The week that had pasted

The latest scene that i am doing is being a bit of a pain. Just cant seem to get it right. So i may end up having to resort to some good all traditional in some areas. This however will slow donw my process of the entire animation. On top of that it has taken around 5 hours for my laptop to render out the work placement project that am doing. Next time i render its going on my beast. Then after that i realised there was a small blue block appearing which is easy to sort out but still after 5 hours of waiting it was really annoying.

Hopefully i shall get this scene the way i want it to look for friday and get all my written work done i have some of it done and certain ones repaired but i should be all sorted for Friday.

17th feb

On the 17th of Feb at Keltie Cochrane, I had to go back through what I had already done to add new textures that Ian had created and put the font in the scenes. This took the best part of the day. After we had a look at the run through the flashes were not as dramatic and we tested it with not White flashes but dark blue and dark orange flashe and they preferred the out come. After they were satisfied with the new look and the new textures I started to put the other scenes together. I need to finish off animating the cogs movement and wait for the font if Ian. Ounce these are done there is only one final scene to be done which wont take to long at all. Then last but not least sound will have to be put in by Paul Smytth.

Entering the dream

Here is one of the scenes nearly completed. Needs more sounds and some atmospheric music in the background. Plus a camera move ever so subtle just so it has a bit more of a dynamic look to it. Also for some reason rendering out in H.264 degrades the the colours and lighting i have spent a while working on so i need to come up with some way to keep the quality up to the quality i wish it to be.

I may have to render in animation codec with millions of colours then from that put the other sounds in during post production this how ever will cause a massive amount of rendering time.

But its just a bump in the road nothing major.

I am also working on the music for the background this may take some time though for i wish it to really be strong emotion and capture the child's feelings since there is no talking.

Entering the world

This is a test to see if i could get the water to move nicely and to make it look as though the wind is strong by making the particles fly by really quick. Ignore the child i only put him there so i can work out were he would roughly stand.

The lighting is a bit to bright so i will have to decrees the Lux "natural light" down a bit so its not blinding. Although were the sun is would be quick blinding but i would like some feedback on that.

There is mist at the left hand side done using several different effects starting with fractul noise and putting several warp maps over the stop to make it look as though there is mist or smoke.

Still plenty to do on this scene though i wish to put plants and butterfly's buzzing around near the entrance of the forest, plus put some depth of field in there to make it seem that its has distance.

Scene 2 completed

Today at Keltie Cochrane i finished scene 2 for the book. It took a while to set the scene up first but there were alot of buildings i had to arrange so that it feels like you are passing through. After a certain scene it was loosing its flow so i showed the guys they though everything was fine except the end part for it was loosing the animation style. So i done some simple tweaks and made another city run before the main building is shown. They liked it alot more, so next Thursday me and Ian are going to sit and play with the font the piece to make it feel right. Hopefully in 2 more thursdays it will be ready for Smythers to put his magic sound design skills to it and then its off to new york :D

The new world

Here is what the world will look like with out lovely moving glowing plants and the child wondering through. Please tell me what you think its not entirely complete though so there is still time for improvement and changes :D

And not relevant to the animation i have started to skecth out a piece i may end up dong a fully detailed piece when i get the chance. I could add to it every time i am rendering or waiting for something upload. Its a Dragon Knight shielding hi self from a funny looking dragon.

Work placement

At Keltie Cochrane i had to do the first few scenes for the animation that i am working on for them. The experience of actually working in there office was nice and relaxing, not what i expected at all. Plenty of feed back from staff i managed to do the first scene for them and they liked the out come. i even had Richard come up to me and show me a animation they done a long time ago and asked if i could do anything like that. I looked at it and it was just still images moving to a location then some pose to pose parts. So the first day working there was nice pleasant and easy.

World test

I have done a depth test and visual test for the forest and how it may look. I like the overall look of it but it may be to dark to see what is happening so i may need to throw the child in and the plants to see how the entire thing will look. If its to dark to understand i may need to change it ever so slightly or give the boy some form of lantern or flashlight.

And here is a little video of the title Atrox Somnium.

The map of the world

Here is a map that i tried to make the map look as if a child had done it. I think the textures of the brushes need to look more like crayon and a bit more scruffy.

I also drafted up a concept of the testicles/roots that try to grab the child when the child wonders through the forest. Making it look as though the roots are evil and trying to drag him down to hell but in a actual fact its just the roots trying to get rid of this body that is not meant to exist in the world.

On Tuesday i also did my presentation which personally i could have done loads better. I shuddered with some words and forgot my lines. Even though i know the story inside out i was not happy with my self. Even though i still got a nice respectable score of 7/10. Compared to my first presentation of this idea i nailed it with a few mistakes.