again a new Illustration... I wasn't in a colourfull mood so its all BW.

The picture is an interpretation of the copper engraving like technique of Edward Gorey or Gustave Doré.
OK I have to admit they are much more detailed then my little finliner scetches but my research goes more in the direction of how to create with a few lines a wall structure or the illusion of space

When I draw or paint my subjects are mainly surreal or odd stills. In the first place the seem meaningless but on a second view they enforce to think what could be ment and in a third step they are very profound (or meaningless HAHAHA)

CUSTOM ATTRIBUTES - Morph Targets

The biggest discovery today was connected to custom Attributes. They are really custom...
Just for fun I tried to wire a morph target to a slider in the Attribute Holder of a controller and to my big suprise it worked!

I was jumping around in pleasure - imagine the clicks you save by this!

The skin stays frozen all the time because access to the morpher is no longer required as all his targets are now wired to custom attributes in p.e. the master body controller.

Happy happy fröi fröi :-)))))))

SILLY BILLY - ENVELOPES

The Rig for the fish was surpisingly easy to do compared with the cat. No legs,no shoulder, no other funny stuff just a head with some fins and tailish things.

It took only a day for all the bones, IKs, helper objects control shapes and the parameter wiring - hahahappy!

OK, it needs still some work on the envelopes but hey I am not a wizzard or something like this and I need to sleep, to eat and sometimes my body should move its muscles to not loose all abilities of movement.
But sooner or later I will create my own 3d body in 3dMax or Maya - the GOD edition of course - then I'll load my mind in to the new body and done. HAHAHA - I already mentioned that I gradually develop a nice little lunacy - Oh I like it very much!!! The world is great yeahhh! Screeny screeny boom boom ;-)

SILLY BILLY RIG

Today is "Rigging the Fish"-Day YUPPHHHIEEE!!!

It goes on quite well but my attempt to finish it today will fail. Damn, damn... I am still to slow!

But I always say to some unspeciefied part in my mind: "Hey YOU! Don't panic. Stay calm and just go on"

So far the newest development in my project.

Illustration RockSoc Assault

During the last Assault from RockSoc in the GLO I began to duddle aome of the dancing people. I totally forgot about this till I looked through my scetchbook today and discovered some hieroglyphic unreadable drawings. But not all of them were rubbish so I decided to take one in to "post" in Photoshop ;-)

It might be one of the girls dancing but maybe I just invented the character - never drink and draw... or was it "never drink and drive"? Who knows ;-)

The Cat moves!!!

The cat moves and can express some stuff... Ok, I found still some mistakes, but the weekend is coming so I can do all the stuff. I hope it's going to rain so its easier to stay at home in front of the Laptop...

I am a bit behind my personal project schedule because of the rigging. It took slightly longer then expected (2weeks more) but is now OK.
The fish is easy - he has no legs, no neck and is basically a head with a tail...

During rigging the cat I felt more and more how I begin to understand the whole bone and IK wizardry. In the end I changed the morph targets for the whyskers to two bone chains with HI IK Solvers on them and a Dummy as a controller. The benefit of this is, the file size decreases and the whyskers are easier to controll but on the other hand I spent an other evening with bones and envelopes.

Thats it... in a few hours I'm going to shoot the live footage for the beginning and the end of the animation that is obviously not animated.

Björk - Wanderlust

for all who own red/blue 3d Glasses... Björks new Video can be seen in 3d!

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2008/04/bjork_wanderlust_3d_video

Theoretically it should be quite easy to do.
I think for a 3d Shot there have to be two cameras in the scene that are nearly on the same place (as it is with human eyes)...

but then comes the tricky stuff I can only guess. Either the images from one cam is renderd out more blue and the other more red or the effect comes through adjusting/ adding colorchannels in the postproduction... Unfortunatly I haven't at the moment the time to make huge experiments.

Not Animating

My actuall plan was to animate a first shoot last weekend but the morph targets went crazy and moved not only the face. Instead they translated the whole character sideways in a very unpredictable way... impossible to animate something.

