Filming and Shooting HDR Maps in Slip in No.3

Today I had a lot of fun by geting some shots from slip in No.3, I managed to get some decent pictures for my HDR map and I was really happy about perfect lighting in the space. I will have to come back to the dockyards next week to get some shots from the ropery too.

Some more pictures for the textures and reference

During last few days as I was gathering some textures in the Dockyards I also tried to take some more cinematic shots with a lot wider lense.

Rope Making Process

Last few days I've been coming back to the dockyards to find something new for the textures and soundtrack. I found out that they make ropes at 8 in the morning and got the permission to enter the dockyards earlyer then it actually opens just to capture the process. Now I will decide how to use captured sounds to improve my animation and use the video as a reference.

Figuring out shapes

While I was listening to my track I started sketching out some random shapes on the picture of my environment. The problem was that I couldn't really figure out how I should make it even more related to the dockyards besides the visual environment and the soundtrack. I just can't figure out how I should make it abstract and historicaly related at the same time.

Choosing Filming Area And Entering Dockyard's Public Competition

The Tour:

Today I had a tour around the historic Chatham Dockyard and took loads of pictures to use them for the development of my idea since I chose it as my environment. My created object will be animated by the sound and will have to look like it belongs to the environment that it is based on. To enter all the areas of the Dockyard and use them for my project I had to enter the contest called "Art in the Dockyard". This contest allows me to use and film in the areas not available for everyone (such as: The top floor of the "ropery").

Information for Entrants:

"Art in the Dockyard", The Historic Dockyard's public art competition, returns this summer. The competition is open to all artists, amateur and professional, aged 17 and above who live, work or study in Kent-Medway. All entrants will have an opportunity for their work to be selected and from next year's spring exhibition "Art in the Dockyard 2013" held in our award winning cultural destination No.1 Smithery: The Gallery.

Enivronments:

The top floor of the "ropery" is a fantastic place because it has this endless corridor in which you can't se the other side because it seems like it is connecting with the horizon line. Slip in no. 3 with endless wooden arches going all the way to the top is another amazing environment to film.

Ropery:

Slip in no.3:

Transcription project: Viking character story and silhouette doodling

I decided to create a character for a game after all. This decision will limit me on the possible detail and will make me to think more about how it could react in a real time game engine. The background of the character is that he is one of the last survivors in the battle of "Ragnarok" from the great hall of "Valhalla". "Valhalla" is a place where Odin prepared special warriors to participate in this battle of "Ragnarok" on behalf of his side and "Ragnarok" is the last battle where all gods where predicted to die. This character will have to clearly reflect its origin, but still stay original and interesting. The type of game for this character would be a non-linear narrative based role playing game. Having these facts in my mind I started doodling some characters. Most of them are just different variations of the same characters, but left alone older versions just leaves some space to think if I could push that character to a different direction. Since the most important thing for a game character is his silhouette it is a must to begin sketching it from it, because most of the in the game it is not going to take the whole screen so you are supposed to recognize it even fro far away and it should tell a lot about it.

I also found some nice Celtic tribal drawings that could work with my character well as a reference for the armor carvings and clothing patterns from a book of "Contemporary celtic motifs" by Alex Sherman.This book even have the templates and examples how to do your own Celtic drawings. Here are few examples:

Transcription unit research: The Vikings

For this project I decided to create a professional movie or game cinematic character design transcribed from Norse mythology tales. I found a great book "Tales from the Norse Legends" by Edward Ferrie. This book helped me a lot to familiarize myself with the most essential information about this epic story of nine worlds. It started from the Norse version of beginning in Ginnungagap and finished with the final battle of Ragnarok. There are many admirable characters with many props and clear descriptions. Most popular ones are obviously Odin, Thor and Loki. Although it is hard not to compare this theme to Marvel's "Thor" or Bethesda's "Elder scrolls" I can see many things that they added or took away in their versions of the Norse mythology. For example Thor was originally said to have red as blood hair with beard and really rusty looks instead of what we saw in the Marvel comic books (Shiny blonde hero with a tight metal-like tricot and red cape). It is a very hard choice to take one of the characters, because all of them have lots and lots to show. I was also thinking what could make my Viking long haired barbarian gods different from other people versions and I couldn't think of anything better then old good classic rock music to express the fighting for survival with the darkest powers. :D

