We have holidays at the moment and it would stress me out to do nothing. Because I have to check ever night if I have work the next day, I won’t be able to travel around much.
Luckily @nainelynn asked me to come to school this week (UGH! Getting up at 8am on holidays??... but it’s worth it!) ... and show her what we did in the cgi-module.
I created those three walking cycles and put them into on file.
Our teacher told us the first 50 walking cycles will be for the bin. So right now I’m five cycles closer to my first acceptable walking cycles. :)
We had a basic-course in 3D with some Z-brush and Maya.
In the last 4 days we had to create a small animation while using playblast in Maya.
The idea I created in the storytelling course. The sentence “If you want to make it interesting, do something unpredictable.” got stuck in my head and seriously, after so many days of having to create story after story all my head was able to produce was “...it’s quite uncommon for a tree growing out of an egg and then having feathers instead of leaves...”
I used a lot of time trying to animate the growth of the tree with blendshape... in the end that’s a very small part of it all, but in the last night before deadline (I stayed at school until 5 pm. haha) I modelled and animated the buds and feathers and while I was really, really tired, I also started enjoying the work and the outcome.
There would still be a lot of work needed. I was constantly afraid that Maya would crash so I didn’t put in as many feathers as I wanted, and of course they should float around differently. All in all the use of Houdini would be good with that maybe.
The song is Part VII from Prequell. My co-student introduced me to the music of Prequell and I instantly knew I had to use one of his songs for the animation. :)
Animation I was so very honored to have done in collaboration with an incredible special guest who doesn't want to be named. It wasn't Voldemort though.
At the moment I'm taking part of a vacation course of my school HSLU.
It's a 2D course to get used to movement and since I'll be going into 3D-animation for my next semester the teacher asked me to use blender for the animations as well.
This now is a test where I started with the 2D animation and then tried to do the same in 3D.
For the artskills course over the semester break we had to create a typical apprentice character who wants or has to achieve something for which he needs a mentor and a loyal companion.
This is my character Catagon.
A cat... who wants to be a dragon.
Those are the rough sketches I did for the character and in the video you see the model I sculpted in Zbrush for the coming CGI course.
Yesterday I was able to work with an old Wacom Cintiq from school. The feeling is really different then working with a normal graphic tablet and I love it!
Here you see my apporach on a character my friend Mimi created for Artskills.
She the daughter of an executioner and was raised as a boy to take over her fathers work. Though love I’d say.
I have to admit, this is one of the first times I actually managed to come to like the colour choices I made pretty quickly and I even managed with a quick and simple background.
For me, progress in applying to this school is showing.
For our CGI Basic module we had to make a video in which the animation is mainly done with the camera-movement.
The interior and sculptures were already done in the previous week and while we only had to do one sculpture in z-brush, I just couldn’t stop and made three more figures based on pictures the teacher provided us with.
Since we had to accompany the animation with a atmospheric music, I decided to go for a creepy feeling and found online the perfect sound for it (Anxiety - Kevin MacLeod).
I was supposed to start with my christmas animation but I got sidetracked by a fanart which I felt the dire need to finish.
Priorities, my dear. Priorities.
But I still was able to get to used to Clip Studio Paint a little bit more and the features for animation.
Incredible that a loop of two frames can make a dancing figure.
Have some dance.
Reference: Song: Broken Machine from Nothing But Thieves, Sony / RCA
When on our timetable “Artskills” appeared I literally had no idea what would expect us, but boy did I start loving this class.
We may have started with “stressfull” figure drawing within a certain time period, but the tasks that followed where challenging but they certainly whet my appetite for character design.
First we had to create ourselfs with the three forms; circle, triange, square. Once that was done, we needed to reduce the drawings to the maximum and cerate a logo of ourselfs.
The next time we had to create characters for certain fonts we were shown. I always instantly had an idea for a character even though I wasn’t quite able to bring them on the paper yet. Instead of feeling discouraged it rather made me practice more and so I was looking forward to the next task.