Today during the animation lecture we fund the mistake. It was a kind of "wrong stack order, wrong collapse timing "-ISH and maybe hierarchical fault with the Pivot involved. *sg*

So...basically I have the pleasure to practise my deforming skills a little more on the newly to create morph targets that have allready been created once... Oh, doesnt really matter... I have lots of time disposable to do every step at least twice *sg*
But yeah, the second approach of the face morph targets gets really better

Skin Test - Buzzcat

maybe would it be a good idea for me not to try to make a perfect rig to skin fitting...

maybe a 80% good version also works - I'll think about this idea during the next few hours of work on the vertex weights...

Yes, I know its time consuming and stupid to weight vertices manually but the envelopes are a kind of limited I just found out. Because if the proportions of your model are a bit out of normal then the envelopes can't cover all the areas the connected bones should influence.

My workflow looks at the moment like this:

1. adjust envelop -> test animate (petrifying shock 'cause it moves somewhere and somehow)
2. manually adjust vertecies -> test animate
3. - 1000. just as I did in step 2. (I could spend weeks on it...)

Buzzcat in zurich

While working out how to ajust the envelopes of each bone I let the cat pose in as many different poses as I can imagine to detect faults in the vertex weights.

In this picture here the cat takes a little walk along the schanzengraben in zurich ;-)

Some of the parts of the skin behave quite odd at the moment. For Example if I move the shouldes down the chest vertices pierce out in the totaly wrong direction... quite tricky to ajust

Illustration - just for fun

I am too much in front of screens. As longer as I continue to work like this the bader gets my performance....

So distraction is the action for perfaction ;-)

Today I explored some areas of Notts by foot, went to a teahouse and made some doodles there. They are very much inspired by the latest bookish things I read... "Johnny the homicidal maniac" and "Amphigorey" by Edward Gorey.

When I was back home I redraw one of them a bit larger and added some kind of goreyish graphical structure to the areas to make the whole comic look more interesting.

BC_an animated Rig Test

Here we are... a working rig for the cat. It does quite all the things I want it to do. After a week working on it today I just realised, that I maybe should have built the rig in to the body.

So far so good... at the moment I guess it needs two or three days to deconnect the rig and fit it in to the body. GOD HIT ME WITH A LIGHTNING, DAMN DAMN DAMN!!!

Manchester

A lovley picture from the Hilton Hotel in Manchester I took when I was there last week with my brother.

Around 5 min later it started to hail havily. I think this is one of the reasons the gray of the sky is so amazingly colorfull!
I really like the composition and the tones of the picture. Its all grey but yet so full of colour... if you watch it on a good screen.

Thinking about this... Its very hard to properly present digital art because of the big difference in reception of the final pice of art. A well lit painting in a museum looks normally very good and is no comparison to a screen work. Even it I would spend hours on refining a photo in photoshop, if you look at it on a bad screen all the work is done for nothing. The audience will only get the idea but not the finetuned finished piece of art...

RIG - a test

One of several atempts to make a rig for the cat.

Nothing is linked, wired or hierarchiesed. There are just the splineIKs in the tail and the spine so far because I have NO IDEA how to link this stuff together...

I found somewhere in Max a tutorial how to rig a biped - doesn't work very well for my purposes.

Sillybilly - the final mesh

Her is the slightly modified final mesh for SillyBilly.

I added little floating eyeballs and made the lantern more bony

Buzzcat - the final mesh

Finally I arrived to finish the mesh for the cat.

The modelling of the head was quite a pain because it looked a long time like the head of a chiwawa dog. After long hours of looking at cat and dog pictures and modifications on the heads geometry it lookes now like a strange kind of cat...

Garfield

sometimes, more precisely said, bloody often my luck is much bigger then reason or planning or resreach...

When I stood in the queue in ASDA waiting to pay my bagles the Garfield movie labled 5£ looked at me and told the BUZZCAT in my head that I should buy it - so I bought!

