BA3b

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

Later Edit- Collaborative project  full animation

The full collaborative project animation was mistakenly not included in my submission folder, the animation is included on this blog

The full piece is also viewable here: 

https://youtu.be/zx5tG_J4Bck 

And can be downloaded from outlook here:

https://nua-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/samuel_stephenson-dawss_student_nua_ac_uk/ERGs-2WlwVhPuO_qYpvBK-IBg2wpJPwNCFSDgdxKxyA4XQ?e=Czh56s

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Reel of all of my unedited animation for the collaborative project

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

Documents for forlorn

https://nua-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/samuel_stephenson-dawss_student_nua_ac_uk/EcP2RGkX_p1BgMY6ANgkxSMBgR2M1Q40oWhO7bPH1ahhWg?e=z5EKKw

This is a link to a folder containing:

meeting notes

time sheet / invoice

risk assessment

schedules 

file format guidelines

and the contract

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

Forlorn

This is the version with Lois’ colour edits, it is not the final verison as both Lois and Ruth are submitting later on, this is simply here to give context to my work and to show the transitions and editing I did. 

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[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

This is a narrated version of my experimentation reel, it was ultimately too long for submission but it includes extra detail.

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

This is a narrated version of my experimentation reel, it was ultimately too long for submission but it includes extra detail.

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

example of render errors I experienced with using Booleans on cloth sims in blender 

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

a quick test video showing my ash/disintegrate texture on blender’s Suzanne monkey head model 

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

another fabric test for the 3rd section, testing pre-cut fabric being dragged in 2 separate directions, this clearly doesn’t look quite right either.

I also tried using a community build of blender 2.79 which has a ‘fracture modifier’ but I couldn’t get this to work at all.

 I also looked into Houdini’s vellum cloth tearing simulation, but at this point in the project it seems like it would likely be easier to simply tear a material physically in stop-motion, and this would likely fit the aesthetic of the piece better anyway.

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

I’ve been making multiple attempts to simulate tearing fabric for use in my 3rd section of the personal showcase, nothing so far has yielded the results I want so I am instead going to do this traditionally potentially with tissue in stop-motion.

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

blender burning paper

This is for my 3rd section of the collaborative project. 

I was originally going to do this with stop-motion where I would repeatedly burn and photograph a disk of black card to animate it turning to ash. However I’ve been dissatisfied with almost all of the stop-motion work I’ve been throughout this project, and a lot of it has had to be replaced with digital animation.

I was going to do this animation with simulation in Houdini, but after a brief attempt at this I decided that the time constraints of the project are such that I don’t have time to learn new software and iterate on this scene in Houdini.

So I instead did this in Blender. This is a procedural shader I created, where any object it’s applied to turns transparent from the outside in with an ashy border being generated to create the effect of burning. I also distort the effect to make it more organic looking. This is one of the more involved procedural textures I have made during this project. 

These complex node based textures are better inline with my overall career plans.

I’ve also been looking into adding particles to this but I’m not sure that I’d want to use that.

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

Burning paper asset blender test animation.

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

3D rig for Over-Spec short

I’m thinking of changing my plans for my personal showcase animation in order to use a rigged 3D character. I’ve been experimenting with using the Fresnel of the model to generate an outline on the character and the face of the character will be a 2D animation of facial expressions which will act as the material for the head. I modeled the character arms down deliberately inorder to follow my 2D turn around drawings and to better replicate the angular shoulder design in the 2D version

I then had to weight paint the model for the rig to work correctly.

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

This is the final version of the mechanical organ animation I did, I consulted Lois about where I should go with the animation. I ultimately decided to redo the background in photoshop as I’d done in my style frame for the piece. I changed the animation of the rig to remain the same speed throughout but added back in the limb falling down (this is just a separate duplicate rig that comes in at the correct frame) and I changed the ending to have the mechanical organ split apart at the end. I feel this adequately addresses the problem of the animation being too simple or boring while being slow enough to fit the delivery of the voice lines. While the ending, and to some extent the whole piece, is a bit too direct a representation of what is being said, I am fairly happy with the overall piece, and the arms of the machine are only vaguely evocative of prison bars. 

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

This is my first attempt at animating this section of Forlorn. I was aware that the initial animatic showed a fairly basic loop, I intended to make the animation more interesting by having variation in the speed of the animation motivated by the lines being spoken and having a slow zoom across much of the animation. The background was white acrylic painted onto black card I decided to not correct for the warm lighting so that the background wouldn’t be too bright. I ultimately didn’t like this version, I worked on this animation in many small parts across several pieces of software and lost sight of the final animation. The voice lines are slow and the speed of the movement doesn’t fit the delivery of the lines. The background and the texture of the paint strokes aren’t really what I was going for. The painted backgrounds looked fine before being zoomed into to the point where it would fill the frame.

I was happy with the rig I had made in blender, I created 3 linkages which I duplicated many times in blender, I then rigged these together and attached them to a IK controller at the bottom, I then made several cylinders and for cloth simulation which I parented to the limbs of the rig for the hanging cables. I also modeled cogs and bolts to using in a particle simulation to have them fall off the rig. I was happy with all of these elements but the timing of the animation and the background weren’t right and so I didn’t use this version of the piece.

[samuelstephensondawssba3b]

This is a time lapse of me painting the frames for the background of the mechanical organ animation for Forlorn.