By this time I already knew that we were supposed to be using monster clay in the future to create a bust of a character of our choice. But first we needed to decide on one of our own characters and make a research for the forms, fabrics, clothes and so on of this character.
But without a story, there’s no real character, so I thought I would be stuck with the story forever. I left school early because I felt a bit suffocated by the rooms and outside I saw a crow on the construction site and instantly I remembered how I liked those birds and the ideas started rolling.
The research was done and prepared for the next lesson and instead of just starting to draw the character we were tasked to make several silhouettes of the ideas we had and use different shapes for it. I never thought about starting with silhouettes before and actually it blew my mind a bit there.
It felt rather easy to create them and somehow so satisfying to have such a wide choice once I went on to do the two drawings which would help as a reference for the bust.
At first I made the wrong choice for the silhouette and wasn’t satisfied with the reference drawing. But I was determined to get more out of those silhouettes I loved so much and so I spent a whole evening filling papers after papers with drawings of a bird-like character for my story.
In the end, that’s how Alva turned out:
In school, years ago we once had to use clay for sculpting and it was a dreary task which turned out horrible. I was a bit afraid of the task to actually use clay to create a bust of a character that grew so dear to me but on the other hand I was really looking forward to use monster clay and have another try at sculpting.
And I was rewarded by really, really enjoying the sculpting of the character. There are quite a few things I would still like to change and improve but the bust turned out better than I feared.
I’ll keep the story from Alva to myself for now, but I hope to be able to work with it more in the future and show you about it then.
Filmkritik zum Musikvideo Lonely the brave – Victory line
Story
Die Animation in diesem Musikvideo ist von Jeff Le Bars. Es geht um einen Jungen, der sicher verlaufen hat oder von seiner Familie davongelaufen ist und nun mit der Kälte in der Natur kämpfen muss. In Zwischensequenzen sieht man erwachsene Menschen durch den Schnee rennen, welche nach dem Jungen suchen. Als der Junge zusammenbricht begegnet ihm ein wilder Wolf, welches ihn anweist mit ihm zu kommen, wenn er nicht sterben will. Am Zielort angekommen, wird dem Jungen ein Angebot gemacht. Er darf das Tier töten, sich von dem Fleisch ernähren und durch den Pelz vor der Kälte schützen, als Gegenzug muss er versprechen sich um die Jungen des Wolfes zu sorgen. Der Junge willigt ein und tötet das Tier, doch als sich die Jungen sich ihm nähern, angelockt durch den Duft ihrer Mutter, weicht er zurück und rennt zurück, woher gekommen ist. In Blut getränkt und umhüllt mit dem Pelz des wilden Tieres begegnet er den erwachsenen Menschen. Froh über das Wiedersehen rennt er auf die anderen zu, doch sie erkennen nur das wilde Tier in ihm im Schrecken des Moments wird er erschossen.
Medium
Die Animation selbst ist flach gehalten. Es scheint eine Mischung aus 2D, vor allem für die Hintergründe, als auch 3D für die Charaktere zu sein. Trotz des 3Ds sind die Bilder flächenhaft und sehr reduziert, was den Ausdruck und die Mimik aber nicht mindert. Trotz der grossen Flächen hat die Animation tiefe, da verschiedene Ebenen wie Bäume, Hügel oder auch Schnee und Wind gewählt werden zwischen denen sich die Protagonisten bewegen. Die Farben sind mehrheitlich kalt gehalten. Es gibt sehr viele weisse, graue und bläuliche Partien. In gutem Kontrast dazu stehen die Charaktere, welche in dunklen, zumeist schwarzen Farben gehalten sind.