Ok, I have to admitt that the movie isnt that good concerning the story because the lethargic sarcastic life observing attitude of Garfield was rejected to make a "better" more Hollywoodlike, 0815 , familyfitting, happy standard story... with a BIG GREAT HAPPY END...

But the good part of the DVD is the bonus material. There is a featurette, where the filmmakers show how they designed the 3D Model of Garfield. Quite good inspiration for me and my little buzzy cat in my head ;-)

Trailer Storyboard

TATE modern - M.Duchamp, M.Ray, F.Picabia

In one of my favored Art Museums - the Tate Modern in London - is a quite good representative exhibition featuring Marcel Duchamps (1887 - 1968), Man Ray (1890 - 1976) and Francis Picabia (1879 - 1953) that will last till the 26th May 2008.

May be the most known of the trio is Duchamps because of his readymades.

I personaly often prefere Picabia to Duchamp. Man Ray I only knew by name before this exhibition but now I have to admit that I like his work because its often sarcastic and critics the philistine way of live. All the tree of them often reference to erotic topics but not in a pornographic way more in a sarcastic.

As more than agree with the DADA movement there for Picabias and Duchamps early work period is very interesting to me. I am not very shure if the two where already in the DADA movement in Zurich but at least when DADA expanded to Paris they must have joined the movement.

and

DADA is here
So da there is dha daaa
Da DA lives on noON and
Dha DAeth is NOT...

hahaha... I like to play! But in german I am a lot better with dadaesque wordplays...

TREATMENT

A treatment is after the proposal the 2nd instrument to aquire financial support.

It is a narrative description of the production and written like the narrator watches the medium and comments it.
Normally it contains no dialogs or special technical terms.
The first paragraph summarises key elements from the proposal like the title, length, format and objective of the production.

PROPOSAL

A proposal is the 1st document to present to possible financial backers in the preproduction process.

Normally it's made by producer, writer, director and opens the door to financial or logistical funding. A proposal should be brief and writen in a for non media people understandable language without to much technical terms. It needs research in books, the web and the real world to write a proposal.

A good proposal includes following features:

• objectives of the production
• target audience
• distribution methods
• key production factors
• basic style
• genre
• unusual production techniques
• special casting / location considerations
• length
• recording format
• release format
• timeline
• budget

inspired by "single camera video production 4th edit." by Musburger,Robert

The S - Words

Script, Screenplay, Scene Script, Shootingscript, Shootlist and Storyboard

...häääälllllpp!!!

Ok, a Script a Scene Script and a Screenplay seem to be basically the same thing with different names. They describe all the scenes in the movie (NOT the shots!), place (INT/EXT) and time (DAY/NIGHT) them.
The Scene Screen Script Play features the characters, the characters movements, dialog, narration, the key props and the location so that later on shots can be extracted.

Sounds cool... now further into this story...

A shootingscript seems to be derivated out of a script (aka...) and contains each specifical Shot. It adds more information for the crew on the set. Things like the transitions, camera positions and framing (WS/ MS/ CU) are written in the shootingscript but they leave space for spontan creativity.

Ähm... OK...

A Shotlist is very precise about cameraposition and angle in the scene. Often they are made dayly for the planned shooting.

And last but not least the Storyboard...
Not every director seems to use it in the same phase of production and in the same amount or artistic perfection. For Animation it is quite usefull to have a more or less accurate storyboard based on a rough shootingscript.

THE BREAK DOWN:

1. Outline an Idea
2. Write Script -> improve it
3. Write Shootingscript
4. Draw Storyboard
5. Write Shotlist
...

• a shot: beginns and ends when camera is switched ON/OFF
• a scene: contains several shots (same location and time)
• a sequence: is a narrative unit out of several scenes or shots
  

CATS SKELETON

Look at the cats legs. they are quite different from humen arms legs. Thez walk on their heels of the hand, basically on the beginn of their fingers. So the knee/elbow and the pivotjoint/shoulder are in different positions

SHOT NAMES - overview

just to remind me to use the right grammar - I'll update my script...

About Character Design

I thought about the physical aspect of character design. Of course there is also a nonvisible side that covers why a character acts like it does, who inspired and influenced him and a lot more...
Maybe I will think about it an other time.

