Portfolio Modelling Task – Part 2

If you read my last Portfolio Modelling task blog then you’ll remember that last time I did a lot of research on Characters, Concept Art and different types of art styles…Well over the weekend I sketched out a design for my Character that I will be modelling. So in this blog post I’m going to be going over ideas I had for my character and how my reference material helped me in the characters design.

When designing my character, I tried to create a backstory for my character. I find that doing this helps me out when creating characters. So I decided to have my be an adventurer that has been on many risky and dangerous adventurers, as well as being a traveller.The character I created was kind of a mix between a load of different characters that I referenced in my reference material, such as Murray the Hippo from Sly Cooper, Crash Bandicoot, Neo Cortex, Abe from Oddworld and so much more.The character I created doesn’t quite have a name as of yet, however I did have an idea of how my character would look like and what kind of character he was. The character as I said before, is an adventurer/ traveller of a large stature. Below is the initial concept that I had of my character showing off my characters main features and so on…Once I created the concept for my character, I then went on to create the reference images that i would work off of in Maya, both the front and side views of the character. When sketching the front view I used tracing paper in order to get the character to be symmetrical. This in my opinion, would make it easier to interpret when It came to modelling. The two images are shown below…

In conclusion I’m very happy with my character concepts an I’m really looking forward to get started on modelling my character and bringing my design to life.

Creating A Logo In After Effects

Over the past few weeks, myself and the rest of the class have been working on a logo design which we could later use for VFX showreels and other projects that we may decide to include this logo in. Anyway, today I managed to complete my logo so in this blog I’m going to be going through the creative process of creating my logo and what the logo looked like in the end.

To start with, I actually had a logo type design in a way to begin with. Your probably wondering whats that then? Well if you can remember my summer holiday project, Jim Jim and Josh (click below to watch)…

The intro before the title screen showed this…This design was achieved by simple masking techniques and keyframing. This was my initial production logo at the time, so when this project presented itself to me I wanted to expand the original design I had. So with this in mind I sketched a few designs and opened up Photoshop and started creating my brand new Logo. So as a starting point I fixed up my avatar slightly, in comparison here’s the old and updated avatar shown below…

I know it’s just a minor change to my avatar but I felt as though it looked much better overall. Anyway once I had my avatar sorted, I then moved on to creating my scene. To start with I created a circular type window for my avatar character to pop his head through. The asset was created by using the circular select tool. The asset is shown below…After creating this I went and created a red background made of Playstation Buttons (square, circle, triangle and the X buttons)…And I added text saying “Josh CG VFX”, mainly because VFX is my preferred specialism.The end product with all the products combined is shown below…Now it was time to animate the layers in After Effects. Firstly I animated the window asset. I did this by increasing the scale and then decreasing slightly, I also added motion blur which gave me the result shown below…I then went on to animate my avatar character to pop out of the window asset which was simple enough. However, there was in fact a fair amount of masking to do so that the animation would look more crisp and overall more polished, so of course I masked…Once this process was done, I animated the mask path giving me this result shown below…Now it was time to animate the text. With my name, I animated it similar to how I animated the window which my character comes through and the “VFX” text I animated so that it came in from behind the window. Once the animation was done, I added motion blur to everything to make it look better and rendered my logo, giving me the result shown below…Once all of the animation was done, I took the After Effects render into Premier Pro so that I could add sound effects and music. When I was satisfied with how everything looked and sounded, I rendered the footage giving me the outcome shown below…

Overall I’m really happy with the work I’ve produced for my logo and I look forward to creating more like this in the future.

Synoptic Project

Since late October, our class was introduced to the Synoptic Project. The Synoptic Projects is one of the most vital projects of the whole year, as for us students it’s worth 50% of our overall grade for our second year. The Project would be divided into 4 phases:

Phase 1 – Pitching our Individual IdeasIn this phase, each student comes up with their own ideas and pitches the idea to the rest of the class. The idea has to link to one of the themes of course.

Phase 2 – Team AllocationOnce phase 1 has passed, tutors will eventually pick an idea for each industry/specialism. Then students will be able to choose which project they wish to work on.