Symbolik
Die Farbe Rot ist als spezieller Farbtupfer vorhanden. der Junge trägt zu Beginn einen roten Schal und das Blut des Wolfes säumt zunächst den Weg, den sie zusammen gehen, danach auch das Gesicht des Jungen, als er den Wolf tötet und sein Fleisch isst. Die rote Farbe kann man als Symbol des Lebens auslegen. Der Junge verliert den wärmenden Schal kurz bevor er zitternd zusammenbricht. Der Wolf färbt den Weg den sie zusammen gehen rot, ihm entweicht das Leben immer mehr und als der Junge den Wolf tötet, sieht man einen blutverschmierten Brocken ins Wasser fallen. Die rote Farbe wird vom Wasser weggewaschen und lässt den Stein im kalten Wasser zurück. Das Leben ist aus dem Tier gewichen und der Junge nährt und wärmt sich mit dem entwichenen Leben. Sein Gesicht ist nun rot verschmiert und die Farben im Hintergrund werden wärmen, als die Sonne aufgeht. Hätte sich der Junge um die Wolfskinder gekümmert wie er es versprochen hat, wäre ein Zusammentreffen mit den Erwachsenen vielleicht auf eine andere Weise verlaufen. Aber er hat sein Versprechend gebrochen und das geliehene Leben hat dazu geführt, dass er nicht als menschlicher Junge erkannt wurde.
Zusammenfassung
Die Animation kombiniert sich gut mit dem melancholischen Lied. Die flächenhaften Bilder sind schön reduziert und verfügen trotzdem über viele kleine Details im Hintergrund und an den Protagonisten ohne zu viel Aufmerksamkeit vom Betrachter abzuverlangen. Für mich persönlich wirkt die Animation wie die bewegte Version aus einem Kinderbuch. Die Bilder erinnern an Kartoffelschnitzdrucke und das weckt in mir eine gewisse Nostalgie aus den frühen Schuljahren. Im krassen Kontrast zu dieser kindlichen Nostalgie steht die schwermütige, dramatische Geschichte, welche ich sehr gerne das erste Mal ohne den gesprochenen Text gesehen hätte. Ich bin nicht sicher was für einen Eindruck sie damit bei mir hinterlassen und ich sie gleichermassen interpretiert und verstanden hätte.
Quellenangabe:
Animation, Jeffig Le Bars für Ecole Emile Cohl 2012. Online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-D_4erfsVQ (Zugriff 26.11.2017)
In one for the first weeks of my study we had to come up with a story for a stop motion animation.
My mind was blank, but I was lucky that it was supposed to be a group project of three people. Emma had an idea for a story and while it didn’t seem to be a well rounded story yet, we (Emma, Viet My and I) were able to work it out into something.
After several weeks of other modules we now finally started with the stop motion project which we called “Sourgrapes”. It was really interesting to start working on a project again after such a long time. We had to make quite a few changes from the initial ideas we had, but all in all I think we all are quite happy how the set and the puppets turned out.
Last week we had to work on the actuall lighting of the setting and when I first was worried how it would turn out, we fount the right lightning with the help of our professor pretty quick. The outcome you can see in the video above. This week, we’ll work on the animation and I’m looking forward to breath life into those crazy puppets.
Below you now see the process of our puppets and part of the setting:
If you’re interested in the story, here’s a short summary:
An encounter between an heady forest spirit and two fully grown spirits escalates once the heady fellow realises he’s able to use the limbs of the other spirits if he rips them out. With a fully new body he’s still made fun of and the quarrel takes dramatic turn!
Since the middle of September my life drastically changed since I got accepted into animation school in Lucerne.
It’s like one big dream you thought is absolutely unreal to become real suddenly got real.
I have a lot of stuff to do and sometimes come home rather late. I don’t see my old friends as often anymore as I’d wish to see them, but I got to know so many new, amazing people.
And the work I have to do gives me so much more meaning than the previous job I had. It’s like finding a bit of the place you actually really belong to. At least for me.
This animation above is from the second module I had this semester: “Zeichentrick”
We had to do a lot of little tasks like drawing an ant running around or a bouncy ball. Basic things which filled my creator heart with joy. I’m really looking forward to all the things wich will follow from where we started now.