01: General

• We define peoples personalities from the visual clues they give us -> attach attributes to person's character
• Express the personality of a character through the design

02: the name

• Triggers always connotation, but very different in each culture and for each person
• gives hints for gender, ethic, social status

03: the hair

• the character himself has a choice how to wear his hair
• how does he see himself, projection of wannabes

04: the skin

• Not so easy to influence by the character
• depends on the circumstances he lives in
• ethical
• scares, freckles, tatoos & wounds -> hint a background story

05: the fashion

• chosen by the character himself
• clothing is very essential to Character Design, because it covers big areas of the body
• indicates culture, time period, gender, age, occupation, income, social standing
• in harmony with its place in the society (words from above) or rebelling against it by dressing unusual
• uniforms -> characters are forced to wear them
• ad details to make cloth look convincing -> researches!

06: the accessories

• little details that give the character deepness
• can set one character apart from a similar looking

07: the body language

• persons body language is dictated by how comfortable they are with both themselves and the world around them
• extrovert have open body position, relaxed arms, open legs, eyes ready to make contact
• introverts have closed body positions, crossed armes, closed legs, eyes down

creating the fish - part 2

This is I suppose the final body for my fish - SillyBilly



He looks much sillier without teeth in the upper jaw. I just added more details like the backfin, a small bellyfin, the lantern and the barb.

I haven't decided yet if I should first finish the cat's body or rigging the fish...
May be modelling the cat is better as I am right now in the flow.

Nature and Engineering

"There is an eternal competition between nature and engineering:

The engineeres try to build more foolproof systems,
Nature tries to build better fools.

So far nature wins ;-) "


I was inspired by the last weeks spp and this weeks spp tutorial. OK - the relation is very vague but I can explain myself.
The scientific point of view tries to find constants and absolut values - right know you can even buy books about interface design and related stuff, where they claim to have found the absolute "Who it has to be done". I don't say there are no principles in Art and Design and the whole content of this books is rubbish, the point I try to make is, that the human being can and does evolve. The quote's "better fools", means evolved fools, are the worst enemy of thatone how tries to remain static and does only look for absolutes.

A sarcastic video I found about music downloading made by Weird Al Yankovic and the RIAA,
Recording Industry Association of America.

creating the fish - part 1

So far the modeling of SillyBilly, one character for my short.
The fin on the back is still missing and maybe I ad some teeth in the upper jaw.

It's all made in 3dsMax, but I really wanna try Zbrush to do some refinement...
Who will count the faces...la la la...
( isn't there somewhere under the building in the caves a renderfarm hidden?)

It took a bit of time to walk around the whole box.



The walker isn't moving very well but I will ad a little more shakieness during the weekend.

A bunch of questions arose while animating.
For Example:

- Why ,when I nearly finish the animation and copy frame 0 to the late frame (f256), does the "head" and the feet have the funny feeling to make a 360 degree turn?
- Who do I keep the feet in place? (Ev. moving pivot point for rotation?)
- Why do the legs in the rendered file sometimes disappeare?
- Are there something like "Sheets" or "Animating Sheets" in Max where I could plan the animation or have I just to start animating?
(It would be usefull to have something like a breakdown for the walkcycle.
For Example: 1. move right leg 2. rotate right heel joint 3. ajust toe rotation 4. move upper body a.s.o.)

- More knowlegde about the whole snaping function stuff required!
- Think about a better workflow so my body (the BACK & the eyes) doesn't feel like a pain after several hours of work -> considerings to start yoga and go to a fitnesstudio!? (Oh my God!)

...more light...

here I used a skylight and 3 omnis (without casting shadow)
It took its time to render and the globe seems to float in the air.
Arrrghhh... not so easy this stuff!

