So, I posted a preproduction blog, but I had been so busy with the project itself I totally forgot to blog about it!
As said in the preproduction/assets blog post, I planned to get really friendly with the parenting feature. I've also been getting a little heavy with the rotation and position transform properties, and the puppet tool. Some nulls were also helpful in the animation process. I've also utilized masks and particles for some effects.
It's still not in the finished stage, but here are a couple of renders to sink your teeth into.
Again, background art is by Bruce, characters by me, and character animation by me.
This is not the last version of this scene, as the camera work had not been added to this one yet.
Here is another early test animation. The timing is all kinds of off, but this was mostly a test to see how the parenting tool would work.
Playing with blend shapes and simple rotation animation. As you can see, my bat breathes, blinks, and has dilating pupils. We seem to have caught him in the middle of an acid trip.
Pitch : I will be doing the character art for Bruce Li's parody of Sleeping Beauty. We shall composite his backgrounds with my characters using After Effects, primarily the puppet tool and making these layers as 3D billboards. Hooray!
Assets: Here is a list of the characters I am in the process of creating, using Adobe Illustrator.
-Aurora -Nobleman -Wife -King -Queen -Fairy 1 -Fairy 2 -Fairy 3 -Evil Fairy -Extra 1 -Extra 2 -Extra 3 -Archer -Spindle peasant -Spindle peasant son -Soldier -Nobleman horse -Aurora baby -Nobleman's kid #1 -Nobleman kid #2 Bruce has made a very helpful storyboard that I am following for my character modeling (as far as the kinds of poses I will have to make them prepared for). I am not quite sure if he's posted them,
Reference images/videos/audio
We've got a bit of influences, primarily the original Sleeping Beauty film from Disney and this short film that Bruce was inspired by
This has also been a helpful image!
The look we're really going for, however, is a kind of storybookish look that will also be easy to animate. This is why I'm using illustrator to keep the characters from looking messy.
Schedule Right about now, we are in the process of creating our assets. Here's a sneak peak at some of the stuff I've gotten done so far.
And as it goes, we will continue working over the next few weeks with the assets. We're moving into a rough composite next week so that we have something to show our voice actor (the narrator), and then use the last week of class to fine tune everything for the composition. Wish us luck!
Here's a little something that I might go back and fix. A couple of seconds, but you see that we have some visitors in a purple ship hanging out around the nooks and cranny's of UT
Particles! I used the prefab of the clouds and played around with some of the parameters till I got something interesting going on. The bat is kind of in creepy eye-only mode right now, but there he is. I brought down the quality of the resolution for the sake of my computer's power. This is super short. I exported 48 frames (which took FOREVER) and then set it to play at 12 fps instead of 24. So, here is four seconds of clouds. Enjoy!
Here is my very first attempt at playing with green screen! Keying was kind of fun, and I'd like to play around with this more. The annoying part was masking out my hand when it gets off of the screen. For a second you can notice this mistake, but a little more time for clean up (if I have a chance to, which I didn't forsee, which is why I'm turning this in so early) is all that'd take (you know. hand rotoscoping). The actual keying part wasn't too bad at all, though. And I had fun throwing effects all over this. Silhouetting is a quick way to make something simple into something really interesting.
Saw and fell in love with this video, and made me think of the stuff we've been learning with masks. It's a very simple concept, but it looks amazing as a final product. Enjoy
So, I'm not super super happy with this. I had a lot of trouble making headway on this assignment. I thought about doing something like a luma maks with a video clip, but I really want to move away from using random footage from the internet and I didn't have any of my own. Perhaps I will do that anyway, though, for more practice.
At any rate, it took me altogether too long to figure out how to get the paint tool to work, and how to modify the masks's points after I'd created the shape. I ended up making this sort of practice animation of vines engulfing sleeping beauty as she also gets masked out in a heart shape. The heart shape has no significance. I drew the vines with the write-on tool using my tablet, but I want to go back and clean it up when I have more time (that is, if this clip does get used in our final project). I also plan to clean up the character art (if this is the version I finalize on!). Anyway. Short. to the point. Will look into more ways to explore these tools.
Now with bump mapping! This post will be edited, as I am still planning on playing with the lighting, but check out my batty with some warm lights. :3 so cuddly and fuzzy!
