Oculus Rift

Oculus Rift

The future?

I wanted to explore the future of animation and games animation, the big elephant in the room is Oculus Rift. the virtual reality head set that has redefined immersion in games and animation.

If one was to watch an animation with the Oculus Rift then it almost turns into interactive theatre!

Its a prospect i like very much, so instead of controlling precisely what the viewer looks at, using camera angles and such, now the viewer can make their own decisions as to what they look at. similar to the ride in Disney land Orlando that I went on years ago 'its a small world after all' where you would go in a cart that is taken round a course that has panoramas to look at and moving elements that make it very immersive. this is what I had in mind with animation.

Say you were modelling an art gallery for a client, instead of restricting the viewer to a set path, they can explore what they want to.

there are problems of course, such as motion sickness due to the kinetic lobe and the stationary lobe in your brain responsible for recognising movement argue and makes your brain think you have been poisoned which in turn makes your body want to eject the poison, this of course in the form of vomit.

But it is definitely something i want to learn how to incorporate into my animations. and to see where it fits in the world of animation.

Ian Livingstone

Ian Livingstone 

40 Years in the game industry

We had a visiting speaker at uni who was none other than the Fantasy Adventure books such as Warlock of Firetop mountain. these books were a big part of my child hood so I had to go and see his talk, here is what he had to say:

He was selling Dungeons and Dragons out of his flat after talking to Gary Gigax, who was the the inventor, Gary was just starting off so needed help as well as Ian, but he had the fire in his belly

"when youre following your heart its not hardship"

he went onto say that if you want to create value in your company you need to invest your own IP

He said to not sell your ip's to anyone, keep them yourself because you don't know how big they could get!

As the success of their interactive books was so great, they loved the interactivity, so they decided to explore the video game industry. and thus Lara Croft was born.

A huge success! and is still going strong to this date!

Ian started to describe his understanding of how to create a successful video game:

the three most important things in a game are:

game play

 game play 

and

game play

There is a graph he presented showing how a game should play out in terms of difficulty, to really make a successful game it has to be hard but not too hard, and easy, but not too easy. there is a sweet spot in the middle that makes a game successful

and one thing that he left us with was a very good quote, one that is relevant to my modules

"collaboration is not cheating"

because that was a similar mindset as to what I had, but after this talk, it really did change my outlook, that collaborating is more beneficial than detrimental to the success of your animations.

the end of BAF

BAF has come to an end

so that concludes my blogs on BAF, it saddens me to hear that it is not coming back next year, but there are many more opportunities ahead of me. such as Animex! an equally fantastic festival held at Tee side university in Middlesbrough. but I did learn a lot from all these talks at BAF, various lessons that I will take with me throughout my animation career. now I have identified the direction I wish to go, now its just hearing the experience of others in that field and using their experiences to my advantage.

Watch dogs

Watch dogs

This talk was presented by Colin Graham, the director of animation for Ubisoft Montreral. and his talk was all about technical solutions whilst working on the game watch dogs, and how the company proceeded with the requirements in this day and age.

He opened by saying

"Are we ready for next gen games?"

challenge your assumptions and ask why

PS2 was going to render at 25 million polygons, this was the future at the time!

"there was a potential shift in the industry with the PS2"

Now the Xbox 360 and PS3 contained 20-40MB of animation memory. the amount of memory contributing to the smoothness of the animation. for example: hands floating through bars that are being held, or objects being held seem to jitter around due to the way the animation needs to be compressed to fit into these perameters of 20-40MB

But now with the recent releaase of next gen consoles this has all changed. the current animation memory is now 150-200MB!! 

"next gen has abolished any of the old constraints"

Why this will effect me:

in the past, huge sections of animations had to be cut or compressed, which makes all that hard work obsolite and as previously stated, compressing causes shifts when a character comes into contact with the world.

so if I were to get involved in the video game industry, this would make the work I do not go to waste, and the production of the animations more secure in having more memory to allocate more animations.

More memory means more budget which in turn means more animators.

Watch dogs used

98 mo cap sessions

4000 animations for UI

4000+ animations for the protagonist

5000 animations of the living city

The problem that we now face is that if the technology grows at this rate then games will be rendered at pixar quality, thus the budget will get so big that you will have to sell a hell of a lot of units to make a profit!

this might cause an end to the technology ladder.

"invest heavily into your first title, as you can re use animations"

when it comes to mo cap, the directors didn't tell the cast what to do, instead they created the context around them and the cast will give them what they want.