To be or not to be - the truth

When we spoke about the perception of truth in both the modernism and the postmodernism I had to think about a picture that shows Friedrich King of Preussen with his fellows of the Tabakkollegium.
The painter (Georg Lisiewski) choose a perspective with vanishing point, but the persons appearing in the picture aren't painted in a realistic way. For example the servants are very small. The king sits in the lower middle of the picture. If I had painted the picture I would have made him bigger, but maybe he wouldn't like to disgrace his fellows...




So the truth is, as quite often, only a question of the point of view and the knowledge a person has.

An other approach to this topic is the modern fashion photografie.

Nearly anybody can be changed in to a supermodel within a few hours spent on its pictures in photoshop. Does this mean that we will look at everyday life people and are bored about them because they look too ugly or do not fit in to the ideal proportions and cleanness of the artificial made poeples? At my opinion it isn't so. I still prefer real humans with some mistakes and some personality to the more and more androgyneus human beings in the ads. But nevertheless I have to admit that creating such ideal bodies shifts the perception of what's considered to be normal. Some may run in to a trap in following unfollowable ideals.

more lights

7 photometrical arealights


6 omni lights + targeted light


1 skylight + targeted light


The shot with the skylight in it looks obvously better... but took 10min to render the other two shots only 30sek...

and it still doesn't look like I wanted it to look like.

there shall be light... ääähhm...hm... where is the switch?

I played around with lights and tryed to remember what Andy tols me...
Basicelly:
Skylight = bad -> takes long to render, but looks good
any other playing around with lots of "normal" lights = better, faster... ähm what ever.

The stair is enlighted only with one targeted area light with raytraced shadows. I'm not so happy with the shadows and the walls are supposed to be white not gray.
How did the POCOYO guys lighten their scenes? I want a white space (that dosn't just look overexposed) with a light shadow an the edge where wall and floor met.

CHESHIRE CAT

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where –" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

I love John Tenniels carefully made artwork for "Alice in the Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass". In my opinion the Disney movie ( last time seen when I was a little boy...) Hasn't reached the book as well as Tenniels artwork. Disney, as much as I like them, is too sweet for the whole Alice topic... so I am looking forward to the Tim Burton interpretation of it... will be like Chrismas, Easter and Birthday for me at one time ;-)

ERASMUS

It's so fun to be on an ERASMUS exchange - but honestly the balance between sleeping, dancing, drinking, reading, writing, taking pictures, drawing, modeling and animating is hard to keep up. People here in Nottingham are to friendly to ignore them and their invitations!

Script Draft02

INT.introduction.STUDENTS ROOM.AFTERNOON

A human being (me) sits at his desk working. The camera slips into his his head either through a ear, the nose or an eye.

CGi.the buzzcat.INSIDE THE HEAD

Wide shots of the landscape to introduce the plot.

Close of the cats weaving paws and a purring sound over two ends of synapses. He is stimulating them to create thoughts. Small electric jolts emit from the synapses back to the cat who is aware of its danger.

The cat jumps around, is excited and astonished about the processes going on in the brain. He likes his work. Several close shots of the cat. (head, tail, blinking eyes a.s.o.)

INT.Cat in the eye.STUDENTS ROOM.AFTERNOON

black

the eyelid opens

In a very close shot of an eye the cat can be seen in the reflection of a pupil.

(later on ev. an other shot with fish and cat in comic like chase with two eyes)

the eyelid closes

black

CGi.the problem.INSIDE THE HEAD

Suddenly something goes wrong. The firing of the synapses reduces dramatically so the former electric storm is down to a minimum. The Audience gets glimpses of parts of SillyBillyFish who turns synapses of with his lantern. The sound changes to a threatening humming combined with the sound of electronic power switched off.

The Buzzcat gets irritated and sets up to locate the source of this incident.

INT.knock out.STUDENTS ROOM.AFTERNOON

A daized and confused person still sitting on a chair in front of a laptop slightly swinging from one side to an other. It isn't capable of doing anything.

CGi.the hunt.INSIDE THE HEAD

(short fast moving takes. Those of the cat bright and shiny and those of the fish dark and threatening)

The Buzzcat hunts the fish of whom only glimpses can be seen. The two of them are never in the same picture. As the hunt goes on they pass a dark tunnel down into the deeper areas of the brain.