Phase 3 – ProductionAfter everyone has chose which project they want to work on, everyone in each group will allocate roles on the project and track team progress through scrums and minute meetings, as well as completing industry standard documentation.

Phase 4 – ExpoSooner or later, tutors and external examiners will have to assess work that is presented to them at an end of year event. For VFX for example, VFX breakdowns can be provided, however for games maybe a demo.

The Project had also split us into separate groups, these groups would be our selected industry/ specialism. These groups being Games Design, 3D Animation/Modelling, 2D Animation and VFX. I of course chose VFX as this is the area I would personally like to specialise in when it comes to industry. Leading up to Christmas though, myself and my classmates are working on phase 1, planning for our pitch.

When it came to brainstorming ideas, we had to keep the themes in mind as it was mandatory that the Project idea linked to one of the themes provided for us in some way. The themes for this project being:

• A place or building of significant interest
• Local connection to history or literature
• A Fictional Character

With this in mind, I brainstormed suitable ideas that linked to the themes. However one thing that was said to us many times was to make the projects as feasible as possible, as it was incredibly important to meet the deadline in time, because obviously an unfinished product would result inna huge drop in marks. So here are my two ideas:

Idea 1 – The Lambton Worm

This would be a VFX short that would follow the tale of the Lambton Worm. However this would be a short that I’d call ‘Dracula Untold meets The Tale of The Lambton Worm’. The reason for this being the story of the Worm would be told in a similar way to how Vlad the impaler is introduced in Dracula Untold shown below…

So instead of the conflict between the Transylvanians and The Turkish in the sequence, it would be replaced with Sunderland and several scenes from the Lambton worm tale being acted out on screen, such as the Worm being wrapped around the Penshaw Monument and cut in 3.This would link to the ‘local connection to history or literature’ theme because the Tale of The Lambton Worm is a piece of literature exclusive to the Sunderland area (which is obviously local).Also many effects could be used in this piece as well as the CG for the Lambton worm, basic colour grading, rotoscoping and so much more. I imagine that this idea could potentially be feasible however, a lot of hours would have to be dedicated in order to sculpt the Worm, getting the details and so on. Also the costumes would be a problem as not many places nowadays sell authentic looking crusaders armour and for the places that do, the costumes would still be painfully expensive to get a hold of.

Idea 2 – Remember

This would also be a VFX short that would follow the story of a nameless character as he goes about his daily ritual, unaware that he’s a serial killer.Sound familiar? Well it should because this idea is a VFX/ live action take on our Global Game Jame 2016 game, Remember…I wanted to create a live action version of this project solely because I thought that a good but short story could be delivered by providing interesting effects along the way, such as a transformation sequence where the actor transforms into the serial killer alter ego, dark colour grading, memory sequences similar to the upside down in stranger things…Rotoscoping and so much more.And of course this does link to the ‘Fictional character’ theme because the story is about a fictional character. Almost similar to Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde in a sense. I think that this idea is feasible, its less CG work compared to the Lambton Worm idea, however everything could definitely be achieved by the deadline. The only problem would be getting actors, but I’m optimistic that drama students would be able to volunteer on that front.

So as you can imagine, after much deliberation with myself balancing the pros and cons of each idea, I eventually decided to go with Idea 2. Why you may ask? Simply because its more feasible than the Lamton worm idea. Even though I’m very optimistic about the Lambton worm idea being a success in the end, it would take a lot of overtime to perfect the overall look of the Lamton worm and lighting the worm to fit the scene. Also I believe that Idea 2 can use so many more visual effects and wouldn’t necessarily need people to work overtime to complete the product, however the overtime offer would be there if anyone were take it, this time round being more of a choice rather than a chore.

As we speak, my presentation is being prepared for my pitch on the 4th of January. In the pitch I’ll be showing off the storyboard/s for the sequence, how everyone could pitch in with their selected specialism if they wanted to change their mind, what effects could be used on the project, the initial story, concept art, promotional material and a trailer that I will create myself over the break, showing off effects and cinematography I would personally like to achieve.