This is my 3D project :D This is actually an early version of what I want to make. I want to add a crowd of people to dolly through, but my hand got really tired last night. Clearly I can't draw as much as I'd like to in one sitting, but I will go back and fix it for the final project. This is actually going to be part of the opening sequence for an animated short I'm working on with fellow class mate, Bruce Li. It's gonna be totally awesome. His script is hilaaaarious. If you see his project, you'll see that his is the very beginning of this "shot," and this is the last bit.
Not the best texture, I was having trouble figuring out how to best UV map this thing. I'm still a little confused on the process, but I took the head/body and UV mapped it spherically and then applied "automatic" to each wing. My goal is to make it look like it's made of yarn.
So this was my text and particles combined. I got the sound from one of my favorite songs (since high school, no judging man) "Give 'Em Hell, Kid" by My Chemical Romance. I always loved the quick tempo and rhythm of the lyrics, so I thought it'd be fun to put to kinetic text. I also got a little fruity and decided the background should be a colorama that cycled through several colors over the course of the project. Yay! Most of my text effects were modifications of existing ones, but a few were my own invention that came from figuring out exactly how the text animators worked (it took me all together too long to figure out the "Start," "End," and "Offset" functions, but that's another story).
The particles in this are a little simple, but I layered several together. I also played with Shatter. Mostly, I wanted it to look like this coming of sound was an explosion of candy pop ness. I hope it's visually interesting.
Hey everyone! I still need to go back and scan my preproduction stuff, but I finished my model :'D I will update this post later with more relevant info. For now, enjoy le bat
This is a little late, perhaps, but I didn't make a post about this part because I wanted to talk more about it when I was done! But, It's probably a good idea to keep me on track with my blog posts.
So, I've decided to approach this assignment by taking it as an opportunity to practice character design. Because Halloween is coming up, I decided to create a little spooky, bat. My goal is to make a little character that can be both cute and scary (that's what the holiday is all about to me, anywho). I've begun by sketching out different ideas. Some of them are based on cartoony bats I found on google images, others are variations on characteristics that evoke cute and spooky for me. I am having a little trouble deciding on the way to approach the body vs head, but I think I have settled on the basic facial characteristics. I also wasn't focusing so much on how the wing shape was going to be (because I would probably create the same wings no matter what). I will update this post later with some scans of my concept art.
Last week I began playing with the idea of the bat. Over the summer I had a digital media internship here at UT where I learned Blender. I now work for the media lab. I told my supervisors about my upcoming Maya character project, and we decided to have a little mini competition to model a bat in 15 minutes. This is not necessarily exactly what I will model, but I thought I'd show you this other pre-vis I was working with. Bear in mind I spent the first 5 of these 15 minutes relearning the Blender tools!
Inspired by David Bowie's "Time" off of his Aladdin Sane record. Classic music.
This is a little victorian magician/hypnotist dude with a pendulum swinging pocketwatch. Mainly, I drew it on paper, digitally inked/painted it, and animated it with after effects using some more advanced tools like nested sequences, the parenting tool, and the curve editor. Not perfect, but a good start. I got a little frustrated with the curve editor because I spent a lot of time thinking it was a graphical way to edit the motion itself, when in actuality it's for adjusting the time/velocity. I should have already known this, but I let myself get mixed up.
I would like to go back and get the puppet tool to bend to my whim so I can add an extra effect to the pocketwatch chain, so as to further exaggerate the tensile force. I'd also like to add some sound when I have more time.
I am a little frustrated with this assignment, not so much for the actual application of the concepts but for my lack of inspiration! I hope to come up with more interesting stuff as we go into more complex modeling.
Here is my planar logo thing. Sort of a design I've been working on of a heart + a questionmark. I kind of want to make a necklace like this. However, it is not entirely perfect. I had a little trouble adjusting the curves. I think I need more practice
Here is my revolve. I kind of played with the toggle settings and decided not to fully revolve the shape. I made this weird mushroom house type plant thing. A little civilization of faeries or ants probably lives here.
This next one is my extrude. I didn't have any specific direction with it, but I did test the limits to see if I could extrude two profile shapes at once. It worked! I couldn't figure out how to cap them, though. I guess it kind of looks like a flower tunnel pot thing.
Finally, my loft. I tried to mess around with the shapes to loft between (ie I wanted to loft between a square and a circle, but the algorithm that governs the interpolation didn't like my idea), but I ended up doing something simple and similar to the example in class. But I made a heart because I'm cute like that.