First ideas for transcription project

Since at the moment I'm unable to do work with maya, I decided to do some research for the next project and finish undone movie reviews. For the incoming project I want to do something very closely connected to Baltic Pagan culture. I was inspired to do something like that when I saw "Secret of Kells".This theme helps me to understand what kind of style, textures and time I should look at. There are many classic examples of that kind of interpretations. One of the most popular interpretations was Lithuanian musical called "Devil's Bride" (Velnio nuotaka) (1973) directed by Arūnas Zebriūnas. It was a modern transcription of Kazys Boruta's tale "Whitehorn mill" ("Baltaragio malūnas").

This movie brought everything from the time of the story when it was written, traditional folk imagery and clothing and spiced it up with the 70's feeling.

There is another famous folk tale called "Queen of Serpents" (Eglė žalčių karalienė).  A very sad story which was show as a short screening directed by Algirdas Selenis and Aurika Seleniene.

This short video have really nice native style of drawing, but the chosen story is simply too long to tell clearly in few minutes. For a person who is unfamiliar with this story this animation wouldn't make much sense, but without style of drawing there is another good thing - the soundtrack. The soundtrack was created by Kūlgrinda. Kūlgrinda is a neofolk/pagan band from Vilnius, Lithuania. The word "Kūlgrinda" means a secret underwater causeway from the Baltic history.

At the moment I had two ideas of what I could do:

1) From various Baltic pagan folk tales I want to create a character of the Velnias (devil). In pagan culture devil is not a satan or demon - devil is a spirit. It has a lot to show and it is very different character from what we understand and know about it from Catholic religion. It is nether good or evil, but it is twisted as hell. Pagan devil is more connected to nature, he has his trees and animals. Depending from the situation devil is punishing evil, greedy or ignorant people or helps to those who really need it. His worst enemy and the one who is scaring him the most is thunder. In Catholic religion Devils are usually sinned angels, but in Pagan culture he is just a spirit of nature, who might do sins or whatever he actually wants. It is a very charizmatic spirit that often doesn't get along well with people, he is more like a rival to them and maybe that is the reason why when Christianity came he was aligned with satan, but there is still a big difference between them.

2) Interpretations of lyrics from a Kūlgrinda's song called "Užtekėja saulala raudona" (Red sun has risen).

This song is talking about a very common folk theme - while the red sun is rising young man is coming back from war and he brings back gifts for a girl. He is bringing her scarf of silk, golden ring as well as a crown of rue which simbolically means that he will take her and her virginity for that. It is easy to adapt iconic baltic symbols and textures for this song and the video could be really visually interesting.

Rhythmic Gymnastics

Since Meg advised me to make it feel more as it a gymnastic pen and make much more research about how it should - I did it. I agree that right now my pen should be called creative rather then gymnastic. In this case I have found out that one of the most popular tournaments of ribbon gymnastics is a part of commonwealth games every four years. The Commonwealth Games is an international, multi-sport event involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations. Right now I am trying to attach some moves to my pen by using examples from Melbourne commonwealth games in 2006 and make some new more effective key frames.

Another advice from Meg was to decrease the amount of the time when my pen splashes ink around and leave it just for the culmination. I disagreed with this idea just because it was the only thing connecting my pen with the gymnastic adjective, so I decided to find another solution. Ribbon gymnastics is still just a part of rhythmic gymnastics tournament. It is also an optional tournament which might not be used every commonwealth games event. I think that I could reach my culmination by using different rhythmic gymnastics parts such as clubs and ball gymnastics and changing amount of ink. There is also rope gymnastics, but I’m really not sure of how I could use this one for my idea.