I'll benefit from this due to the reference material I have to use, as well as collaborating now I might need to get someone to be the subject of my reference so I can employ this method.

There is a distinct style as to how Aidan (the protagonist) presents himself, the way he walks and the way he carries himself. these are some of the ways they achieved it:

His hands are often in his pockets, but this boasts certain concerns, such as fingers coming out of the pocket. so when ever he puts his hands in his pockets they temporarily make the visibility value 0, so his fingers don't exist. this is a technique I could use if I come across this problem.

When he crouches behind a wall the back pack would often intersect the wall, so the solution to this was to animate the bag moving to the side to avoid this intersection, simple but effective!

A problem i might come across is the way they made the animations realistic, it was 100% mo cap, leaving the animator to 'clean up' so if this develops any further the animator will be made redundant.

here is what Ubisoft considers as the role of the animator

there are 2 types of animators:

Game play animators and technical animators

Game play animators are more technical "animators are creators again" the amount of input the animator has is all down to how well they use the tools and plug-ins available

this talk was very beneficial as it gave me a few challenges that could come to fruition in the games animation industry that I might have to consider if I end up going into that field.

Proffessional

Professional

The professional section of the festival is a collection of animations created by professionals in a vast collection of these short films. this gives us the insight as to the outcome of professional animations. here are two of the animations that I chose to explore further and try to link with my practice.

Through the hawthorn

Director. Anna Benner/ Pia Borg/ Gemma Burditt/ UK/ 2014/ 8Mins 50Secs

3D computer/ Drawing on paper/ Live action

Three characters, three perspectives, three directors. A session between a psychiatric, a schizophrenic patient and his mother.

Through the different styles of rotoscoping and 2D drawings, the style really reflects the psychological concerns in which the animations are questioning. the processes also dictate the way the audience feels, trying to make the audience emphasise with the characters.

Timber

Director. Nils Hedinger/ Switzerland/ 2014/ 5Mins 35Secs

2D computer

A group of logs is about to freeze to death in a cold, icy desert. when they realize that the only fuel for a warming fire is their own body, things start heating up.

This is by far my favourite animation of this section, for its comedic value, but also its relevance to life. and how it questions modern concerns in a way that is simplistic but also not too complex in terms of narrative. I know I strive for some bizarre narratives in my animations, maybe I can learn a thing or two about this animation: complex doesn't necessarily mean good.

Strange hill high

Strange hill high

This talk was from Mark Oswin, one of the writers working on strange hill high, gave us a brief but interesting analysis of how they write the episodes for strange hill high. they are all written using the same method to create successful episodes keeping originality. Here is the guidelines that they use:

Act 1

Set up:

Setting up the scene, the characters and the environments

Inciting Incident:

An incident that occurs that will drive the rest of the episode

Act 2 (part 1)

Playing with fire:

The characters start to play with fire

Midpoint

Act 2 (part 2)

Down Hill:

after playing with fire the characters receive the burn

Lowest Point:

the characters are in a position that doesn't seem escapable 

Act 3

Fight back and fail:

the characters fight back but fail and makes everything seem lost

Out of the bag:

Something comes up which helps the characters somehow get out of the situation, a third party influence.

So this is an insight as to how the professionals formulate their episodes, if I were to do a series of animations I would definitely consider using this method!

Strange hill high also uses Mackinnon and Saunders to create their puppets! it seems as though they are the main distributor to high end puppets for animation. it would be beneficial to research into them further to discover how much influence they actually have on the world of animation.

Boxtrolls

Boxtrolls behind the scenes!

Here is one talk that I really couldn't wait for, my love for all the animations created by Laika, it is the most relevant to my tone of voice and ultimately where I would like to end up in the future. either using 3D software or modelling the sets, which are very much the style that I like to work in!

The presentation was held by Mark Shapiro, the marketing manager of Laika

Laika has been around for 30 Years, based in Portland america. over this time they have created 3 feature length films:

Coraline 2009

Paranorman 2012

Boxtrolls 2013

Here is Marks explanation of what its like to market a feature film:

The advertisement posters are different between the US and the UK, and it is marks job to curate what is appropriate for different countries.

The process of creating these feature length films is astonishing. the studio is comprised of space equal to 2 empty football pitches, which everything is built from scratch to fit the space.

The actual percentage of animators in the crew equals 10 percent! which is an extraordinary number when you think about it.