Again, I was a little short for ideas until I remembered this sketch I had done. The drawing itself is kind of unfinished, but I thought it'd be fun to bring it to life with after effects. I've been reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman series over the past few weeks and falling in love with it as a series. Naturally, I drew some Sandman-inspired doodles like the one featured in this video. I threw a beautiful photo I found of the nightsky by Flickr photographer GeoJono and played around with the effects and transforms in after effects until I found something that I kind of liked. Throw in a little Jarvis Cocker's sweet sounds (or at least some soothing thunder sound effects at the end of one of his tracks) and it makes for a nice little animation. Why Jarvis Cocker? Because that is totally what Sandman sounds like in my head. There a few small things I'd like to go back and tweak when I have a little more time (particularly the text), but overall I'd say it wasn't as much of a headache as it could have been.
So, my painting is not quite the one I'd like it to be, but I definitely intend to continue working on it later. It took me a while to come up with an idea for this assignment, but while I doodled I came up with a little mini story (basically working off of what perspective the drawings were at). I wanted to do a double image, one at worm's eye pov and another at bird's eye. The girl in the foreground is meant to be the "pauper" looking up at a "princess," and it was meant to have a matching, opposite image.
I worked with 3 point perspective because I wanted to challenge myself and improve on perspective drawing. I sketched it on paper and scanned it in to photoshop for the painting process. I took it in a different direction in photoshop, using the selection tool to create masks to fill and play with. This lead to a much neater look than I was planning for. The original plan was to leave the sketch multiplied on a layer on top, but I liked the even more simplified look of the shapes without the drawing. Stil, I included a version with the original sketch.
So, here are my first 3D renders. I had some software issues on my home computer, so I couldn't dedicate as much time as I would have liked, but I think I'm getting a feel for the program.
I used an oldschool panorama photograph of Moscow to build my skysphere and placed a modern looking structure in the middle of it using two cylinders with a couple of extrusions. I think I still have a bit to learn as far as texturing goes because I wanted to give the building a more gritty or at least something like concrete. I tried bump mapping, but I guess I did not understand it as well as I would have liked. I mostly played around with settings and settled on this transparent texture (perhaps to evoke a dark glass?). I also tried playing around with lights, but only really added a sun near the top of the interior of the sphere.
This was more fun than I was expecting it to be. I decided why not take this opportunity to create a scene I wish existed? So here we have Mr. Barack Obama, Mr. Davey Havok, and Mr. Don Draper onlooking to Barney Stinson making a legendary plot with the 10th Doctor Who.
Awesome! This involved some color adjustments and rescaling and definitely some masking. Hooray!
Introductions, everyone, introductions. I did not mean to be so rude as to not properly introduce myself. Feel free to read ahead, skim, or just tab through the links.
My name is Laura Nicole Dávila (that's an accent on the first a, so please try not to mistake me for davilla/daviya or daveeeela or davilahhhh. It's more like dah-vi-la. Got it? Cool.) I was born here in lovely Austin, Texas but due to my father's family business I was promptly transported to Laredo where I spent the majority of my life. Although Laredo is a godforsaken land that no one by any means should live in for too long, I eventually found likeminded friends and later escaped to attend college here at the fabulous University of Texas, continuing life where I feel I truly belong. I would never forget my roots, though, so Laredo's legacy of lame people and border violence forever weighs upon my mortal soul.
Also a lot of friends still live there, so returning is unavoidable if I ever want to see them.
If you can't tell by now, I'm hispanic and kind of nerdy. What you probably can't tell necessarily is that I am also a pisces (not that it really matters, but it is fun to think about), a vegetarian, a Senior Fellow, and somewhat artistic (at least I like to think so). I have always been into visual art and music and everything related to. When I was small, my mother made me take dance classes and piano. I ended up continuing with dance as a member of the dance team in middle school, but switched to band when I got to high school. I am not the best instrumentalist but I can get myself around on a piano, clarinet, guitar, bass, and even upright double bass. I may not the best, but I definitely have a strong curiosity for music and rhythm based art. What has remained consistent, though, has been my aptitude for visual art. Thanks to access to supplies in high school art classes I have been able to dabble in all types of mediums. Above all, though, I'd say I am definitely best at drawing (I could use some practice, though). My favorite mediums are ink or graphite, and I like to draw character figures and facial expressions best.
So, if I love to draw so much, why am I studying Radio-TV-Film at UT? Well, I think that film and television are the ultimate mediums for communication, which is ultimately why I enjoy art (to share ideas!). When I was young I adored animated films and shows.