At first the pen could play arround with its plug for a while like a club gymnastic.

Later, it could throw up and catch one drip of ink with several spins in between.

And ofcourse grand finale should be lots of ink splashing arround like a ribbon.

I am sure that this should strengthen my three act structure.

Mood of the soundtrack: Which is better?

I made two versions of the soundtrack: one more adventurous and happy and another more serious and sophisticated. It changes the animation radically, so what do you think? I will also change the keyframes wit the mammals, because some people have found some weird associations with it. :D



New decisions for the pen animation

1. I've started doing some key frames and made it so that camera would change it positions during the pen's flight. I will try to show the examples as soon as posible.


2. I decided that pen could just start falling from the top without any hands or characters. This short would have less of the scenario in that way and it would talk more about what is creativity.

3. I was thinking to mix something with the garage band, but I still don't want to make a primitive soundtrack, so I thought that I could mix a bit of the song "Oh Yeah" made by Can in early 70's. It is one of the first so called krautrock bands and it is somehow hardly believable that this modern music is actually from that time. I want to make this animation kind of smooth, maybe a bit naturally hallucinogenic, so I will make the pen to move in the rhythm of the snare drum. I'll cut a bit of this song as it goes backwards up to 3.03 minute when you hear the explosion (explosion will be the end when pen touches the ground and ink splashes all the place around).

Unit 5 - Classic Animation - The Gymnastic Fountain Pen

My new new project asks me to make a 1 minute classic animation using randomly selected item and it's definition. I have The Gymnastic Fountain Pen in this case.

I have just been making research about the history and desingns of Fountain Pen's. The one that just captured most of my attention was Mont Blanc pen with a golden nib. It is just beautiful.

It instantly gave me idea to make a very short and simple, more visualy beautiful animation about falling down from a table fountain pen. While it fals down - the ink splashes arround generating plastic shapes of nature. This is just a first idea, but I don't want to childishly characterize my item this time very much (I want to characterize something that it creates).

Flashbacks in Alain Resnais's "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959) Essay idea



Hiroshima mon amour is an acclaimed 1959 drama film directed by French film director Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. The title literally translates from French to English as 'Hiroshima, My Love', though the film is almost always referred to by its original French title. It is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness. It was a major catalyst for the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave), making highly innovative use of miniature flashbacks to create a uniquely nonlinear storyline.

One of the first flashbacks in the movie shows up after powerful beginning when the main character (French actress) takes a Japanese lover who reminds her of her first love, a German soldier who was killed in Nevers during the World War II. The problem of time and it’s relationship to the present is solved in unusual way- the woman watches her Japanese lover as he sleeps and his arm is twisted. When she sees his hand, Resnais cut back and forth between a close-up of the hand and a midshot of the woman. After moving in closer, he cut from the midshot of the woman to close-up of another hand (a hand from the past), then back to the midshot and then to a full shot of a dead german lover, his hand in exactly the same position as that of the Japanese lover. The full shot shows him bloodied and dead and the film then cuts back to present.

This movie is just filled with symbolic flashbacks and they are not clearly explained, but knowing some historic facts you can find something very interesting. For example: why in some of her past memories she was shaved and kept in a cellar explains the fact that when towns throughout Europe were liberated from Germany in during the war the women who had slept with the occupying Germans had their heads shaved to show the disgrace and shame of sleeping with the enemy. This is also why her fathers shop closed as no one would buy products from the father of a traitor. Unfortunately, this was unconditional commitment to her lover and he helped define her as a person. So upon his death she was experiencing the vulnerability of love. This is also probably why in the scene with the parade there was a man who had burns all across his chest that stood in front of the couple. He was the symbol of the re-opening of that old wound and the vulnerability of having people help define us.

I think this classic movie has a lot to talk about and it is very iconic. I had lots of different movie ideas, but this one looks the strongest.