They employ Mackinnon and Saunders to create the puppets used in these animations

electricians are on the set 24/7 as the lighting and leads involved in the creations of these animations are crucial.

The backdrops are painted as well as green screen and occasionally blue screen

Here are some of the things that were told to us that are involved to create these fascinating animations:

The company employs 6 complete colour 3D printers, these used to not be able to print in colour which made the company need to paint each individual face that they print. and as we all know these films required tens of thousands of printed faces. but with the ability of the colour printer they are able to boycott this process completely to save money and time.

The faces were created in Maya, animated to get the key frames and then printed/

although these faces were printed, to make things quicker and more efficient, the characters that didn't have many lines would have mechanics in their face to make animating a little more efficient as they can utilize frame by frame techniques. this is the kind of thinking that I need to employ, which techniques should I execute and where? 

The animators on a good week would produce 2 and a half seconds of animation ... this is what stop motion animation is. very time consuming and labour intensive. which I need to take into account when creating mine, as it will take a lot longer to create them.

But then the faces would present these horrific seems that need to be removed by post effects and the crew responsible for cleaning up the visuals.

Here are a list of programmes that are used in the making of these films

After Effects

Photoshop

Dragon Frame

Nuke

Shotgun

Maya

"The animator is so important!"

"Pre Vis is essential!"

As I discovered in my previous module which was just backed up by what mark was saying, that references and pre visualisation is so important due to the direction of the animation needing a guide.

The whole process took 4 years: from character design + storyboarding to completion.

Aardman

Aardman Studios'

Peter Lord

As we all know Aardman studios is the company responsible for wonders of the animation world such as morph and Wallace and gromit. Peter Lord, the co founder of the studio gave us this talk!

How the studio works

Here are a few bullet points as to various things Peter told us about the studio and the workings of it all the way from the start:

"Everyone is making it up as we go along"

The name Aardman came from the first animation that they did, it was a cell animation (very rudimentary) but the start of Aardman. the team combined two words: aardvark and superman - aardvark being a word that they liked, and superman being what their first animation resembled. the first animation was rudimentary, and they were doing what other big studios were doing at the time such as Disney! so after seeing an american plasticine animation they decided to pursuit this media.

"There are very few new ideas out there!!"

so the company started on Morph in 1976, which put them in a very good position.

but one of the problems that they faced was that they could only see what they had animated until they processed the film so they were animating blind. and morph also didn't have an armature so there was unavoidable swaying in the character.

As the company progressed they went on to feature length films. this is where Peter starting going into what areas the studio needed after progressing so much

5 Areas/Departments of crew

Feature film crew

TV adverts crew

Small games crew

TV shows

Rights department - making money off of others

he went onto saying that each area of crew take it in turns to take the strain of the current project, as in any other company.

"make it as good as it can be for the money"

He told us that it is very labour heavy which in turn makes it very expensive to run these projects.

Aardman, we found out, were doing a lot of TV commercials to make ends meet, which they found very good to fill the time.

and nowadays the product sellers will tell you what to do, when Aardman was just starting out, any animation company would tell the seller what to do due to it being a new concept.

another problem that they encountered was that of materials. when morph was first created they were using a plasticine from Harvads, it was called Harvads original terracotta plasticine. which sadly went out of production, so they had to formulate their own version of the stuff as it was much easier to work with and animate.

this is something that I can relate to. as price of materials is so expensive such as foam latex, I want to see if there is any way I can create my own material to achieve similar effects.

Short shorts

Short Shorts!

In this section was an hour long showcase of various short shorts from different practitioners. so without further ado, here are some of the animations included in this section:

Mute

Director. Job Joris & Marieke/ The Netherlands/ 2013/ 4Mins 22Secs

3D computer 

In a world populated by people without mouths, a gory accident leads to the discovery a mouth can be created by cutting yourself. this unleashes an enthusiastic chain reaction among the population.

with this simple art style and story, could dictate the simple problems that people come across, in this comical representation of life problems.

I enjoyed this animation for its story and its simple style, which made it easier for the viewer to incorporate it into everyday life. although this style doesn't reflect my own style I did see the benefit of simplicity in animation.

Perth + 6 Hours

Director. Wendy Morris/ Belgium,, South Africa/ 2013/ 2Mins 30Secs

Drawing on paper

Perth+6Hrs is a personal reflection on the transience of family, on the fleetingness of childhood, and on the inevitable separations as children grow up and move away. the objects in the film are made by the son of the film-maker. the film is created out of a single drawing.