(find metaphor for deeper brain to help visualising)

The fish slips with a deep blowwwwph soung through a barrier in to his lair. The cat stops worried in front of the barrier.

CGI.the metaphysical cat.INSIDE THE HEAD

The buzzcat overthrows (transcends) the barrier by moving his paws and rotating like a twister, so he becomes after the whirling a transparent cat that reflects the rainbowcolors. Like this the cat can slip through the mental cellular wall.

A black wall remains, or alternatively the camera folows the cat through the barrier.

CGI.the lair of sillybilly.INSIDE THE HEAD

Now the Buzzcat is inside the hiding place of SillyBilly. For the first time the fish can be seen in total. He is floating in the space.

(first a close up of the fish, then the camera moves backwards tho show the cat and the fish on opposite sides of the picture)

The cat growls, hisses and spits at the fish. The fish answers with a deep tone that sounds chuntering, droning and humming. Both of them move in the beginning only slightly but more and more faster while the sound gains volume and around the cat buzzing starts.

Finally the fish gets thrown (ev. without being touched) between two synapses endings and stays stocked there.

The Buzzcat approaches while gesticulating with its paws and grinning madly. The synapses enlighten and fire a thought so that the fish explodes into thousands of pieces.

int.the end.STUDENTS ROOM.night

The human being awakes from his paralysed state, shakes his head and blows his nose. The remainings of the fish are flushed out of the brain. The Buzzcat glimpses triumphantly up in one eye.

changed scenes

CGI.the problem.INSIDE THE HEAD

Suddenly something goes wrong. The firing of the synapses reduces dramatically so the former electric storm is down to a minimum. The Audience gets glimpses of parts of SillyBillyFish who turns synapses of with his lantern. The sound changes to a threatening humming combined with the sound of electronic power switched off.

The Buzzcat gets irritated and sets up to locate the source of this incident.

INT.knock out.STUDENTS ROOM.AFTERNOON

A daized and confused person still sitting on a chair in front of a laptop slightly swinging from one side to an other. It isn't capable of doing anything.

CGI.the hunt.INSIDE THE HEAD

(short fast moving takes. Those of the cat bright and shiny and those of the fish dark and threatening)

The Buzzcat hunts the fish of whom only glimpses can be seen. The two of them are never in the same picture. As the hunt goes on they pass a dark tunnel down into the deeper areas of the brain.

(find metaphor for deeper brain to help visualising)

The fish slips with a deep blowwwwph soung through a barrier in to his lair. The cat stops worried in front of the barrier.

Script Draft 01

Parts Of My Brain

Story Outline

Draft 1

14/2/08

thomASKunz

STUDENTS ROOM 1

(live action footage)

A human being (me) sits at his desk working. The camera slips into his his head either through a ear, the nose or an eye.

INSIDE THE HEAD 1

(CGI 3D footage)

Just inside the skull the buzzcat is active. Actually the cat is visible through the eyes of the human being from the outside world but not every time and only if he wants to.

Buzzcat is excited and astonished about the proccesses going on in the brain even though he lives there since he started living. It's good never to lose the ability to get astonished. So as more active the brain is and as more the synapsis are fireing/ buzzing because of the thoughts passing as more the cat likes the landscape or should it be called brainscape ;-)

INSIDE THE HEAD 2

(CGI 3D footage)

Suddenly something goes wrong. The fireing of the synapsis reduces dramatically so the former electric storm is reduced to a minimum. Only occasionally a flash lighting up. The Buzzcat decides to set up to locate the source of this incident.

STUDENTS ROOM 2

(live action footage)

A daized and confused person still sitting on a chair in front of a Laptop slightly swinging from one side to an other. It isn't capable to do anything.

INSIDE THE HEAD 3

(CGI 3D footage)

The Buzzcat is wandering around still in search of the problems source. Where ever he crosses the synapses fire a little bit because of the cats stimulation. As the cat passes a dark tunnel downwards to the inner regions he finds himself near the deeply hidden areas of the subconscious mind. Actually this isn't a physically locatable region, it lies in the metaphysical parts of the brain. As the Buzzcat isn't a physical cat either he can reach every region imaginable. Here the incident of the lower synapsis activity seems to has it's source because as the cat approaches the region no fireing at all starts.

