Part A (Narrative) - Idea Inspirations

After looking into the different genres and it's aspects, we went into looking at animated shorts to find inspirations. Here are some of the animated shorts we've looked at that sparked some idea for further development.

Part A (Narrative) - Exploring The Different Genres

Action/Adventure (A goal to achieve)

Essentially one long quest with a succession of issues to overcome. It has rising tension and anticipation leading to the final 'sequence.'

          Examples:

          ~ Flying a toy plane

          ~ Using toys to escape (toy plane, bouncing on a ball, skateboard)

          ~ Trying to be the toy on the top shelf/on pillow

Comedy 

There are many different ways to explore a comedy genre. The conventions that allow this are; Types of Comedy, Setting, Iconography, Character, Theme, Bright Colours.

          Subgenres within comedy:

          American ~ Cheesy

          Slapstick  ~ Banana skin (silly usually involves pain, timeless)

          Horror      ~ Seeing something unscary, VERY scary

          Adult        ~ Cheeky, unaware of its nature

Crime

Commonly the narrative offers room for debate

          Examples:

          Race, Policing, Gender, Social Events

Romance

There is a common plot within Romance: Boy meets Girl - They become good friends - There are frequent hints made that they would make a great couple - Unfortunately an argument makes the characters hate each other - Until a huge over the top gesture is made and the characters leave happily ever after.

Sci-fi

Generally following a disaster in the past, mankind turns to robotics and scientists to build a new world. Following Todorov's Narrative Theory.

Thriller

There is usually a crime at the core of the narrative, often a murder. The film is sculpted around this, with complex structures and false paths, clues and resolutions.

Horror (A fear of something)

Horror's tend to follow Todorov's Narrative Theory in a linear fashion. With tension climbing for the duration of the film until the resolution that answers all the questions rose within the film. 

          Examples:

          ~ Loosing limbs

          ~ Scissors

          ~ Loose threads

          ~ Dogs chew toy

Pipeline 1: Character Head Modelling (Refined Blocking)

For the second part of the tutorial, it was to refined the blocking by adding edge loops around the mouth and eyes area. Also, to create a smoother head mesh, there was a need to add edge loop across the head and here's my WIP.

WIP (Refined 1)

WIP (Refined 2)

WIP (Refined 3)

Pipeline 1: Character Head Modelling (Blocking)

This is my work in progress for the head modelling of the character.

WIP 1

WIP 2

WIP 3

WIP 4

Narrative Film Theory - The Hero's Journey

Figure 1 Movie Poster [Still Image]

For this assignment, I have decided to do on the film Never Back Down (2008).

List of Illustration: 

Figure 1 Never Back Down (2008) [Movie Poster] at http://i36.tinypic.com/otlzlk.jpg (Accessed on 27 September 2014)

Autodesk Maya- Lesson 1 (Lip Sync: Jaw Bounce)

For Maya's lesson today, we were introduced to the basics of lip syncing. Some pointers I took away from the lesson to make lip syncing a success is not to dwell too much on the letters that's being said when I first start off.  I learnt that I needed to listen attentively and focus on the pressure of the jaw(opening and closing) after each word has been said. Another thing to take note was that I should not have the keyframes too close too each other (at least 2 frames apart) otherwise the jaw will move unnaturally. After this, I will go on to moving the lips.

CG Trope - Tilt Shift Exercise (Footage)

Apart from the photograph, we also learnt that we could do a tilt shift to a footage by placing in the footage into Adobe After Effects and then had a gradient image underneath this footage layer before applying the Camera Lens Blur. Here's the outcome of before and after.

CG Trope - Tilt Shift Exercise (Photograph)

In today's class, we learnt a little about CG History and we were introduced to this CG Trope which was tilt shift. So here's an example of being able to produce the same concept without owning a tilt shift camera lens.

Part A (Narrative) - Plot Ideas

After being given the theme of 'In a Toy Cupboard' and the phrase of 'Once Bitten, Twice Shy' we immediately started brainstorming and came up with several ideas. After thinking about style and content we have come up with three plots that we feel could be portrayed effectively. 

Plot 1 - Puppet 

•  Puppet looks up at his strings whilst dancing slowly
•  Flash back - puppet is dancing erratically, gets tangled and ends up having some of his strings cut
•  Cut back to the puppet dancing cautiously and slowly

Plot 2 - Bubblegum

• Character sees gum on the floor
• Flash back - same character seeing gum, rushing over to it and playing with it, becoming tangled
•  Cut back to the character avoiding gum

Plot 3 - The Thread 

• Character walks along and notices a loose thread on his leg
• Flash back - the same character pulling on a loose thread on his arm, resulting in a loss of limb
•  Cut back to present day, Character carefully fixes thread on leg

Part A (Narrative) - Given Phrases

This is what my team (Rosalyn and Scott) and I got for our Narrative project. Looking forward to working with them and really excited to start on it! :D