The realism in this animation was fantastic. its something I would love to work on in my drawings, the way the 2D drawings are made to look like 3D objects. its something that I've always wanted to improve, my perspective. I also like how the director has kept it traditional, charcoal on paper. whilst upcoming animation studios are using 3D cgi and stop motion, she has put a natural twist on traditional animation.

Mario

Director Wendy Morris/ Belgium, South Africa/ 2014/ 3Mins

Marker on glass

In Italian playgrounds a song is chanted that dates back to world war 1. this paint on glass animation tells this dark tale of a soldier who returns home from war to find his girlfriend has left him.

I appreciated the deep meaning behind the animation, but I wasn't too sure about the media used. obviously it worked well with the story behind it, but it is so much different to my chosen techniques that I wasn't a big fan. but as always it showed me how other practitioners work, and how they execute their animations.

One of a kind

Director. Rok Predin/ UK/ 2014/ 3Mins 40Secs

3D computer

starting with a young lad running into a cemetery and what at first looks like a family gathering, the film's narration begins and we learn that the narrative isn't necessarily set from the perspective of the boy. working backwards through time as we move along the table, the cast reverts from modern 21st century man, onto a WW2 soldier, Tudors, Vikings, Romans and caveman and back to the origins of life. Exploring various aspects of history and the human species including war, love & sex, all with a playful, tongue-in-cheek humour.

This animation is some what the same style as mute as previously explored. the simplistic modelling etc. although i prefer the texturing in this animation. but it also shown a different technique in which to execute these simplistic models. for example, the cheeks are separate geometry which would seem can be animated individually to create a very different tone of voice to other mainstream animations. it is something to consider whilst trying to improve my Maya skills.

So there was a few examples of what was shown in the short shorts section, which was very beneficial to see some of the styles used and techniques employed. I have gotten an insight on how to provide different solutions to technical problems. such as using individual geometry to imply physical features.

BAF

BRADFORD ANIMATION FESTIVAL!

And so commenced the 20th anniversary of Bradford animation festival. this was my second time at this fantastic festival! but regrettably until further notice this would be the last one. the plethora of wonderful and weird animations is astonishing, but most relevant to the module, the professional speakers gives a solid explanation to their practices and how to reflect on them in our own practices.

My note book this year round was filled to the brim with notes, for various reasons:

the content was more appropriate to me and also I took for granted last year how it can effect my work and how it can benefit this module. but also I've learnt how valuable these visits and talks are to bettering my knowledge of the professional world and what I can do to increase my knowledge further!

so read on to hear of the fantastic presentations and shows I went to see!

Propercorn Brief

Final Boards!

After assessing my peer feedback I made some crucial adjustments to my boards that would help me better reach the judges and to answer the brief in a more appropriate way!

Straight away the main criticism was the lack of text assisting my explanation so I added text along all boards.

I was also advised to add different examples of where the animations would appear!

There was a brief discussion about the illustrations, how they were too bold and distracted one from the content. so I knocked down the opacity of the illustrations and I saw how much of a difference it makes! it definitely makes my boards look more professional.

I added a fourth board to be able to incorporate a type of storyboard as some of my peers asked what the animations actually are, this board help me show what the content of the animations was.

I am much happier with the new version of the boards as they look a lot more professional and get a lot of the content across. this would not have been possible without my peers reviewing them and giving me constructive criticism, this not only showed me how important having a second opinion is but also how important collaborating is, because if I can improve my boards by someone just giving me their opinion then who knows what could be accomplished with more of that persons time devoted to the same cause.

COP 2

So I have derived my Essay title from the lecture that i enjoyed titled: Cities in film and media.

After a discussion with my Context of Practice tutor, the title that came to fruition was:

How does the environment in animation represent the uncanny and psychological concerns

There is a lot of room to explore darker reasons as to why some animations sets or environments are as they are, but i will have to be careful to not slip into the trap of exploring the animation itself, its characters and stories.

I will research into Sigmond freud's work to explore the uncanny and various other psychological texts to better understand where i am to go.

I will be influenced by a number of graphs as well that give a more visual outlook on the uncanny valley

But first i will start my essay in order to scribe down a starting point in which to explore further.

Response to my essay

Idea

So being briefed on our practical part of context of practice, we are to create an animated response from our essay. and being as though mine is quite a vague topic, I'm going to hone in on a certain response.