INSIDE THE HEAD 4

(CGI 3D footage)

The Buzzcat slips through the cellular wall and faces a quite huge latern fish who claims to be SillyBilly and has arrived just some years ago as a little grain of some seed. The fish prefers a low level of brain activity and tries to catch with his forehead latern precious thoughts to destroy and devour them.

A confrontation between them is inevitable.

INSIDE THE HEAD 5

(CGI 3D footage)

The Buzzcat and SillyBilly fight against each other. In the end of the fight the fish is thrown away and gets stuck between two ends of some synapses. As they fire for a new thought, the fish explodes in to thousands of pieces.

STUDENTS ROOM 3

(live action footage)

The human being awakes from his stand down status, shakes his head and blows his nose. The remainings of the fish are flushed out of the brain and the subconscious mind is free at last.

my chinese flatmates food

AS my flatmates not clean up their food very often - let's say once a week - I tried to deal creatively with this problem. My education was very pacifistic and diplomatic so I didn't want to shout at them but give a little visual hint that I think our flat is so dirty that the food gathers together to strange living beings...



I think this will not be the last of my chinese food pictures - as I live together with them till the end of the 3rd term. So look forward to more ;-)

a bit more story

I just phantasized around my two characters.

So I saw the Buzzcat as somekind of an aktive part of my consciousness that dwells deeper in my mind. He passes a synaptical sourrounding where thoughts as flashes are transmitted by neurotransmitters from one end of a synapsis to an other. As he went on in to the innerst there can not be found boundaries between the phisical brain that can be seen by cutting open a skull or the mind of thoughts or the subconscious mind that has no physical location.
The Buzzcat is kind of physical but also metaphysical so he can slip in to any real or imagined surrrounding he wants to.


The picture is located in the subconscious mind of me where the Buzzcat finally mets a fish called SillyBilly. At first it looks like a nice little fish to lock at and to gesture with (he doesn't intend to eat the fish) but then it turns out that the fish is a mind torturing monster, that should be eliminated. After a short fight the SillyBilly gets thrown between two ends of synapses where he got stuck. As they flash up for the next thought, he explodes in the electrical energie.

I really wounder how it would feel in my brain if I could kill this bloody fish!

the most UGLY CAT in the world

I found very ugly cats when I was wandering around in the WWW to lock for more reference images to my Buzzcat character. The poor animals lock like something between rat, cat, dog, corpses from all of them or even extraterrestrial... I had to laugh and was disgusted in one and the same moment.

They look so special that a surrealist painter could have invented them or they could have jumped out of one of H.R. Gigers airbrush paintings. He is from Switzerland (like me) and has a very cool museum in a castel (unlike me ;-) )

The ratcat



and the first price goes to... brrrrrrrrrrrr...ta taaa!
the CORPS CAT

...eventhough, some sources insist it to be a dog, I don't bother - it's my corpscat.

Poems - everybody

The Jabberwocky

- by Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

I just found out during a bit of reasearch over Jan Svankmajer that he also made a short animation called Jabberwocky (1971). The poem written by Lewis Carroll is very liked by me. It refers to the Dada Word play movement - nevertheless it was written 1871, over half a century bevor the DADA mouvement started in Zurich.

SILLYbilly 1

A possible sidekick (or shouldn't it be a sideclick - as we are digital now ;-)) to the BUZZcat could SILLYbilly be. He is a latern fish from the deepest regions of the sea or to keep up the image where the cat comes from - my inner brain - then that would mean SILLYbilly floats in the subconscious mind of mine.

How he meets the BUZZcat and what their relationship is like I acctually don't know yet. But as they are both living beeings in my mind, their story can't take place without my notification!
I will spy on them and document the way they live to be able to try to tell their story to other poeple outside of my mind.