Okay. Let's be realistic. I still totally adore animated films and shows.
The point is, that SINCE I was little I've wanted to work in animation because I felt it best culminated all the things I enjoy. Animated musicals in particular are a great way to combine all of my favorite elements of visual art and music together. This dream has stuck with me, so I decided to pursue filmmaking after highschool. Learning these skills so far has opened the door to other potential opportunities. In addition to animation, I now am very interested in television production and production design, as well as the academic discipline of media studies (yes. I told you I was nerdy).
It's become increasingly apparent that today a lot of animation is digital and involves much 3D modeling. This is not my preferred path, but it is practical for those aspiring to work in animation to pick up these skills. So I have sort of been minoring in computer science, familiarizing myself with programming basics and somehow also a lot of web stuff. This has helped me get my current jobs. I work as a student web assistant for The University of Texas School of Law (hey! my brother is a student there at the moment!) and I also work for Digital Media Services in the Center for Teaching and Learning. Hooray employment!
So where is this leading me? I plan to graduate in May 2011. Not quite sure what I will do after that what with the bleak climate of our economy, but my plan as of now (being Fall 2010) is to prepare for the GRE and apply for graduate school at Texas A&M. Save your double take. Yes an orange-blooded, lifetime longhorn, loyal till Gabriel(la?) blows his(her?) horn, is planning to go to AggieLand. For their highly prestigious Visualization program.
If that doesn't work out, I will probably wander myself into graduate school in some form, because I am THAT girl who loves school and I don't know what I'll do without it. Maybe I'll end up doing production design freelance on top of some other form of steady employment related to my tech skills. Perhaps I'll venture into television, which also highly interests me *cough*especially shows that last for years on tv and therefore equate to steady employment*cough*. I'd love to work on anything sci-fi related, but I'd be happy even running a local TV station.
But who knows? Maybe I'll humor my mother's hope I go to Law School. Maybe I'll go back and study medicine. Probably not, but hey! Life does happen.
Inspirations and Influences
I feel it important to make note of all the awesome things that I really like so that you can get an idea as to where my aesthetic leanings come from.
Works that absolutely get me going and feeling amazing for whatever reason are those by JK Rowling (ie The Harry Potter series), Morrissey, David Bowie, and AFI. While I do not make music or write the way they do, I owe a lot to these artists for inspiration. I have quite a bit of art I've made has been an idea or character from their work (and later inspires something completely original on my end!).
Other wonderful people and things: Miyazaki movies, Pixar, Marjane Satrapi, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Jhonen Vasquez, John Waters, Kevin Smith, Edgar Wright, Adrienne Shelly, Tim Burton, Delicious Mocha drinks, Tegan and Sara, Keane, Nightmare of You, Joss Whedon, Sandy Stone/The ACT Lab, Gorillaz, Disney movies (as long as I reprimand their racist/sexist history), bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldua, and plenty of other things that make me happy.
Some Works
Here's some of my art and videos and stuff
Drawings
I have way more where this comes from, but here's a small sampling of some things I'm most proud of, mostly with the aid of computer and tablet. Contact me if you want to see more.
Not quite sure why, but Vimeo doesn't like the sound on this project, but all you're missing here is me quacking over a soundtrack I made with garageband's extensive tools.
My first and only 3D character animation made in Blender! Yay free software!
Video
This was a practice exercise in editing (both audio and video) and an experiment in After Effects. I made a little fake promo for AFI's last album Crash Love
This was the project I worked on in the fall of 2009. I was the editor, sound designer, and animator (for the 2D animation behind the window) for this.
Here is the trailer for a short I did production design on. I did storyboard and set dressing for this one, as well as a little prop gathering and graphics (mainly the posters in his bedroom...Some of them were drawn on set).
My first hand at cinematography, directing, and proper editing. A music video! On this project I learned that I am probably not a cinematographer, but it was a ton of fun to shoot!
The Blog Who Destroyed the World?
Once there was a blog who had a vibrant glow. Woah Oh Oh Oh. But as it goes someone took it from her. One day in the rain I heard her meekly moan 'Will you come and wrap your arms around me as I'm blogging?' Remember when we were all so Blogiful? But since then we've lost our glow.
This blog title, after much thought and meditation, is one I feel reflects both my own baadasssssery but also pays mini homage to the best band in the universe ever, A Fire Inside. The title is a slight parody of their song entitled "The Boy Who Destroyed the World" off of their much acclaimed EP, All Hallows EP.