Im going to create an environment in maya and animate a camera going through the environment as though through the eyes of a person walking/ running through the environment to reveal certain aspects of the environment that becomes its own character, causing the viewer to feel certain emotions.

The film that influenced this decision is called Room 1408, where the protagonist is subject to  room in a hotel that seems to be its own character! that causes problems and takes the protagonists through various experiences that make the viewer uncomfortable.

So I too am going to use a hotel as my environment, but instead of one room im going to use a larger part of the hotel, such as the lobby and such, this will give me more opportunities to express its character.

This is the kind of style i am going to go for, just a bit less 'blingy' than this example. i need to rough out a storyboard and to design the aspects of the hotel 

Direction

The direction i'm going:

As its come quite apparent, I like to incorporate my dark and macabre tone of voice into all my animations so instead of working with a team, i've decided to approach the module individually, being my own director, but asking for people to chip in where necessary, so in layman's terms: we will be our own directors but each others crew!

So I have tried my hand at doing the concept art as I knew it wasn't my strong point, after going to Animex and seeing a tutorial about how a concept artists does his spaceships for guardians of the galaxy.

Here is my first, its more of a visual brainstorm rather than concept art, but this was to try out this new method whilst still considering my desired feel as to what my animation is going to be like.

There are aspects which i like such as the saw blade, but I am still a novice when it comes to photoshop so the outcome wasn't up to my wanted standard.

I will use Maya to set out a brief scene and use the same method to achieve a more realistic concept art which is more aesthetically pleasing ... whilst still being disturbing.

human slaughter

Cloud Atlas

So after much deliberation and after researching into the slaughter process of animals in the meat and poultry industry i've decided to create an 'Awareness' animation, one that is deep in the uncanny valley but also asks various questions about the concerns of slaughter in this day and age. like this:

What if it was humans instead of cows?

I know its quite a morbid thought, but it has to be disturbing to invoke the questions that i need to raise from the audiences mind, similar to the film inception: I need to plant the seed of an idea

Here is an example that was very much disturbing for me, and am sure for many others. its a clip from the film Cloud atlas, the scene is of a human slaughter house, these humans are cloned in order to be slaves and then slaughtered to feed the others.

This clip has the same dramatic and gory feel that i want to achieve with my animation, i want people to want to look away whilst still being fixed onto the screen.

I will create a mock scene, using Newplast to create the humans as it is very malleable and easy to animate. 

First i need to figure out how realistic I want the humans to be in order to avoid any unwanted ethical or psychological concerns.

Mcdonals

How many cows are slaughtered for McDonald's?

1. McDonalds opened in 1955. Since then 247 billion beef burgers have been sold. On the web are many sites analysing this, and there we find that they can get 2024 burgers from a cow. 247 billion divided by 2024 = a total of 122 million cows slaughtered so far!

this raises the moral question, who are we as a race to dictate what happens to these millions of other life forms that share our earth.

Also the concern linked to the slaughtering of animals, is the way in which they are slaughters, some say there is no humane way to do so, but others have been caught on CCTV abusing animals in the most disgusting way. 

Here is why I want to base my animation on this concern. I think the best way to raise awareness for this issue is through disturbing imagery, and this is where my idea was born. to do a role reversal animation where its a world where cows slaughter humans.

this will not just be an average impact animation because people will be obliged to think as though you were in the footsteps of the slaughtered.

Propercorn Brief

Peer review of boards

After the session with my peers I received a detailed breakdown of my boards and how they respond to the brief and whether I am going in the right direction. here is the breakdown of my first boards.

These comments were very useful as it outlined certain aspects of my boards that weren't clear and needed improvement. this showed how important peer feedback is, because someone might spot something that I miss!

Propercorn Brief

Design boards version 1

Here are the first design boards formed from my initial design ready for peer review, this would give me an opportunity for another opinion on whether the boards respond to the brief well. 

As you can see they contain the illustrations from the packaging to make the boards fit more with the brief.

Applied Animation

So where do we start? ...

Food!

After being briefed today on our applied animation module, there are various things to consider before pursuing our ideas. we have to explore the concerns wrapped around food and the thoughts that these can provoke, so to start I am mind mapping my understanding of some of the concerns linked with food and how I would pick out elements to turn into a resolved idea!

Such concerns include:

Slaughtering

Over fishing

Waste

Health

Fast Food

There are lots of avenues to explore when it comes to concerns in the world of food. the mind map should highlight those that stand out to me.